How do we serve the lesser gods? We feed them. What is their food? Our sensations of anger, hatred, jealousy, frustration, obsessive desire. These sensations are held in the nervous system and the muscles and their vibration attracts unseen minions who revel in them, encourage them and look for ways to provoke them. In our work, these sensations are known as negative emotions because they arise as an electrical charge in the nervous system and eventually discharge.
Religions have developed rules to subdue the expression of these negative emotions but rules most often operate on the basis of suppression, which is ineffective. Our work recommends that these phenomena be impartially observed, held consciously and absorbed as energy. In short, whose food is your anger…unseen vampirish beings or your functioning as a real human being?
The key to all this is wanting. Consider, what is wanting? To want is to have a desire for something you do not have, meaning a lack of something you desire. Wanting is a loaded gun. In a state of wanting, you are not satisfied with what you have. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”, says Psalm 23. Wanting is not intrinsically wrong but it is dangerous, meaning not only that in a state of wanting you may not appreciate what you have but also that you may be tested on the lengths to which you will go to get what you want.
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May 16, 2024
Tags: negative emotions, sensations, wanting, work notes
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October 10, 2016
I still do not understand what you mean about neither expressing nor suppressing. What’s the alternative?
This seems to be the single most difficult part of work on self to understand and the problem probably started with G’s famous dictum about not expressing what he called negative emotions.
Let’s go step by step. You observe in real time that anger is arising in you. The observation begins with noting the sensations of anger and then perhaps moves on to labeling it, or perhaps not. It doesn’t matter at this point. The observing remains objective…that is, you do not judge/criticize yourself for the anger nor do you justify it by blaming circumstances or other people. It is simply an experience of anger. You decide not to express it. There is no psychological dimension, no identification, no body-based habitual compulsion to express. The anger is energy, that’s all. Unlike in suppressing, this energy does not need to go anywhere else; it does not drive other unconscious reactions and thought loops such as self-pity, self-loathing, hatred or the desire for violence.
This is a very elegant maneuver, in my opinion requiring years of observing self to accomplish. And even then, do not assume it is always within your capacity to accomplish it.
Do you undertake this maneuver for the sake of the work?
This is an interesting question. Do you need a reason? It is possible for any reason to become a subtle form of suppression. If you want to restrain expression in order to excel at the work, you may be adopting a standard of performance that requires you to suppress. The same could be said for withholding expression for the benefit of other people.
Then why aim for non-expression?
Observation of self takes you there, intending it or not. Expression of so-called negative emotion is objectively a waste of energy which is observably injurious to the machine and an insult to your being. After much objective observing, it becomes an unnecessary extravagance.
What happens to the energy of the negative emotion?
Remember that the term negative emotion is not a judgment about tone or content but simply a reference to the fact that it results in an energetic discharge. That’s what emotions do. By not discharging, the energy becomes available for use. It may help you to wake up. It may attract your presence which easily becomes absent when negative emotions are active along with their identifications.
The question that arises is this: can you take everything as data?
Tags: energy, expressing, negative emotions, observation, suppressing
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October 10, 2015
I am often embarrassed by my sleep behavior which gives me the motivation to stay awake.
Yes, sleep can be embarrassing . The energetic charge of embarrassment can be useful. However, do not make the mistake of assuming that being present means being awake. Presence is an intermediate state between sleeping and waking. In presence, the momentum of sleep continues in the machine. The charging/discharging mechanism remains potentially active, leaving you open to the full range of negative emotions if the ‘right’ stimulus comes along. Identification then follows. At best, the machine is temporarily neutral when you are in a state of presence.
To awaken is to awaken the machine, in which case there are no negative emotions and no possibility of a charge/discharge cycle. In the waking state, the circuitry of energy generation and transformation is fully engaged, sensing/feeling/thinking are integrated and operate without interference from conditioning.
Awakening is not some sort of metaphysical state. It is not Samadhi. It is not withdrawal from sense-experience. Awakening is embodied.
Presence and attention are catalysts for awakening but awakening itself encompasses and harmonizes all the functions humans are capable of. This is a state of real being. Life is real only then, as Mr. G would say.
To Be Continued…Related Posts:
Tags: attention, awake, identification, negative emotions, presence, sleep, waking state
