Monitoring and Assuming Responsibility for Emotions

If you wanted to teach spirituality to others, what do you think would be the very first lesson? I think it would be emotions, and how to properly assume responsibility for them. Why is that? Because the end of spirituality is virtue, proper conduct, and it is the way we handle emotions that dictate our conduct. No matter how smart a person is, no one acts from thought. Everyone acts from emotion. And there is nothing in the behavior profile of a person that is not first in their emotion profile. But we can act from unprocessed (raw) emotions, or processed ones. Raw emotions are the feelings we get when we consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously react to something; processed emotions are the feelings we get when we take raw emotions and pass them through the reasoning faculty. Processed emotions are the ones that begin in the heart and get to the head, before they proceed to the rest of the body.

How do we assume responsibility for emotions? If for example a person acts from raw emotion and claims he or she was ignorant of the presence of the emotion, are they to be believed? Well, emotions are the preserve of the soul, and we've already defined the soul as the sum total of the unconscious, semi-conscious and conscious activities of an individual. So when a person has raw emotion, the person may be completely unconscious of it. This is the same state as if the emotion weren't even there. Or the person may be conscious of it, but only partially. And so, vigilance is called for. If we monitor our thoughts by gauging our emotions, as Rhonda Byrne would say, then we can monitor our emotions by our spontaneous behaviors. The sad thing here is that if we have to act negatively before we notice negative emotions, then we are in trouble. There has to be a better way.

The amount of consciousness needed to regulate human emotion may not always come readily when needed. In regular human society, we know that when things do not supply themselves we have to instigate such supply. And so, if it seems like the mechanism of processing emotions, especially negative ones, is not functioning properly, we have to stimulate the process. We can do this in a number of ways, such as: meditation, yoga, counseling, therapy and contemplative prayer. These exercises help us to scan our souls thoroughly to see if we can find any emotions lurking in the corner anywhere. The emotions we might have missed, the emotions that do not readily show themselves; the ones we may be unconscious or subconscious of - it is through these excising activities that we unearth them. And evaluate them.

In order words, the emotions we can ordinarily pick up in the course of our everyday existence, we can simply process via Descartes' three-step Mastering the Emotional Arc formula; whereby we become conscious of the emotion, process it through cogitation, and then reason objectively with it. But for emotions we are unconscious or subconscious about we can scan them out through the aforementioned spiritual exercises. This is preferable to attempting to keep tab on emotions by observing behaviors. It is a proactive way of monitoring and assuming responsibility for emotions rather than a reactive way, like trying to do so through observing behavior is. 

But why is it important anyway to monitor and assume responsibility for emotions? The reasons cannot be overemphasized. To begin with, emotions ultimately determine if we're going to be happy. If we never monitor our emotions or assume responsibility for them, we can be sure that we will never be happy. Period. It's like a diabetic and his or her blood-sugar level. They have to monitor it. It's also like a hypertensive person and their blood pressure. They have to monitor it as well. We all have to keep our emotions monitored and handled, or else we will fall into trouble. We have already said in a previous post that happiness is ethics consequent on epistemology. But negative emotions work against both. If we entertain negative emotions, we will be unable to act virtuously, ethically. If we entertain negative emotions, we will be uninspired to seek after knowledge and understanding; to engage in epistemology. And so, emotions are a huge deal to consider in our teleological search for happiness. 

When we monitor and assume responsibility for emotions, we show ourselves to be people of reason. We show ourselves to be philosophical. We show ourselves to be human, because it is reason and reason alone that sets us apart from other animals. Reason alone makes us transcend the appetitive and the animated aspects of ourselves. Reason assures us of truth as opposed to falsehood or opinion. Reason helps us to articulate the sensations we experience, and to assess our human behavior. Because "an unreflected life is not worth living." Reason in short should trump emotions. We need a wide head to support a wide heart. Measure for measure. People who suspect themselves of having loads of emotions scattered all over the place must develop a system of counseling, or yoga, or meditation, or therapy. They must seek out a life coach if they think they cannot engage in spiritual exercises by themselves. It's like wanting to watch your weight. You can begin an exercise routine, or you can join a gym or hire a coach, and thus benefit from the expertise of people who do exercises for a profession.

The benefits of doing all this abound. Through meditation, a person attains some level of peace or calmness; keeps their emotions in check. A person through meditation can put paid to psychological conditions such as anxiety, stress, ADHD, depression and so forth. Even physical health is improved, especially when an individual's seemingly physical ailments are actually psychosomatic. Counseling helps the individual in similar ways. Through counseling, an individual can overcome neurotic behavior; can become more aware of his or her emotional profile; can be put on a path toward making better behavioral choices; can assume greater responsibility for personal conduct and happiness, and can improve overall mental, emotional and physical health. The same is true, or even truer, with professional psychotherapy. And of course through taking yoga classes, a person can improve overall mental, emotional and physical health, by engaging in the mind-body exercises that attempt to center a person in their chakras and lift their minds to higher levels of possible consciousness with the resultant effect of improving the potential to handle emotions optimally. 

Everyone owes it to himself or herself to monitor and assume responsibility for human emotions. Because we all desire to be happy, and emotions are the primary factor towards our possibly attaining happiness, we cannot not monitor and take responsibility for our emotions. We have to become conscious of everyday emotions in the course of our lives, and take care to process them through thought, before acting. This is the Descartes' three-step emotional mastery procedure. But for the emotions that do not easily come under our radar, we have to engage in the sorts of spiritual exercises that can help us monitor and assume responsibility for them. These exercises include: psychotherapy, counseling, yoga and meditation. By means of these spiritual activities, we can improve our mental, emotional and physical health by becoming more conscious of our emotions and improving our potential to optimally assume responsibility for them in such a fashion as to prevent them from getting in the way of our happiness. We can then be well on our way to ethical conduct and the resultant state of true and lasting happiness, which is what spirituality is all about in the first place.