Thinking. And Feeling

You may have spotted some running themes to my recent articles.

The first is uniqueness; that everyone is different, not just superficially but deeply and profoundly. This is a good thing and we should take the trouble to discover what our uniqueness is and not try to hide in the crowd. No-one ever discovered their life purpose in the midst of the mob..

The second is karma; that our options today have been determined by what we did yesterday, and that no matter how fair and equal you try to make society, people with karma to play out will play it out and there is no legislation, movement or party that will ever prevent that.

The third, and the topic of today’s words, is the power, beauty, wonder and danger of emotions.

The world that we live in was formed by men. One of those was a chap called Rene Descartes (pronounced day cart) who lived in France in the 1600’s. Now if you hate maths should blame Descartes for his invention of the x and y, horizontal and vertical axes, on graphs. But that was not the end of his crimes, for he also uttered the famous words

“I think, therefore I am.”

These words set humanity on a four-hundred-year long worship of the mind, elevating reason and logic above things like feelings. Fast forward to the 1990’s and my old teacher adapted these words and said

“I feel, therefore I am more.”

Now, these two statements help to bring the mind and the emotions into balance, helping us to see that we need both, and that when we only have one, we are somehow lacking. Who wants to reduce every encounter and happening to cold hard logic? Not me. But who wants to make everything a drama-fest? Not me either.

Just as it is possible to over-think, it is also possible to over-feel. Mind plus emotions expands our awareness, but mind instead of emotions, or emotions instead of mind, is an imbalance that brings only problems.

Yet over-feeling is exactly what our society is now engaged in. We are living through a period which I call the Great Closing of the Mind, where feelings beat facts and emotions are routinely preferred to reason. Some enthusiastically claim that this will take us to a better place, that this is not a closing of the mind, but an opening of the heart. I say that the evidence, from events in our world, suggests otherwise…

Consider the extent to which most discussion and debate in our society now turns almost entirely on how people feel. For example, who can seriously claim that they any longer vote in elections based on track record or policies? OK, there’s a few of us left but the decision of who leads us is now largely a competition between armies of devotees versus armies of haters. Who even knows what Trump or Biden stand for? You don’t need to know this, we are told. You just need to love him, and hate him, and there are plenty of people ready to make you all emotional about this. Brexit? Lockdown? Vaccinations? BLM? Very few people investigate the facts or think seriously about these issues. More and more we take positions based on emotions such as anger, resentment, outrage, and fear.

Now, just to be clear, I am not advocating that everyone become cold rational logic heads for it has long been recognised that the mind can be a twisted forest of confusion. This is why many spiritual practices teach that to get anywhere with God you must somehow break or transcend the mind. But this is not so that you can replace the mind with emotions, but so that you can replace thinking with love. And love and emotion are not the same thing! Love takes you in one direction only, upwards, but when you embrace emotion you open two doors, one to enlightenment, the other to chaos.

Emotions, just like the mind, are useful when directed, but murderous when left unchecked. Unchecked emotion spreads like water. It’s easy to turn the tap on, but many forget to turn it off again later. We need to learn when to stop crying, when to stop wailing and howling at the Moon and when to start thinking. If we cannot do this then the whole world will drown in tears.

Again, this is not, repeat not, about repressing, suppressing, or denying emotions. Not only is this unhealthy but it won’t work anyway, for emotions will always out in the end. But HOW they come out is crucial to determining how life goes. For example, there have been many times in my life where I could have cheerfully throttled someone. Horrible bosses, smarmy co-workers, idiots in bars and clubs, morons in shops, there have been dozens of them over the years. And in some cases, I could easily have justified my actions. But if had acted on any of those impulses – which were always emotional and never rational - quite aside from them being illegal and carrying material world consequences, I would have surrendered to the lowest part of myself, the part of me (in fact the part of all of us) which is intolerant, controlling and has nothing to do with love. What you feed, grows, so acting on impulse always has consequences.

Of course, there is no question that the heart knows stuff the mind does not, but the heart is not everything for it also contains monsters such as jealousy, resentment, fear, and regret. The mind can go too far, statistics on a page will never tell the real story of an atrocity or tragedy. But the heart is not privy to all truth and the emotional power of individual stories can blind us to the reality of the bigger picture.

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, those who taught spiritual development would encourage their pupils to develop the skill of introspection, that is to observe one’s own feelings and thoughts. This is not the same as dwelling on them, obsessing over them or becoming self-absorbed and it is a vital step along the road to any sort of lasting spiritual connection. With introspection comes the ability to notice; how do you react to things, what triggers you to react and where does that reaction come from? When someone you hate starts talking where do you sense that hate? Does your stomach knot? Or your shoulders hunch? Or do they give you a headache or make your skin tingle? It is not a matter of interpreting what any of those different reactions mean so much as sitting with them until you understand that those reactions are TEMPORARY and need not belong to you. Introspection is an essential tool in the journey of realising that you are not perfect, and therefore not qualified to judge the imperfections of anyone or anything, until you have at least made some attempt to perfect yourself..

I would not say that introspection is the same as mindfulness. The point of introspection is to realise that though I think therefore I am and I feel therefore I am more there is actually something else going on which is neither mind nor emotion, but that to get to it we need to control both our thoughts and our feelings.

Unfortunately, during the Great Closing of the Mind, all that matters, we are told, is how we feel. But when enough damage has been done (and it will be) by the unfettered expression of emotion then people will realise that just as you can train the mind so you can (in fact you must) train the emotions. So, if you want to stop being ruled by how you feel then here are some starter tips.

1. Examine all sides. Emotional people are easily manipulated, and this is well known in political and activist circles, as well by Big Tech and the media who rely on click-bait and outrage to galvanise you into supporting their agenda. To counter this we must learn how to listen, watch, and read with detachment, to hear, watch or read something and say inwardly “thank you, that was the case for the prosecution, now what’s the case for the defence?” There is always more than one side and more than one layer to every story, and only those running an agenda will tell you otherwise.

2. Give up on the Golden Age. It is not coming anytime soon and those who expect it or are involved in trying to make it happen are cruising hard for disappointment. Golden Age thinking leaves the good people who practice it susceptible to false rescues and illusions, whereas those who wisely abandon dreams of Utopia are actually the ones who attain inner peace, a state that ‘spiritual warriors for justice’ will never understand.

3. Notice, with detachment. Introspection for 20 minutes in the morning three times a week, while the rest of your life goes ahead unchanged is not introspection at all. Introspection is an ongoing practice that requires us to notice things in ourselves more than we do in others, to look first to ourselves as the cause of any problem and first to ourselves as the home of any solution. Introspection, used right, is an antidote to blame. People who practice introspection might be happy or sad, but they will not be attached to either of those states. It cannot be sunny every day and introspection helps us to deal with this.

4. Practice kindness but develop strength. All of us must learn, at one time or another, how to be tough and how to cope, all by ourselves. Helping, assisting, supporting at every turn arguably does much damage, reducing people’s resilience and making them weak and reliant. When you learn to walk you first fall over, when you learn to ride a bike you first fall off, when you learn to drive a car you very early on have a crash. It is only through these things that we learn, and sometimes they hurt. A lot. But they all carry with them valuable learning which we would not otherwise get.

Much of what is going on in our world now is the result of the Great Closing of the Mind. We have handed over our thinking to technology, the media, and academics. Theoretically this leaves us free to ascend to higher forms of living, but in practice it exposes us to the demons of hate, resentment, fear, and anger. As these dark emotional forces become more and more visible I urge everyone to STOP and TAKE TIME to THINK and INVESTIGATE before making judgements or taking sides. Those who cannot (or will not) do this will be played like puppets on strings, pushed this way and that by those who are intent on using emotion to manipulate your reality for their ends.

Millions of people are having their view of the world shaped in ways that would have been deemed unimaginable to previous generations, so when you read of events or happenings that make you angry, sad, fearful or outraged then step back and consider who profits from this and move instantly to reassert your own thinking mind.

Question the narrative. Doubt the consensus. Resign from the herd, reject the mob, think for yourself, and tell others to do the same. Intuition alone isn’t the answer here, because that’s just another form of feeling. To really be in charge of our lives we also have to think…