Emotions and Consciousness

August 1, 2021 AURELIS Syllabus, Cognitive Insights, Consciousness No Comments

An emotion is, of course, always important. Yet, there is a whole gradation between ‘superficial’ and ‘deep.’ Deep as being what has more to do with more of you.

But what this actually means is quite subtle. [see: “What is ‘Depth’?”]

You can be aware of an emotion,

but you cannot evoke an emotion with your consciousness alone.

You can imagine a situation in which a certain feeling appears. In other words: you use autosuggestion (such as in the form of visualization), and your deeper self will react. That’s what we do all day long.

That’s what we somehow do each time we feel an emotion. Autosuggestion is something of this world, not of another one.

Sometimes quite a few emotions may arise during an AURELIS session.

That’s OK as part of the whole.

However, it is not indispensable, and it is not necessary in order to speak of a ‘good session.’ In general, it does not increase the ultimate impact of a session unless the purpose of the session revolves around the emotions themselves. So when emotions come up, let them come ― and pass again. Appreciate them with profound attention as you can appreciate also other things that come from deep within yourself.

Deep attention makes it real.

It is this attention that ultimately determines the effect of emotions during an AURELIS session.

Purely conscious handling of emotions turns emotions into shadows and food for ‘ego.’

Deep, ‘open’ attention reveals an additional dimension that brings everything to life.

Thoughts, feelings.

Sometimes it is assumed that ‘thoughts’ are connected with consciousness (or: with what consciousness is ) and feelings/emotions with the non-conscious, the ‘deeper layers.’

Actually, this is clearly wrong.

Both thoughts and feelings/emotions live in a total person.

It is true that what we call ‘emotion’ and, as such, consciously perceive in ourselves has more non-conscious qualities. Apparently, the transition between deeper self and consciousness has a less crystallizing influence on emotions than on thoughts.

Perhaps this is related to the fact that emotions, whether we like them or not, ultimately influence – or overlap even more with – what motivates us or not.

Men and women

Apart from all cultural specificities, I don’t think that men are less ‘emotional’ than women. They may be emotionally in a different way, or they may deal with their emotions in another way.

Building on Jung’s theories of animus and anima, men and women would be better able to show each other’s non-conscious to each other. In other words, some of the attraction between sexes can arise from the attraction between a person and his/her own deeper self.

Just look at:

The urge for unification and growth.

Creation of new life.

Libido.

Eros.

It would be a shame to reduce eroticism to a mere focus on the ‘sexual act’

and the latter to some hormones and the depth of an iron pick. And yet, this is often the case. Nowadays, there is even a tendency to interpret Darwinism in such a way that it comes down to that. For many people, this brings a lot of suffering and not being able to accomplish oneself. With some attention for this problem, you will encounter it in coaching again and again.

People are so much richer than that, eroticism so much deeper and more beautiful.

“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” (Judy Garland)

Primal emotion?

An interesting theory says that, specifically, all types of emotions start the same somewhere in the brain, as a kind of undifferentiated ‘primal emotion.’ It would then be all kinds of additional interpretations of a person about himself, which make that the primal emotion will eventually (this is: a few microseconds later) arise as fear or as anger or rather as a positive emotion, such as a feeling of challenge or of ‘being alive.’ It seems unlikely that this is entirely correct, but to a certain extent, it is true.

Interpretations

It also means, and this is very important, that interpretations that can include both cognitive and emotional aspects help determine emotions.

Well, these interpretations can undoubtedly be influenced. Not so much at the moment, of course – since it all happens too fast – but in advance. So when you hear someone say: “My emotions are going to get away with me,” then that may be correct at that moment itself, but it does not mean that this person is someone who will never be able to do something about it.

It is possible to work on it in advance (if that is someone’s intention).

In this case, autosuggestion (communication with the non-conscious, you know) is also an excellent way.

See the metaphor of the mikado chopsticks. Emotions that go crisscrossed in all directions in a wild manner (‘getting away with me’) may align a bit more.

As repeatedly said: if you do this completely non-aggressively, you will also become more yourself. You can already feel this in the phrase “getting away with me.” So ‘they’ with ‘me,’ because they are not me. The crisscrossed emotions are less myself than I would like them to be.

A different view on other things

In my opinion, the foregoing readily gives a different view upon homosexuality, for example. This new view is more accepting from the outside and more flexible from the inside.

Of course, it is always important to pay attention: what am ‘I’ and what am ‘I’ not. It is not the intention to turn into who one is not, perhaps least of all on an emotional level. I think it is only natural that people should always be wary of this.

Mind-medication

The previous is also a sensitive point in the field of antidepressants and antipsychotics, which artificially aim to drastically alter a person’s feelings.

This was central to the movement of antipsychiatry, which, especially a few decades ago, also had fervent supporters among psychiatrists themselves (Foudraine, Foucault, Szasz, Laing,…).

Nowadays, the steamroller of biological psychiatry (three times medication!) has made short shrift of this. Apparently, anything is allowed as long as it generates money and can be packaged in a disease model, rightly or wrongly.