What are Emotions and Where Do They Come From?

     What are Emotions and From Where do They Come?

    Emotions are reactions to external events, people, situations, and expectations. There are also emotional reactions to internal experiences. It is very difficult to speak of emotions in general, so we will look at a number of specific emotions to better understand. Emotions come from the emotional center, the instinctive–moving center, and the thinking center. Most emotions are learned. Emotions are not thoughts although they can be triggered by thoughts.

     We all experience emotions every moment of the day. The Bay Bridge is shut down for repairs and you are angry because you have to drive miles out of your way. Traffic is twice as heavy and you will be late for work. You are worried about what your boss will say since this is the second time you’ve been late this week. You are afraid that this might lead to lay offs.. A driver cuts in front of you nearly clipping your front end. You flip him off and lean on your horn. You figure that you’ll have to fight the same traffic coming home tonight and you are irritated about being late for dinner again.

     Most of our emotions are negative emotions. According to the Work, man asleep cannot experience positive emotions. Real positive emotions do not change into their opposite. Most of the so-called positive emotions that we experience soon turn into their opposites. Love turns to hate. Joy turns to sorrow. Happiness becomes sadness. The higher emotional center is the center for true positive emotions. It exists in man, but because of his sleep he cannot experience the vibrations that it constantly sends to him. At best, man asleep can only experience some pleasant emotions that do not last very long.

     There is no center for negative emotions. Negative emotions are learned emotions. We learn them from our parents, older siblings and other adults that we grow up around. One form of negative emotions comes from the no’s that parents teach to protect their children. No, you can’t talk to strangers. So, we fear people that we don’t know. No, you can’t cross the street. So, we fear leaving the safety of our home. No, you can’t have more soda. So, we feel guilty when we over indulge.

   Yes, we are always negative. Negative emotions are the only emotions that we can experience at the second level of consciousness. If you are negative, it is always your fault. It is never the fault of other individuals or situations. Negative emotions drain us of our energy. If we are negative, we have no energy left for awakening.

     We repress many of our emotions. Very young children are much more expressive from their emotional centers. Young children are still in their Essence and receive messages from the higher emotional center. Therefore, they seem to be able to express real positive emotions: love, hope, faith, etc. They have a sense of the mystery and magic of life. Is it possible that we are born with positive emotions and as we grow in personality, we repress and replace them with negative emotions? As personality replaces Essence we no longer are able to receive messages from higher centers.

    In order to discover where emotions come from, let us look at some specific negative emotions. Fear can come from the moving-instinctive center. If you are walking through the woods, and you see a snake you will jump back in fear. This is a proper response and in this case the emotion of fear is not negative. If on the other hand you will not walk in the woods because of your fear of snakes this fear is a negative emotion. You have learned to fear snakes and this fear has no positive purpose. A girl in my adult school class was afraid to cross the Bay Bridge. She loved San Francisco but would not go to the city because she was afraid that the bridge might collapse. This again is a learned emotion that serves no purpose.

   If you feel grief because a loved one has passed away, this grief comes from the moving-instinctive center and serves to help you accept the death of your loved one. If you grieve because hungry children are dying in Africa every day, this grief is a learned emotion and has no real purpose.

   So, we have limited number of real emotions that come from the moving-instinctive center and help us to avoid danger or accept unhappy situations. But, most emotions come from a center that does not really exist. The emotional center which man asleep carries inside him is a center that is developed from childhood by imitation and conditioning.

    My most constant negative emotion is anger. Running a close second behind anger is fear. And, these two negative emotions compliment each other. When I look back into my childhood, I can remember hearing my father yell at my mother for spending too much money on household expenses. She would get angry at him at yell back, “ You punch drunk, dumb Pollack!”

     “I’m not even from Poland. I’m from Lithuania. How could you be so stupid?” And back and forth it would go. Hearing my parents yell and scream at each other would cause fear in myself, probably instinctive fear at first. But, this and other instances of my parents yelling in anger soon taught me that when something didn’t go right in my relationship with my brothers and sisters and friends it was right and natural to yell at them.

    My mother’s dominant emotion was fear. She would get frightened of noises outside our window, of strangers knocking on the door, of nightmares that she often had. She was especially frightened of mice. If a mouse ran across the kitchen floor she would climb upon a chair and scream.

    And I remember that I soon picked up these fears also. I would lie in my bed at night with my eyes tightly closed listening for sounds outside my window. I would never open the door for strangers.  I would often awaken in fright from a nightmare. And until this day I am still afraid of mice.

    I have spent years trying to stop the expression of my negative emotions especially anger. And though I have had some success I find that anger is the one emotion that I have the most difficulty controlling. Once an emotion is learned, it becomes a habit and is very difficult to control. A situation occurs and we are conditioned to behave in the same way that we always do.

    Before I began to study the Work, I was actually proud of how strongly I could express anger. We often take pride in our negative emotions. I remember once when my son somehow set a can of gasoline of fire. I rushed out to the garage, kicked the can outside, and doused it with the garden hose. Going back into the garage I screamed at my son in intense anger for a full two or three minutes. The next day my nephew who had witnessed my violent behavior told my son, “Boy your dad sure knows how to chew you out when he gets mad!” I felt my chest swell with pride as I listened to him phrase my burst of anger.

  For the past ten years or more I have been observing my emotional response to situations. When I express anger toward my students in the classroom, I often catch myself in time and turn the anger off. Other times I become identified with the situation and do not realize that I have been venting my anger until the class is over. With each observation, now, I am able to control my expression of negative emotions in many instances. I find myself more and more letting my students know that I was caught up in anger and agreeing with them that my anger was unproductive.

   I had a dream last night that shows how we can be total lost in a situation when through anger and fear we identify with it. I’m substituting in an eight-grade limited English history class. I’ve substituted in the class before and the students dislike me because they think I’m too strict. The teacher has left us as assignment in which we are to read a chapter of from the state adopted text aloud together. I pick a better reader student, Anne, to read aloud and instruct the rest of the students to follow along.

    As we begin reading, I notice that Jose is sitting with his eyes half closed and has no book on his desk. I walk to his desk and slam on it with both hands. “How to you expect to read if you don’t even have a book?” I scream at him.

   “I left my book at home,” he tells me.

    “Move you desk next to Sammy and read off of his book,” I yell. At the white board, I write the Jose’s name and put a check by it.

    “What’s that for?” he asks.

    “You are suppose to read along,” I scream and add a check.

    “O. K. begin again,” I tell Anne. She starts reading the first paragraph again. As I look across the room, I see a Juanita has a picture magazine covering her history book. I walk to her desk and throw the magazine on the floor. “How can you read your book when it’s covered with a magazine?” I yell. Back at the front of the room I write her name on the white board and add a check. “Don’t you guys understand English? You’re suppose to read along!” I scream at the class. “O.K. begin again,” I yell at Anne.

    She goes back to the first sentence and begins reading. Looking around the room I see that Maria is writing a note to a friend. I rush to her desk, tear the note from her hands, ripe it in pieces and throw in on the floor. Back at the white board, I write her name and add a check. Beside myself with anger, I scream at the class, “What is wrong with you people. You are suppose to read along…”

   When I awake from the dream I realize it is showing me how once you become identified you lose yourself completely in your negative emotions. Knowing that the students hate reading, hate history, hate me, I am afraid from the very beginning of class that I will lose them. My anger at the students who are not reading alone is not serving any useful purpose. They will only hate reading more because of the way that I punished them for not reading. If I had been conscious, I would have paired up the non-reading student with a student who could read a little better and had them read together in pairs. Or I would have found some other way to get the students to do the assignment. If I had been conscious that I was trying to perform an impossible task, I would not have identified and lost myself in useless fear and anger.

   Do you observe your negative emotions? Do you listen to the tone of your voice? Do you even know when you are expressing anger or irritation? What is your favorite negative emotion? Are you proud of it? Have any of your negative emotions ever produced a thing for you? Once you understand what emotions are and where they come from, you may be able to control your expression of the most destructive of them. Do you have any positive emotions? With work on ourselves, we can again connect to the higher emotional center and experience positive emotions.