Brooke,

{{Another sign of emotional mastery in my opinion is to be able take in negative emotions from others, filter them within yourself, and put out only clean, positive, forward moving emotions and responses.}}

I excel at taking in negative emotions from others but not so at putting out clean, positive responses. How do you do it? I am still looking for the button to push.

{{I dealt with severe anger issues due to ptsd associated with adolescent trauma for many years. As I started to normalize in my late 20s and early 30s the first thing I did was almost completely give up anger, I figured I spent 15+ years of my life angry all the time, why not spend the rest of my life free of it.}}

Anger has been my lifelong issue as well. I figured to be free of it too. Tell me how!

{{I like to try to be what I call a negative energy buffer, I take in the bad, absorb it, clean it, and only let out good. If others can’t let it go and have to spill it out fine, but I will not hang onto it for them, the anger leaves once it passes through me.}}

Passing through reminds me of the Litany Against Fear from the book and movie, Dune. Do you know of the Litany?

Litany Against Fear

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

– Frank Herbert, Dune

“Paul Atreides, the son of Duke Leto Atreides I, used the Litany when the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam compelled him to put his right hand in a device that causes pain as a test of his intellect. The litany helped him to withstand the excruciating agony. NB. This was not actually a test of his “intellect”, it was a test of his humanity in a qualitative sense. A person whose nature is still primarily bestial recoils from pain and seeks to flee it to preserve itself, a person of higher nature goes through it and out the other side in order to remove the threat permanently.”

– dune.wikia.com

shaleejynnsade (may I address you as Shay?),

{{I think what you are talking about reflects the concept of centeredness…When we may be experiencing trouble and trauma in the physical sense but not inwardly.}}

Centeredness is exactly the word. I also refer to the state of the inner landscape when writing about the whole human.

{{When circumstances arise that would normally generate fear or even panic, and we respond with acknowledgment, not blocking or denying that fear. Not attempting to control emotion, circumstances, or other people. Then moving toward peace as we process the emotion and circumstance. That inner tranquility acknowledges that being ok on the physical level is much more than a setting of physical things.}}

Beautifully expressed. This is the cream of having started the discussion. I also refer to shifting from being driven by emotions to being powered by higher feelings. But to communicate my meaning requires more depth of writing than I can put into it in this moment.

{{Likewise when relationships disturb us, we move from acknowledgment, processing, to the reality that no matter what happens we are still where we should be, learning what there is to learn, growing because of the “disturbance” and being thankful for it.}}

Again, you are right on with my way of seeing.

{{Gratitude in crisis is what I would call emotional mastery. As we experience and process the emotions, we may not “Look” or “feel” very mastered. Emotions will move. But the process moves us to a place more peaceful and we grow in wisdom.}}

You have graced me with an expansion of my own awareness and understanding. Gratitude is now a more aware part of my practice.

{{Just knowing that as we experience this is emotional mastery and inner peace. It will come out “right” in the end.

{{I might also add that emotional mastery fulfils the recognition and expression at least inwardly of the said emotion. That expression should not purposely harm self or others. The motive is very important I think. Being based in gratitude really moves us from a destructive cycle.}}

Yes, it is not just the words or the actions, but the motives and energy behind them that matter.

Thank you.

Gary

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Gary R. Smith. Reason: correct typo and add clarity

Matt,

Why bring it up?

On a forum titled ‘Emotional Mastery,’ do you think it useful for participants to understand what emotional mastery means?

Smells of pride?

Wow, you can read and judge me over pixels on a screen? If I was defending, I would like to become aware of it. Please help me become more aware, that way we can be of use and benefit to each other on the path of conscious evolution.

“Lol, what? How unexpected! How delightful! “I am not this, I do not do that”. Then why bring it up? Said differently… what were you defending, and from what or whom? We all burp, no biggie. Whew! Smells of pride… which is just another emotion, rises, fades. *hugs*, namaste.”

With warmth,
Matt

Tell me more about the hugs, namaste and warmth. Are they real? Do they come from an authentic place, an open heart? Or do the words cover something else?

Dear Anita,

You wrote, “Emotional mastery doesn’t have a look. It doesn’t look like any particular thing.A person who mastered his/ her emotions cannot be recognized. A person trying to look like he mastered his emotions, a guru type. And when such a person recognizes a person looking for a guru, there is a match. A personal standard, highly personal. Not something to show off like a new car or a college degree.

“Some of the characteristics are the ability to endure distress, to not automatically react to distress in destructive ways, to calm oneself down when agitated and before acting, patience with oneself and with others. These do not look, again, like anything in everyday life: there is no look, a glitter in the eye or a certain strong chin, or a head held high… no appearances to emotional mastery.”

I recognize people who have emotional mastery and do not just talk about it. They are non-reactive and act more from higher feelings than from lower emotions. It is past due in human history to bring this awareness from being highly personal to being culturally normal. The look is not a glitter, but gold that can be seen by those with eyes to see.

I agree that a person trying to look like she has mastered her emotions is obvious, and that emotional mastery is not something to show off. A person who has gained emotional mastery does not talk about their own mastery. It is individual, and evident, when the self-mastery is real.

Thank you for responding.

Gary

Thank you for responding, Brooke.

“I feel this would fall into the category of self actualization: A good lifetime goal for anybody who would like to complete themselves to there own satisfaction while maintaining a constant flow of giving back to society, and the people they love and care about. How it looks in every day life would vary state to state, country to country, etc etc. If and when I get there I might have a better explanation.”

What the process of growing into emotional mastery looks like to me is that I become more neutral and less reactive, more aware of the slightest triggers and reactions and able to manage them in the moment so they don’t control me. I certainly have not fully mastered emotions as there are still times when anger is on slow burn and I cannot do anything about it, or my thoughts are obsessive over some perceived wrong-doing towards me. I call that my human sprout aspect, a part of me still in development. They joy is growing in self-awareness and compassion, and observing myself as my actions grow more towards my ideal of the whole human.

Dear Anita,

Your response to my post and questions helped me clarify my understanding. I am constantly revising my answers, as realizations don’t stand still. In the end it is all a mystery unfolding.

From our dialogue, I wrote two blog posts on the Whole Human site. I referred to you generically as ‘a reader.’

Sometime I may like to quote you:

“Regarding your question: why… are emotions left unattended: when we are children and experience lots of fear and distress, we often dissociate, remove our emotions from our awareness. And so it becomes a way of being, emotions stay away from awareness, not attended by our awareness. The job of emotions is to motivate us to do what is effective for us to do, to survive and maybe thrive. But when a child/ person experiences too much fear (the most powerful emotion), all emotions go into hiding.”

I would do so only with your permission. May I quote you as stating the above, with your name, Anita?

The blog posts developed from our interaction are:

What are emotions, feelings and e-qualities?
http://www.wholehuman.emanatepresence.com/realizations-blog/what-are-emotions-feelings-and-e-qualities

What is the Greater Flame?
http://www.wholehuman.emanatepresence.com/realizations-blog/what-is-the-greater-flame

Best regards,

Gary

Dear Anita,

If my post was vague it is because as I wrote, ‘to answer your question, what is the greater flame, I feel a need to give my words more attention than time allowed’ that morning.

My answer may seem philosophical and far away. To me, it is closer than a heartbeat and just as real.

Whether you respond to this or not is okay. Others may read it or not, and that is okay. I will continue to write on this focus and post on the Whole Human blog.

You wrote, ‘ maybe you mean by it the “higher feeling” – but I don’t know what you mean by the later either.’

As I wrote above, ‘For clarity on what I mean by lower emotions and higher feelings, I wrote on the Whole Human site with example lists of both.’

Out of respect for the Tiny Buddha Founder who wrote that ‘Tiny Buddha is about reflecting on simple wisdom and learning new ways to apply it to our complex lives’ I am looking at keeping my posts focused on simple wisdom and may go to posting short text with pics on the Tiny Buddha FB page.

But, to finish what I started here,

by ‘the greater flame’ I mean universal consciousness, the ultimate reality.

Can anyone deny that there is an Everything?

I don’t mean the bagel with cream cheese, but the all that is — physical, non-physical, known, unknown, all universes, dimensions and planes of existence with all its chaos and order design and randomness, laws and mysteries. No specifics now, as Everything includes everything, whatever it is.

And Everything is unified by Something called consciousness.

According to Athene’s ‘Theory of Everything’, consciousness is produced by neural synergies.

There is local consciousness generated by human brains (each person has three ‘brains’ – in the head, the heart and the gut,) the flame of an individual. Yet there is another consciousness, which pervades all things, animate and inanimate. It is the consciousness of the atoms, particles and creating wavicles, non-local and universal. This is what I call the greater flame.

There are many views regarding consciousness and voices speaking sense and nonsense. Matthew R. Francis debunks popular pronouncements in the article ‘Quantum and Consciousness Often Mean Nonsense.’ I have read lightly in this field and am informed/inspired not by writings but by feeling and knowing. A quick browse through Brainy Quotes yielded these nuggets:

“These experiments have been carried out hundreds and hundreds of times in all sorts of ways so that no physicist really questions the end point…. these experiments are very clearly telling us that consciousness is limitless and the ultimate reality.” – Robert Lanza

“Consciousness, when it’s unburdened by the body, is something that’s ecstatic; we use the mind to watch the mind, and that’s the meta-nature of our consciousness; we know that we know that we know, and that’s such a delicious feeling, but when it’s unburdened by biology and entropy, it becomes more than delicious: it becomes magical.” – Jason Silva

“Each time you choose not to act on a frightened part of your personality, you create authentic power – and you grow spiritually. The frightened parts of your personality come less frequently and with less intensity, and the loving parts fill more and more of your consciousness.” Gary Zukav

Then, what am I?

What makes a being a being? Consciousness?

One dictionary definition of being is, ‘the nature or essence of a person.’

Athene wrote in his “Theory of Everything”, “When we use our mirror neurons to look at ourselves, we may construct the idea of identity. But if we do this with our scientific understandings, we see something completely different: the neural synergies that produce our oscillating consciousness go far beyond our own neurons….”

At my core essence I am a cell of the One Being, whose body is all that is. My core purpose is to emerge as a whole human.

Anita, does this give you a sense of what I mean by ‘the greater flame’?

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Gary R. Smith.