Secondary Emotions

Good evening ladies and gentleman,

So i was diving around the random peculiarities of the internet recently, due to suffering through a recent period of boredom and a subsequent sensation of stagnation, for not to unnecessarily quote Sherlock Holmes, but my mind really does rebel at stagnation. I just can’t deal with it, aimlessly distant,  scouring every detail of my life, all of the information on a subject or particular person, no matter how important or relevant the details may b. I have found that i seem to almost have an obsession to be lost in a puzzle, a desire to wander aimlessly through the seemably never ending complexities of some ideological, philosophical behavior that, rationally speaking anyway, doesn’t make sense when you look at it from  a certain perspective.

Now as I’m sure you know, if you don’t understand something, be it a problem in your mind or a behavior presented to you, be it by yourself, someone you care about or don’t even know, looking at a fresh perspective may help you understand. To take a step back and consider the wall you find yourself at, to look at it a different way and hopefully find a way through the problem. I choose to believe the key to this new perspective is steeped heavily in favor of emotion. Irritation is something i have found to cloud your mind and in particular your perspective when attempting to learn and subsequently understand something about yourself, or something in your life, for the fact its such a consciously soul drenching power. It seeps into every crack, irritation, anger and rage. Its powerful, destructive and will be the end of who we are and everything we want to be if we let it.

What if we ignore the problem for now then and concentrate on the emotion. Anger, irritation, rage and so on. This is where my jaunt across the more philosophical speeches of the internet led me to in that, essentially, there is so much more to anger, as irritation or fury so powerful you feel yourself shaking, for these feelings are more secondary to a more primary emotion.

I’ve heard this extract repeated a number of times in a number of different speeches, but as Elizabeth Kubler said:-

“There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It’s true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it’s more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They’re opposites. If we’re in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we’re in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.”

What if the way we deal with situations feelings or events that seem so saturated in emotions of powerlessness, of pain, anger, longing and jealousy all have a starting point- these secondary emotions a cloud for some larger issue? What if, as Kubler says, it all comes from somewhere, in that every secondary emotion, like anger jealousy, lust or happiness, has a starting point in the realm of a primary emotion, be that a place of love, or a place of fear.

She goes onto say more about emotions, focusing in particular on these two starting points for what can only be described for everything you experience across all aspects of your life, from when you were a small child crying because you were hungry, or as tears tumble from those big blue eyes as someone you care about, someone you love comes into to view after so long, a vividly powerful reminder of how fleeting life can be.

It’s this power that makes her point all the more important in understanding what these two primary emotions can do to us, for they are complete opposites. We have problems all the time, in all walks of life, this is inevitable. Along with this problem, there is an emotion we feel with it, anger, rage, happiness and so on. Emotions, especially i think the secondary emotions can massively affect clarity and judgement, leaving your understanding of life and your own self severely clouded. This results in you thinking of every possible scenario in which things can go wrong, living in the emotion and letting it break you down until you barely recognize yourself anymore.

So what if we tried to look further into the emotion, in the way Kubler has presented? We understand that every emotion we experience has a starting point, either in fear, or in love. These emotional states are arguably totally opposite to on another, so cannot be experienced at the same time. So we know that every emotional experience is arguably coming from either a place of fear, or a place of love. What if we could step back, take a look at what ails you from another perspective, look closer at yourself or the relationship, connection or issue that causes you confusion, anger, rage or happiness. Any of these things start in fear, or love.

What if we could understand what creates that fear in you, understand that sometimes fear is a good thing as you cloud your mind with rage during an argument, maybe you fear losing that person, or when you smile at a photo of your friends, you realize what you always knew in how important they are.

Fear & Love. So very important to what makes you, you. Every emotional experience is a result of one of these emotions. Maybe if we understood how, or why in a particular situation, we could break through these walls towards who and where we want to be?

And if we could do that, i feel we would be living true and pure to ourselves.
Which would be outstanding.

Yours, with love as always,

DR x