Chapter 6: The Military of Emotions
In the same way we command our limbs, we command our purpose. We have dedicated roles for arms and legs, core and brain, chest and spirit, but also external roles in our lives. To manage this, our mind is channeling its entire capacity towards a specific goal; your composition of thought. We have trivialized thinking in a way that makes us have no distinction between the macro and micro meanings of “thought”. Thought is our life, we navigate and survive off our ability to sense and form a response. But a thought is also just one thing, usually needing a web of itself to connect to any meaningful conclusion or meaning. In turn, as minds expand outwards towards a deeper conscience with more experience and history; minds also retreat towards a shrinking mind, compressing itself down towards a single point.
Babies experience thoughts that are the most important thoughts. Their mind knows only to grow outwards. Growing inwards would be to reflect on the space that is being made and has been made, which babies have no use for. They need to experience and build a network of identity. Our first thoughts were emotional ones; our last ones will be as well but due to the experience cultivated.
Experience is the intensifier that creates the depth in our thoughts. It is the goal of the living, whether that be to seek meaning or to simply survive. But experience is a word that is also trivialized. When babies experience an emotion, a thought occurs and “experience” is formed. An emotional attachment is then tied to the amount of “experience” experienced in the same way it was last felt. This is the limb of consistency, trust.
Trust leads our action and can be broken down as a council of five beliefs or heads:
Justified trust is when you can expect someone or something will be in alignment with your knowledge, as you know it to be.
Distrust but loved is choosing to trust while dismissing the inconsistencies.
Neutral trust or toleration is your sense of security. You are open yet wary.
Distrust and disliked is not trusting in a thing or belief because of your instincts.
Unjustified trust is when you expect someone or something will be in alignment with your being as you know it for no reason.
These five heads are the stamps of approval before sending out any response to the world. Trust carries the voice, guides it and takes accountability for the result. In chapter 2, I wrote about the ego’s ability to gain depth akin to your concept of self, concept of others and your world view. Your ego has the ability to command your ‘emotional limbs’ alongside your better judgement. An ego in control is your involuntary thought. For the conditional lover, it’s also possible that their better judgement functions more as the secondary commander because the ego controls their actions. If the ego’s been hurt, trust takes accountability, the ego then responds to preserve its control on trust. Trust then, losing faith in itself, will lose a chance of growing inwards and gaining depth, becoming more reliant on the ego to dictate the truth.
Your emotions are your own army. They should not be silenced but worked alongside with. Depending on your experiences, any emotions you’ve felt will show up in the ‘experience’ attached to it. However, our emotions can be ignored by our own trust. This is to protect the ego which is weak to a few warrior-like emotions within you:
Shame which attacks the ego’s main defense, Pride.
Guilt which maintains vulnerability with the controlled trust.
And Dread, which causes the feelings of urgency, pressures surrender.
These negative emotions function as ego stabilizers. Letting them exist, questioning why they’re being felt and eventually remedying the cause, is key. They push you to address hard feelings or experiences and grow.
They are the outcome of your sense of victimhood and sense of superiority. Shame and guilt are the feelings of your value being defiled by yourself, but whether it’s true to you or not is up to your reflection. They are your friends in your better judgement and your enemy if you’re moving from ego.
Confidence is the second limb that functions under trust. It is just two sides, a glass half full or half empty. To be confident is to see the value of something, even with flaws. To be unconfident is to solely feel the absence of value. While optimism and pessimism are more perspectives than feelings, the perspective of worthiness is the ‘bridge’ between the sides of confidence and the unconfident. Balancing worthiness allows you to know what is possible for you, allowed for you and good for you without believing it is specifically for you. What this means is not being pushed towards conceit from your worthiness and becoming arrogant or narcissistic, while also not rejecting blessings because of low self-worth or self-esteem. Taking a once in a lifetime opportunity over someone else takes confidence but requires humility. Accepting help from someone in a time where you need it takes confidence but also requires assertiveness. Your confidence is delicate yet strong, a glass cannon. If your ego robs your confidence to use as its food, remember to speak to yourself with an open-mindedness that keeps you from becoming too detached from reality.
The last limb is satisfaction. To be satiated with life or to feel complete for a period of time. This feeling is when the light, positive and present parts of you are in a stalemate with the dark, negative and absent parts of you. A stalemate is not necessarily in complete agreement, but it is a moment of unity in a shared appreciation of an experience. For me, I can imagine my ego personified, sitting back at a distance, arms-crossed in contempt of joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust sitting among each other, sharing in each other's company. The ego is never left out, nor is it treated differently. It is loved the same way, unconditionally, even while it is keeping its distance to prepare for war again. Always try to find a way to recognize the parts of you that are working hard to keep you from falling to your own suffering.