A comment on emotions
A response I wrote yesterday, on a Cathar video describing the false nature of emotions; and someone commenting saying that without emotions we would (simply put) become heartless. Quoting:
“The distinction between “heartless” and “emotionless” seems to me rather artificial. You can`t be compassionate and emotionless at the same time, since compassion arises from an emotional source. […] Personally speaking, emotions are my guide and I shall never give up this basic attitude towards the Demurgic world that encompasses us.”
“Unfortunately emotions are creations of the devil itself, as each emotion is always paired with its opposite, and there is no love without the hate, no serenity without disturbance, etc. Today you win the lottery, or receive a praise from someone, or a promotion at your job, and you feel emotionally happy, while you do not notice how the opposite emotion is also created, and you start fearing losing that money, or that praise, or that promotion. Fear, dread and insecurity silently hunts the soul, while happiness and joy appears to entice it. It’s a constant carousel which actually depletes the soul of its true energy, vitality and life.
This is what few people understand, that the devil is not only that which appears bad, or ugly, or psychopathic. That’s only one side of it, but the devil can also appear very seductive, apparently beautiful, even apparently kind. Look at the many charitable organisations run by people or corporations with very unclean intentions.
Both sides of the duality are being played by a force which has only one singular purpose in mind: to extract and steal as much of the life of our soul as possible, and emotions are part of this strategy.
This is why a common practice, among many serious spiritual traditions, has been the practice of finding the neutrality of the heart, the so called ‘dao’. The centered internal state, where one can see through the deception of both the false happiness and the false sadness, and thus one can judge things correctly and, in consequence, act correctly in the world.
But many, not truly having the experience of what this heartful living means, easily mistake neutrality for indifference, and they believe that a life without emotions is a blunt, careless, or cold, psychopathic state. Which is the opposite. Paradoxically, true love, true compassion, true mercy can only be found after the fake world of emotions is left behind. “
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“In other words, you don’t need emotions to feel compassion towards the other living things around you. Compassion is your natural state, we are naturally loving, empathetic, intelligent, creative. This is our natural state, and it’s permanent and eternal, not something that arrises with an emotion and then fades away when the emotion has gone.”
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I highly recommend the Cathar video as well, as they point out some things more clearly than I found in many other sources.