What are Emotions?

To understand emotions, we need to get rid of labels. Anger, love, hate, jealousy, guilt, sadness, and so on are the labels we put on our emotions. We do not feel our emotions in a real, deep, and intimate sense. The labels create a chasm between us and our emotions. We have never met with them in a real sense. We do not like to be hateful or angry. We love to be loving, and we want to bury our guilty feelings deep. We do not like to stay with our sadness, and we yearn so quickly to get rid of our boredom and loneliness. Hence, it is no wonder that we have never met with our emotions in a true sense. Thoughts and emotions are interlinked. Emotions work at a deeper level than thoughts. If thoughts are airy, then emotions are fluids. Thoughts play with our minds, and emotions with our chemistry. Emotions are certain sensations in our chemistry. With the help of thoughts, we put different labels on those sensations. Once they are labelled, we return to the realm of our thoughts. Emotions are nothing more than sensations generated by the chemical reactions within our bodies. These sensations are interpreted in various ways by our thoughts. Our thoughts, on the other hand, play a major role in creating these sensations. Let’s look at the example of the emotion of anger. I am angry with my spouse. Why, because she has not behaved the way I think she should. So, it is basically my thought that now prompts my chemistry to create a certain kind of sensation, which is labeled as anger. If I lose my control out of those angry feelings and I, God forbid, slap her, then another thought may come and make me feel guilty of my cruel action. I am trapped in the vicious circle of thoughts and emotions. Thoughts create sensations, sensations generate responses, and responses, in turn, generate thoughts in terms of good, bad, worthy, unworthy, and so on. And the whole process does not seem to stop. I find myself in a whirlwind. This is not a wise way to deal with our emotions, of course. So, as mentioned before, let’s not label them. Let’s pause a bit. Let’s not react to them in terms of both expression and suppression. What if we allow them to flower without any response from our side? What if we decide to fully taste the chemistry of our sensations, so that it won't leave any traces there? The sensations of anger, hate, love, sadness, and so on are there. Let’s create no division between them and us. Let’s embrace them fully and see that we are not separated from them. I become angry without any reaction. Now there is no difference between me and my anger. I am angry in its entirety. The moment I do, I find my anger dissolves. The moment I embrace my sadness, I am out of it. But it is easier said than done. Oftentimes, I am trapped by my anger and realize when it is no more. I commit the mistake of not getting angry in the future, and thus, in a way, stop the prospects of my being intimate with my anger. Once again, I start to follow the same old habit of keeping aloof from the so-called negative emotions. I am afraid of feeling lonely. I hate it. I do not want it to come near me. I escape it through various indulgences. I also find that no matter how much I escape, it is always there, waiting for me. It is my constant companion. I also figured out that I went a bit too near it last time, and some of the burden was removed. I still remember that pleasant surprise. I want to spend more time with it and see how things get folded. With an open heart, I approach my sadness this time. A little fear and trembling is there, but I am curious this time. I stay with it. It grows heavier with each passing moment. It is too much. Its burden might kill me. So many thoughts rush towards me, suggesting I run away. Don’t be sad. Go and eat some chocolate, or have a chat with a friend, or watch an interesting season on Netflix. I keep on passively observing the flow of my thoughts. I do not listen to them. I just pay attention to the gaps between them. The gap gets bigger, and they get less. There is a space now which allow me to be more intimate with my sadness. It is there waiting to be felt. Thoughts have stopped nudging me. Sadness keeps on growing and flowering. A moment comes when there is only sadness. I am no longer separate from it. We have become one. And lo, out of this union, joy and freedom are born. I do not hate my sadness anymore. I am not afraid of it. Now whenever it visits me, I welcome it and embrace it fully against my heart. Similarly, I no longer hide from my guilt. I do not repress it. I listen to it, and it has interesting stories to tell. The past memories start to unravel in front of me. They are painful. They torture me. They keep asking me the same question in different ways: why I behaved the way I shouldn't have. I try to justify, rationalize in a thousand ways, but they are not satisfied. I ask for forgiveness; make resolutions that, in the future, I will behave; and, if possible, I want to go back and make amends for my past deeds. But nothing works. The guilt does not leave me. Then I suddenly realize my mistake. I stop creating a distance from myself and my guilt. I am no longer interested in proving to it that I am a good person. I stop rationalizing. I embrace it. I become it. And lo, it got satisfied! Two things happen in this whole process. The more there is a passive observation, the more space between thoughts emerges, and in that space, intimate meetings with the emotions happen. Each negative emotion starts to turn into a positive one. And one day, I find there is nothing else other than peace, joy, and freedom. Yes, the word "I" is still used, but in a functional and strategic sense, not in an existential one. No separate “I” is there. There is no thinker and thought, no observer and the observed. The illusion of separation is gone, and with that, suffering too.

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