Should I transmute or dissolve Emotions? Are affirmations helpful or trapping?

[Keryo Koffa]

This of course presumes that I can decide that, but I can determine action and aim.

I've been changing habits. Today specifically, waking up unsatisfied and down, I decided not to engage in sense pleasures to lift my mood. I was cold, so I took a cold shower and my body heated itself up. I was hungry, so I brew tea instead. I felt tired, so I did yoga and am consciously focusing on my posture at all times.

All this lifted my emotions and made me feel proud. But this is retrospect, I had to be counter-intuitive unless this is the intuitive thing to do that humans have conditioned themselves to do the opposite and call that intuitive. Either way, it seems I should act completely independent of all emotions and purely on values, on the other hand I feel I should use them as indicators and transmute lower emotions into higher ones by handling the source conditioning/judgements.

Now I wonder if I should care and strive for positive emotions after all, or whether their absence is a cue to internally release what keeps them from not being permanent, or whether I should just stop caring altogether and act on what's difficult and aligned with my goals. The subconscious is like an elephant after all, right? It takes time to change direction and it's a conscious effort.

So should I feel proud? Right now, I do irregardless, but my perspective affects my emotions and I can change that. Does the source of pride matter, or is it just a distraction to feel content and slow my progress, should I celebrate and do positive reinforcement or should I just keep going and aim to dissolve pride into tranquility and let go of all feelings of accomplishment/rewards, since they're not unconditional and I ought to have a stable state of tranquility from which action arises and not pride myself on anything. After all, I only act the way I do due to the longer journey, conscious effort and life circumstances, pride seems to distort that into ego, although I am proud of of acting on higher values and learned lessons.

This is a projection and only an idea so far, but I feel the ultimate state doesn't have any room for personal accomplishment and is pure tranquility that creates automatic action because all is conscious, there's no judgement and every act is natural and there's nothing to judge in any kind of way, positive or negative, its inevitable, aligned and does its best at all times to generate harmony. Leo mentioned four states though I forgot the video and what they're called but I recall Apathy/Warrior/Creator/Peace and at the end you'd relinquish control, though its a long continuous journey.

Should I use affirmations to change habits or overpower them with conscious awareness and let go of any habit even the good ones? Should I adjust and balance the process or just aim high? Are there positive sides I'm ignoring in various methods, does everything have its place, is it like spiral dynamics where I have to work through the stages or do I do that more effectively by aligning myself with higher ones and dissolve the source of resistance on the way?

Give me your insights and experiences

[LastThursday]

1 hour ago, Keryo Koffa said:

Now I wonder if I should care and strive for positive emotions after all

I see emotions as being like a messaging system. Your being is trying to maintain homeostasis, the further away from that you go the louder the emotional messages are (either positive or negative). From this paradigm chasing emotions or ignoring them doesn't make much sense. Rather you should be looking to maintain good homeostatis: basically you're not in imminent danger and all your needs are being met. A plant doesn't chase emotions it searches for nutrients and daylight.

[Keryo Koffa]

@LastThursday Very well, thank you for destroying this false dichotomy, I am shifting towards awareness on that aspect also.

I'll use emotions to understand my current homeostasis, identity and experience. And I gotta explore that, since outside of bodily health, it is one massive preference-based identity simulator and ego-defense-mechanism, which can be massively shifted towards all kinds of actions, lifestyles and life purposes essentially...

Edited July 4 by Keryo Koffa