How to be wise

Emotional Mastery or Enlightenment

27 posts in this topic

2 hours ago, kieranperez said:

No

No.

You’re contradicting yourself. You say that you can have emotional mastery without enlightenment, then you say you can’t. Make up your mind dude. 


"Not believing your own thoughts, you’re free from the primal desire: the thought that reality should be different than it is. You realise the wordless, the unthinkable. You understand that any mystery is only what you yourself have created. In fact, there’s no mystery. Everything is as clear as day. It’s simple, because there really isn’t anything. There’s only the story appearing now. And not even that.” — Byron Katie

 

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12 hours ago, How to be wise said:

When I say Emotional Mastery, I mean somebody who will never feel any negative emotion no matter how bad the situation gets. If somebody feels any negative emotion to begin with, it is not emotional mastery. A lot of enlightened teachers haven’t got that one down. They still sometimes have negative emotions when something bad happens to them.

@How to be wiseYou have your definition of emotional mastery, but is it ideal? Emotional mastery (in my understanding) is knowing what an emotion is, why it is necessary, how it comes about, and how it ends. At this point, one has the freedom to experience emotions without labels, not experience those which are useless/senseless, and connect with others. 

How does one interpret an emotion as being negative? At what point does an emotion cause suffering? Can suffering ever be necessary? Why don't we investigate compassion as in feeling the pain of others. How is it helpful?

Enlightened movement is free flowing, intention-less, intelligent, and non-fear based. To avoid judgement and separation when investigating emotions to gain a holistic understanding

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@DrewNows Lol you will know when an emotion is causing you suffering ?.

Suffering is never necessary. In fact, when you are more joyful, you can think a lot better. 

Most self-help books do not teach this, rather they teach you how to ‘cope’ with negative emotions. My definition of emotional mastery is: feeling blissful 100% of the time, for the rest of your life. 

Sadhguru and Byron Katie report that they haven’t felt any negative emotion in more than 30 years! It’s fucking possible. But it takes a mixing of emotional mastery with enlightenment. Enlightenment is a must! No other way.


"Not believing your own thoughts, you’re free from the primal desire: the thought that reality should be different than it is. You realise the wordless, the unthinkable. You understand that any mystery is only what you yourself have created. In fact, there’s no mystery. Everything is as clear as day. It’s simple, because there really isn’t anything. There’s only the story appearing now. And not even that.” — Byron Katie

 

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@How to be wisecan you list me your negative emotions? Do you see sadness as negative? 

4 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

My definition of emotional mastery is: feeling blissful 100% of the time, for the rest of your life. 

Sounds boring to me...i would rather feel nothing and have bliss arise spontaneously at any given moment. 

5 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

Sadhguru and Byron Katie report that they haven’t felt any negative emotion in more than 30 years! It’s fucking possible. But it takes a mixing of emotional mastery with enlightenment. Enlightenment is a must! No other way.

Maybe they just don't define the emotions they have to be negative...possibly it's taking the seriousness out of the identity? 

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1 hour ago, How to be wise said:

Suffering is never necessary. In fact, when you are more joyful, you can think a lot better. 

Does emotion create suffering or does thoughts/interpretations create both suffering and emotion? 

@How to be wiseDo you equate blissful with peaceful? EM means feeling blissful even when being tortured? 

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I think negative emotions are severely diminished by Enlightenment and I think Emotional Mastery gets you closer to Enlightenment. 

Would there be a need to master the positive emotions or just the negative ones? For me, it'd just be the negative ones as I'm perfectly content with positive emotions. So we're basically talking about rewiring ourselves to not have thought patterns that bring us to suffer.

To do that, we'd need to become aware of those patterns, find their root causes and use awareness and observation to change them.

Off the top, I'd venture to say that judgment and attachment/desire are the primary culprits of negative emotion, which are also what Enlightenment teachers preach to undo. 

For me and my situation, the need for Emotional Mastery or the elimination of negative emotions that I impose on myself is currently more important than Enlightenment, and I think that's probably the case for most people. To become calm and centered and not so worried or agitated that you can't even practice spirituality. Strategically, this could potentially fast-track you to Enlightenment.

Emotional Mastery is a good target but I think that if you could reduce the negative emotions causing you the most suffering, you'd be happy just cutting those down by 50% and then Mastery might be a waste of time. 

Either way, I agree that this is an important subject and definitely something to consider.


I'm a middle-class, middle-aged, straight, single white male. I don't watch MSNBC. I've never been to a political protest. I've only ever had sex with women.

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