Can Emotions Be "Wrong"?

[Superfluo]

In the last decade I searched for truth, I did self-inquiry and I questioned all that I've learned, without me knowing it (due to negative emotional states, I searched for a truth to hang on, now I'm okay) (just to tell you that I'm not a newbie in exploring my inside ahahah). The other day I was feeling negative emotions. I was sad and I felt lonely. Trying to understand the root cause of those feelings, I came up with a thought that I already had in the past, but that day I used it. I asked myself: "What if this negative state, this feeling I'm having, that I think is sadness/loneliness, is not sadness/loneliness? What if I feel sad only because I think this feeling is sadness/loneliness? What if this feeling is actually happiness but I have mistaken it my whole life for sadness/loneliness?" In other words, I convinced myself that feeling was happiness.

As I shifted my assumptions, I felt good. This shocked me. How can it be possible for an emotion to change depending on our thoughts? Maybe I was wrong, maybe I just wrongly recongnized that feeling of happiness as sadness. A mistake in analizing that feeling. But what if I'm not wrong, what if I have not made a mistake? This means that emotions are merely physical sensations to which we learn to associate thoughts. But feeling good (the following relief I had) is not only a thought. Do emotions have no intrinsic value? But then, our emotions arise in certain situations and for certain reasons. How can it possibly be? How can all of this fit together? In addition, what ensures me that even the sensation I had when I felt good is not me deceiving myself again? Can I then trust emotions? All of this reinforced my idea that everything perceived is part of an illusion.

Thank you for your answers!

[ground]

7 minutes ago, Superfluo said:

This means that emotions are merely physical sensations to which we learn to associate thoughts. But feeling good (the following relief I had) is not only a thought. Do emotions have no intrinsic value? But then, our emotions arise in certain situations and for certain reasons. How can it possibly be? How can all of this fit together? In addition, what ensures me that even the sensation I had when I felt good is not me deceiving myself again? Can I then trust emotions? All of this reinforced my idea that everything perceived is part of an illusion.

Emotions are illusions, yes. Without thought associations there wouldn't be emotions in the first place. And yes, any 'cause' (what is it?) may make itself felt as positive or negative effect depending on the conceptual/intuitive setting.

[Superfluo]

@ground Okay, I agree with you. Much like I was expecting. But I have a counter example: if you take a child and you don't teach him anything, the child still learns to smile when certain sensations arise. How can it be possible? And the child doesn't try to cry, to get mad, or to ponder in order to see what's the correct thought pattern for that sensation.

I'm not trying to prove that emotions are an illusion. I'm mostly trying to understand how this specific illusion works and to evaluate different perspectives regarding sensations, thoughts and emotions.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Superfluo

[ground]

9 hours ago, Superfluo said:

@ground Okay, I agree with you. Much like I was expecting. But I have a counter example: if you take a child and you don't teach him anything, the child still learns to smile when certain sensations arise. How can it be possible? And the child doesn't try to cry, to get mad, or to ponder in order to see what's the correct thought pattern for that sensation.

Well there are two speculative assumptions. 1. that the child isn't taught anything and 2. that 'certain sensations' arise.

as to 1: all cases I have been observing are cases where an adult first smiles at the child before the child smiles back. So there may be learning involved.

as to 2: Since you cannot know what actually is going on 'inside' the child you can only project your own experiences onto the child.

 

9 hours ago, Superfluo said:

@ground

I'm not trying to prove that emotions are an illusion. I'm mostly trying to understand how this specific illusion works and to evaluate different perspectives regarding sensations, thoughts and emotions.

Initially something is taken to be true. That 'something' may be a sense appearance or merely an idea. This then causes a feeling on a scale from dislike to like. If this is taken to be true further intuitive or conceptual associations may arise and lead to emotions. These then again may be taken to be true and cause further proliferation.

[Leo Gura]

At good way to view emotions:

Emotions are self-manipulations to maintain the self's survival agenda.

[Speedscarlet]

@Leo Gura can a person’s emotions be used to measure how conscious they are? i.e. the better they feel, the more conscious they are.

[Leo Gura]

@Speedscarlet Of course.

But "feeling better" is not a good measurement. Rather, how conscious are you of how your emotions manipulate you.

[MM1988]

@Leo Gura If I would act on all my emotions and be needy as fuck with girls and people why does this repell people, and especially women? Shouldnt my emotions steer me to be accepted by the tribe and to reproduce? Why did emotions evolve in a way that they sabotage you in this regard?

Why would not being accepted by people make you depressed and put you in a state where you have even lower energy and repell people. How does this make any evolutionary sense?

Can someone please clear this up for me, I wondered this for a long time.

Edited December 4, 2018 by MM1988

[now is forever]

@MM1988 did you ever try it with a ribbon ?? jumping out of a cake or something? here you go ta da all my neediness? 

it‘s all a matter of packaging.

Edited December 4, 2018 by now is forever

[Annoynymous]

@Leo Gura I am very confused about my emotions. When an emotion arise, i feel the pull like it is trying to make me do something. On other word, it is trying to send message to me. In this case i become very confused. Should i follow it and do whatever it is telling me to do? Or should i ignore it? What is your insight about this?

[now is forever]

@Annoynymous are your emotions not constantly communicating? if you don’t know - maybe observe? if you think they arise out of nothing, they are just the loud ones.

[Annoynymous]

@now is forever @Leo Gura  they are consistently communicating, but i am confused about following them or not. Many times i follow them, many time i suppress. 

[tsuki]

14 hours ago, Superfluo said:

As I shifted my assumptions, I felt good. This shocked me. How can it be possible for an emotion to change depending on our thoughts? Maybe I was wrong, maybe I just wrongly recongnized that feeling of happiness as sadness. A mistake in analizing that feeling. But what if I'm not wrong, what if I have not made a mistake? This means that emotions are merely physical sensations to which we learn to associate thoughts. But feeling good (the following relief I had) is not only a thought. Do emotions have no intrinsic value? But then, our emotions arise in certain situations and for certain reasons. How can it possibly be? How can all of this fit together? In addition, what ensures me that even the sensation I had when I felt good is not me deceiving myself again? Can I then trust emotions? All of this reinforced my idea that everything perceived is part of an illusion.

Thoughts and feelings are not disjoint dimensions of experience and the fact that you can meddle with their connection is one of the most amazing observations to make. I think that you falsely attribute this change to the process of 'thinking' (inner hearing), though.

The connection between thinking and feeling is not rooted in thinking, nor it is rooted in feeling.
Thinking and feeling are how this connection is expressed.

[SOUL]

Emotions are a primitive way the self survival instinct motivates behavior, chemical reactions are the primordial way, and thoughts are the most recent evolutionary step in motivating behavior for self survival. Emotions aren't wrong or right, they just are, but as a self aware being we don't have to unconsciously be influenced by them, we are aware of them and have the ability to transcend them.

So when the thread starter says they didn't follow the emotional impetus to behave in a way that reflected the 'bad' feeling and instead use their thoughts to transcend that feeling and transform it to a positive one they are simply using the thought-mind to alter their emotional state and thus their behavior. Emotions can influence thoughts and thoughts can influence emotions and both can influence behavior.

Although behavior can influence both thoughts and emotions as well such as meditating or exercising can alter our thoughts and emotions. These are all connected within our experience of self conscious and we additionally have the awareness of self conscious that allows us to 'freely' intend an experience of this self conscious that isn't influenced by the impulses, urges and thoughts that conditionally arise.

Awakening to the agency of this 'free will' of attention and intention of our self conscious is the opening up to what is commonly called 'enlightenment'. Staying present in that awakened agency so that it transcends the self conscious impulses, urges and thoughts is the source of liberation from suffering. It doesn't necessarily end all of the self conscious activity, it just ceases the influence of it to cause self suffering.

When staying present in this awakened agency it allows us to orient our thoughts, emotions and behavior in a way that serves self survival from peace and fulfillment instead of suffering and yearning. Some may experience an immediate cessation of much of their self conscious conditioning but most will see it slowly be transformed as they 'be present' more consistently so alter the conditioning to reflect this liberation.

Edited December 4, 2018 by SOUL

[Superfluo]

@ground

Quote

Well there are two speculative assumptions. 1. that the child isn't taught anything and 2. that 'certain sensations' arise.

as to 1: all cases I have been observing are cases where an adult first smiles at the child before the child smiles back. So there may be learning involved.

as to 2: Since you cannot know what actually is going on 'inside' the child you can only project your own experiences onto the child.

Yes, at first I didn't see that my reasoning was biased.

Quote

Initially something is taken to be true. That 'something' may be a sense appearance or merely an idea. This then causes a feeling on a scale from dislike to like. If this is taken to be true further intuitive or conceptual associations may arise and lead to emotions. These then again may be taken to be true and cause further proliferation.

Okay, this is something that had already been stuck on my mind for some time. But then when we associate a feeling of dislike or like to a sense appearance or idea, we are doing it starting from some previous knowledge, otherwise we couldn't generate this association. Why associate pleasure and not pain to a certain sensation that has no value? In addition, if conceptual associations can lead to emotions, can we say that emotions are thoughts applied when a sense appearance or an idea arises? It seems like the ego is applying itself to itself. It seems so much twisted to me, I've never explored so much emotions with this point of view.

 

@Leo Gura

Quote

Emotions are self-manipulations to maintain the self's survival agenda.

I came to similar conclusions. So how can I trust emotions? Do I need to be skeptical? But the only way to know it is to try, I guess.

 

@tsuki

Quote

The connection between thinking and feeling is not rooted in thinking, nor it is rooted in feeling.
Thinking and feeling are how this connection is expressed.

Interesting point of view.

 

Thank you for all your answers!

[Forestluv]

17 minutes ago, Superfluo said:

So how can I trust emotions? Do I need to be skeptical? But the only way to know it is to try, I guess.

Observe, observe, observe.

There are deeper mechanisms of being, such as intuition, that are not thrown around like a rag doll in the ocean.

[ground]

24 minutes ago, Superfluo said:

@ground

Yes, at first I didn't see that my reasoning was biased.

Okay, this is something that had already been stuck on my mind for some time. But then when we associate a feeling of dislike or like to a sense appearance or idea, we are doing it starting from some previous knowledge, otherwise we couldn't generate this association. Why associate pleasure and not pain to a certain sensation that has no value?

A pleasurable sensation can even turn into pain if it endures over a longer time. Or there are people that find pain pleasurable (masochists). I don't think that the 'why' is important but that it is important to clearly see that feelings are only conditioned and that the liked/disliked qualities are not characteristics inherent in the objects perceived.

 

24 minutes ago, Superfluo said:

@ground

In addition, if conceptual associations can lead to emotions, can we say that emotions are thoughts applied when a sense appearance or an idea arises? It seems like the ego is applying itself to itself. It seems so much twisted to me, I've never explored so much emotions with this point of view.

I would say that thoughts and emotions are mutually conditioning each other. There won't arise feelings and emotions if intuitions and concepts do not arise upon perceiving phenomena.

[EternalForest]

@Superfluo Happiness is a choice, you can choose to be happy under any conditions. Are you alive and breathing? That's all it takes to be happy, if you want it to be.

[Leo Gura]

The solution to emotions is to observe them mindfully. But of course this takes years of practice.

There are also emotions of the higher self which pull you up to spiritual pursuits. But they are often drowned out by negative emotions like fear, anger, envy, greed, lust, etc.

[Seed]

 

 

@Leo Gura Emotions from the higher self are soft and alluring, they tend to be 'desires' or 'messages' They don't have an urgency to them.

Emotions from the ego tend to desperate, defensive, urgent and impulsive...

Because emotions of the higher self are not so apparent. You will hear them best when you  are meditating or tuning in to the present moment. They tend to come instantly. Before reaction has taken place.

Hope that helps.