I have no idea what emotional mastery feels like.

[museumoftrees]

I have no idea what emotional mastery feels like. I know that Leo talks about the concept of emotional mastery a lot in his older videos where the topics were more grounded in the achiever stage. I have getting more and more aware of how I feel at different moments in time but if such a thing exist as ''emotional mastery'' then it would be one of my ambitions to realize that.

However I just have no idea what that would entail. Does it mean (I know this will read as childish but bare with me) being always happy never sad? Being highly focused never distracted? Does it mean being able to be productive while feeling unproductive, acting a certain positive way in spite of feeling negative emotions? Or does it just mean being acutely aware of one's emotions? I'm really curious. Let me know if you have achieved emotional mastery or if you are in the process of achieving it.

[Thought Art]

Emotional mastery is the ability to understand our emotions, cognitive processes, bodily reactions to our emotions, and how the mind body connection works. It means increasing our awareness, doing shadow work, improving our breath, posture, weeding out cognitive distortions and limiting beliefs and self image. It means developing your emotional intelligence, and your adversity quotient. It means developing your emotional mastery to the point where you are able to live a powerful life.

Emotional Mastery is built on many foundations and incorporates many aspects and facets.

Each type of emotion and our relationship to it requires its own skillset, practice, research and tools to master it. I suggest creating a reading list of books as your grow in awareness of what areas need work. Chances are each area of your emotional journey has a few books written on it.

Emotional Mastery is a process and a practice that we develop slowly over time. Sometimes it means doing really well, and other times it means consciously going through a messy period where we fail to live up to our ideals. We often learn the deepest emotional mastery lessons from our roughest lows.

Emotional Mastery does not mean that you are never angry, sad, depressed, horny, confused, etc. It means that you approach these emotions in a skillful and conscious way that allows you to live the life you want, reach your goals and spend more time feeling well, than feeling ill. 

Emotional mastery at its most developed is being able to feel well within yourself, being able to navigate the complexities of our social matrix with ease and the ability to skillfully recenter and get yourself back on track when you fall out of alignment with your values. It means feeling and accepting all your emotions.

In order to master your emotions you will need to develop this definition for yourself. For me 5 things that come to mind as I write this are:

1. Ability to relate to all emotions in a skillful way

2. Total acceptance of all emotions 

3. Systems for living including: Meditation, Yoga, Qigong, relaxation techniques, journaling for contemplation, self reflection, affirmations and visualization

4. Being centred, grounded, sober, calm, peaceful, content, long term thinking

5. It means exposing yourself to a wide variety of social situations, stress, positions, projects, etc 

6. It means having such a high level of control, and understanding over your emotions that you are able to live the Good life. 

7. Just being content with being

8. Developing a healthier relationship to fear so you can live the life you want.

Are your emotions and thoughts allowing you to live a powerful, loving and creative life? Or is it hellish life sucking mess where you can't control yourself?

Edited October 13, 2021 by Thought Art

[Thought Art]

28 minutes ago, museumoftrees said:

However I just have no idea what that would entail. Does it mean (I know this will read as childish but bare with me) being always happy never sad? Being highly focused never distracted? Does it mean being able to be productive while feeling unproductive, acting a certain positive way in spite of feeling negative emotions? Or does it just mean being acutely aware of one's emotions? I'm really curious. Let me know if you have achieved emotional mastery or if you are in the process of achieving it.

I think these are aspects of it too. It's a really sprawling question I think and response.

[museumoftrees]

Thank you @Thought Art 

Other actualizers let me know as well.

[Jakuchu]

@museumoftrees Emotional mastery is when you start controling your emotions and not the other way around 

You use emotions like a tool, they don't become a mode of being. You are angry in the right place, at the right time, towards the right person, to the right degree. And you can drop it any time

What I see with people, or myself sometimes, is that the slightest inconsistency makes them upset or angry. They already are angry, that incosistency just brings it to the surface. They misunderstand that surfacing as the anger. If a bird shitting on your car shield can make you "angry" so easily, then you are emotionally already completely off balance

Edited October 13, 2021 by Jakuchu

[HypnoticMagician]

@museumoftrees

"I have no idea what emotional mastery feels like. I know that Leo talks about the concept of emotional mastery a lot in his older videos where the topics were more grounded in the achiever stage."

I think Leo's understanding of the subject of emotional mastery is limited. In my book, emotional mastery can be divided into 3 parts. Letting go of your emotions, Directly disabling emotions, Being able to induce any emotion you want.

"being always happy never sad?" "Being highly focused never distracted?"

Why try to  be happy? Any emotion you'll feel will have a filtering effect preventing you from experiencing the reality in an unbiased way. Being highly focused requires you to disable your emotions altogether. You need neutrality for a more impartial understanding. But there are occasions when you need to be emotional too such as the time when you wanna retain an information more quickly. Or when you wanna fake a sincere smile to deceive your partner into believing that you feel empathy for them. Or when you need to enter into flow more rapidly, you can induce the happiness emotion just to give yourself some high, start the activity you wanna excel at with higher frequency. Once your brain's processing speed becomes good enough, you can disable this emotion and keep progressing with this gained momentum.

If you ask how to induce any emotion you want, you can use facial expressions. For example, when you feel intense ecstasy, you start smiling with a joy. The opposite is also true. When you smile, same type of emotions are evoked inside your brain and boom! You get what you want. But do it as sincerely as possible, not just mechanical smile.

"Or does it just mean being acutely aware of one's emotions?"

When it comes to being deeply aware of your emotions, both feeling deeply and letting go of these emotions, that's also something. It is not something to take for granted even if at beginner level. So Leo's level of understanding this subject is pretty sound even if not so advanced.

By the way, I am not a psychopath even though I got the diagnosis of psychopathy. I just imitated psychopaths a lot, that's all about it It does not define your morality either. There a lot of benevolent psychopaths with good heart, and terribly emotional guys who tend to resort to violence either out of envy or religious reasons supposed to be the only right way to be moral. Just because you are having calculated intellectual empathy or loyalty towards only those who deserve doesn't make you a bad person. Since you are not your brain but consciousness. It is you who is deciding how to behave toward others. Your consciousness can shape your brain anyway you want whether you call it neuroplasticity or epigenetics. I also got the diagnosis of anxiety, OCD, bipolar, schizophrenia, autism. And I am none of it. The most logical diagnosis I got was atypical psychosis. I have overcome all of these seemingly inherent illnesses on my own because I recognized it was all due to a lot of wrong connections I set up, imbalances of neurotransmitters, inflammation in my brain...

 

[Leo Gura]

There is an entire Emotional Mastery section in my book reviews.

You are never going to reach some sort of end-stage of "Emotional Master". It's just about becoming better at working with your own emotions and psyche.

[Yeah Yeah]

@Leo Gura There isn't a separate self who can fix themselves, can't lift yourself by your own bootstraps, you are what you are, and your idea of a better self is an illusion, a separate 'you' who can self-improve an imperfect 'you' is ridiculously preposterous, nor is there anything one can do to become a master ... ? Even the idea of a master is an illusion, a ghost and this simply goes against thee teachings about an illusory self, let alone there being a master over emotions? 

Perhaps emotions come and go, same with a storm which kills numerous animals and people, nothing YOU can do to be a MASTER over that storm, even if it makes you sad that your dog drowned, nothing YOU can DO to become a MASTER over that feeling of sadness and loss - Also goes for emotions, nothing YOU can DO, because YOU are those emotions/amongst said storm at that crisp moment, absolutely nothing YOU can DO to become a master, except perhaps observe and become more aware of that experience without attempting to distract away from suchness,

Edited October 14, 2021 by Yeah Yeah

[hyruga]

Read the book Emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman!

The author includes 5 important domains for emotional mastery.

Knowing your emotions.

Managing emotions.

Motivating yourself.

Recognizing emotions in others (empathize with others).

Handling relationships.

Edited October 14, 2021 by hyruga

[Guest EmptyVase]

It certainly feels better, and better, and better, and better. Shedding skin.

This obviously also entails facing challenging emotions, but with a certain degree of emotional maturity, you recognize the goodness of it. Thus, it can only get better.

[Leo Gura]

7 hours ago, Yeah Yeah said:

@Leo Gura There isn't a separate self who can fix themselves, can't lift yourself by your own bootstraps, you are what you are, and your idea of a better self is an illusion, a separate 'you' who can self-improve an imperfect 'you' is ridiculously preposterous, nor is there anything one can do to become a master ... ? Even the idea of a master is an illusion, a ghost and this simply goes against thee teachings about an illusory self, let alone there being a master over emotions? 

Perhaps emotions come and go, same with a storm which kills numerous animals and people, nothing YOU can do to be a MASTER over that storm, even if it makes you sad that your dog drowned, nothing YOU can DO to become a MASTER over that feeling of sadness and loss - Also goes for emotions, nothing YOU can DO, because YOU are those emotions/amongst said storm at that crisp moment, absolutely nothing YOU can DO to become a master, except perhaps observe and become more aware of that experience without attempting to distract away from suchness,

You are speaking from the absolute level. But from the practical relative level there is much inner work which can be done to deepen one's skill with handling emotions.

Your position is far too reductionistic. Developing emotional skills is very practical and valuable for all humans to do, whether awakening happens or doesn't. And remember, for most people awakening will not happen because they don't want to go that far. And awakening will not happen without first a healthy dose of emotional mastery work.

[Ry4n]

26 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

And awakening will not happen without first a healthy dose of emotional mastery work.

underrated point here

[Nahm]

16 hours ago, museumoftrees said:

I have no idea what emotional mastery feels like. I know that Leo talks about the concept of emotional mastery a lot in his older videos where the topics were more grounded in the achiever stage. I have getting more and more aware of how I feel at different moments in time but if such a thing exist as ''emotional mastery'' then it would be one of my ambitions to realize that.

However I just have no idea what that would entail. Does it mean (I know this will read as childish but bare with me) being always happy never sad? Being highly focused never distracted? Does it mean being able to be productive while feeling unproductive, acting a certain positive way in spite of feeling negative emotions? Or does it just mean being acutely aware of one's emotions? I'm really curious. Let me know if you have achieved emotional mastery or if you are in the process of achieving it.

Like the term “self help” or “self improvement”, “emotional mastery” is a helpful billboard type term, to find what you’re looking for, but then let the term / concept go, as it’s precisely the opposite ‘direction’ to go. Just like true control is realized in the surrender of the thought facade of control, the surrender of ‘the separate self’ - the one who is separate from and desires to master emotion - results in emotional mastery. Perfect emotional experience, just, for no one. 

Start with understanding the emotional scale, and specifically notice…  ‘emotional mastery, how I feel, highly focused never distracted, unproductive, positive, happy, sad, negative emotions & one’s emotions’…. are not emotions (reference the scale). 

Awareness of and letting go of self referential thoughts is paramount, as one can never understand and create emotion when one is believing one is two. Imagine something like attempting to repair an automotive engine, but with the majority of arising thoughts being about two engines. Imagine how confusing that would be. Imagine the clarity, effectiveness, and efficiency of the alignment of what is actual, and the thoughts. Then imagine that multiplied by everything in your life. Relationships, work, interests, plans, dreams, etc. Inevitably there aren’t “emotions” anymore per se, just communion. 

[Thought Art]

@Nahm Woah, Love that emotion scale

[museumoftrees]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:04 PM, Leo Gura said:

There is an entire Emotional Mastery section in my book reviews.

Great I bought the booklist, will slowly work my way through it. 

[museumoftrees]

On 10/14/2021 at 2:00 AM, hyruga said:

Read the book Emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman!

The author includes 5 important domains for emotional mastery.

Knowing your emotions.

Managing emotions.

Motivating yourself.

Recognizing emotions in others (empathize with others).

Handling relationships.

I've read that book and haven't got much value from it. Maybe I just missed it ?

I felt like it was just stories of children becoming less problematic. Didn't find any important informations, wisdom or even practical techniques.

[hyruga]

44 minutes ago, museumoftrees said:

I've read that book and haven't got much value from it. Maybe I just missed it ?

I felt like it was just stories of children becoming less problematic. Didn't find any important informations, wisdom or even practical techniques.

Most books only focus on the surfaces because they do not look at the research.

Don't listen to audio because it's harder to internalise when listening to audio. Daniel Coleman clearly covered the different domains of emotional intelligence. It's not just about understanding others. It's also about understanding and managing yourself.