 Emotions make us human. Denying them makes us beasts. Choo-choo, I'll aboard the feels train on a journey to the center of the self. We've probably all seen Inside Out by this point, right? If you haven't, you should totally go watch it, since it's centered around personifying emotions to teach kids how to define and process what they're feeling in the classic and lovable way that only Pixar can pull off. So you know it's great. Not to mention, now they're referencing Crown Chockers and Soul? Pixar is really on a roll lately. The fact that the movie did so well raises an interesting question though. How much do we really know about our emotions and what we feel on a daily basis? Do we really know how our feelings affect us? Or even on a more basic level, what actually is an emotion? Sure, we all have an intuitive understanding of what it's like to feel something, but when it comes down to it, where does that feeling even come from? And what actually is it? Do we all have little chibbies in our heads pulling levers when we get angry or sad, or telling our brain when to release serotonin? I think my serotonin chibi could do with some more training, honestly. I think he's probably an intern. But either way, when you look at society as a whole, it seems like the vast majority of people are running on autopilot, constantly reacting to external things rather than taking a moment to sit with themselves and examine what is it that they're actually feeling, why, or where exactly that they're feeling it. And it's for this reason that we created the esoteric emotional mastery formula, a free download that you can use to tap in and reshape your inner reality. You can get the free download in the author comments, and now on with the show. So, first off, let's define some basic stuff so we actually know what we're talking about here. Like, what's the difference between an emotion and a feeling? Or even a feeling and a mood? While many people use these words interchangeably, they're actually pretty different, and understanding them can be a great first step in helping you come to a fuller understanding of yourself. But don't feel too bad if you get confused along the way, even neuroscience and psychology doesn't really have a full set of definitions for emotions, even they're just still figuring things out. In fact, the number of scientific definitions for emotions has grown to the point where counting them all seems just kind of hopeless, but I wonder if they're missing a piece of the jigsaw. At the most basic level of our experience in the world, we have emotional responses. While the concept itself is kind of abstract and hard to define, outside of drawing weird, smiley or frowny faces in kindergarten, generally we can agree that an emotion is something that is experienced, usually internally. They are a sensation we have within ourselves that is automatic and reactive to certain things. If you've ever eaten three tubs of hog and does after a breakup and regretted it the next day, you'll also know that emotions probably also occur in a part of the brain that isn't connected to logical reasoning. In other words, an emotion is sometimes illogical, but you can be pretty sure it's going to come up fast when you're exposed to something that elicits a response. This idea is reflected in the energetic polarity of our experience in life, as well as the esoteric understanding of our subtle bodies. Emotions relate to the suit of cups in tarot and are almost always seen as a feminine energy, something that is nurturing and intuitively associated with the right brain in comparison with the logical, masculine left brain. Since an emotion isn't always logical, it can either aid or hurt your decision-making by clouding your mind with attachment, which is why so many monks seek to detach themselves from circumstances that causes stuff like that. Part of the reason for this is that emotions, by their nature, are temporary. They don't last forever and in many cases are fleeting experiences or reactions to the world around us, so it's never a good idea to make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion. Even the word emotion itself comes from Latin mauver, which means to move, coupled with an E at the beginning to designate out of. Linguistically speaking, E-motion can be thought of as energy in motion, caused by certain impressions or situations externally or internally that causes some kind of reaction in our brain and perception. While scientists often like to say that emotions are linked to our fight-or-flight response, different emotions elicit different responses in our body, and they're not all about running from big cats or fighting someone in the aisle at Walmart for the last tub of yogurt. Emotions are one of the first things we feel when we go through an experience. In fact, they're pretty vital to us even being able to experience this world at all. They're kind of like things that allow us to experience a physical life, or at least interpret it in a way that's meaningful to our consciousness. In classic left-brain logic, much of modern psychology has tried to conceptualize and put certain emotions into boxes that allows us to give form, structure, and understanding to these weird behaviors and sensations. But, as you might expect, no one actually agrees on what these boxes are. In fact, even everyday people confuse terms a lot. The phrase, I feel tired, usually refers to a bodily sensation rather than an emotion. And saying, I feel they are wrong actually means you think they are wrong, you don't feel wrongness. The most common emotional model that are used here in the West is usually one with six basic emotions. These are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. In theory, every emotion we feel fits into one of these categories, or subcategories, usually from combining two or more. But putting emotions into boxes brings us to the whole debate of how we define basic at all. Generally, we can recognize an emotion like anger or joy if it comes up. We all know what it feels like to be angry, but actually trying to study that subjective feeling is near impossible. See, while both non-verbal behavior, like facial and vocal expressions, and physiological stuff like body language, can be used to infer the emotional state of a person, there are no objective methods for measuring the subjective experience of a person during an emotional episode. It's actually about as difficult as trying to measure the deity you met on ayahuasca that one time. So we're kind of screwed on that front for now. As we've all said in the past though, where science studies the objective principles of reality that we all experience, spirituality studies our subjective experience of those principles. So it's only really by working together that we can even hope to understand ourselves as a species. But that is a pretty emotional debate. Things get a bit easier to understand when we come to feelings though. A feeling definitely has a cognitive part to it. That is, something happens in the brain that interprets it into something we can put a word to. A feeling requires consciousness and awareness of ourselves. You could even say that an emotion has no meaning in itself until we apply consciousness to it, where it becomes a feeling that is integrated into our experience and understood. Feeling something usually results from having an emotion. It's like us saying, hey, this is anger. I'm aware that I'm feeling angry. Feeling is when the emotion is integrated into our consciousness, and we have a thought about that emotion. In other words, feelings are emotions that are processed by thinking about them. As a result, they're much more long lasting and often result from us thinking about our emotional responses to something or someone. Finally, when you get to something like mood, that is basically like chucking emotions and feelings into one big soup and feeling both at once. In therapy, the word mood generally refers to what someone may be feeling or how they are showing what they are feeling and what kind of emotions are triggering that. Mood can be a result of feelings and emotions coming together so the time period of experience can be much longer and affect your life and worldview in tons of ways. If someone has a depressed mood, we can see it as an extended condition or state of being that affects how they go about their daily life. So it's crazy to think that being sad and having depression are at all the same thing. Someone who has an emotion of sadness will often find it passes relatively quickly, but if someone has experiences that forces them to focus on that emotion, the feeling it brings up can color their world, almost like a chakra lens. It evolves into a much longer lasting feeling and mood that takes time and patience to work through and bring ourselves back into emotional balance. But you know what's so cool about humans? Different cultures around the world have different words that many times don't exist in English to describe emotions or feelings and learning about them can actually help you put your experiences into words and broaden your understanding about yourself, which can facilitate healing by helping you understand what you're going through. Some fun examples of stuff like this are, and warning in advance I might butcher some of these pronunciations, the Norwegian word forlsket, which is a word for that feeling of ecstatic love that you feel when you're in a new relationship. It's basically the honeymoon phase in a word. The Filipino word gil, which is that urge you get to squeeze something super freaking cute and then smush its cheeks. And then one of my personal favorites, the French lapel du vide, which translates to call of the void, and is that morbid feeling you get when you're standing on the edge of something and feel the urge to fall. And lastly, le spirit de l'esqueriel, which it literally translates as spirit of the staircase, which sounds like a Harry Potter reference if there ever was one. And this is a phrase that describes that feeling of coming up with the perfect comeback, but only after you've left the conversation. So say you've had an argument with your arch nemesis, Reginald von Brandebuck III, who said that you looked like a fanny, the nerve, and then being the spiritual wonderchild you are, part ways, and only later in the shower you think, aha, well at least I don't smell like one. But then alas, the conversation ended hours ago. Coming back to defining the nature of emotions though, perhaps looking to certain texts in Sanskrit philosophy can help. In the famous Katha Upanishad, a story is told of a little boy called Nachikita, who is the son of the sage Vajasravasa. In it, he meets Yama, a Hindu god of death, and has a nice little chat. Eventually their conversation evolves into a discussion of the nature of humans, knowledge, the soul, and enlightenment. In one of the chapters, someone recounts a parable about a chariot in order to explain how the soul, mind, body, and emotions and senses, and empirical reality relate to a human being. In the parable, the human being is represented as a chariot, with a horse, a driver, and a passenger. It is explained that the chariot itself represents our physical body. The driver represents our intelligence and ability to reason. The horse stands for our senses and emotions, while the reins represent our mind. Finally, the passenger or rider, who is referred to as the master, who is experiencing the whole journey, stands for our soul. In the story, the reins, the mind, connect the driver, our sense of reason and logic, with the horse, our emotions, while the horse is intrinsically connected to the chariot. The whole point here is that the master, our soul, gives orders to the driver who then directs the horses so that the chariot is moving in the direction the master wants to go. In other words, our soul is thought to give instructions to our intelligent mind, which then controls and directs our emotions and senses to give us experiences that will contribute to our journey. In such an example, the horses, our emotions and feelings, shouldn't run wild or out of control, but in a harmonized state, work in service to spirit. If everything is in order and works in this way, spiritual experiences and feelings such as awe, bliss, and enlightenment arise and give way to perfect selfless love. In other words, if you don't use your powers of reasoning and allow your senses and emotions to be unruly or even allow yourself to be ruled by them, your life will drift into chaos and confusion. However, if you are mindful of your emotions and experiences and take note of how and why things arise and use your intelligence, your senses and emotions will be calm and under reason and you will live a life of bliss and liberation. So, let me ask you something. Do your horses drive you or do you drive your horses? Think about it. As we said earlier, if you want to take that step and become your own charioteer, then please check out that free download I mentioned earlier. The EEM formula is a blueprint to emotional mastery. And until next time, stay mindful of your experiences and remember, no emotion is good or bad. They are simply a mirror of how we see and experience the world around us and within us. Toodles!