Last week, I spoke at two bookstores here in California. During one Q&A, someone asked me about the ideas a current spiritual teacher has about emotions. This teacher says that emotions are the body’s responses to thoughts. I blurted out “Oh, he’s full of sh!t.”
Out loud.
I experienced a complete failure of my internal monologue system. Oh shiiiite! You could hear a pin drop, and then you could hear all the angels who were dancing on that pin drop as well. Thud.
Clearly, I had gone quite loopy. I forgot that you never question a spiritual teacher’s ideas. You also can’t express “negative” emotions about spiritual teachers. There’s absolutely no mechanism for those normal human behaviors in many spiritual circles.
How fortunate it is that we’re not in any spiritual circle!
I am sorry that I blurted out what I really thought about this guy’s ideas, but it’s not as if they were original thoughts of his. I’ve heard similar ideas bandied about for decades in an endless number of spiritual ideologies, but I naively hoped that they had gone away. To meet them again in 2010, re-packaged but not reconsidered — wow, it was a shock. It wasn’t just an angering event: I felt depressed, despairing, offended, horrified, and sort of crushed under the weight of centuries of emotionally-stunted ignorance.
I could have responded by being diplomatic and all-encompassing. I could have utilized assuaging and comfortable social lies. I could have applied my giant vocabulary to the creation of some temporizing and politically apt non-answer. I certainly know how to do that. I could have looked really pulled-together and above the fray. But instead, I used the magic healing balm of of swearing to help myself tolerate the intense pain I was feeling. Swearing is fecking magnificent!!!
But I was in a place where kids could hear me, so that was crass. Dang! I hope the parents used it as a teaching moment.
Now, after many days and liberal amounts of analgesic, health-building swearing in private, I can be more nuanced in my response.
Some Thoughts about Emotions
Contrary to the opinions of many metaphysical and spiritual thinkers, thoughts do not control emotions; they can’t. Emotions are irreplaceable aspects of our intelligence, and they evolved over many hundreds of thousands of years (okay, millions; thanks Leo) to help us survive. Emotions are instinctual, protective, communicative, and meaning-generating aspects of our thought processes. Without them, we can’t understand other people, we can’t communicate or connect; we can’t love, we can’t learn properly, and we can’t even make decisions, as Antonio Damasio showed us in his classic book, Descartes’ Error.
