Are You Living for the Love… or Emotions?
Written by a wonderful fellow traveller on this spiritual journey,
who wishes to remain anonymous
Can we understand emotions? What are they? Are we controlling them? Or are they controlling us? How much do we want to live from a place of love, or from our emotions?
Many people think that it is natural to be emotional. But is it? We have become accustomed to believe that it is natural and normal to live from our emotions. Living with our heart on our sleeve so to speak. But, is it true and is it healthy?
Ask yourself: When was the last time you were in the grip of your emotions, could you think logically? Did you have any control over your thoughts, feelings and actions? Chances are the answer is: – “No.”
When we are in alignment with the truth of who we are, and we understand what we are not then we start to experience the world from another angle. We stop looking at what is wrong with the world and start to look at what is right. We begin to live from a place of balance with love and we stop being re-active.
Sorrow, sadness, depression, unhappiness, these are all symptoms of emotional pain etc. We tend to think of these symptoms as natural and all part and parcel of being alive. The emotions do indeed serve a purpose, just like physical pain in the body, the emotions are there to tell us that something is out of balance. That ‘something’ is our thinking, and the more we give energy to our emotions the worse we feel. The fine threads of attachment spread far and wide, and the thing that is the most dangerous of all, is that those threads are invisible. But, when something pulls on them, sure do we feel it! Slowly we become trapped in a web of our own creation. We need to be able to process our emotions to maintain a healthy state of being and not get stuck in them.
Our emotions can sometimes create a loss of clarity for us. It is true to say that in one way or another everyone is looking for love. We have been conditioned to believe that we have to feel our emotions. Actually we should learn to recognize and understand the messages of our emotions more.
But, here is the thing. Love is not an emotion. Love is a core quality, power and virtue of the soul. To be loving is our true nature. Love is at our essence. Anything against love, means we are living against our truth. Lust and love are not on the same page at all. Love can never morph into an act of violence against another. Love looks for ways to nurture the well-being of others and to help keep our ‘being’ well.
The pure expression of love can be seen as understanding, kindness and co-operation. This is when we do not have to think twice about whether to be kind or compassionate. We are naturally expressing love through, kindness and compassion as a natural way of being. That is because we are living from the love of the heart, not from the head. When we live from the head, then we think twice about everything. We measure and we make calculations as to whether someone is worthy enough of our love. God never thinks like this. God just gives Love. In fact, God just radiates and vibrates Love all the time, but we are not always tuned in enough to receive that Love.
What has happened to the love? If we empower what we truly are, love, then surely we would see more love in and around us in the world. Let us create a base line in our life of love, peace and happiness from the inside, and build upon this foundation from the outside. Then we will be able to maintain some stability in life. We will not be dependant for our love, peace and happiness from the conditions or anything on the outside. We would enjoy everything in the world, but we would not be dependant.
Remember, pure unconditional love is a stable state of being. But, such is the degree of our conditioning that some people believe that the emotions are the only way to live. Yes, if we live constantly through our emotions, then we will certainly know that we are alive. We can see this where there is a growth in extreme sports and activities. Some people live life on the edge, their life can be like a sort of emotional roller-coaster, up and down, being swung left to right whenever there is any form of disturbance. This form of living we call… excitement!
Something that we are attached to, have expectations about or cannot control will ultimately bring us a lot of emotional pain. The result will be instant unhappiness and a complete lack of love for the self or anyone else. Then ego and attachment take over our life and we start to perform actions which we later regret. Which of course will mean that we can get that emotional fix all over again. At this point our emotions could be seen as a form of addiction.
Definitely our emotions have a purpose. And that is to let us know where and when we have deviated from our track of love. Whenever we are ‘off track’ then some form of emotional disturbance will manifest itself in our lives. We can see this clearly because we will be unhappy, depressed, sad, anxious, confused and… very emotional.
It’s Time… for us to make wise choices. It is a choice to live from love or from our emotions. Remember, the emotions are just the messengers, so let us learn to listen to the messages they give us.
© ‘It’s Time…’ by Aruna Ladva, BK Publications London, UK