You know the kind of emotions you’re supposed to feel. Patriotism: your country’s flag and national anthem should inspire loyalty, courage, camaraderie. On the other hand, symbols of the national enemy should inspire hatred, disgust, rage, loathing. The Swastika, the Red Menace, the Yellow Tide. The Evil Capitalist Empire. Terrorists. Drug dealers. Predatory Pedophiles.

If you’re into sports, substitute your favorite sports team and their rivals. Politics, your party and the opposing party. Religion, ad nauseum.

If you’re married, your spouse should inspire affection, loyalty, compassion, vanity, perhaps jealousy. Your children should inspire pride, affection, protectiveness.

If you have a job, your boss and your company should inspire loyalty, humility, fear (of getting fired), pride… Competitors – well, you get the idea.

Cultures train their members to feel the “correct” emotions in a given situation. Those who don’t feel the right emotions become outcasts or rebels, members of a subculture, or if they are clever, hypocrites who rationalize having sold out, traded their potential destinies for material comfort, social status and mass produced toys. “Whoever dies with the most toys, wins.”

You and me, though, we’re exceptions to this rule. We remained true to ourselves, not like those others. Didn’t we?

Cultures and their current manifestation, nation-states, condition people to accept that they belong to the collective organization, however it manifests. Someone will tell you what to do and how to feel. You have choices of course, but within a given matrix. The indoctrinated subject always looks for the next authority: the parent, then the teacher, then the boss, and in a broader context, the God or his earthly representative, the priest, mullah, rabbi, brahmin or whatever. In the modern consumerist religion, media and advertising replace the old gods. A shopping trip to the mall replaces church attendance. Profit and Progress replace Heaven. Bankruptcy or even Prison – Hell.

In ordinary experience, no one will encourage you to take control of your own body (liberating space-time). Mass organizations sing that old song: “You belong to me.” And every human belongs to some culture. Except maybe, that fleeting trace of haunting music heard in a back alley, a faint distorted echo: “People can be free!”

Do you decide what emotions to feel? Emotions “hit” you, just as a car might hit you if you stepped off the curb without looking, but then you I-dentify with it. You say, “I feel angry,” or “I am angry.” (I am the anger.)

The human machine functions as a complex system of systems, including emotions. Objectively, emotions manifest as molecules, hormones, chemicals released into the bloodstream by glands. Subjectively one experiences this as feelings.

The big question: who controls this machine? “Spiritual” schools may transmit techniques, but without addressing the fundamental question, even if a person succeeds in defeating its social conditioning, it simply transfers to a new set of conditioning. It changes religions, moves to a different cellblock, looks down its nose at those other “unenlightened” prisoners.

G. I. Gurdjieff likened a human to a cart with a horse and driver. The driver represents the head brain, the horse the emotional brain (center) and the cart the moving/instinctive body. The horse pulls (read “motivates”) the cart (body), and the driver directs the horse by means of the reins. With an uneducated, undisciplined emotional brain or center, the horse pulls the cart any old way, however it feels at the moment, or just stops to eat grass. In the same image, the driver doesn’t take care of the horse, leaving it ungroomed and underfed.

Continuing the metaphor, the owner of the carriage ought to initiate and oversee the whole action. Most modern people lack this owner, the “Real I,” so the carriage functions like a for-hire cab, traveling about anywhere at the whim of any “I” that gets in.

Positive and Negative Emotions

People position emotions as “positive” and “negative” but these terms don’t correlate well with experience. Judging as positive or negative depends on the situation and the subject’s viewpoint and history. For example, a modern city-dweller might suffer panic attacks (“negative”), but a herd of wildebeests attacked by lions panics as a natural and appropriate response.

However, we can divide emotions into 2 groups.

1. The common, coarse, automatic/reactive, or down-pointing emotions. These register in the solar plexus or gut area.

2. The noble, fine, conscious/intentional, or up-pointing emotions. These register in the upper chest.

Emotions in the first group “happen.” They arise automatically, or as reaction to stimuli, without intention. Often interpersonal telepathy triggers waves of these emotions through large groups, either accidentally or intentionally by mob manipulators: the “Emotional Plague.” Extreme examples include Hitler’s Third Reich and Joe McCarthy’s Communist Hysteria.

Those in the second group spring up from conscious intention, as a sympathetic response to such emotions from others, or spontaneously from impulses of the “higher emotional center.” Some works of art – paintings, sculpture, dance, theater, music, architecture, films – by design inspire higher emotions.

In order for them to regularly displace the automatic emotions one must train.

Evolutionarily speaking, why do we have emotions?

The emotional center, or brain, operates as a long-distance transmitter/receiver, analogous to radio. Telepathy, though commonly understood as transmission of thoughts, actually means long distance feeling (from Greek & Latin). Groups of animals, or people, can instantly coordinate fight/flight and other responses, by this quick subliminal 2-way communication.

Negative results from the lower emotions such as depression, apathy, suicide, result from the blocking of healthy physical expressions of emotion. Remember that e-motion means “moving out.” If the energy of the emotion can’t move out into an appropriate physical action, the substance festers and rots, poisoning the body-mind. An animal in the wild which instantly fights when angry or runs when scared, will not suffer these ill effects. Just as the digestive system must eliminate the remains of food, the emotional system must eliminate these residues or they cause problems.

Long term emotional “constipation” can cause serious, even fatal, diseases and/or psychological “disorders” (paranoia, neuroses, psychoses…) For example, the ancients imaged cancer as a crab that “ate away” the body, just as an unresolved emotional issue gnaws at you: the emotion congeals into flesh. A “broken heart” may literally break the heart: heart attacks.

Cultures train people not to express emotions in a natural way. Society frowns on and punishes such uncivilized behavior as screaming and yelling, throwing tantrums, hitting, running away, and other negative expressions, except in certain ritualized contexts such as sports and wars.

Fear, terror, panic, motivate running away from the danger. Those of our forebears who ran away from the saber-toothed tiger survived. Anger, rage, fury, lead to fighting. If you can’t run, fighting might end in survival. A jealous lover would block access to his or her mate, would pass on those jealous tendencies to the offspring.

Emotional Education

Educate from Latin e+ducare: “lead out.” Formal educational systems do not directly address emotional education, leaving it up to chance. The lucky child may have a mentor who understands how to educate it emotionally. British culture excels in this, at least in the upper class schools, perhaps one reason why the British Empire succeeded so well.

The adult may take responsibility for its own emotional education. Most people do not educate, “lead out” their “horse,” emotional brain. Without reins, the horse pulls the “cart” any which way.

The emotionally uneducated person accepts whatever emotions arise, as a given. “I’m happy now.” “I’m in a bad mood today.” “That makes me so angry!” Perhaps they use music to induce certain feelings. Some enjoy “horror” or “thriller” films which trigger strong coarse emotions such as terror or blood lust in a safe setting. Or perhaps romantic films open your throttle. Emotional merry-go-rounds and roller coasters jerk off excess energies and pacify the masses. “Gore, whore, and store, more and more.”

Various glands secrete and inject a range of molecules into the bloodstream at high speeds. One experiences these combinations as emotions.

The professional actor must find a way to initiate emotions at will. What does the given character feel at any given moment? A “ham” actor shows the expected external manifestation of the required emotion. He might throw up his arms for surprise, press his hands to his heart to show affection, and so on. However, the telepathic (Latin: long-range feeling) audience, knows genuine emotion from fake. The real actor “reveals the inner life of man” (Stanislavsky). He doesn’t just show the emotion; he actually feels it in the present moment.

How does he do this? Different schools teach their own techniques. A “method actor” might get a job as a factory worker. A Stanislavskyan may use memories of situations which evoked the necessary emotion.

The simplest way: just as a pianist strikes the key which he knows will deliver the desired note, the brain can initiate any emotion in her instrument, the body, at will. This does require practice; one does not turn into a concert pianist overnight. Emotional education and practice: the driver reins (reigns) the horse.

If you don’t take care to train your horse, you can’t expect it to follow your directions when you want it to take you somewhere.

As a young captain this lesson impressed itself clearly on my stubborn noggin. The ship had three sails. In order to tack, that is to turn the ship so the wind would be on the other side, at the critical moment when the ship faced directly into the wind, a sailor had to pull the boom (the stick along the bottom edge) of the foresail, into the wind. As the ship had lost momentum by then, the wind would push the head of the ship downwind until the sails could catch the breeze and begin pushing her forward again.

I stood at the stern (back end) to direct the helmsman. As the ship turned I called out, “Back the foresail.” The crew stationed up there did nothing. So I called louder, “BACK THE FORESAIL!” Still nothing. I yelled til hoarseness. Nothing. In the end the manouvre failed. Fortunately no danger loomed. What did I learn? Useless to give orders if you haven’t trained the crew. No fault of theirs, they simply didn’t understand.

How to Train the Horse (Emotional Center)

1. Become aware of the emotion. Name it, describe it as best you can. Perhaps a combination of 2 or 3 emotions: despair and self-pity. Maybe some anxiety.

2. Disassociate. Nonidentify. Instead of “I am anxious,” or “I feel anxious,” say “Now proceeds in this body the emotion called anxiety.”

3. “Emotion” means “moving out.” If the emotion cannot express itself in physical movement, it gets “stuck,” upsetting the body’s balance. So move. Run, jump, hit a bag or mattress, if possible yell and scream. Laughter displaces coarse emotions so laugh if you can.

What if you are in a social situation where such external manifestations might lead to negative consequences? You’re in a business meeting; you’re surrounded by uptight assholes at a cock-tail party. You can still do steps one and two. You can usually do some unnoticable movement like wiggling your toes; maybe excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and stamp and pound the walls.

4. The body, this chemical factory, produces the emotion. If the body can actualize coarse emotions it can synthesize noble emotions. You have the right to use your body to create the emotions you want to feel. Despite religious and nationalist notions to the contrary, this instrument belongs to you.

Initiate a fine or noble emotion and hold that. Courage. Compassion. Enthusiasm. Confidence.

How do you do that? Coarse emotions run automatically, without intention or consciousness. Noble emotions don’t “just happen.” Conscious intention engenders finer emotions.

Consider the actor’s methods outlined above. You may find it easiest to start with the “Ham Actor’s” method, which does work to some extent. Faking the expected physical manifestations of an emotion does invoke the emotion at least a little. So… when you find yourself feeling “low,” correct your posture. Straighten the spine, broaden the shoulders, lift the top of the head (to straighten the neck) and look to the horizon. Take a big, deep breath, pushing the diaghram down. Then plaster a big, silly grin across your mug. Now of course this will be a fake smile but do it anyway. If there’s people around and you don’t want to look like an idiot, at least paint an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile on your face. Every time you catch yourself slumping with despair or whatever, repeat.

“There’s no people like show people, they smile when they are low…” – Irving Berlin

The secret of the good leader: you may be afraid, but demonstrate the actions of courage to your crew. Inspire (breathe into) them.

Second method: memory. Remember a scene in your life, or even in a film you watched, which provoked a noble emotion. Seeing a sunset or a rainbow. Holding the hand of a loved one. Standing on the seashore and watching the waves roll in. Peering into the mystery of a “Starry, starry night.”

Third, advanced method. By will, simply trigger the emotion in the upper part of the chest.

5. Hold the higher emotion together with the lower emotion.

Fighting the Good Fight?

You can’t fight coarse emotions. One can easily verify this on a large scale in world political affairs. The “War to End All Wars” simply led to an even worse war. Dubya Bush’s Iraq attack, itself a reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center, led to the Islamic State wars. World War One led to World War Two led to the Cold War spawning the Korean War and then its cousin the Vietnam War with its sidekick the War on Drugs.

Coarse emotion as a reaction to coarse emotion, simply engenders more of the same. You worry about your anxiety, doubling the anxiety. You get depressed about being depressed so much. Your inability to control your attacks of anger enrages you. And so on, the neverending story.

For example, you feel anxious. Worried. Nervous. What to do? How about holding it together with confidence? “Whatever the problem is, we can solve it. We can handle this.” Hold anger together with serenity. Cool Hand Luke. Partner terror with compassion. You can write your own emotional “cookbook.”

The coarse emotion sneers like the “bad boy” to the schoolyard “nice kid.” “Goody two-shoes! Mamma’s boy! Sissy!” Watch the reaction without reacting to the reaction. Shocked that anyone had the nerve to confront it, the bully retreats in confusion. Blustering and bravado conceal weakness. Exposed, it cringes, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I am the Great and Powerful etc.”

The lower emotion tries to yank down the higher emotion, make it lose its balance. Keep serenity. Don’t judge the lower emotion as bad or negative. It simply is what it is. Judge fire: good or bad? Good in a stove, warming us ’round; bad uncontrolled, burning our house down!

Passion: a good servant but a bad master. William Blake: “To be in a passion you good may do, but no good if a passion is in you.”

Advanced Work

Mastering the balance of higher emotions with lower, the attitude towards lower emotions transforms. No longer a nuisance, now the coarse emotions appear as a delicious feast. Self-pity, despair, regret? Yes! Thanks, more fuel to power wonder at this magnificent world! Frustration, rage? What a boost for compassion! Horror, disgust, loathing? Yummy! Surfing on that wave of courage.

Emotions color every perception, whether noticably or in ignorance. Why not get on top, and ride your horse?

Once a powerful samurai went to visit a zen master.

“Master,” he said, “Please enlighten me as to the nature of heaven and hell.”

The master suddenly yelled, “Get out of my presence! I cannot teach such a violent brute as you!”

Enraged, the samurai drew his sword and was about to swing it at the Master who instantly cried, “Stop! That is hell.”

Perceiving this truth, the samurai fell to his knees and murmured reverently, “Now I see. Thank you for this teaching, master.”

Quietly the master added, “And that is heaven.”