We talk about mental wellness at the office and how we “feel in our soul” between friends – our society is slowly waking up to acknowledge the profound determinism of how we feel and think.
The number of people feeling heavy, dark, low, or in some other way at unease, has reached alarming proportions. However, this suffering does not originate primarily from an aching body, it’s suffering we experience in our soul.
The problem is, there is little explanation on what the soul is, the term remaining mystical even in the 21st century. How is it connected to emotions and the mind? We often hope our lives will improve, but without understanding the mechanics, a possibility to initiate wise change becomes impossible. This is very similar to hoping to bake tasty pancakes without learning how to do pancakes.
What’s a pure soul? What you seek is actually not anything alien or far away. Have you looked into the pure eyes of a baby? This you have forgotten, but there was a time when you too were a baby – you have experienced this same purity. An absolutely natural, self-evident ease. How did this purity become “polluted”?
I learned from my teacher Ingvar Villido Ishwarananda that all people, when they clear their soul of such acquired blemishes (automatic reactions of anxiety, anger, sadness etc), emerge again as pure – kind and light. This is the mission behind creating the Art of Conscious Change and the techniques to gain release from harmful reactions activated by the autopilot. For only liberating the negative, not building another layer upon layer, can restore our humane-ness back to us.
However, our current approach has compressed a huge field of human functioning under one abstract term which has not served to create understanding. Emotions have been looked upon as “merely” emotions, a “soft” and private matter that can be dismissed. What has been labeled as “emotions” is, in fact, one particle on a grand territory of health on the Vital level. In calling upon to changes, I agree with Thomas Dixon from the University of London, who in his paper (Oct. 2012, Emotion Review, Vol. 4, No. 4, Pp 338–344) explains why the current agenda is problematic:
“The word “emotion” (imported into English from the French émotion) was in use already in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of the most influential theorists of “passions” and “affections” had been moral philosophers, clergymen, or both. By the 1890s, the word “emotion” started to cover all that was previously understood by the terms “feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions, sentiments, affections.”
…. The key figure in inventing the category of “emotion” was the Edinburgh professor of moral philosophy Thomas Brown, first published in 1820. A second key figure was another Edinburgh physician and philosopher, Charles Bell. For Bell, an “emotion” was a movement of the mind. In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, this previously “everyday” word became a scientific term. Darwin and James were both influenced by these works.
….“Emotion” is certainly a keyword in modern psychology, but it is a keyword in crisis. Interviews with leading emotion scientists, together with responses from other experts demonstrate that there is still no consensus on the meaning of this term and some even believe that it should be thrown out of psychology altogether.”
The relevance of understanding the practicalities of emotions goes far beyond being merely a matter of taste, philosophy, or whether or not one has a mental health issue. To learn and then systematically release the disruptive reactions is not only a possibility but a responsibility. Every one of us can and is called upon to do our share in becoming a better, lighter person, inwardly pure and beautiful. As a psychiatrist and a professional instructor of the AoCC technology, I call upon a nationwide need to initiate change in:
1) our conversation on emotions and introduce the broader context of “Wellbeing on the Vital Level of Functioning”;
2) people’s access to practical DIY skills to stop the cycles of these habitual, yet harmful reactions.
The next dates to participate at the Art of Conscious Change can be seen here.