Examining the Nature of Emotions and How to Work with Them in a Beneficial Manner

Posted On September 25, 2023 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

Emotions are probably one of the most difficult things for us to understand in the practical sense because they’re so electrifying and act to send us into an automatic reaction that can be hard to shake off or bring under control. Many people consider emotions actual entities that take on a life of their own when they inhabit us and have commonly been referred to as ‘demons’, because when we become charged with them it can feel as if we’re possessed by an outside force that takes over our mind and clouds it with delusions. The first step in learning how to work with something that’s invisible and energetic in nature, is to step out of it in order to examine it as a working concept from an objective mindset in terms of how it functions, what it causes, and what purpose it serves in the natural world of which it’s a fundamental part of.

Emotion is what we can think of as the ‘electric force’ of Nature that propels and orchestrates instinctual impulses as automatic behaviors. These behaviors are automatic because they come without direct awareness, a thought process, or having to make a calculated decision of some kind. They result from the conscious energy being expressed and projected by something and the natural activity of sentient beings in the environment that’s transmitted or emanated through the atmosphere, where it can be sensed and picked up on by everything around it. Whatever motivating force or intention that’s actively expressing in any situation forms an electrical impulse that stimulates everything that’s a part of that situation with the same or corresponding feeling and serves to orchestrate an automatic reaction as a form of synchronization. The problem we have as humans is that we bring emotions into our thoughts and imagination where they act to create correlating realities. We hold onto emotional charges instead of letting them go once the danger or arousing energy has passed and continue to think about them long afterwards, building them into whole scenarios in our mind that keep the emotion alive.

Electrical impulses that are generated through activity and motivation are transmitted through the immediate environment and are designed to alert and produce an automatic reaction in animals as instinctual patterns of behavior that compel them to act a certain way. As soon as the threat or danger passes, animals shake off the emotional charge and go back to their normal activities and way of being as if nothing happened. Whereas humans, when we feel threatened or afraid, we allow it to take hold in our mind and we continue to think about it long after it passes, often building whole realities out of it that serve to keep us in that emotional state. We allow the emotion to continue to run our thoughts and as a result keep ourselves constantly afraid, apprehensive, or stressed as a general way of being. We use our own thoughts to express the reality of the emotion, keeping ourselves in a constant reactive state, usually without realizing that’s what we’re doing.

Emotion functions the same way in humans as they do in animals and serves to cause an immediate reaction that comes automatically without thinking about it or realizing what we’re doing and why. As we’re triggered by the electrical charge of an emotion being expressed by someone around us, it causes that same emotion to become active within us, causing us to go into a semi-unconscious state, while a distinct behavioral dynamic begins playing out between us and the person or group of people who triggered us. The reaction formed, which occurs instantaneously, is directly associated to a memory of some kind that we formed out of the same emotional state as a child. All memory, like the memory of instinct, forms a behavioral dynamic as a thematic pattern. Anger, for example, which is what we can think of as a general emotion shared by everyone, has a distinct set of behaviors associated with it, which, though played out differently by each person, still follows a common theme that produces a predictable result or outcome. Anger either causes a person to become equally angry, escalating and amplifying it, or it causes someone to feel afraid, shrink back and become submissive, and try to hide or run away. Whatever behavior we developed in our childhood in response to someone being outwardly angry, becomes the dominant behavioral pattern we continue to act out as an adult.

One of the biggest differences between humans and animals is we not only have a subconscious mind like all animals and life on Earth, commonly referred to as the ‘collective unconscious’ or ‘group mind’, but we also have a conscious mind and are capable of forming our own memories, which have distinct behaviors associated with them. As we have an experience of an emotional nature, it not only prompts and instinctual reaction in us, but as we bring it into our thought life, we form a story out of it that gives it ‘meaning’. As we internalize our emotions, anger and aggressive behavior towards us not only acts to prompt a ‘fight or flight response’, it also ‘means something about us’, about the person who’s angry, and about the way life is in general. Instead of being a momentary stimulus that’s designed to get us out of harm’s way or deal with a volatile situation in an immediate fashion, it becomes a a form of ‘life theme’ where we perceive others and the world at large as being a scary and volatile place, where we don’t feel safe, and we ultimately become a victim to our own imaginary thoughts. We form a general attitude of always being somewhat apprehensive and scared, where we generate and maintain a feeling of anxiety, holding back and refraining while waiting for the hammer to drop.

What makes this whole process even more elusive and profound, comes in the fact that as we feel afraid and have our guard up as a result, it stimulates everyone and everything around us with a corresponding feeling, causing them to become aggressive or dominating in response to us, usually without being aware of what they’re doing. This can be understood by recognizing that when we encounter an animal that we’re afraid of somehow, it senses our fear, and often becomes aggressive towards us in response to it. All energy, which in this case can be construed as being equated to feelings and emotions that are freely transmitted through the atmosphere, are ‘polarized’ and function as ‘complementary forces’, where one acts to stimulate the other into an active state. Anger and aggression produce fear and anxiety, which promote more anger and aggression.

Someone who walks around feeling inferior to others, or self-conscious and intimidated, not only attracts the opposite energy to them, but also acts to stimulate it in others, calling it forth in an active state. It’s very common for a person with an inferiority complex to try and build themselves up by putting others down in the same way that causes them to feel inferior as a means of making themselves feel superior somehow. A person who feels as if they’re a victim somehow to the actions of others, will both attract to them and bring out in others the attitude and behaviors that cause them to be victimized. A person who’s ‘wounded’ psychologically somehow, emanates and puts out that energy as a feeling others get just by being around them, bringing out in others the very energy as a mentality that causes them to feel wounded in the same way. Because this functions at the energetic level of electromagnetic impulses, where we’re always transmitting and stimulating everyone around us with the same feelings and emotions we’re experiencing, we’re not aware of what we’re doing, and we imagine it’s happening beyond our ability to change or control it. It occurs automatically through an invisible and silent force that can’t be seen or heard, yet is felt internally in a pronounced manner.

We act to both transmit and receive emotional impulses that act directly on us to alter our state of mind, keeping us in the same mental state as our environment and everything around us. Energetically, which means mentally, we’re always a fundamental part of our environment at the subliminal, unconscious level. We not only share the same collective unconscious mind inherent in all of Nature, but our physical body is also made out of the Earths essence and physical substance. We’re an intrinsic part of everything around us, and like everything around us, function naturally (unconsciously) through electromagnetic impulses freely transmitted through the astral light of the Earths energetic field and soul memory.

Due to humans also having a conscious mind, which is creative in nature, where we form our own experiences, memory, and reality through internal mental processes, we don’t act to ‘receive’ energy as electric impulses in the objective sense, but rather ‘conceive’ electrical impulses where we act as a transducer for converting a universal idea (archetypal memory) into a personal one. We take an emotional impulse, and through a process of mental gestation, we build it into a reality that represents and forms the basis for producing a distinct type of experience. We then identify with our own self-produced experiences and shape ourselves by way of the memory produced. As we get older and we build our own memory base, we no longer function solely out of animal instinct, but out of the dynamics formed through our own memories which are activated and set in motion automatically by the emotions associated with them.

Two Forms of Emotion – Conceived and Self-Generated

As described previously, there are basically two ways we experience emotions, we either act to conceive them from the emotions being expressed by others around us, which acts as a triggering mechanism that renders us unconscious in the sense of playing out automatic reactions, or we generate them internally through our thoughts and how we build and present ideas to ourselves by imagining them as a possible reality. Let’s start by exploring the automated conception in terms of how to manage it in an aware and deliberate manner. Like all life skills, this requires consistent practice until it starts becoming natural and you do it without having to think about it.

It may be best to start this practice with situations where you’re only being mildly stimulated, because intense emotions tend to overwhelm us in the moment they occur and take control of us without our ability to control them or even realize what’s happening. Once you develop your method using milder ones, you can then begin applying it to more intense emotions. The best way to start this process, like all mental processes, is by setting an intention beforehand, allowing you to remain self-aware through the whole process without getting lost in it. As someone near you is expressing an emotion outwardly through their attitude, tone of voice, and body language, turn your attention inward and allow yourself to notice where in your body you’re being stimulated by it. Notice that the energy ‘enters your body’ instantly, without resistance or being impeded, and brings alive that same emotion ‘in’ you. As it comes alive, notice how it acts to instantly change your mental state to match the person projecting it, causing you to take on the same type of behavior. Whether you form the same behaviors or counteractive ones depends on how you internalized and processed the emotion in the past and formed a memory out of it that has a behavioral dynamic or pattern inherent in it that ‘meant something’. Whatever meaning the memory represents, determines the pattern acted out as an automatic reaction. Allow yourself to notice that the emotional charge is directly related to a particular type of dynamic you formed based on the meaning you gave it.

Once you form a clear awareness around what’s happening when you act to conceive an emotional charge, also allow yourself to realize that you can prevent the charge from entering your body (which is your subconscious) and taking hold through mental means. All energy of the material world (Nature) can be ‘directed and utilized through active use of will’, and will is exercised by forming an idea in your mind as a working concept. All energy flows into and follows our thoughts, which is what gives your thoughts life. You can set the intention to prevent energy being projected by others from ‘infecting’ your mind and body by forming an imaginary barrier around you as a form of glass bubble, while ‘telling yourself’ the emotion can’t penetrate the invisible barrier. This invisible barrier not only prevents the electrical charge from entering you, but also ‘reflects it back’ to the person projecting it. This whole process is not only formed through imagining it, but also by directing it’s activity by thinking about it. This is what ‘active use of will’ means. All energies active within the natural world can be directed and utilized using the higher capacities of your conscious mind, through the faculty of your imagination.

This leads us to the second way we experience emotions, which are generated internally in relation to and response to our own thoughts and how we present ideas to ourselves as imaginary scenarios that mimic an actual experience. To experiment with this idea, simply learn how to mentally observe your own internal processes from a detached perspective where you’re fully in control of what you’re doing. Take an idea that represents a ‘type of experience’ and form it in your mind as a reality. The picture or scene formed initially appears as a neutral light formation with greyish undertones that make it seem like it’s far away and off in the distance. Then begin developing the image by shaping it with sensory attributes (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting) that bring it alive with sensation and desire. Imbue it with rich colors and textures that form correlating sounds, feelings, smell and taste, and as you do, notice that it becomes closer, bigger, and more alive. Form it as if you are experiencing it and what you’re telling yourself about the experience.

Once you bring it alive on the inner planes of your mind as an experience, notice that you automatically give rise to correlating emotions in response to it. The emotion is naturally formed based on how you ‘present’ the idea to yourself, and once formed becomes the motivating force that animates it and determines how it expresses through a natural set of behaviors. This vivified, emotional idea forms the frequency of the thought that’s simultaneously transmitted throughout the space around you, activating and bringing alive all the corresponding elements necessary to organize the same type of ‘experience’ in your outer environment. The idea is the pattern as a metaphorical theme, and the emotion is the life-energy that causes it to vibrate at a particular frequency and mode of consciousness, and acts to resonate with everything around you that’s of a similar nature.

By preventing your mind from being infected with the emotions being transmitted around you, while also understanding how to internally generate and determine your own emotions through controlling your thoughts and what you picture in your mind as a self-induced experience, you can act to consciously determine and shape your own experiences of reality. Not only can you become self-determined and self-regulated in the basic sense, you can also influence everything around you with the same feeling and emotion, giving rise to the same type of thoughts in others. You can literally introduce a thought into the collective unconscious of humanity that will influence others in a subliminal and subtle manner.

While it can be difficult to transmit actual thoughts, because thoughtforms in the general sense are self-produced and metaphorical in nature, where they mean something different to everyone, we can generate emotions that are directly correlated with certain types of thoughts and are more universal in nature. As we generate emotions in response to certain type of thoughts, we can embellish them, and then amplify and project them fluently through the atmosphere around us where they’ll be naturally conceived by others. Emotions are the language and motivating force of the subconscious which we all share in common, and by transmitting the proper emotions we can determine what type of things it causes people to think about.  If we generate and transmit positive emotions, it causes others to think equally positive thoughts. If we deflect negative emotions instead of absorbing and taking them on as our own, we act neutralize them, and provide a mirror for the person projecting them, allowing them to form a new awareness around their own projections.

Once we’re able to regulate and determine our own emotional state using our thoughts and imagination, we’re then in a position to begin using emotions as a tool for intentionally producing desired mental states in others. We can influence those around us and lead them where we want them to go by how we emotionally express ideas. This is a powerful skill used masterfully by all great leaders in being able to elicit the appropriate mindset in large groups of people and lead them towards the accomplishment of a common goal. These methods, which are subliminal in nature, once practiced to the point of mastering them is how we can intentionally inject and sustain a mental influence in the collective field and mind of humanity.

There’s a direct and complementary relationship between thought and emotion. One can be used to generate and determine the other, and they bear a direct and intimate influence on each other, the only question is which one is dominant and running the show. If we stay immersed in our emotions without realizing we can direct and utilize them, then they run our thoughts and determine our experience of reality. We stay locked into the illusions and dramas we create out of them and repeat patterns of the past by reliving the memories formed in the past over and over through reactive states. Once we realize we can direct and regulate the emotions being projected by others, while also generating our own in response to our thoughts and ideas imagined as an experience, we step into our true power in creating our life experiences in a conscious and intentional manner, and our ‘self’ out of the memory created. We can become sovereign, self-governing, and self-determined in the most basic sense of creating ourselves in an intentional manner through active use of will and imagination.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Mind-Body Medicine Consultant, and Spiritual Teacher