So let’s move to Dirk’s first and second questions. We have prepared the ground.
[1) what are emotions really? Where do they arise from? Why?
[2) what are the raw primary emotions? ]
But doesn’t this divert us from where you were? Didn’t you just get to beginning to describe feelings as our background, and shouldn’t you be explaining that a bit before moving on to emotions?
Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you – we notice now that we haven’t explicitly said it – that feelings and emotions might be looked at as the same connectors, viewed from opposite directions.
I can’t make sense of that. I feel like it almost makes sense, till I really look at it.
[A pause, and a pretty long one]
The statement was premature. Too much remains to be said before we can explicate the statement. Let us set it aside and continue.
What are emotions, where do they arise from, and why do they arise? The short answer is that they are the 3D psyche’s reaction to the conditions created, moment by moment, by the spirit’s flowing though the structure that is the 3D soul. That is, the vast impersonal forces of whatever moment, being experienced by the soul, produces a sort of music.
Whew! I almost get that. You are nearly beyond the reach of words.
No, it can be done, it’s just a matter of some careful slogging. First comes the image, as general orientation (spark), then comes the net of words (illustration) to try to provide continuity with whatever you already are.
Let’s break down our illustration and look at it a bit pedantically. Those who immediately caught the spark will be able to pass this lightly by; others may find it an essential link. Neither way is it a waste of effort.
Emotions are
the 3D psyche’s reaction to
the situation created moment by moment
as the spirit flows through
the (3D) soul.
In effect,
the interaction of spirit and soul
produces your life
which may be regarded as
a sort of music.
Wind blowing through the structure. You are making us out to be bagpipes.
Worse analogies have been used.
You have to remember, your 3D life cannot be understood in isolation (if only because isolation does not exist). It must be seen as part of the greater world it forms a part of, the All-D, not merely the 3D. Just as conscious life cannot be understood without the context of unconscious life (sleep, coma, etc.), so the 3D life you lead cannot be understood outside of the context of so much that is background to the 3D you are experiencing.
The impersonal forces of any given moment are the conditions in which you exist; they are not negligible, and cannot be negligible. Although they are often disregarded or even unconsidered in schemes of description of psychic process, they are primary. As we said, your psychic life does not take place against a neutral background. The background changes every moment.
But if the vast impersonal forces are in no way under your control (and, trust us, they aren’t), what is under your control ultimately is the psychic structure they animate, because this structure you chose into existence, and choose on an on-going basis. We have said this more than once.
The sense of it I get is that our 3D life is the continuing working-out of the pattern we were born with, or born into. We are always choosing what we want to be, and we are always trying to live that choice, and we do so – you are pointing out – against a background that is continually changing in ways, and for reasons, that do not depend upon the choices we make.
Yes, only say it more carefully. If you are on a camping trip, where you are and where you intend to go and how well prepared for contingencies you are is up to you. The weather is not. You may take into account the meteorological forecast, but that does not defend you from freak storms, and even less does it allow you to change seasons. If you set out in July, you cannot expect April’s conditions, nor November’s.
Meaning, our life has its own season and we cannot expect to escape that?
Don’t make it sound grim. Merely, if your life begins in the 1940s, it is going to be lived in a different season than if it begins in the 1840s or 2040s. Similarly with place. That is the season you are born into, and it unfolds as you go along. Those are the background conditions to your life. But just as in meteorology, so in psychic life, you are much more affected, moment by moment, by the changing weather you experience. Summer lasts a long time – your whole life, perhaps – but a summer shower does not. You are apt to notice the shower more immediately than the long season. Change is more evident than continuity.
Now, we made an analogy to music. The same air being blown through the pipes will create different effects depending upon what the piper has done in providing the structure of the moment.
I get that you mean, what we already are will determine what we do with the input.
Certainly. That’s the point. Six people living in the same weather will produce very different tunes, not only because their choices will differ but because what they can absorb of that common background is not so common after all. That is, it is common (in and of itself) and is not common (in how it is or is not experienced). That is why no two people experience the same emotion at the same time in the same way. The cause is different, the conduit is different, the intent is different.
So we may look at feelings as background and emotion as reaction to what happens.
We have heard worse definitions.