The final question of Dirk’s latest series, then.
[6.0) It seems apparent that certain sets of strengths of various emotions in varying combinations – valence, arousal, and intensity in psychological terms – lead to certain “strengths” and “advantages”, and other “weaknesses” and “disadvantages”. Is this a reasonable view? What can you tell us about this?]
As usual, things will look different when seen from different angles. You could say that the emotions cause things or that they result from things. Rather than choose one view or the other, it is productive to look at it both ways, so that the problems presented by seeing it one way will be countered by the problems of seeing it another way.
If you take the emotions to be a part of the 3D individual’s character as is commonly done, then yes, you could say that they bring in their wake certain consequences, and may be judged in terms of the character they are part of. But a moment’s thought should produce dissatisfaction with that analysis. If, as we have been saying, emotions are the effect produced by the friction of inner and outer worlds, how can an effect be considered to be a cause at the same time? We don’t mean that an effect cannot then become a cause; obviously it can and does: That is the basis of any system employing feedback. That is a quite different thing from lifting oneself by pulling up on one’s bootstraps.
Yet, if you take the emotion to be the natural effect of the 3D individual in its surroundings, could you now say that in effect they are part of that personality? If – well, we’re looking for an analogy and not finding one, but perhaps it is clear?
How about this? If a person never fits into his surroundings comfortably, and is never going to, because of what he is and what his surroundings are, can’t we say his nature is quarrelsome, or petulant, or miserable, or however it takes him?
You have the idea of it. We are not sure the underlying idea will be clear to any on the strength of the words alone.
I think you’re simply saying, when our situation is such that it inherently causes persistent results, those results may be said to be a part of our character. To say that wouldn’t be accurate in one sense, but would be an acceptable shorthand for a different way of seeing it.
Good enough, yes. And since we have to remember to include one’s second-tier response to life – that is, how one chooses to respond to life – you can see that both aspects, both ways of seeing, are in fact accurate enough for descriptive purposes, if not necessarily for analytical ones.
So now let’s back up and summarize all this series of questions. We have said:
- The strength and combinations of emotions in any given lifetime result from the fit or misfit of a soul in its larger (unconscious to it) “external” world.
- The emotions as they manifest are not chosen by the individual, but are chosen, in effect, by the process of putting a certain mixture of characteristics in a certain time-space-location.
- The individual cannot choose where it begins – what it begins as – but can and does choose what it will become, by its choices throughout its lifetime, creating second- and then cumulatively third-tier effects.
Perhaps the most important thing we have said is that you in 3D are not primarily reasonable beings proceeding from thoughts. You sometimes like to see yourselves that way, but you aren’t, any more than an animal instinctively defending its offspring at peril of its own life. That isn’t reasonable, and it is essential; in other words, it is more fundamental than reason.
Your lives are based in emotion, not in thought. This does not mean you run amok with feelings. It doesn’t mean your emotional base is violently volatile or immovably quiescent or anything between. It means, only, that as has been said, “Feelings are the language of the soul.” It is in feelings that you connect to your larger self, to the outside world, to each other.
This would be obvious if not for one thing that confuses analysis. Feelings may be, and often are, invisible to the 3D mind. Thus you may be motivated by feelings you are not aware of having.
I think we should make explicit the difference between what you just said and what Dirk has reported. [That is, the absence in his life of certain emotions.]
Yes, although it seems to us that we have already done so, many times.
Conceptually, maybe?
We shall see:
- Consider the entire range of possible emotions to be an artist’s palette. Call this the complete spectrum.
- Consider the emotions produced by a person’s 3D experience to be, in effect, a limited palette. No one experiences all Certainly people do not experience them equally. [I take this to mean, we each experience them in different ratios.]
- Consider the partial palette you employ in your life (or, shall we say, that you seem to be furnished with in your life) to be a subset of the complete spectrum. There is no reason a priori to assume that the spectrum experienced cannot be added to or subtracted from during a lifetime. People change.
- Another way to classify yourselves would be between experienced and potential or latent emotions. What you have not experienced will be invisible to you. However, looked at more closely, latent emotions reveal themselves to be parts of the complete spectrum that have not manifested, so what advantage is there in deciding that they are or are not parts of one’s emotional makeup?
That seems clear. And a change in environment could produce changes in emotions experienced, I imagine.
Certainly. As could a change in the conscious self. Change either end of the conscious/”external” relationship, and the laminal layer will be affected.
Thus, when Dirk asserts that he does not experience certain emotions, he is correct so long as he silently adds, “at least, not so far.” When others insist that he must have experienced them but not recognized the fact, or suppressed knowledge of it, they are on shakier ground, but need not be considered right or wrong. Sometimes, in 3D, you do suppress or not recognize emotions playing out in life. But sometimes one person’s life does not produce the emotions others would have expected it to, because of reasons not observable by them.
In short, as you always say, “Don’t judge others’ lives, you never have the data.”
Well, it’s the truth.
Anything else?
The consideration of outlying conditions. Psychopaths, for instance.
Yes?
As you can imagine, the range of relationships between an individual’s 3D awareness and its surroundings extends from empath to sociopath. That is, from one whose psychic boundaries are nearly nonexistent to one who lives at the opposite pole of unawareness.
I never happened to think of it that way. Empaths and sociopaths are unaware of boundaries between self and other, the one because it fully participates, the other because it is aware of nothing but self.
That isn’t a definitive statement, but it is a suggestive one. And most people function between the two poles of acceptance and rejection of others. No matter the individual’s makeup, the complete spectrum of emotions is potentially available, but not necessarily available in practice. Second- and third-tier decisions have as much to do with whether a given part of the spectrum is available.
Our thanks as always, and now we will wait for further questions, or for you to begin something else, or time out for a vacation. Till next time, then.