Tapsearch Com EditorEmotions can rule the game
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We continue to explore self improvment of personality and character and how we can pursue our life ideal. Emotions play a big part. An emotion is a whole experience in perception not only of any given situation but its meaning to us and the bodily reaction to that perception. There is the knowing element by which one becomes aware of a certain situation. Then there is the desire element of attraction or repulsion that comes spontaneously with the perception of the happening; and finally there the bodily response in the corresponding actions of nerves, glands, internal organs and so on.
We usually are cautious in giving into emotions and play down their part in pursuing the life ideal. However, we should find ways to trust our emotional powers. We know that emotions can make us do things we otherwise can not do. For example a person can get out of their sick bed when something serious changes the circumstances. We know self-survival can change the pattern of our emotions. When confronted with a severe danger, we forget about our fatique.
From the nature of such emotional experiences, it is easily seen just what is meant by emotion. Anyone who has had a spiritual conversion, know how the emotions can carry all a bigger load of life's problems. Emotions become an experience or mental state driven by a strong degree of feeling and usually accompanied by motor expression often quite intense. As efficient "movers" our emotions are great helps to good actions. Often one can do things by the aid of emotion which one could never do in a state of calm as many artists will tell you. Laying down on one's life for a good cause is one example of the power of what emotions can do.
The driving powers of these emotions is universally recoginized. We know what anger, envy, greed, revenge, hatred or love can get us going. With emotions being such a large influence in our lives we must study it carefully. The mild emotions are love and hatred, desire and aversion, joy and grief. The emergency group are hope and despair, courage, fear and rage.
Love and hate are of course, opposites. Love is an affective agent which I experience is that which I perceive as good for me. ( However, the real definition of love has to be observed and not to cover actions that really are not truly love- "making love" may be something completely different from real love. ) Hatred is a repugnance which I feel for that which I perceive as bad for me. Both of these play a large part in every life. Both affect our attitudes and have much to do with the expression of our personalities in subsequent actions. And the quality of personality is manifested by the nature of the loves and hatreds possessed.
In judging our own personalities and characters by the nature of our loves and hatreds, we must make a distinction. We can love and hate on two levels. One level is the sense level and the other the rational level. When one experieces delight in the idea of a good cigar or a piece of chocolate, it is love on the sense level. When one experiences delight in a great poem, it is on the rational level.
([I]We will continue our next post abut the importance of making distinctions about love or hate experiences for the sake of our personality and character in the pursuit of the life ideal.)
[B][I] Sources: Father McQuade and notes from the Personality and Character course.[B][I]
