Emotions are teachers

In many spiritual traditions, role of emotions is limited. It is often said, one should refrain from expressing too much. Even in day to day life, we often hear such phrases — ‘strong individuals don’t cry’, ‘don’t cry like a baby’ etc. With the exponential use of digital communication, it has become far more difficult to express emotions, unless or until you are good with ‘emojis’.

I, on the contrary, believe emotions are the most beautiful gift that enhance our existence and help greatly in our journey. Today, what differentiates a life from a machine are emotions; else we are nothing but robots. Every emotion is positive; it only depends on how we use it. For me, fear is as good as courage. Fear of failure is one of the most common fears that majority of successful people possess.

If I am riding a bike at 200km/hr, without any fear, I have no negative emotions. BANG!! Accident happens. Fear here, can save someone’s life. Fear of losing someone, fear of death, fear of loss, these can stop a person from riding at that speed. When you ask most of the athletes what made them achieve the impossible, the most common answer is — “The adrenaline rush — the outburst of emotions did it all for them.

I consider emotions to be great teachers. They are here to teach us about existence, and how we master them. Emotions are like subjects we have in school, the emotions we are weak in, the more teachers we have. For example — If a person feels he is not good enough and thus feels under confident; he will keep coming across people who would make him feel that way. What this person needs to do here is accept his weakness in that particular emotion and start working towards it. He should sit down and check, what makes him better than other people, what is the one thing he is very confident about and start working around it, completely accepting his weaknesses. The day he doesn’t react to the feeling — “I am not good enough”, he has mastered that emotion.

So, you should sit down and look at all the situations which trouble you at the present moment and note them down. What you will notice is, almost all have the same core, all the situations lead to one emotion — frustration, anger, irritation, etc. If you try and run away from it, it will become bigger and come from various sources; rather you should face that emotion and not react. Instead respond to it. Once you respond to the emotion, the situation will disappear, as you would have mastered it.

All those who say, emotions have no space in spirituality may want to look at it in this perspective — humanity is also an emotion. It is the most spiritual aspect humans should have. Compassion, kindness and love are the most spiritual words and all of these are emotions. Krishna is considered a complete avatar not for the miracles he showed, but for the range of emotions he had. He danced, sang, laughed, cried, got angry, broke promises, fell in love — he did everything that a so called spiritual persona is barred from doing in today’s time. Spirituality is all about the range of emotions you have, alongside having the right awareness to use them.

Let emotions not control your existence, but your existence express your  emotions!

The writer is a spiritual seeker, and karmyogi. You can mail him at masterrishavofficial@gmail.com