Emotions and Balance

[zenmaster]

A new thread to avoid derailing.

It's one way of using contrast to integrate emotions through metaphor.

But that's sort of like saying someone removes the cause of physical pain by integrating yelling or wincing.

One doesn't integrate emotions. An emotion is an unconscious reaction to some aspect of self that had not been integrated (acknowledged and accepted). You could call this a 'misunderstanding', an 'imbalance', a 'blockage', etc. The emotion is a response to a mind pattern (such as a complex) which has been engaged by some stimulus which brought awareness close to it. What is being integrated is how one views that which is reinforcing the distortion. When the distortion being held on to is seen as being unnecessary, the pattern is balanced and becomes part of usable consciousness. That is the form of integration.

Is your view that the unconscious is causing unbalance?]

The relationship of consciousness to unconsciousness is the balance or unbalance.

I don't agree. The only difference between the unconscious and the conscious is that one is on the table and the other is in the cabinet, so to speak.

The unconscious doesn't cause imbalance. The imbalance is due to particular distortions being emphasized or held on to, due to lack of acceptance of something in the unconscious. So we have the balance of the unconscious and conscious.

Are you suggesting that expressing emotion is unwanted?

No.

Are you saying that emotion is a mind complex and an unconscious reaction?

No. Emotion is the result of an imbalance (a distortion) that is manifesting at the body (physical) level. That distortion can be a complex of mind. The point is something (a distortion) which is still unconscious which dictates behavior.

I don't understand emotion as the result of an imbalance. Why cannot emotion also be the expression of balance?

It can be, but as an unconscious reaction there must be movement from the unconscious to the conscious for it to find expression. Since balance is relative to imbalance, and emotions are due to complex patterning of the unconscious, which necessarily is still out of reach. We can only say that the expression of the emotional reaction is merely influenced by some balance.

Do you think expressing emotion is an indication Of imbalance or of a balancing act itself?

Any consciousness directed towards knowing self/other-self, no matter what the object of consciousness, that is is going to lead to balance. That's the nature of learning. An emotional reaction is an indication of an ultimately unnecessary distortion, 100% of the time. Again, this is not to say emotion is something 'unwanted'.

In that sense, everything is ultimately unnecessary if it just falls away. And what is left?

A new level of awareness.

I see emotion as any other expression of energy. Is not balance itself an emotion?

There is sort of like a homeostatic condition between the unconscious and conscious. That's the balance I'm referring to.

I've had emotional reactions, and then I've had mental thoughts about emotions. The two appear very different to me.

They are different. Emotional reactions made their way down to the physical precisely due to lack of awareness (integration of pertinent distortions) at the mental level. Thoughts about emotions are often memories or associations which draw the distortions closer to conscious awareness.

The 'distortions' are often related to a misunderstanding - usually due to the manner in which a past event or association was directed to be formed (as a memory) by consciousness. So the distortion is often related to an unknown bias or preferences: what we like or we do not like. The distortion, in effect, holds energy in pattern - a construct. The mind can easily, with complete autonomy, hold on to that distortion, in a relatively unchanged form, for a lifetime.

There are emotions created in the body that move their way to the mind.

Then when we are talking about emotions, we are definitely not talking about the same thing.