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Mastering our Emotions

03 Saturday Dec 2022

Posted by AjmaniK in life and living, nature, practice

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

awareness, ego, emotions, intellect, mastery, mind, senses

The heavily overcast skies that had brought intermittent rain all morning, ought to have been an indicator for me to delay the morning walk. And yet, the breeze through the partly open window brought a warmth as it fluttered over the ‘morning pages’ of the journal that I had been writing over the past half hour or so. The restless ego nudged me to ignore the distinct possibility of more rain, and off I went around the development, to discover more of Nature’s variations.

I only made it halfway through, before the wind must have shifted, and I saw the first signs of the shift in the form of a multitude of small circles in one of the retention ponds at the end of the street. Turning around, I was now headed back home, but facing rain and wind as they gained speed, painting my face. The heron sitting by the pond must have seen me turn around, as it took off with its ever majestic flapping wings, perhaps towards one of the other ponds in the development.

I was only ten or so minutes into the walk and yet I had already run through a whole bunch of different emotions. The pride in having decided to walk despite the conditions, the annoyance at the onset of the rain, the relief at realizing that I wouldn’t get totally drenched before I made it back home, the exhilaration at the unexpected sighting of the heron, and much more. Ten minutes, and a plethora of emotions, many, if not all of them, seemingly ‘arising out of nowhere.’ Can one even imagine how many emotions we encounter in an hour, in all the waking hours of a day? How many of these emotional waves or currents are we even aware of, before one wave is replaced by the next? What con we do to develop better awareness of our emotions and their origins, if we want to develop ‘mastery’ over their effects on us? Why is it even important to gain ‘mastery’ over our emotions, and are there any particular ones that we need to focus on more than others?

We can begin to address the question of emotional mastery by first understanding the origin of emotions. According to the Ashtavakra Gita, “The ego can recognise the world only through its instruments of sense organs, mind and intellect.” The sense organs are the receivers, the mind is interpreter, the intellect is the instrument of discernment. The ego’s reaction to what the world feeds it on a regular basis is perhaps the seed-bed of emotions.

If we can learn to reduce what is fed to the sense organs, we can reduce the minds vagaries and restlessness, can’t we? If we quieten the mind, we can then refine, purify and strengthen our intellect, can’t we? Slowly but surely, by reducing the influence of our senses, withdrawing them from the world, we can reduce the outer noise and increase the inner signal. It is said that this is the essence of spiritual practice, of spiritual work. The result is that we purify the intellect by slowly getting rid of both, hyper-activity and aversion to activity. Dwelling in purity, the intellect will then be strong enough to control the mind, which will then control the senses, which will then control our emotional disturbances.

By taking back control from our senses, and giving it to the intellect, we can achieve emotional mastery and resilience. What comes next? We will be ready to evolve to the next level of self-mastery — the dissolution of the intellect and hence the ego, and the realization that we are one with the Infinite.

We can all get to realization — let’s begin by working on our senses and emotions, shall we?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for our weekly twitter chat and gathering of the #SpiritChat community, Sunday Dec 4 2022 at 9amET / 2pmGMT / 730pm India. We will discuss emotions and their mastery over tea and cookies. I am grateful to my good friend Gopi Maliwal for the topic suggestion. Namaste – AjmaniK

Nature and its variations have a unique ability to influence our emotions…

On Memory, Ego and Awareness

30 Saturday Aug 2014

Posted by AjmaniK in Uncategorized

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Tags

awareness, ego, memory

The #SpiritChat conversations over the past two Sundays – Inner Workings of the Mind and Inner Conditioning and Habits – have generated a lot of diverse insights into the mind, its workings, its effect on our inner conditioning, and how ingrained patterns lead to formation of habits. One of the aspects that we haven’t talked about much, is the role of memory, its connection to ego, and its effect on our external and internal awareness.

So, what is memory? One definition is that it is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. We are perhaps born with this faculty, this ability, this skill – some may loosely refer to it as the brain – and as we grow, and our physical brain grows, our ability to gather, store and then remember or retrieve information, also grows. For most people, this faculty (of memory), reaches its peak at a certain age, after which, the process of aging can cause a drop-off of this skill. We may start losing our ability to gather information, to store it, or to retrieve it – or it could be any combination of those three abilities. While a discussion about how these three aspects of memory can affect us is beyond the scope of this conversation, suffice it to say, that a good, well-functioning memory is considered to be a significant quality of life skill, by most people.

Another definition of Memory may be in the context of something remembered from the past, a recollection. It is this ability, of us to remember, that is crucial for us to develop our discriminative side – the ability to know, and remember, and recall, that touching a hot pan with our fingers leads to pain. The ability to experience, and remember, and recall, that eating vanilla ice-cream with hot chocolate fudge sprinkled with nuts leads to (some degree) of pleasure! So, the accumulated sensations of pain and pleasure, as stored in our memory, shape and influence our mind by creating ingrained patterns (inner conditioning, habits). When faced with an action choice, the mind may ask memory – is this action likely to produce pain or pleasure? Our choice is likely to be based upon an avoidance of pain…

So, how do we break out of ingrained patterns that no longer serve us well? It is hard to break out of them because the memory and the ego are in collusion. Our accumulated memories of pleasure-producing actions are continuously feeding our ego with fear, encouraging the ego to avoid new actions – for there is no record in our memory of what results those new actions will bring. Once the memory bank has had a sufficient deposit of actions/results which had produced ‘pain’ in the past, the mind starts becoming conditioned – and responds with fear, when faced with the mere possibility of a new action. The ego’s response is based on what our memory informs our mind, even before the intellect (our higher intelligence) has a chance to intervene and give its opinion. The biggest casualty of this cycle of conditioning? Self-Awareness.

How do we break out of this pleasure-pain duality that exerts control over our mind through the memory faculty? Which memory vaults need to be ‘cleaned out’ in our lives, for us to improve our mental health, and hence our spiritual health? What is the risk in taking actions which are not influenced by memory? What are the rewards? How do we break this collusion between our memory and our ego (that produces fear), so that we make choices in self-awareness?

If you have read this far, and have some thoughts to share with us, or would like to ‘hear’ the thoughts of the #SpiritChat community on this topic, please join us for our weekly twitter chat on twitter – Sunday, August 31st at 9amET / 2pm UK / 6:30pm India. If you would rather share your thoughts in the comments, please do so, and one of us will be sure to respond.

Namaste, and Be well.

Kumud (@AjmaniK on twitter)

Ready? Q1. #Memory ~ creates a life full of memories… What are some of your choice ones? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506065061862191104

Q2. #Memory can serve us well. What are some instances when it has NOT served you well? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506066875294691328

Q3. “Remembering is easy. It’s forgetting that’s hard”. Agree or disagree? Why or why not? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506068724051619841

Q4. Any specific tools to train the faculty of #memory ~ to weed out what we don’t want any more? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506070948106485761

Q5. Memory informs us of both pain and pleasure. How may we extract value from painful memories? Should we? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506072782581821441

Q6. How does our having a good (or bad) #memory influence our Ego? Our actions? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506074073596952576

Q7. There is a time to hold on, a time to let go. What role does Ego play in this decision? Does it? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506075174496927744

Q8. How can we use the faculty of memory AND our ego – to build self-awareness? Can we? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506076398742941696

Final Q9. This question is yours. What would you like to ask the community about #Memory? #SpiritChat http://twitter.com/AjmaniK/status/506077516894076928

Questions from participants, in response to Q9 ~ Thank you, to all who contributed questions 🙂

@denisebuchman
Q9 How do memories hold us back from forgiveness? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/denisebuchman/status/506078294782275584

@margiebonwick
A9; would you erase it if you could?? #SpiritChat https://twitter.com/margiebonwick/status/506078130008625153

@EmeliaSam
A9 Which of your memories imprison you? How does your life change if you reinterpret it? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/EmeliaSam/status/506078334145421312

@SimonSaysLife
A9.When will you let go of the memories that are holding you back? #spiritchat
https://twitter.com/SimonSaysLife/status/506078455705137152

@Naren_Raykar
A9 if given a choice to have powers to choose your memories, would you like to acquire those powers? #spiritchat
https://twitter.com/Naren_Raykar/status/506078574752063490

@SignyTheSage
A9 How can you use your painful memories to help others who are still there? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/SignyTheSage/status/506078948342898688

@GThakore
A9: Do memories help us in repairing our negativity and ego? #spiritchat https://twitter.com/GThakore/status/506080378377875458

Full Transcript for “Memory, Ego and Awareness #SpiritChat Sunday, August 31st.

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