Our emotions or feelings have a wide range of mood from sympathy, suffering, compassion and affection to envy, anger, hatred and many other less pleasant, negative expressions.
Positive emotions are those that activate our best aspects of our personality or soul. To experience these brings us contentment, happiness, love and peace. All these feelings can inject a special quality into events and experiences. We will all remember the happy moments in our lives when our finest emotions were heightened. Many of these will have arisen spontaneously. Although it is possible to consciously generate certain degrees of feeling, we usually learn that we cannot use our will to bring us a repeat of those feelings. Only an echo of them comes through our memory and we are reminded that it is possible to experience such ‘highs’ again.
We all develop our emotional nature not only according to our innate inclinations, but in conjunction with the environment and circumstances to which we react. The most wholesome emotions are those well known to us when it is our heart that speaks to us, rather than our head.
We readily accept that anger, fear and jealousy result in disturbances to our psyche. When we are feeling envious we feel uncomfortable. When we are lonely, it is only a step away from giving way to depression. Negative feelings are difficult to live with – in ourselves or in those around us.
On the other hand, we feel good when we feel happy, and cheerful. Like a magnet, we will feel attracted to those who have a positive, outgoing nature.
So we need to cultivate our emotions as we do our thoughts. To alter one’s emotional pattern requires time and patience do all efforts involved in self culture. For us all, our discipline involves restraint in curbing anger and irritation, and all negative traits and consciously exercising the positive feelings that will help us to be inwardly in a harmonious and peaceful state where we can identify ourselves with all that is good and noble. The rewards are great and will endure for our lifetime.
We will know love, happiness and the joy of living because our minds will direct our emotions to this end.
Sally Janssen’s wonderful book “Mental Fitness: The Complete Self-Help Guide”, offers timely solutions. Read more…
Mail this post
