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Ramsses II
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(10/30/05 9:49 am)
Reply 		The Resplendent Sun
(Quote) Balder:

I have enjoyed reading the beginnings of your “4 types of emotion” epic, and may retract some of the reservations I am about to express after you have finished posting on the subject. You mentioned that people are using emotion simplistically and confusing what may be multiple types of emotionality, but I am not sure where you’re getting that from. You reacted strongly to Varela’s article, saying he was elevating infantile emotion over cognition, dismissing cognition and the effectiveness of cognitive strategies for mediating emotionality as mere illusion, and committing other cognitive crimes. But if you think that Varela is advocating this regressive defense and elevation of infantile emotionalism, I respectfully disagree. I think you have erected and toppled a strawman.

The way you reacted to Varela’s essay, it seemed to me (initially) that you regarded all emotion as infantile and regressive, and that you were offended by the idea that the purity of cognition should be sullied by any association with emotionality. After reading your latest posts, this impression has been lessened, and I look forward to what you have to say.

One thing that concerns me is the repetition of that old pattern of condemning the flesh (whether as evil, animalistic, or infantile) and setting it in eternal opposition or submission to rationality or soul or whatever. I do not deny the effectiveness, and the importance, of cognitive strategies for reigning in and giving shape to basic, infantile emotional impulses. Clearly, that is partly how we are able to move out of the terrible twos and begin to relate to others with restraint, respect, care, compassion, and so on. I also do not deny that many of us remain relatively emotionally immature and cognitively undeveloped, and I think you are right to point this out and to challenge the “cornerstones” of society that perpetuate this problem. But emotion/affect are not, in themselves, equivalent with infantilism, nor are they mere hold-overs from our primitive days that have to be beaten into submission and then tolerated until such a day that we evolve beyond the need to feel or emote at all.

One of the points that I get from Varela’s writings, and from other current writings in the field of cognitive science, is that cognition and emotion are more interrelated than we had imagined; that rationality is not the disembodied, abstract thing we thought it was, but that our cognitive processes are shaped profoundly by our embodiment. There is not a hard and fast, dualistic divide between rationality, as an abstract and ethereal principle, and human embodiment and affectivity.

Now, just as there are multiple expressions or types or levels of emotion, there are a number of “levels” or types of “mind” as well. When scientists comment on the embodied nature of human cognition, which emerges and takes its characteristic shape through our sensorimotor engagement with the world, I do not take this to be an explanation for the origination or “absolute nature” of sentience itself. That’s a different issue. But if we acknowledge this at the outset, then we can carry on a discussion about embodied cognition, and the interrelationship of cognition and emotion, without imagining that we are reducing things to the “lowest common denominator” or naively conflating “absolute” and “relative” realms of experience.

In my own exploration of these things, I have found that emotion and thought are indeed interdependent. This does not negate the possibility for growth or maturation, however. In fact, I think it is this interrelationship that is actually the doorway through which our growth may proceed. If these realms were not interrelated, then cognition could not act on or influence emotion, either negatively or positively. They would exist in alternate universes, and never the twain would meet.

You have mentioned how thought can help to lessen impulsivity, as we learn to think rationally, to plan, to imagine and weigh various outcomes, to adopt alternate perspectives, etc. This is clear. But it is also clear, I think, that thought can initiate its own types of problems and disturbances, as it interacts with our feelings and impulses. Thought can provide “pipelines” through which the currents of our emotion flow, and in which that energy becomes trapped, circulating in destructive or dissipating patterns. I have explored this many times in my meditation. Here, I don’t necessarily mean formal meditation; rather, I simply mean that I have turned open, receptive, welcoming awareness on strong currents of emotion or reactivity, and have seen clearly how certain “thought loops” perpetuate feelings. When the circuit is broken, the energy of the emotion is released, and often is transformed in the process. Strong aversion, once liberated from its destructive cognitive loop, may transform into sheer joy, life-force, clarity.

I knew nothing about Tibetan Buddhism at the time I first discovered this, but Tibetan Buddhism describes this process well, and defines a number of stages through which this transformation of unwholesome emotion may be liberated and transformed: 1) learning about distorting cognitive/emotional patterns, 2) testing these patterns against our own experience, to see if we can recognize them first-hand, 3) resolving to catch ourselves in the act of indulging these patterns, and naming it on the spot; and 4) staring into the face of the arising emotions. Intellect or cognition is necessary to bring us to the recognition, but then it must be left behind; we drop it on the spot and face the emotion in a naked fashion, with presence rather than reason.

A passage from Spectrum of Ecstasy, a book on a Tantric/Dzogchen approach to emotionality, is worth quoting here. I quote it not in lieu of my own experience, but because it describes my experience so well.

quote:

Talking about nakedly facing the emotion of sorrow, Ngakpa Chogyam writes, “But if you are able to surrender the words – the conceptual scaffolding – then the sensation ceases to manifest as pain. If you can then maintain the presence of your wordless gaze, the emotion becomes free energy.

At first, thoughts seem to be thrown up by the centrifugal force of the sensation; but, if these thoughts are allowed to fly past and disappear into space you will discover that it is the cyclic nature of thoughts rather than the sensation itself that is the cause of your ‘dis-ease.’ When you can simply be with the sensation of your emotion and experience it fully at the non-conceptual level, you will notice a dynamic reversal taking place. The spinning energy that seemed to be generating rivulets of words and ideas has a vast still centre; like the eye of a hurricane. From that experience of stillness it is possible to perceive that the obsessive spinning is not caused by the emotional sensation, but that it is in fact the cause of it. When you realize the empty nature of the sensation of emotional pain, the pain dissolves into an ecstatic sensation of presence and awareness."
This approach to facing emotion and liberating its energy from the cognitive scaffolding that maintains it is not suggested in lieu of the kind of cognitive strategizing and rational analysis that you suggest; it is usually explored after people have reflected seriously on the nature of human suffering and trained in basic cognitive methods of resolving dysfunctional habits and patterns of behavior.

A number of teachings describe “wisdom emotions,” or enlightened affectivity. Buddhism describes them in terms of “Buddha families,” the primordial energy patterns of Buddha nature; Sufism describes them in terms of the Lataif; the Diamond Approach talks about “facets of Essence.”

There is a lot that could be explored here, but for the moment I just wanted to point out that I think there is value in recognizing that enlightened energy may be right at the heart, the still point, of our most basic emotions, even highly afflictive and disturbed ones.

The Law of cognition may bring certain emotional patterns into line and establish relative peace; but there is a further, deeper step, a redemptive power that penetrates and transforms us in our fullness, from the bottom to the top. Not relegating emotion to the basement, under the heel of the landlord; but opening up the whole structure to the rising, resplendent Sun.

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