Think you know why you had that cup of coffee this morning? How about why you picked the person you married?
Well, most likely you don't really know why because NONE of us get to see the intricacies of connections to our deeper brain.
We think that the habits like our morning coffee don't even really involve a decision, yet EVERY decision ... even the most mundane ... is ONLY able to occur when our brain is hard-wired to perceive the emotions.
We may think we know more about the emotions behind why we picked a spouse, but even there, our conscious brain constantly deludes us into thinking we know the depths of the reasons why.
There are some good books written about the illusions of the brain.
A Mind of Its Own, by Cordelia Fine, is a wonderful book that is as funny as it is well written, and it helps you to learn more about how the brain deludes you in so many ways.
Blink, by Malcolm
Gladwell, is probably even more well known for its examples and research behind the subconscious mind when it comes to making decisions.
But if you're looking for the specifics of how to make decisions that affect your perception of happiness, the book
Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert, helps you to put things into perspective so that you may even be able to affect your own ability to be happy!
These resources and more, teach that the subconscious mind actually goes so far as to
invent responses ... and then "think" they are valid.
I can just hear you now!
YOU wouldn't do this! Right?
But it is fact that everyone does this. And in the paraphrased words of Marvin Minsky in
The Emotion Machine:"The illusion of the 'simplicity' of thinking and reason comes from forgetting our infancies, which is the time in which we actually grew these abilities."
And believe me, our
infancies are extremely rich for emotional interpretation of every event.
We are an emotional machine! It is almost as if our emotions are another
sensor for our bodies. We may give it the label of "the sixth sense" through our intuitive reasoning, but it is amazing to me that this "sense" is not given the status it deserves as one of the body's mechanisms for interpretation of its environment. It's time to give it equal footing with sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.
So it is best if you don't ever downplay ANY emotion. Don't try to avoid it, or push it away, or cover it with an antidepressant. Our emotions provide us with wonderful insights into our lives. And when you learn to TRUST those emotions, they can direct us in a healthier way so that we don't need to
bury it, where it will later express itself in some other form.
This doesn't mean you must punch someone in the nose with your anger. In fact, when you acknowledge anger, it is more likely that you will express it in a healthy fashion, for anger has a wonderful meaning in that it is trying so hard to direct you
away from a particular outcome.
Nor does this mean you need to do anything dangerous about your grief either. Even grief, which none of us
like to feel, is a wonderful emotion that is trying so very hard to direct you
inward ... to "cocoon" and heal from your loss so that you can then be "reborn" again with a whole new expression of yourself ... just like our teacher, Mother Earth, does each spring.
Simply acknowledge the gift of information from emotion. In the same way you might acknowledge the gift of the taste of chocolate when you bite into that awesome birthday cake someone made for you this year.
It's all information. It's only information.
And if we can learn how to "detach" from the intensity of the emotions just as much as we need to detach from the addictions of ... yes, might I say chocolate ... then somewhere in this world and body of yours you will find balance. The balance of night to day, winter to summer, hot to cold, and I could go on and on.
For it is ONLY in the balance of receiving all information and perceptions that we can then ever determine what it is that we are REALLY deciding for ourselves in every moment of life.
