The Purpose of Emotions: Our Built-in Spiritual GPS System

Our emotions play a big role in our lives- but for many of us the role they play is too much the improper role of master of our behavior and not enough the proper role of trusted informant of where we are placing the creative power of our attention and thus what we are in the process of creating in the invisible world of spirit and mind.  While it may be fine for infants and little children to let their emotions dictate their behavior, it is not a sign of a spiritually mature person to let their behavior be at the mercy of their emotions.  On the other hand, even for most adults who have developed a socially responsible level of freedom between emotion and behavior, it is the rare individual who really understands how useful emotions can be in guiding them in the process of their spiritual growth.
 
While the topic of emotions is a complex one, I will attempt to share some clarity that I have come to understand about the proper function, purpose and use of our emotions to aid in our spiritual growth.

Emotions Are Our Built-in Spiritual GPS System
I think one of the best analogies to understand the proper purpose and function of emotions is that of a GPS system.  A GPS system is a feedback device that tells us on a visual display where we are geographically at any given time. If we've programmed a destination into it, it's job is to instruct us step by step how to get there and to let us know if we're staying on course or getting off course. If we get off course, the unit will recalibrate and start directing us how to get back on track. Wouldn't it be great if we had a spiritual GPS systems that would do the same thing for us spiritually- help us get from where we are where we want to be spiritually? I believe we do have such a thing and we come with it already pre-programmed with our final destination. That destination is a return to God- our Creator- but not just returning to where we came from like the proverbial river returning to the sea and being swallowed up in the sea with no more individual identity. Rather a returning as an individual conscious being that has evolved spiritually as a direct result of being human and experiencing life on earth and exercising free will to make decisions along the way- having thus fulfilled the purpose of coming into this life to begin with, and ready to continue on evolving eternally.

So, how does this built-in spiritual GPS system communicate with us? Can we look on a screen and see written directions for making important decisions? Can we listen to a voice telling us to take a right turn at the next fork in the road? Obviously it's not quite that easy. On the other hand it's not nearly as hard as most of us make it out to be. We don't need to consult spiritual gurus, have our palms or auras read by psychics, spend years studying in seminaries or earn an advanced degree in theology.

The communication method is something that we're all familiar with, but maybe haven't thought about as serving the purpose of spiritual feedback. The method is our emotions or "feelings". If you're like me, you may have taken on a belief at some point in your life that your feelings were an unreliable guide, were constantly changing and as such could not really be trusted. Instead your intellect and logic were what could be trusted. Head over heart. While there is good reason to not allow our feelings to automatically determine our behavior, I have since come to understand just how important our feelings are in giving us feedback on our spiritual direction and also just how much of a hurdle or smokescreen our intellect can become (if we let it) when it comes to spiritual growth.

Before going further in explaining how we can rely on our feelings to guide us through life and back to our destination, we need to first understand that feelings are a response or effect of underlying causes- they are not free agents generating emotions on their own- they are acted upon by other causes . There are many different causes that can impact our emotions. Some are out of our control, but most are within our control- or at least we are capable of bringing them within our control. Some common emotional generators include our diet, fatigue and sleep patterns, intoxication, illness, injury, hormonal changes, biorhythms, subconscious childhood memories and associations, even scents and music can be emotional generators that impact how we feel. It is precisely because there are so many underlying causes that understanding what our emotions mean can be so confusing.

The important realization regarding emotions is that we can create a space between feelings and behavior. We don't have to be automatic emotional reactors. Our emotions themselves are automatic reactors, but we are not our emotions. There are two extremes of reacting to emotions that are common- and both are unhealthy. The first is to deny and suppress them and the other is to automatically externalize them in our behavior- to dramatize them- letting everyone else know what we're feeling. There is a third option- and a much healthier one: we feel them and observe and learn from them without acting out on them or denying them. Because an emotion is an automatic reaction of some underlying cause- we can look for that underlying cause and use the emotional reaction to understand better what might be going on in the deep unseen world of our mind and body. We are not responsible for our feelings, we are only responsible for our behavior and as we grow spiritually, our behavior becomes less and less at the mercy of our feelings- but instead we learn to use the messages our feelings are communicating to make better decisions.

However, of all the causes beneath our feelings- the most dominant and important emotional generator to understand is this:

THE THOUGHTS WE BELIEVE AND GIVE OUR ATTENTION TO.

Your Thoughts Are Not Yours, Your Attention Is.
Notice I didn't say OUR thoughts and beliefs, but the thoughts we believe and give our attention to. Hopefully this important distinction will become clear as you continue to read. In general, our feelings primary role is letting us know at any given time where the thoughts we're currently believing and giving our attention to will ultimately take us if we continue to keep our attention on them.

Chances are you've come to believe that feelings are just what they are- they have a life of their own and we have little to no control over them. Now there is some truth to this as mentioned above- we are subject to moods and emotional weather patterns that come and go seemingly of their own accord. We can experience emotional storms followed by clearing and peace, and come to appreciate the beauty of the natural cycle of it all- much like appreciating the beauty of natural weather patterns and cycles.

There are also very real cases of biological/chemical imbalances that can cause extreme feelings of mania or depression or anxiety. I'm not here to deny these facts of life. If there are chemical imbalances we can seek medical help to put us back on a level playing field with others. But it's still a playing field and it's important to understand that we do have much more control over our feelings than we've previously been aware of. For the most part our feelings are a direct feedback response to our thoughts- or rather to the thoughts we are choosing to believe and give our attention to.

This is a vital distinction. Chances are you've been brought up to believe that you control your thoughts- that they somehow all generate from within you and you are responsible for every thought you think. I'd like to suggest a slightly different reality to you and see if you can see the difference. Some of our thoughts do originate within us- we are thought creators and broadcasters. But we are also thought receivers of all sorts of thoughts that were created elsewhere or outside of us. We are like two way radios that can broadcast and receive thought frequencies.

We all know that invisible and inaudible frequencies are all around us- they are quite literally in the very air we breath- we are like fish and our ocean is our atmosphere. With an instrument like a radio receiver, we can tune in and amplify sound frequencies and hear them as music or talk on the radio. We can switch the receiving dial slightly and pick up an entirely different frequency with an entire different message or sound. It is our ability to turn the dial and choose which frequencies to listen to that we control- not all the thoughts. So when it comes to the thought spectrum it is our attention that is like our tuning dial. We don't choose all the thoughts that come into our mind- thousands come and go on their own accord- each trying to grab our attention to give it life and bring it from the unmanifest realm to the manifest realm. So the most important part of this discussion is to understand the power of attention. That is the one thing we do have some control over.

There is an entire spectrum of thought energies- from the very negative and self focused to the very positive and service focused. When we talk about levels of consciousness, we are really talking about levels of thought energies that we give our attention to. A thought can come into our mind that someone else is "more established" or "better off" than I am and I "should be better off than I am." If we are unaware of our ability to focus our attention like a tuning dial on different thought frequencies, we may automatically and unconsciously believe these thoughts to be true and our mind will knock itself out trying to supply us with all the evidence that it is true and (here's the second really critical point) we instantly FEEL lousy. That's right- our feelings are our built-in GPS system letting us know if we are giving our attention to low frequency thoughts or high frequency thoughts, thoughts that are getting us to our true destination or thoughts that are leading us way from our true destination. So now instead of just having feelings that seem out of your control, look at your feelings something much more- understand them as instant feedback to what level of thought energy you are giving your attention to at the moment.

Once you become awake to this truth, you instantly begin to exert more influence over your life. You are no longer "asleep at the wheel." Becoming aware of this is a huge step in the right direction- but awareness is never enough by itself- action is required and daily practices to help us develop our feeling-GPS listening skills need to be put in place. For example, when you notice that you're feeling a negative emotion- like anxiety, fear, self-pity, guilt, anger or jealousy (all very common when we compare ourselves to others in the wrong way), the first step is to be able to step back and see what's going on. "Ahh, I must be believing a thought that is trying to take me off course."

The next step is to try to identify the thought itself- bring it into conscious focus. To use our previous example, it might be a thought like "I am not as good as my friend because he is more established than me. I should be more established than I am. " It is believing (giving our attention to) this thought that "I should be something other than what I currently am" that our feelings are responding too. They instantly pour chemicals from our glands into our blood stream that make us feel "yucky" like a warning bell sounding as if trying to say "Stop! Don't give your attention to that untrue thought- it's taking you down from where you need to be in order to see where you need to go. Down there in that low mood- it's dark, your creativity is shut down, your perspective becomes limited, you make poor choices- you literally can't see with your mind's eye what God has in store for you."

So what can we DO if we are now awake to what's going on and we FEEL a warning bell going off inside us? Even when we can see what's happening, we often feel powerless to do anything about it. But we're not powerless. There are two things we can do. Both are simple but not necessarily easy at first. But like all endeavors of mind and body, with continued practice it becomes easier and we become more masterful. The first thing we can do is to deliberately shift our attention from the thought that we're getting negative feeling feedback from and move it to a higher frequency thought that feels better. This will work for most thoughts that we haven't given too much of our attention to in the past. For thoughts that have really taken root and begun to grow like weeds in our consciousness, more drastic measures are required. We need to mentally challenge the truth of the thought and expose it as the fraud that it is. Both of these mental techniques are very effective, but to do them justice, they need to be the topic of their own article.