The causes of our emotions

Last week, after a long period of time, I followed a Buddhist class again. As usual it brought me several insights and I am happy to share. Growing by sharing still is one of my life themes.

The teaching was about emotions. Emotions, we have many of them, are effects. In the present timeframe, especially on the ‘social’ media, people share their emotions and moods with the so called ‘Emoticons’.

Where there is an effect, there is also a source, a cause. And because for every individual person this sources can be different, the emotions we show in several circumstances are different depending on the person. And the deep-rooted habits of our reactions partly determine our personality.

Although there is a balance in emotions (wholesome, neutral and unwholesome), if we talk about emotions most of the time we immediately thing about being emotional in a kind of sad way. During my acting classes I learned for instance that responding out of the same element ‘fire’ can bring us laughter and happiness but also deep sadness and crying. So emotions are personal expressions. Kinds of body language using all our senses and the manifestation of dealing with our inner energy. All emotions have two points of view: what we think (psychological) and what we feel (physical).

Unwholesome emotions have to do with:

# Greediness: Desires, lust, passion

# Anger: Rage, hostility, hate, resentment, dislike

# Ignorance: depression, sadness, despair, anxiety, self-pity, worry, insecurity, and so on.

Negative emotions lead to mental disorders. Affecting (ruining) your health, family, job, relationship, etc.. Simply your whole life. 

Wholesome emotions have to do with:

# Joy: Happiness, enthusiasm, optimism, cheerfulness

# True love: caring, compassion.

Positive emotions lead to mental balance and order. So your whole life as well but in a very different strengthening way. 

If we get more sight on and understand the causes, we can work on them is stead of suppressing the effects with for instance medicines, alcohol, drugs or going deeper and deeper in our mobile devices addictions of loneliness.

So the question in this week blog is: Where do our emotions come from?

Looking deeper into this question we can discover the cause of our emotions has to do with karma. Buddhism even teaches karma of this life but also from former life’s. But let’s leave that for now.

Karma? Easy said but maybe not so easy to understand.

Karma you can see as a gathering of actions. Physical actions, speech and thoughts of our mind. It is also related to the so called ‘law of cause and effect’. Meaning this. Our thoughts, actions and speech (cause) influence (effect) our future.

And again we can understand that our early childhood experiences and primary main life themes at that moment of how to stay safe and how to survive, has a lot to do with the creation of our karma.

Personalization of the experiences of our present life (the dealing with the external world) and the interaction with our build up/learned mental experiences cause the arousal of our emotions. Craving and attachments, satisfying our desires, are big parts of this interaction process and make us dependent. We cannot and do not want (and did not learn) to let go.

So you can see an emotion as the personal, most of the time habitual, way of attention based on your personal perception in your interaction with yourself and others.

Taking some distance to watch without judging to this personal process gives insight in your karma and the way you show emotions.

Learning to let go, calming and clearing the mind (experiences) and focus on wholesome emotions step by step can heal a possibly disturbed emotional balance. And that is dealing with the cause instead of fighting the effect.



Gangey Gruma (Frans Captijn)

Captijn Insight. Catalyst in developing tranquility & in-sight to get in a sustainable way real connection, purpose, pleasure and flow in life, love, family, business, career and work again.

captijninsight@gmail.com