When one is prey to one's emotions,
one is not one's own master.
one is not one's own master.
Baruch Spinoza
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Today's Meditation:
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Today's Meditation:
I would never argue that our emotions are negative aspects of who
we are. To me, our emotions provide an important guide and meter as to
how we're doing in life, and it's important that we honor them and pay
attention to them. But like Baruch, I've seen that if we let our emotions
control us, if we allow ourselves to be swayed constantly by those emotions
into behaving certain ways and making certain decisions, then we can no longer
say that we have any sort of control over our own lives. We cannot even
say that we make our own decisions or our own choices if those decisions and
choices are based on our emotions rather than our instinct or our logic.
It is easy to become too attached to our logic, of course, but that's not the
point here. The point is that no matter how valuable they may be, our
emotions are not trustworthy indicators of just how things are going or just what
is the right decision to make in any given situation. I love following my
instinct, but whenever I feel my emotions getting in the way of any decisions,
I see a huge red flag going up, for I know that my thinking isn't necessarily
clear when I'm letting my emotions sway me.
We've all seen people make emotional decisions, and we've all had the
experience of wishing that they wouldn't do so, wishing that they would wait
until they calmed down a bit to react or decide or act. None of us are
ever completely in control of our own lives, of course, but when we allow our
emotions to run things for us we definitely are giving up much of the control
that we actually do have, and we run the risk of losing any mastery that we may
have.
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Questions to consider:
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Questions to consider:
What kinds of problems can arise when we let our emotions take charge of our
lives?
Why is it so often so tempting to follow our emotions instead of our
reason?
How can we be aware of when our emotions are influencing us too strongly?
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For further thought:
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For further thought:
When you look at things emotionally, you will
not see
them clearly; when you perceive things spiritually,
you will understand.
you will understand.
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