What do emotions, spirituality and stoicism all have in common? Other than being experiences of humanness, there is not much that comes to mind. This post aims to enlighten you as to how each of these three topics in their general forms intertwine.
Emotions
What are emotions? We all have them, feel them and experience them, so what are they? One of the biggest philosophical questions is about love, and the meaning of life which encompasses emotions.
Anger sends us out of our bodies in plights of rage.
Happiness is sought after by any means necessary.
Joy is overlooked as something impossible
Sadness keeps us from doing anything productive at times
Fear inhibits us and paralyzes us into a place of utter stagnation.
Emotions are the meaning of life in one sense. However, emotions are not taught in schools. Management of emotions was not a topic until the beginning of the new millineum and even in 2020 mental health is stigmatized by the medical community.
There are reasons that this is the way it is, from the patriarchy, to sociopathic serial killers and school bombers, there are reasons that mental health has it’s own limitations.
However, in this case, the stigma — another name for fear — of unmanaged emotions and unhealed trauma becomes so large that it is normal to judge and avoid those who suffer. Society judges and overlooks this based on ideas that are manipulative.
There is an emotional scale based on vibration. It is scientific fact that emotions carry a vibration with them.
Everything we feel is an indicator of where we are vibrationally, and thus what vibrational frequency we are emitting.
Emotions & Spirituality
Do you agree that you are a vibrational being having a physical experience?
Yes.
Then you have accepted the spiritual aspect of your own humanness. You are aware that you chose this experience.
You came into existence with eagerness and appreciation. You chose your parents, your life, and everything you’d learn about yourself and the world while living.
The way spirituality relates to emotions is as an indicator of what vibration is being transmitted from your thoughts into the physical world.
Picture yourself as a Sim character with a green orb above your head. All the emotions you feel change the colour of the orb.
According to the chart, if you are feeling joy, appreciation, and love, then your orb is purple. It follows for lower emotions as well.
The last emotional colour is grey, it indicates a cloud of despair or a storm around someone. This is something we often see in television to personify someone having a bad day, or bad emotional experience.
Emotions, Spirituality, & Stoicism
Now how does stoicism relate to spirituality and emotions?
The great stoic philosophers wrote about becoming stronger than your own emotions.
It is often interpreted as shutting down your emotions, and ignoring them, or burying them. However that is not the case.
A true stoic is aware of the value of their emotions. They sit with them, and allow them to be. Simply existing with the emotions.
The power of stoicism comes from choosing your reaction to a situation over giving in to an emotional reaction.
Once you begin to gain power over your own reaction, you then begin to hold power over your emotions.
THEN, you begin to understand that you can CHOOSE what you feel.
In a state of empowerment, you understand that you are in control of your emotions. No situation, person, or experience is going to tell you what emotion to feel.
This is where Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Seneca, and many others understood that you can be poor, have no material possessions and have unlimited happiness.
Remember…
As I was writing this I pictured a circle with arrows going from Emotions, to Spirituality, then to Stoicism, as all three of these ideas intertwine.
You cannot be stoic without managing your emotions.
You cannot have emotions without accepting that you are having a human experience.
You cannot understand the true power of spirituality without first understanding what your emotions are indicating to you.
xo kristy