Spiritualism Is Not Emotionalism

Everyone is searching for something  and many people find the answers in the drugs of the world; the most pervasive of these drugs is emotion. Religion serves it up on a platter and the news exploits suffering. While discovering the overwhelming all encompassing impossible peace, that is the absolute, will certainly affect your emotional state in the world of the senses, it is merely a bi-product. An almost disgusting after taste of emotion that is only bearable because it is better than everything else.

Emotion is unpredictable and is highly dependent on our current state of affairs. It can lie to us and is susceptible to even the smallest variations in biology. The idea that these sensations which bind us to our survival in the natural world can represent the absolute is a little absurd.

Though it is absurd, that has not stopped the emergence of purveyors of emotion masking themselves as spiritualists. They re-brand standard emotional treatments like psychology as spirituality while completely ignoring the absolute. If you care about discovering the absolute, don’t accept the scams. There is something beyond emotion and beyond the shadows of the reality you perceive.

Escaping Emotion (A Method)

The idea of escaping emotion has been around since the starting of civilization. Emotions can often be negative and so we will try to be objective or practice other methods of escaping emotion such as meditation. The need to escape emotion is usually always used in the context of escaping bad emotions such as fear or sadness because no one really wants to escape joy unless they are in a phase of their life where they are seeking purpose.

The most interesting thing about escaping emotion is how often we do it but we just don’t recognize it. I remember when I was a child and someone asked me how I was feeling and I responded truthfully, “I don’t really feel anything at all.” This was followed by, “Are you feeling alright?” I quickly learned that the proper response to that question was that I feel good or that I am okay. I think everyone can relate to this. How many times have you been asked how you are feeling and responded with, “I am good” when you knew that wasn’t entirely truthful? Why do we do this?

Humanity is obsessed with binary choices. Something has to be good or evil, wrong or right, and happy or sad. When we interact socially with people there is usually emotion present such as excitement or regret. When we interact with fellow employees over work tasks there is almost never emotion involved unless there is some kind of problem. I imagine there are people reading this blog right now that are stateless. They are neither happy or sad and if they were to really meditate on that for a moment it might actually make some people feel uncomfortable. In fact an unemotional state is where we spend a significant amount of time but we hardly reflect on it. This is because in an unemotional state there is no need to reflect, you have a goal or an objective of some type that needs to be accomplished and this might be something as simple as the need to go to the washroom.

Imagine you are driving down a long high way where the scenery was completely the same and suddenly you come to screeching to a stop to let ducks cross the road. If the trip took hours, it wouldn’t matter, you would only remember the emotional state you were in when the ducks crossed the road. When you reflect on your state of no emotion it might feel like you’re not living. However, after awhile you will realize that this state can be utilized to have moments of clarity.

Emotions are a reactionary force to try and get us to do something to compensate for some kind of stress or make us recognize lack of stress. That said, you are capable of interacting with the universe in a non-reactionary way. So how do you voluntarily escape emotion? That is the simple part. Unlike meditation this state is easy to get into once you recognize it. Let me explain. Odds are you have never really reflected on this state you enter on a regular basis, but now that you know it exists all you have to do is catch yourself in the act. Once you catch yourself in the act you can reflect on it and once you know how it “feels” you can gain the ability to turn it on and off. When you enter this state it might allow you to make better choices then to simply follow your emotions which almost always have a much shorter term horizon.

The Happiness Deception

We see our world through emotion and this is unavoidable. Our emotions tell us when there is something wrong with our lives and helps us to figure out how we want to react to different events in our lives. The common belief is that our primary motivator and decision making process should revolve around obtaining happiness. Our emotions, however, can be our biggest deceivers such as short term highs that result in longer term negative consequences like the emotional catastrophe that the use of highly addictive drugs can bring on.

In Naturalization & Happiness I talked about how after one year a person becoming a paraplegic and a lottery winner were equally happy. The biggest deception that can occur is when life moves someone to a new state in their life (The Flow) and it is so superior to their previous life that they become elated and stagnant. I met a man who was pushed into the flow by his father having a stroke and he was compelled to move. He lost his good paying job at a corrections facility and all his previous friends. He kept repeating to me how it was so strange that life can just suddenly make a complete turn. Though he was making less money he, throughout the conversation, kept insisting he was more happy now. Yet he talked very little about his own life and instead talked about his brother who he helped put through aviation school and was now making almost twice what he was. The entire conversation was marked by him trying to convince me of all the reasons his life was better now but it only convinced me that while it may be better he was still lacking something.

If possible, we should all avoid living in contexts.

Happiness is a funny thing because it doesn’t really care about long term goals but instead forces us to live contextually. If you are both hungry and thirsty, you may become happier when your thirst is quenched but it won’t last. Happiness is a valuable tool for evaluating our present situation but it shouldn’t necessarily be the tool for planning longer term goals which could provide significantly more moments of happiness then your present trajectory. We tend to let our momentary happiness guide our relationships as well by staying in relationships that ultimately we know, consciously or unconsciously, will not last. Marriages that end in divorce don’t necessarily start sad or in turmoil but it is because society teaches us incorrectly. We are bombarded constantly regarding the context we are in with messages like you only live once or the glorifying of people that have won a lottery in the form money or otherwise in the media.

If possible, we should all avoid living in contexts. This can be very difficult and sometimes feel impossible. Both Bill Gates and Buddah in their stories share the common characteristic that they both chose to not live in a predefined context or conform to what everyone else expected them to do. Not conforming to a context might not be the greatest for your immediate happiness but can ultimately lead to significantly more happiness down the road for both yourself and others.

The Three Phases

When I talk about human progress and ultimately the idea of ascending I may write things that seem to be in conflict with each other but in reality I am discussing things at different stages in the process. Absolution of emotion and the development of new ways of feeling are a very late idea but at the current time emotion is necessary to guide us through the world of the corporeal. This distinction not only applies to my own beliefs but to the world at large. Long Term goals may not necessarily match short term goals or initial goals may be simply stepping stones for new ideas or objectives.

Generally speaking when I discuss things within reality such as managing emotions, motivation, and physical objectives I am talking about short term goals. When I am talking about things that are outside our current reality, I am discussing long term goals. An example would be me discussing human population of other planets versus moving past emotion. Since long vs short is highly relative and contextual, I will begin tagging what I consider short term goals to be first phase, intermediary goals to be second phase, and finally late goals to be third phase.

First Phase
This phase is the current phase we are in and the changes we can make are mostly social in nature. These changes can include political and economic changes. The changes we make in this phase will set us up to move into all other phases as smoothly as possible. Incorrect setup now could lead to some less then preferential circumstances in the future.

Second Phase
This phase will include technologies that will fundamentally change the human condition. These technologies are already in research or development and include nano technology, no cost manufacturing or item creation, and hyper biological advances such as the cure for aging, cancer, etc.. Finally, late second phase will include things like advanced space travel and human colonization of other planets. The things in this phase can be considered post humanism or broadly the H+ movement.

Third Phase
This phase is post post humanism or as I will call it H++. What the third phase truly is will not be readily visible to us until late second phase. The idea is that we will start progressing towards the concept of Elolight and there will be a separation of our physical selves and our consciousness. This detachment may ultimately lead to the discovery of new senses, emotions, and feelings. Furthermore, concepts such as our notions of good and evil will rapidly become completely irrelevant as scarcity will no longer be of any issue.