Question Marks . Process

Something I struggle with is, that when I get too excited, I throw myself into something but only get the affect of everything. This is odd because as much as I am in tune with my emotions when I'm reflective, I tend to not value anything beyond excitement when caught up in a moment. Sometimes I don't know if this is due to the Aries in me or because I've been conditioned to not value emotions - or to value sharing them with other people. And then a thought occurred to me - why must intellect and intuition be perceived to be polarities?

Why see them as separate? Because we don't know how to trust. We don't know how to trust how we feel or some otherworldly feeling that's directing us.

We've lost the ability to trust when we've privileged intellect above intuition. Because intellect is more concrete in a material way. Because we've become material beings, privileging what we can perceive with the 5 senses above all else. Intellect - we can trust. Because it can be molded and dealt with when it no longer fits our reality in a very materialistic way.

If a certain ideology no longer serves us, if we aren't GETTING anything out of it, we use our intellect to figure out why it is no longer working and then map out a new way for new ideologies to serve us. To take care of our material understanding of the world. Whether it's an attainment of wealth and friends, or a redistribution of it.

The thing is, with intuition and feeling, there is no clear GETTING. Wait, correction. When there is no GETTING, then we devalue it.

You see, we've trained ourselves to perceive feeling and intuition in a very materialistic way. If we invest in grief, it is so we can get over something or relieve ourselves of guilt. If we invest in loving someone, it is to be loved in return. Some would say that love is unconditional, or that it SHOULD be - and perhaps this is so... but when you love someone and that person does not love you in return - whether that person is a child or a dog, your mother or your partner, doesn't that feel terrible?

And then what happens? The way we've been taught is that if there is an investment, there has to be a return.

And when I say "we" I mean as a mainstream collective being of entities that see themselves as separate. Whoa, that was wordy. Blah, blah, blah - there are always exceptions. ::rolls eyes:: Seems like America is the land of exceptions. As are most nation states and people who identify with them. Blah. BLEH, blah!

So what happens when we grieve and don't get healing? We're "depressed" and need to "fix" that. Anger is not a popular emotion - it's something one should not express at another person. Love - is it an emotion? Well it's an abstract feeling, for sure. Love, if you express it, then it should be returned. With the exception of family, if you love someone "separate" from your blood and it isn't returned, then we are conditioned to divest ourselves from these feelings. Because it doesn't GET us anywhere. Because it doesn't GET us a return on our investment.

The thing is, when the feelings aren't Practical or Logical, we are encouraged to keep them to ourselves.

If you express Love to someone who does not return it, not only is it an expression "wasted," but it makes the recipient feel obligated to return it. And if the recipient doesn't, then people tend to feel bad. All around, for different reasons. But is this a way of "dealing" with emotions?

Again, "deal" with. Emotions are something that must be 'dealt' with. A chore, of sorts. Because they are messy, because they aren't super convenient. Because, if not utilized in the "correct" fashion, emotions don't get us anywhere.

So we are trained to laud the happy, more positive emotions and to devalue those that aren't as positive. Or, we can feel them as long as we keep them to ourselves or as long as they serve a purpose - so we can "get over" them so that we can move on towards more positive emotions. And when we "feel" too much without a return on investment, a common solution is to self medicate or go to a therapist to "fix" it.

My conundrum is... if we aren't encouraged to experience a full range of emotions, what happens? Repression or possible conditioned anesthetized emotions.

Because the lows aren't socially acceptable to be "so" low, the highs probably won't be as high.

More importantly, in my mind/Intellect, is that when we anesthetize the experience of emotions, we become less equipped to process them in a way that resounds with us - not a mainstream kind of affect - but within our own network and complex of affect.

When something bothers us, it's our emotions that point to that red flag. And why is this important?

When we don't know how to deal with our feelings, when we just go to the surface of it and cannot logically or rationally understand them, often our first reaction is to either ignore them, exorcise them/"fix" ourselves or to go Unconscious.

But when they come back, when they won't go away, what do you think that indicates?

Process is different from Understanding. The thing is, Understanding comes FROM some kind of Process. If we don't Understand our emotions, chances are that we haven't fully Processed them. How can we Learn without Process? The thing is, when you look at it beneath the surface, our emotions try to trigger within us a Process.

But why are we so wired to struggle against this process?

I've thought and struggled with the idea of struggle for a bit. Struggle has a purpose. To learn. But is struggle the only way? Isn't there a way we can process things without struggle? Not in a lah di dah kinda way, but in ALLOWANCE. Allow, allow, allow for the process to happen. Don't fight the process. Let it happen.

Don't you think we'll learn something new, come to a kind of understanding where in which we'll learn the value of our emotions and Intuition that is Outside of the Immediate Understanding of What We Get Out of It?