Consciousness work in this area has two distinct parts. A lot of work is needed to fix what is broken, out of balance, and draining the system. Once that has been achieved, the right kind of emotional energy can be accumulated to make enormous progress toward the goal.

In “normal humans” emotions almost never work at their optimum level or ideal capacity. If they did, you would be able to experience and sustain for long periods of time very positive emotions. Sustained positive emotion combined with increased awareness accumulates energy needed for a real breakthrough of consciousness, but in normal conditions that emotion can never accumulate for very long.

The cow always kicks over the bucket. A person has almost exclusively negative emotions that range from a dull, negative state to outright anger and fuming animosity. This is one of the biggest drains on the system, leaking great amounts of energy every day. It is an unfathomable distance from the equanimity of temperament and ecstasies of the swamis or saints to the average person’s uptight, grumbling state. Teachings that admonish people to feel compassion and love for other beings all the time are asking for a level of emotion, internal unity, and focused will that simply does not exist in humans without intense intervention.

There are several curious facts about negative emotions. People universally:

Deny how often they have them and to what degree.

Blame everything and everyone else but themselves for them.

Are extremely attached to them and will do anything to avoid giving them up.

Wear them like a sort of merit badge.

The mental blocks and denial are so great, only a prolonged period of self observation and honest evaluation can reveal the truth. It can be helpful to keep a calendar or journal of emotions felt and expressed to get a clearer picture.

The concept of “Moods” portrays some of this denial. When a person says he’s in a bad mood, he’s describing an emotional state supposedly arbitrary and uncontrollable, denying any responsibility for it. If this were truly so, humans would be in a terrible predicament, completely enslaved by external circumstances and other people.

Once you start applying attention to this field of activity, you’ll find a surprisingly large variety of negative emotions, ranging from the common dull, negative state, to complaining, fault finding, outrage, taking offense, and sarcasm (this word means “ripping the flesh” in its original Greek roots.) A popular form of negativity is arguing for a “cause.” Many maudlin emotions are really just a negative drain on a person, such as excessive sentimentality.

Worry is a deeper form of pathological and morbid negativity since it has no basis in reality, and generally most things people worry about never come to pass. Also, a sane person would focus on the solution to a problem or reach the conclusion there is no solution and just forget about it.

The observing self periodically disappears – is subsumed by one of the stronger negative emotions. This is the real internal struggle between the forces of consciousness and unconsciousness, an interior battle. A closer look at some of the more common and powerful negative emotions can help gain insight into overcoming their persistent and draining qualities.

Anger is one of the most common destructive forces in a person’s lower fields of activity and releases vast amounts of poisonous chemicals into the body. Most people would deny they had an anger problem. It’s often a profound shock to keep a journal or self observe and honestly face how often and how deep one’s anger is. A knee jerk response to being confronted with the extent of it is something like, “You’d be angry too if: you had to live with so and so, work at such and such, put up with, were cheated out of, ignored, etc.”

Felt to be the most justified of all one’s negative emotions, anger is very entwined with a number of other negative emotions that are used to defend it: inflated self importance, projection, expectations, blame, frustration, and impatience. A person spends a lot of time investing bad feelings into concern about how others see him or perceive him, even to the extent of not really listening to what other people are saying because he is too busy thinking about what he himself will say next and what impression it will make on the other person. He has nonnegotiable expectations and projects them onto others, and when they are not met, simmers and stews in anger until it boils over into an outburst he feels is demanded by the circumstances.

A common defense for negative outbursts is that they are caused by another person or external circumstance and are deeply justified. This sense of justification is very hard to give up, and some people bail out of consciousness work because they can never, ever face the reality that all negative emotions they experience are only their own fault.

This habit cannot be reasoned away. As with all other negative emotions, the only way to get free of it is to cease to identify with it. The resolve to do that can only come about by an admission that all anger is generated within oneself by oneself, that others and outside events are never the cause of anger, ever.

Anger is a response one gives into feeling and expressing. It may be entirely appropriate to dislike or disapprove of someone or something, but to feel and react with anger is always a mechanical, unconscious emotion one has given into.

A lot of insight can be gained on dealing with situations that normally push your buttons by learning to be assertive. Anger often evolves from bouncing between the two extremes of being either passive or aggressive. Simmering, festering anger shows itself passively by undermining others or taking thinly veiled shots at them. It’s a symptom of putting off dealing with a situation rather than finally resolving it. Aggressiveness occurs when a person lets anger out unchecked and attacks others verbally or in other ways. Assertiveness is the middle ground way of dealing with challenging people or things by calmly establishing your position. A person who expresses anger aggressively always appears to be in a weak position. A genuinely powerful person deals with difficult people or situations calmly and assertively.

Complaining is another form of anger. If you observe for it and journal your findings for a short period of time, it will astonish you how much time you and others spend complaining about a job or a relationship. Some people do this every day for hours day after day, and each conversation ends the same way – with nothing resolved. A rational goal is to set time limits on this sort of indulgence, for instance, “I’ll spend five minutes everyday complaining about my job/relationship. If I can’t stick to that I need to consider a plan for a major life change.”

Failure to resolve forms of anger and frustration eventually leads to stress, a condition wherein the continuous poison chemicals of these negative emotions are effecting a person’s health.

While negative emotions like anger take an agitated form of expression, on the other end of the spectrum are a group of sluggish negative emotions that slow a person down or immobilize him. Boredom is a failure to engage productively with life. Self pity and victimhood are ways of dwelling on one’s continuous recounting of perceived insults and refusing to resolve them. None of these lead anywhere but further down the pit of inactivity and failure to thrive.

Depression, an extreme form of all of these, traps a person in a vicious cycle. The depression causes withdrawal from activities. The lack of activities causes more depression. Round and round it goes. One could spend years and a small fortune in talk therapy or become poisoned with expensive antidepressant drugs, both terrible choices. Better to just go at it directly by moving a lot more and switching into other fields of activity. This works almost all of the time.

All of the major negative emotions have their root in what Jung called the Imago, what we unconsciously project onto other people. What we project onto others is what we wish was there, what we would most like to see. When reality doesn’t match the projection, we revolt. A tremendous percentage of relationships are made of this, especially in early stages. We fall in love with the desired projection, then later become angry when the reality doesn’t match.

Without insight into this you may spend your entire life only relating only to your own projections or Imago, never seeing anyone else or having a genuine relationship. This is reflected in the restaurant scene of the movie Being John Malkovich when the actor enters his own portal and hears and sees only “Malkovich, Malkovich.”

Learning the extent of your most extreme negative emotions could be discouraging, but remember – the more you are aware of these things, the worse they appear to be before they get better. Also, because they are extreme, they are easier to notice, and you can use your greatest weaknesses as the strongest reminders to remember yourself.

Fortunately, there are properties of negative emotions that can lead to their eventual eradication: You must be completely identified to experience them, so they are always mechanical. Because they are automatic, they always follow the same Script.  A negative emotion will be expressed in the same way using the same words and body movements time after time. This makes it easier to recognize. With self observation you can learn the script and learn to recognize these unnecessary emotions.

There are no such things as conscious negative emotions. Where there is consciousness, there is no negativity. Where there is negativity, there is no consciousness. This is very hard to accept, but work in this area will give more energy for higher consciousness than any other activity.

Getting free of negative emotions progresses in stages of work. A realistic initial goal is to simply not express them, later it will be to not get lost in them, and even later not to have them at all. Because negative emotions serve no purpose, you can lose them completely with no ill effects.

At first you will only be able to spot them after they have happened, later as they are happening, and after a good deal of work, before they happen. If you persist in your work of not identifying, eventually you will be free of them.

Emotions are the fastest of the fields of activity, much faster than movements, and way faster than thoughts. Consider how quickly you experience and express emotions before you can check or edit them with thought. Just self observing enough to be able to think before you speak would increase your quality of life immensely.

Information can be gained lightening fast because of the speed of emotions. Reflect on times in your life when your emotional “gut feeling” gave you immediate information about a person or event. Part of learning how to be safe in the world and not be a victim is learning respect for that emotional intelligence, learning to listen to those gut feelings.

Science has explained that there are definite chemicals of emotions. This is not an obscure fact, but something you can tangibly experience. The next time you are very angry or agitated, stop and feel the effects of adrenaline coursing through your veins. This is the fight or flight drug activated with anger, fear, or stress. It increases the heart rate, raises the blood sugar, and makes a person feel shaky and tense.

One of the tricks of working with negative emotions is to be more observant of the effects of their chemicals, then learn to stop their spread throughout the body. Later on in consciousness work a person can learn to interact with the very good chemicals produced in the body from positive emotions.

You have to accumulate energy to reach a higher state of consciousness. To do this you need more positive emotion. To be able to sustain positive emotion with enough intensity and for long enough duration to make a breakthrough, you will have to have done an adequate amount of work and gained enough focus and one-pointedness of intention.

The yoga model describes the lower chakras being divided from the higher chakras by a hard knot at the navel that only a certain kind of meditation will pierce through and allow the upward rising energy of consciousness. Meditations on chakras and raising Kundalini are generally non-productive because the accumulation of the energy needed is impossible without bringing the lower fields of action into harmony and stopping their leaks. Once that has been accomplished to some degree it is possible to make great gains by producing sustained positive emotion, but how is that done?

Traditional religious writings and works on meditation tell people to practice universal love and compassion for all beings, and if unable to feel it, to use forms of visualization as if it were so. You would be capable of this with higher consciousness, but meanwhile, this is a waste of time and resources, a form of useless pretending. The fact is, the object of your positive emotion doesn’t matter at all, only the quantity of emotion you are able to generate. While it might be more traditionally acceptable to venerate icons or religious figures, any object will do. Chivalry was based on the idea of generating great amounts of emotion from unrequited love. What will create the most positive emotion is what you are most moved by, regardless of what it is. The most potent magic is your own, the book of spells in your heart the most powerful.

What works best for you might be traditional, religious, or even falling in love with no object at all. Music, art, beauty, nature, and certain substances like alcohol can help build emotion. Bhakti yoga is all about building and sustaining powerful feelings. Your best bet would be to experiment. At a certain point more positive emotion will help you make quantum leaps with all the rest of your work.

Once enough positive emotion is generated with enough intensity for a length of time, it propels the consciousness to the higher fields of activity, chakras, or centers. This is an unmistakable experience described in the Hindu system by the Sanskrit term, Satchitananda, energy-consciousness-bliss, and by the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky system as attaining the Higher Emotional Center. This state will be described in more detail in chapter eight of this book.

Emotional Center Main Points

There are no such things as conscious negative emotions.

People lie about how many negative emotions they have and do not want to give them up.

All anger is generated within oneself by oneself. Others and outside events are never the cause of anger.

Assertiveness is the middle ground way of dealing with challenging people or things by calmly establishing your position.

All of the major negative emotions have their root in what Jung called the Imago, what we unconsciously project onto other people.

A person uses the same words and movements to express negative emotions, so their scripts are easy to spot.

You can use your greatest weaknesses as the strongest reminders to remember yourself.

Sustained positive emotion is needed to accumulate energy for a real breakthrough of consciousness.

The object of your positive emotion doesn’t matter, only the quantity.

Emotional Center Exercises

Keep a calendar or journal for several days and write down every emotion you felt and expressed.

Analyze your journal and note the frequency of major negative emotions.

List the causes you most frequently use to blame others for your negative emotions, and contemplate yourself as the actual cause.

Set limits on time you will allow yourself to complain about a relationship or a job.

Pick a negative emotion you especially dislike and set a goal not to express it. At the end of the day review how successful you were.

Reflect on the role Imago has played in your relationships.

When have you felt positive emotion the longest? How often?

What would it feel like to have only positive emotions? Would it hurt or help you?

Make a list of things that inspire your emotions to reach a higher level than normal.

Experiment with things that evoke positive emotion and think about what creates the most lasting effect.

Emotional Center Glossary

Accumulation of Energy – Positive emotions sustained with enough focus and time to enable a breakthrough of upward rising consciousness, piercing the block between the lower and higher fields of activity

Chemicals of Emotions – Internal drugs released by emotions that can produce discomfort or bliss

Imago – Unconscious projection onto others of what one wishes were there, rather than seeing what is actually there. Forms the basis of most relationships.

Mood – Word used to pretend one is not responsible for one’s own emotions

Negative Emotion – Unconscious, identified emotion that drains the human system of energy and causes bad chemicals to flow through the blood stream

Positive Emotion – Conscious emotion that causes blissful chemicals to flow through the blood stream

Script – Automatic, mechanical words and movements used repeatedly in expression of negative emotions

VII. Physical Center