“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” - Oscar Wilde
The Source Of The Monkey Mind
Today I want to talk about emotions and the energy scale of emotions to help us understand ourselves better. If you're on a spiritual journey, on a self-development journey, you know that understanding our emotions is of paramount importance.
Today's post is inspired by a teacher that I had when I was in my early 20s that had a really big influence on my life and his name is Lester Levinson. He was a Western mystic and his method to quiet the mind was teaching on how to let go of our emotions. The reason behind that is our our feelings and our emotions are the main motivator for our thinking
Essentially our emotions are the culmination of thousands and millions of thoughts. If we can learn to let go of these emotions, these patterns that we have, we would be letting go of thousands and millions of thoughts. This would allow us to get into a meditative space much easier.
You know if you talk to anybody that is on the spiritual journey and who has tried to meditate, the common thing you'll hear is about the monkey mind. When they sit down to meditate most people never get beyond just a superficial level of quietness because their mental activity is just too much.
Our emotions and feelings play a big role in that they motivate our thinking. If we can learn to let go of our of our emotions it will be much much easier to find that inner stillness and peace. Another thing is that whenever you talk about letting go of emotions, many people fear they may be losing a big aspect of their life.
For some people, their emotional life even if it's not good is extremely important because they derive a certain sense of identity from them. I just want to make the point that as you learn to let go of these emotions, your capacity to feel is not going to be diminished. Actually, it is quite the opposite. Learning to let go of some of these coarser emotions you'll free up the energy to be more sensitive. Not sensitive in the emotional or sentimental sense, but just sensitive in that you'll be able to really feel in a deeper more penetrating way.
This will add a whole different dimension and a richness to life, so don't be afraid of learning to let go of some of your emotions, if that's a fear that you may have. What I want to share with you today is the scale of energy of the emotions which Lester developed. This is a helpful framework, keep in mind these aren't exact scientific numbers, but if you observe yourself like a scientist observes something you'll come to realize that these figures are pretty accurate.
Emotional Energy Scale
The main thing that Lester shared is that most people are caught up in these course base emotions that keep us in a low state of being and a low state of consciousness. He used an acronym called AGFLAP, A was for apathy, G was for grief, F for fear, L for lust, A for anger, and P for pride.
Under these main categories were all the other hundreds of related emotions that we may experience that are of a similar vibration, of similar energy, but these are the main six emotions that keep us in a low state of being.
Our high state of being would be with the acronym CAP. C for courageousness, A for acceptance, and P for peace.
Above is a little triangle that I drew for you. At the bottom of the triangle is apathy and here you'll see I have 0 to 5 percent. Someone that is at the very bottom of the scale and is experiencing the world through apathy is using about 95 to 100 percent of their energy to suppress their emotions.
By using that much energy they will only have zero to five percent available for taking action. You can see why someone who is in a bad place and is in this state, why it's so hard for them to change. It's hard to change when you only have five percent available for taking action. This is why sometimes telling somebody you know to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, can be be insensitive or won't really mean much for that person.
At that level of energy, you can't really do much. One of the key insights of understanding this scale is that with this awareness, it can help to move us up the scale. If someone is in apathy they can say "okay I know I can't make it to peace....that jump is too big, but maybe I can make it to grief".
That's moving gradually up that scale. In grief, we have five to ten percent of energy available to take productive and constructive action. In fear we have eleven to fifteen percent available. In lust, we have sixteen to twenty percent. In anger 21 to 30 percent. In pride 31 to 40 percent. These are the emotions that keep us stuck in life.
The smaller triangle above we have CAP. In courageousness, you're at 41 to 65% of available energy. In acceptance, we have 66 to 85%. In peace, we have 86 to 100% available. Here is where magical things can happen. From a peaceful state of being you can get to a state of effortless effort.
This is where things just kind of just fall into place. Life is real smooth. That's where we want to get to. When we're in the AGFLAP emotions, we live a life where it's mainly blaming and complaining. We're out in the external world. As we start moving up the scale we start to become more inwardly empowered and we take full responsibility for our lives.
Learing To Let Go of Our Past
This is why I think the scale is very useful. When you notice that you are in a low state then you can begin the process of gradually moving up. Another one of the key things that Lester taught was is that in order to really release the past, our old programming, you want to do it from the high state.
This means letting from a state of courageousness, acceptance, or peace. When you learn to move yourself up into the state of courageousness, acceptance, or peace then you can bring up your past in a conscious way and consciously let it go. From this high space, you will be able to let go much more easily. You'll be letting go of millions of thoughts of subconscious programming that keeps you living in a certain way.
Hope you enjoyed today's post. Many blessings to everyone!