Living on Earth has its nice moments, like peaceful walks along the beach, and its awful moments—shark attacks, tidal waves, assaults….

Daily life can be a wild ride with lots of ups and downs that can stir up our emotions.

Typically…

• When it’s calm and safe we experience awe, trust, empathy, and other nice emotions. We relax and feel vital.
• When it’s violent and dangerous we feel fear, suspicion, and self-preservation. We panic and feel vulnerable.

This article takes a close look at our emotions:

• What they are, and
• What to do about them.

What exactly are emotions?

Nowadays there are three popular ways to address that question (you can follow the links for details):

1. Scientifically, emotions are products of our body (with its hormones, its DNA, and especially its brain),
2. Psychologically, emotions are products of our body and its mind (or consciousness, which is like the brain’s software), and
3. Spiritually, emotions are products of both our mind (or spirit, which is the real, indestructible you and me that lives forever) and our brain-driven body (which is just our mind’s meaty, makeshift earthsuit for this lifetime).

This article looks at #3—our immortal mind interacting with our mortal body and brain. That interplay between the timeless, cosmic mind (or spirit) and the fleeting, earthbound body, I believe, is where we’ll find most of the answers to the mystery of emotions.

Essentially, the body and spirit live in two different realities.

• The body is built for stressful living on Earth with all its drama, especially contending with the predatory, parasitic, and competitive relationships among living things, including us humans.
• The spirit lives concurrently in various spirit realms associated with Earth (as depicted below)—most of them with very little stress and drama. The mind or spirit has been assigned* to stressful Earth for this short lifetime.

*The “assignment” is typically made, before we’re born, by our finer spiritual self working with other higher beings as they assess our karma and soul plan in relation to the higher plan for Earth.

It makes sense, then, that…

• our subtle spirit (the “real” you and me) can get bewildered during its lifetime on Earth, which is about the only place in the vast cosmos for stressful encounters with predators, parasites, and competitors… and
• our dense body-brain can be similarly perplexed while trying to reconcile all of life’s “normal” drama and suffering on Earth with the inherent cosmic goodness that it feels shining deep within.

The disparity between body (stressful under its normal conditions) and spirit (comparatively stress-free under its normal conditions) seems to be what causes emotions.

In which case, the general rule is:

• When our body resonates and blends with our finer spirit (in times of low drama, low stress), we feel positive emotions.
• When our body bristles with and deviates from our finer spirit (in times of high drama, high stress), we feel negative emotions.

So that’s a simple explanation of what (I believe) emotions are and why they happen. Now let’s take a closer look to see if it makes sense.

How Body and Spirit Blend or Bristle

This is how I believe it works.

First and foremost, we get a steady stream of life-energy from the source, which creates and nourishes the entire cosmos with vitality and wonderful, positive motivations. As the pulled-apart diagram suggests, however:

• Only a small amount of pure (non-vibrating) life-energy trickles directly from the source into us physical humans. That non-vibrating inner light from the source has infinite creative and transformative potential, but most of it streams directly from the source into the finest realms at levels 7 and 6, where it’s transduced or changed (or devised) and passed along (or delivered out-beyond) to lower levels.
• The life-energy continues to get devised and passed down the line, through our many spirit bodies (levels of the mind), before it reaches us. The devised life-energy takes many forms and goes by a lot of names—chi, prana, holy spirit, shakti, kundalini, subtle energy… which science is only beginning to explore.
• The rich bundle of devised life-energy coming to Earth carries a lot of positive motivations and attitudes from the finer spirit realms at levels 3-7. Though it’s not as powerful as the pure life-energy that comes directly from the source, this devised life-energy generally shapes our lives in wonderful ways.
• We can receive a bit more of the pure, powerful, non-vibrating life-energy directly from the source by practicing techniques like meditation, in which we foster conscious contact with the source, as explained at the end of the article.
• Fostering conscious contact also filters and refines the devised life-energy we receive from the various levels.

Second and at the same time, we live out on the fringes of the cosmos, on a material world where life has evolved in a dramatic, stressful fashion. Our bodies are designed to survive and to try to flourish amid the drama. That’s evident in the structure of our brain and the effects of our hormones and DNA. We’re built to handle stress and drama, for example with our response to fear… in which we typically “fight, flee, freeze, flag, or faint.” (Try to say that three time. 🙂 )

So, again, it’s the disparity between our peaceful spirit and our roughhouse body that seems to be at the root of our emotions.

What To Do with Our Emotions

Well, that depends on our gender, since men and women usually deal with their emotions differently, and women typically sparkle more in that area. (read more about that… )

Still, learning to deal appropriately with our emotions can benefit us all.

Here’s a snapshot of how to deal effectively with our emotions, according to psychologists in recent years:

• Get familiar with them: Be aware of how you’re feeling, accept all of your emotions, know when it’s appropriate to share your feelings, don’t repress them but regulate them and, if it helps, take a deep breath, give yourself some space, and keep a mood journal.
• Manage them: Be aware of triggers, physical symptoms, and the stories you tell yourself about yourself; do positive self-talk; decide how to respond to trigger situations; focus on positive emotions; and find a therapist.
• Manage stress: Read, listen to music, listen to calming nature sounds, take walks in nature, do yoga, bathe, rest in silence, light scented candles.
• Recognize signs of emotional suffering: Personality changes, anger or anxiety, withdrawal from people, poor self-care, and a sense of hopelessness or worthlessness.

That can all be explored in much greater depth in this Healthline article, which contains links to other fine articles about emotions.

But by far the most important and most effective technique for handling emotions and stress is often overlooked. It involves getting in touch with the inner light that shines at the center of everything.

Making Conscious Contact with the Source

Every body in the cosmos (every galaxy, every world, every entity) has that state of perfect bliss and complete knowledge at the center of its being. The source creates and nourishes everything with its life-energy.

Bright beings throughout the cosmos all share one underlying yearning—to return to oneness with the source.

We humans can mitigate the stress and drama of living on roughshod Terra by sharing that yearning and by taking steps to make conscious contact with the source.

I’ve explained some good techniques for making conscious contact in various articles, most recently and most concisely here….

Through meditation and by knowing the truth (that we’re all connected to the oneness), we can be instruments for the source and bring its light into the world. In fact, from a cosmic perspective, that’s our job, first and foremost.

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