There are four basic emotions that lie at the bottom of every other emotion. They are fairly easy to locate and so are a useful tool for becoming aware of the feeling layer in oneself.
Joy, anger, fear, sadness.
I hear people sometimes say that three of these are negative and only one is good. Yes, that is how we usually regard these.
But here is another perspective. Thoughts can lie, feelings don’t. Thoughts can be negative, by putting the word “not” in there somewhere. Feelings don’t use language, they don’t have the “not.” A thought might be untrue, a feeling is always true.
Here is yet another perspective. In the teachings of Swedenborg feelings are described as the effect of angels and spirits upon and into us. Both good and evil spirits. It is probably true to say that the feeling of anger is imbued by an evil spirit. That makes it negative, right? No, it doesn’t.
There are two reasons why we are influenced by high and low, by good and evil. One is our freedom. If I only knew and felt good things, I would have no choice. This is simple and it is at the core of being human: freedom.The influence from hell guarantees this freedom.
Yet it goes further than this. The second reason is that the experience of something we don’t want makes it possible to recognize, feel, imagine, and create that which we do want. We become able to write our own ticket, build a better life and a better world.
The name of the game is not just to be free and wander around in a universe of choices. The name of the game is growth, creation, building, expanding, becoming. All four emotions help us do that.
An older post about the same topic is here:
http://muires.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/the-four-emotions/
