How Emotions Contribute to Sickness
Following on from a previous article, we shall continue to explore the role of ego identification on physical health.
What is a negative emotion?
An emotion is an embodied thought - it’s how we feel our thoughts. Any emotion that is not recognized and relinquished becomes toxic to the body, interfering with its intricate functioning.
When unseen and unrelinquished, negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, rage, resentment, sadness, jealousy, confusion, and so forth - all disrupt the flow of energy through the body. This has far-reaching effects on the functioning of the body - altering the heartbeat, muscle tension, lower immunity, digestion, generating hormonal imbalances, and so forth. Although allopathic and many alternative medicines have yet to acknowledge the central role of the ego in creating sickness, there is at least recognition of the connection between stress and chronic degenerative diseases.
Do positive emotions, therefore, have the opposite effect on the physical body?
Yes, there is a correlation between positive emotions and physical responses. However, we need to differentiate between ego-generated and deeper emotions that radiate from our natural state of connectedness with Being.
Ego-generated positive emotions, those that you “fake it til you make it”, contain within them the opposite, negative emotion, to which they can switch to. So for instance egoic-love is laced with possessiveness and clinging that can turn into hatred on a dime. Anxiety about an upcoming event, the ego’s over estimation of the future, swiftly turns into its opposite - disappointment - when the event doesn’t turn out how the ego expected it to.
Praise and recognition make you feel on top of the world one day; being criticized and blamed makes you crestfallen the next.
Ego-centric emotions are derived from over-identification with external factors. Ego regards them as sources of joy and sorrow. Since external factors are all subject to change, they are unstable and unreliable sources of happiness. Investing our happiness in these makes us feel vulnerable and emotionally labile
Deeper emotions are not really emotions per se, but are deeper states of Being. Whereas emotions arise from opposites. States of Being, despite being veiled, do not have an opposite. States of Being arise from within you as expressions of love, joy, and peace. These are aspects of your true nature - your Being.
In his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get ulcers, Stanford university biologist, Robery M. Sapolsky, put forward the idea that for animals such as zebras, stress is generally episodic (e.g., running away from a lion). On the other hand, for humans, stress is often chronic (e.g., worrying about losing one's job).
Therefore, many wild animals are less susceptible than humans to chronic stress-related disorders such as ulcers, hypertension, decreased neurogenesis and increased hippocampal neuronal atrophy.
After escaping a near death from the jaws of hungry lions, a zebra shakes off the event, and returns to grazing with its dazzle (the name for a herd of zebras). Humans on the other hand relive the event over and over in our minds - creating a state of chronic stress, aka post-traumatic stress disorder.
Why is this?
The above piece of research demonstrates how many of us do not have the inability or rather unwillingness to let go of the past. The past lives in us as memories. These memories are not in themselves a problem - we can actually learn so much from the past, particularly mistakes.
Memories are thoughts about the past. When we become over-identified with, this is a problem. They become a part of our sense of self. What we call personality, which is conditioned by the past, becomes a mind-made prison. This mind-made self, the ego, becomes invested in memory and becomes wrapped up with narratives of who you think you are. This limited sense of self veils the reality of your true identity - that of a timeless and formless presence; of awareness.
This limited sense of self not only consists of conditioned mental patterns, but of emotional reactions which are continually revived. Most of us carry needless burden of emotional and mental luggage throughout our lives. These patterns of resentment, guilt, hostility, grudges, become their identity.
Through waking up to the presence that we are and shifting into the 3P’s, we stop adding to the burden of this pain body, and learn to break free from the patterns of conditioned thinking and reactive emotions.
Through shifting into presence, we can face any negative emotions fully and see them for what they are, they will dissolve completely. A sense of peace naturally arises along with other innate qualities such as love, joy, compassion - which had hitherto been veiled by the ego-identification.