If our emotions function as a sensory organ to detect relationship dynamics, then we are interested to learn how to understand them accordingly. Relationship dynamics are either of advocacy, or adversarial. The sensation of fear, for example, is commonly associated with a belief of danger. The danger means something we are in relationship with is presenting itself as an adversarial act toward us. We may be motivated to immediate action, for self-protection. The fear we experience is understood in the context of an external reference, which is the action that puts us in danger, or the “potato” that our emotions are detecting.
It is the adversarial act within a relationship that our negative emotions detect. This is the external reference that our emotions are motivating us to address. They do not detect who it is that is responsible for the act; this is the role of our eyes. In order to rationally understand the information our emotions are giving us, we must train ourselves to understand our emotions in relation with the action dynamic (constructively, according to the problem or situation), rather than in relation with the person or object responsible (destructively, believing the person or object responsible to be the problem, which is what our eyes detect).
However, it is possible to get trapped into understanding the negative emotions we experience in the context of an internal reference. The fear or anxiety itself becomes what we believe is what is adversarial and is the problem. We get pulled into a short circuit: experiencing anxiety about anxiety; this becomes a loop of anxiety for which there is no escape. The detector of our emotions is closed in to detect itself as an adversarial event. We make ourselves our adversaries!
Our only option is to address the internal reference (our emotions detecting our emotions), and we become motivated to manipulate external events with the goal to deal with and soothe our emotions, as if our emotions are the “potatoes.” We do things to appease emotions/anxiety rather than use the passion of our emotions to accomplish things. Our emotions take control of us (and possibly others), rashly driving our actions for selfish purposes. Rather, we are interested in the freedom to experience the essence of our identity with the control to appropriately generate the energy of our passions to act with justice. We can appropriately relate our emotions with the external reference that they are detecting. In this way we are free to respect ourselves and to respect others with our actions.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Easter Meditation for Christians: This Easter season, as I ponder the meaning of the cross, I find it compelling to think about the union of Jesus and the cross. Jesus himself stated that he must be lifted up, as Moses lifted up a snake on a pole. Whoever looked at the lifted up snake would be cured from the devastation of poisonous snakes ravaging the community of Israel after they had left Egypt and were in the desert. In a sense, the snake represented death, and the pole that the snake was attached to represented life, to those who would believe.
At a separate occasion, Jesus commented about marriage: that a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and so the two would become one flesh. There is a portrait of our relationship with Jesus in which he is the groom, and the church, the body of believers, is to be his wife. Jesus on yet another occasion states that his followers would eat his flesh and drink his blood, and he also said that he would be in his disciples and his disciples would be in him.
So we have two images: Jesus has left the heavenly realms (father), and has left his mother (he transferred his mother into John’s care), to woo his wife. There is also the image of Jesus on the cross. It is said that Jesus gave up his life for our sins (not for his own sins) and that we must repent and accept his death for our sins, to receive his life. Therefore, when I imagine Jesus on the cross, I think of the union of two becoming one. Jesus is nailed to the cross, and the cross is nailed to Jesus. I imagine the cross is his wife, the church, and that I am part of that cross. Jesus is presenting himself to be united to me. What gift do I give Jesus that he willingly receives? It is death. What gift does Jesus in return give to me? It is life. The two become one, death and life, Jesus and me. The scars that Jesus bears represent me in him. The life I live, I live in him because he lives in me, as the apostle Paul testifies. Life does indeed prevail and not die, as proven by the empty tomb. Happy Easter!