#361 Snippets of wisdom: Our emotions are feedback to restore balance.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
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Agi Keramidas  0:03  
Welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast. And this is another snippets of wisdom episode where I select my favourite most insightful moments from previous episodes. Today's snippet comes from my conversation with Dr. John Demartini, the world renowned specialist in human behaviour, and featured expert in the film and book The Secret. This snippet I chose from that conversation is about mastering our emotional state. I asked Dr. Demartini, how we can improve our ability to be reflective, rather than react to our emotions and perceptions out of unconscious reflexes? I hope his answer is as insightful for you as it was for me.

Dr John Demartini  0:52  
We have reflexive awareness and reflective awareness, like you say, a reflex is outside extrinsically stimulated and you're responding. And reflective is that we're more introspective. And we're listening. And before we respond with thinking, in systems, one thinking, we react and think and systems to think and we think then react then we respond or act. So I've asked that question since I was 23, when I first started teaching neurology, and I'm feeling quite certain that we found solutions to that, here's how it goes. Whenever you have an emotional reaction, it means you have incomplete perception. Because if you're infatuated with somebody, you're perceiving the upsides. But you're blind to the downside, you're ignoring the downside, you're unconscious of the downsides. So in a sense, you're ignorant of the whole, you're only seeing part, and you're now generating an opinion, that's got an emotion. And I'm gonna make a statement that the purpose of emotions is to offer us as conscious beings, feedback to let us know when we're not seeing the whole. We're not fully aware, we're ignoring some of what we're experiencing. And we're having a bias. And we're in survival mode. And it's offering us feedback to let us know that that's all it's giving us symptoms in our body and our psyche, to let us know that we're not whole, we're not authentic. Because if we infatuate with something, we'll tend to minimise ourselves to it. If we minimise ourselves, we're not authentic. And if we resent something, and we look down on it, we're conscious of the downsides and unconscious the upsides and we're ignoring the upsides. We're going to exaggerate ourselves looking down on people, and that's inauthentic. And so the homeostatic mechanism of the brain is trying to make us authentic. It's trying to teach us how to love is trying to teach us to have sustainable fair exchange. And when you tend to be looking up to people minimising yourself, you'll tend to sacrifice for them. Anybody you've been infatuated with, you'll tend to inject their values, try to live by their values and sacrifice for them temporarily for fear of loss of them. And anybody who resent you will try to sacrifice them for you narcissistically because you'll try to get them to live in your values, both of which are futile. And so all the emotional responses and symptoms of our psyche and our physiological responses, our feedback mechanisms to let us know we're not authentic, we're ignoring information. We're not seeing the whole, we're not in grace, because the magnificence of life is really magnificent if we see it whole. So those those symptoms of the motion or giving us feedback is just a homeostatic feedback just like a thermostat. If it's hot, you know, we sweat and if it's cold, we shiver. And there's symptoms to let us know, hey, we're not imbalanced temperature. Let's regulate the temperature and get us back into the centre. That's all symptoms are. That's what illness is. And Pythagoras said that in his time, and Galen said that it's not the it's the all, the mythological story of its clypeus refers to that all the great healers knew that almost every drug they take in medicine is to try to balance out the chemistries. So the emotions are feedback mechanisms to let us know that we're ignoring key information. And we're dividing our consciousness into conscious and unconscious halves, and not seeing full consciousness not being mindful. That here's the magnificence though. If we infatuate with somebody, and we put them on a pedestal, and we minimise ourselves. We're too humble to admit what we see in them inside us. So we have a missing part, a disowned part, a deflected part, a deflected part. I'm too humble to admit what I see in them inside me. I'm deflecting what I see. Now we know that when we point our finger at people three are pointing back. The truth is we have everything we see in them, but we're too humbled To admit it, or if we're resenting them, we're looking down on him. And exactly, we're too proud to admit what we see in them inside us. But yet, we got three fingers pointing back. And that's because we actually have shame. And it's reminding us what we feel ashamed of, and we don't want to admit it. So we dissociate from the shame and go into pride to protect ourselves. And we judge them for something we're doing, but we don't want to face it. So we deflect and deflect of awareness is reflexive. And so far, we react reflexively, not reflectively to the impulses to seek are the instincts to avoid. And we're like an animal in survival reacting before we think, because we're in reflexive awareness, not reflective awareness. But now, let's say we see somebody we admire. And instead of being too humble, to admit what we see in them inside us, what if we ask the question, what is it what specific trade action or inaction do I pursue this individual displaying, or demonstrating that I admire most, and then go to a moment where and when I perceive myself displaying or demonstrating the same or similar Trade inside myself, what if I go in there and introspectively reflect and find out where I see what I see them inside me. And don't stop until the quantity and quality is equal, and be accountable for being fully conscious, and now have reflective awareness and level the playing field, where they're not above me, and I'm not below altruistically, sacrificing for them and trying to be somebody I'm not, but level the playing field where I value me and I value them and I make sure I have a sustainable fair exchange, where I have equanimity in me and equity between me and then. Or when I'm resentful, what happens if I go in and find out where I do those behaviours to, and to reverse reflect, and realise that they have brought into my life to teach me to love all parts of myself and not deny any of them because at the level of my soul, nothing's missing in me. But the level of my sense is things appear to be missing in me. And the things that appear to be missing me are all the things that I'm too proud or too humble to admit that I have. And in that moment, we have pure reflective awareness. And that's exactly when we balance that the blood glucose noxion activates the executive centre, and our body is poised and present and gracefully has a balance between the agonist and antagonist and we have movements such graceful, graceful movement is a sign of graceful mind. It's really quite beautiful. So our body gives us feedback to try to live a reflective awareness. And you know, when people think they have love for somebody, they confuse a passionate infatuation that's blind, where two people are passionately infatuated and there. They want to go and procreate and have a sexual passion, instead of that of True, true love and intimacy. True love and intimacy is where you realise you have pure reflective awareness where the whatever you see in them you have in your own form, and nothing's missing in you, and nothing's missing in them. And you both have fulfilment. And there's grace and tears of gratitude for reflecting and seeing that what I see in you I see in May, the God within me and the God within you are meeting. And that is something that transcends the passions that the Stoics and Marcus Aurelius talked about the passions, and you could transcend them. It was called Omonia, by Aristotle versus hedonistic pursuits, and wisdom is coming from that state of pure reflective awareness, not reflexes.

Agi Keramidas  8:38  
Thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the full conversation in Episode 250. The link is in the show notes. If you've enjoyed this episode, can you find one person you think would find it a value and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow and you also add value to people you care about. Thanks. And until next time, stand out don't fit in!