Overcoming negative emotions 1 – Explanation, Experimentation, Evaluation, Elevation

[Talk at Midwest Yoga Festival, Wisconsin, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I’m grateful to be here amongst all of you today. And thank you for being here for this session on overcoming negative emotions.
Am I clear in the voice or is it echoing? It’s clear? Okay. Okay, I’ll just keep it. So I’ll speak this talk in four parts, which is centred on four E’s.
So, explanation, experimentation, evaluation and elevation. So let me begin, explanation. So negative emotions are something that can disempower us internally.
We all face various challenges in life. Be financial, social, relational, cultural. Now all these obstacles that are external to us, we can face them to the extent we have strength within us.
But when negative emotions come up, they dishearten and disempower us internally. Negative emotions can be loneliness, hopelessness, excessive anger, excessive craving, addiction, depression, inferiority. So the specific negative emotion that may de-energise us will vary from person to person.
Suppose we are driving a car, and we have a certain amount of fuel. Now we know with this fuel, with the average of my car, I can go 100 miles. But then we go 50 miles, and we find that our fuel tank is empty.
What happened? That meant there might be some leakage, because of which the fuel is going away. So if we consider our energy to be like the fuel for us to function in life, negative emotions are like the inner leakage. Because of these negative emotions, we lose energy and we can’t function.
Now where do negative emotions come from? The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient yoga text, and that describes, in a dramatic setting, the power of negative emotions. There was a great warrior who was about to fight a war against vicious forces. But just before that, he became overwhelmed by negativity.
And at that time, the Bhagavad Gita explains, it’s a conversation that explains, a three-level model of the self. Three-level model means, the Bhagavad Gita says that we are not just our physical bodies. There’s the body, the mind, and the soul.
So we could use a rough computer metaphor for this. The body is like the hardware. The mind is like the software.
And the soul is the user. So now, if we get a new computer, the hardware is all very good. But if somehow we put some pen drive in it, or we connect to some unsafe site, and viruses come in it, then those viruses will prevent us from using the computer, although the computer is very good.
In today’s world, through science and technology, we have focused on improving physical things a lot. I come from India, and as compared to India, America is materially much, much more organised and prosperous. So through technological progress, we have improved the hardware.
But unfortunately, the software, the mind is afflicted with negativity. And because of that, we, with our progress, are more comfortable physically, but still, we are miserable mentally. Mental health problems have risen to a level that is unprecedented in human history.
So we could say that we are, in today’s world, comfortably miserable. Our bodies are comfortable. We would be in an air-conditioned room, comfortable, but the mind is agitated.
And this distress is coming primarily by negative emotions. So negative emotions arise primarily in the mind. Now, as I said, the mind is the software, so it connects the body and the soul together.
Just like if we are working on a machine, on a computer, the computer software helps us to use the hardware, use the software to press a particular command, and they start printing. So for us, the mind is important. Just like in a computer system, the software is important.
The software is essential. But within the software, some viruses have come, they have to be removed. So similarly, we need to remove negative emotions.
So where do these, when they say the negative emotions come from the mind, so where do they come from in the mind? Like if we have a virus in our computer, we don’t know where it has come from. So broadly speaking, our emotions can come from three distinct sources. One is the situations that we are in.
Second is the impressions that we have inside us. And third is a combination of both. So a few examples to illustrate this point.
Say, somebody has, while driving on a dark road, on a stormy night, met with an accident. And somehow survived the accident. But now whenever they drive on a dark night, they feel fearful.
So somebody else might be driving on a dark night, they may not feel that much fear. A little caution is good, but being fearful can be paralysing. So here, there is a situation.
The situation is, it’s a dark night, it’s stormy. Now, for somebody who has not had an accident, they will drive cautiously, but they will drive smoothly through that. But for somebody who has had an accident, that accident has created an impression in the mind.
And that impression also causes some emotion. So for a person who has no impression, there might be just caution, but no fear. For a person who has that impression within, there might be a strong fear, which comes primarily from within, not from without.
The external situation is stimulus, but the primary source is internal. So we all go through different experiences in life, and these experiences create impressions within us. And those impressions shape our emotions.
So what we experience when is determined not just by the situation that we are going through, but also by the impression that shapes our perception of that situation. So in that sense, we could say that the emotion that we experience is not a one-step process. This person spoke rudely to me, that’s why I became angry.
So the situation was this person was rude, and anger is my emotion. But it is not just the rudeness of that person. Somebody else might speak rudely to us, and that might not make us angry.
So if somebody whom we don’t know at all is walking along the road and somebody yells at us rudely, we might feel annoyed but not feel angry. But if somebody whom we love, somebody whom we have high regards for, and they are rude to us, that will hurt us much more. So the situation is here that somebody spoke rudely.
The emotion is of anger. So the same situation will cause different emotions to us because there are different impressions. In the first case, this person is a stranger.
They might be going through something in their life, just yelling at me for no reason. But somebody who is a loved one, if they yell at us, that hurts us much more. So the emotion results not just from the situation, but we could say the impression that is stored.
The impression shapes our conception of that situation, shapes our expectation of that situation, shapes our perception of that situation. And thus, when we overcome negative emotions, they may be coming from negative situations. But the situations alone are not their cause.
The impressions within are also the cause. And to the extent we can change the situation, we can try to. But many times the situation is not changeable.
What we can change is the impression within. So to illustrate this point of how the impression shapes the perception of the situation, I’ll give an explanation. Now I’ll move to the second part of experimentation.
So let’s do a simple thought experiment to get some sense of this three-level model of body, mind and soul. So wherever you’re seated, you can sit comfortably and then you can close your eyes. And with closed eyes, you can take three deep breaths.
One, two, three. Now with your eyes closed, look at what you see in front of you. Because your eyes are closed, you can’t see physically what is in front of you.
But you will see inside you there is some kind of screen on which you may see this room, you may see your home, a friend, a loved one. You may see various images on that inner screen. These images may come and go in a rushed stream or you might just see a dull haze of colours.
Whatever it is that you see, you see it on some kind of screen inside you. While you’re observing that screen, take a step back and try to see who is observing that screen. There is an inner screen and try to catch sight of the inner seer of that screen.
Try once again. Try to take a step back and look at the seer of the screen. No matter how many steps you take back, the seer steps back with you.
What you’re looking for is what you’re looking with. You, that inner seer, is the soul and the inner screen is the mind. You can take one deep breath and then you can open your eyes.
So normally when we function, when we perceive, at that time, the inner seer, the inner screen and the outer scene, all three come in one line. So right now you’re looking at me. I’m looking at you.
Now, when the inner screen is focussing on the outer object, that is when perception happens. But if on the inner screen, something else appears. Say, you remember, oh, I had kept this there.
It is still there or not. Then, although the outer scene is still there, the inner seer is still there, but the inner screen has shifted off. And that’s why we can’t perceive properly.
So for us, negative emotions come not just because of what is happening on the outer scene, but negative emotions come because the inner screen goes off in unwanted directions. I have a friend here in America who is a suicide helpline attendant, suicide helpline counsellor. So if some people feel depressed and want to commit suicide, they call up the helpline.
And he told me of an incident where a girl called him after she committed suicide. She took the pills and then she said, I don’t want to die. She called him.
So they rushed an ambulance and she was saved. But then he asked her what made her commit suicide. And she said that she had been in a relationship with a boy and she had called that boy.
And that boy did not respond to her call. And because of that she committed suicide. Now let me say, so many times people don’t respond to our calls.
We don’t respond to people’s calls. Why would anyone commit suicide just because of one unanswered phone call? So here if you consider, I said that the emotions are caused not just by the situation, but by the impressions. The situation doesn’t seem to be that distressing.
It may be a little disturbing. Why is this person not responding to my call? But the impressions that were there with him. What were those impressions? She had a constant fear of loneliness and abandonment.
Her parents had separated when she was a small girl. And she had been with one parent to another. And she had a fear of being lonely and being abandoned.
And this inner screen, which is supposed to normally act like a window, say right now I’m looking at you, so as a window the inner screen shows the outer world. But this inner screen can suddenly change and act like not a window, but as a TV. And the TV, it can suddenly start showing a movie.
So for her, when this incident happened, because of the impressions within, a whole horror movie started. And that horror movie was, oh you know, he’s not responding to your phone call because he doesn’t care for you. Maybe he’s with someone else.
Maybe he’s left you now. Even if you form some other relationship, even that person will also leave you. You will always be alone.
All your friends will be in healthy, happy relationships. And you will be alone. When they see you, they will all have pity on you.
And your life will be pitiable. What is the use of such a pitiable life? Better end your life. So from that situation, a whole movie started.
Now that movie, that whole image was not warranted, was not justified or warranted by the situation. But based on whatever impression is stored within us, each one of us, certain thought trains start. And as those thought trains start, they create images within us.
And these images stimulate emotions within us. So I talked about explanation or education, of what is there in the inner world. Then I talked about experimentation.
Now that brings us to the third point which I am discussing now. That is evaluation. Evaluation means that for each one of us, based on the impression stored within us, certain thoughts, certain desires, certain emotions will pop up.
But just because those emotions pop up, doesn’t mean that those emotions are valid or justified. That doesn’t mean we have to get carried away by that emotion. Going back to the earlier example of the software, if somebody has visited a particular website many times in the past, if somebody has visited sports.com, now as soon as they open their browser and they type S, what happens? It brings us sports.com immediately.
It comes as an auto-complete. Now suppose they come for a beautiful spiritual gathering, like we have at Midwest Yoga Festival, and they think their spirituality seems very interesting. I want to know a little bit about spirituality.
And they go open their computer, and then they type spirituality. They type S, P. What happens? Sports.com comes up. They want to go to spirituality.com, but based on their previous choices, sports.com will come as an auto-complete.
So the same, just like in the software, our previous choices are stored, and they come as auto-completes. Similarly for us, our previous actions have created impressions, and those impressions come as auto-completes. So whenever, if we have been abandoned in the past, if we have met with an accident in the past, when we come to a similar situation, even if it is only slightly similar, immediately that whole chain of thought starts off.
In the case of the computer, just that particular side will open up. But in the case of the mind, certain stimulations, certain situations, may stimulate the starting of a whole new. So for a person who has had an accident in the past, going through a similar situation, may cause panic, fear, paranoia.
For a person who has been abandoned in the past, even a small strain in a relationship may cause great fear of loneliness. So now when this post.com opens up, that is when the person has to do evaluation. Was this what I wanted to visit? No.
Although it has opened up on my own computer, that doesn’t mean this is where I want to go. If we can evaluate similarly the emotions that pop up within us, then we can choose, is this what I want to do or this is not what I want to do? Generally, if we consider emotions come after thoughts, we think about something and then we feel some emotion about it. Say, somebody has hurt us.
Then first, maybe somebody else speaks something about us and the thought of that person comes to us. And when that thought comes, if we dwell on that thought, that thought becomes an emotion. How dare this person do like this? This person is such a terrible person.
And then as the emotion grows, it can become an obsession. Just one moment, imagine we are calm and cheerful and suddenly somebody speaks something about someone and the thought starts growing within us and next moment, our fists may be clenched, our teeth may be grinding, our heart may start palpitating. So it all began with a thought.
The thought grew into an emotion, the emotion grows into an obsession and that obsession can make us do some self-destructive action. I started by talking about how our emotions can de-energise us. So, they all begin with thoughts.
So to deal with negative emotions, it’s best if you can catch them at the level of the thought itself. A few months ago, I was in Utah. So there were big mountains.
Snow-clad mountains were there. So there was a danger of snowballs coming. Now when snowballs are formed, at the top, the snowball is actually a snowpebble.
It’s a snowpebble. But as it starts rolling down, down, down, down, it acquires greater mass and greater momentum. At the top, where the snowpebble is just starting to roll, a person might just kick it, or just crush it and it will break apart.
But as it starts coming down, down, down, down, it becomes so powerful that a snowball can knock down a well-built, grown-up person. The same snowball. At the top, it was a pebble.
At the bottom, it’s a giant ball. So similar is what happens inside our consciousness. At the top, it’s just a thought.
It’s like a snowpebble. It’s okay, this person, I think about it. Or this person.
Or the situation is there, a thought comes in because of that situation. But then, as we develop it, from that thought comes emotion. From that emotion comes obsession.
And from that obsession comes self-destruction. So evaluation means that when the thought itself is emerging, at that time, we check it. The thought itself emerges, at that time, we check it.
Is this what I really want? Is this important for me? Is this where I want to go right now? Sports.com has opened. Do I want to go in this? Do I want to visit this? No. So the thoughts will come within us and we can’t avoid the coming of thoughts.
Sometimes we just say that I just want to become free from thought. Yes, what we mean by that is we want to become free from disturbing, agitating thoughts. We can’t become entirely free from thought.
Because even wanting to become free from thought is also a thought. That’s also a thought. So therefore, the word thought, we can use it in two different senses.
One refers to just an event that occurs in our mind. A stimulus that pops up in the mind. Grammatically also, the word thought can have two meanings.
Sometimes we may say, I just got a thought. That means something popped up in my mind. But we may also use the word thought in another sense.
I have given this a lot of thought. I have given this a lot of thought. So here we are using thought first as something that comes within us.
But second is, when I have given this a lot of thought means, I have deliberated it, I have analysed it. So the first refers to an involuntary action that happens within us. The second refers to a conscious, focused contemplation.
So we can’t control what thoughts pop up within us. The situations are not in our control. Even the impressions are not in our control.
Whatever has happened in the past, that has created certain impressions. We can’t change that immediately. And we don’t have much control over the external situations.
But whether the situation or the impression, when a thought pops up, at that time, we can evaluate, okay, this thought has come. Do I need to pay attention to this? Do I need to dwell on this? Sports.com has opened up. Do I need to go in this direction? Say, if we have a big TV at home and there is some programme or some system set up by which a friend or a child or somebody watches a particular set of movies.
And now a horror movie is starting over there. Now that has started on our TV. Do I really want to watch this? No, this is not what gives me fun.
So I won’t watch it. So evaluation happens. Our evaluation becomes possible when we understand the difference between the inner screen and the inner seer.
Normally, we think that any thought that comes up within me is my thought. Any emotion that comes up within me is my emotion. Yes, that emotion has come within us.
But do we need to dwell on that emotion? The whole purpose of yoga, of meditation, of spiritual growth is to help us understand that I am the inner seer, different from the inner screen. I am not my body and I am not my mind. I have a body and I have a mind.
So, just as our body may be conditioned in a particular way. I come from India, which is a much warmer country. So when I go out for a walk here in the mornings, I might be wearing 2-3 layers of clothes.
But I see people walking around wearing no warm clothes at all. They are wearing shorts and sleeveless shirts. They walk around.
Now, their body is different from my body. Their body is accustomed to that situation. Mine is not.
What this simply means is that just because I feel cold, somebody else doesn’t feel cold. Just because I feel cold doesn’t necessarily mean that I shouldn’t go out for a walk. Just because I am cold doesn’t mean I have to develop cold feet.
I won’t go out for a walk. But I have to prepare myself. So just as our bodies are different and our bodies react differently to different situations, similarly our minds are different.
And our minds may react differently to different situations. But if we understand that this is simply a reaction of my mind, I have to take that into consideration. But that alone doesn’t have to determine my response.
I can still, if I am driving on a road where I had an accident in the past, I will feel some fear. And I acknowledge that fear. Yes, I am feeling fear.
But this is simply coming from my past impression. This is a reaction. I acknowledge it and I move on.
I keep driving without getting carried away by that emotion. And that requires elevation. By elevation, right now I took this as a horizontal.
There is the body, the mind and the soul. The outer seal, the inner screen and the inner seer. If we could consider these three as vertical, that we could consider our self-existence to be three-level.
So three-level building. The body is ground level. The body is level one.
The mind is level two. The soul is level three. So we are actually situated on the wings at level three.
But we may be obsessed with level one or level two. We may identify completely with what is happening in the body or what is happening in the mind. But when we practise spirituality, when we do yoga, when we practise bhakti yoga, we have kirtan going on over here.
So when we do this kirtan, all this, at one level it may make us feel good, which is good, no doubt. But this is meant to do something much more. It is meant to help us realise our own spirituality.
That I am the soul who has a mind and who can observe the mind. So when this elevation happens, then we can address whatever impressions we may have and we can address whatever situations we may have. We can address them without getting carried away by them.
Now this elevation is not just a matter of intellectual conception. Yes, philosophically or analytically, it may seem very interesting. Okay, I am the inner seer, different from all this.
It’s good at least to have this intellectual understanding. But there is a process of elevation of consciousness. It’s like if you are at level one and you are going to level three.
You could take a staircase or you could take an elevator. But there is a process for going to level three. We might just intellectually understand, okay, from level three, this will look different.
And I want to go to level three. But just thinking of how things will look from level three, that is fine, but that is not the same as going to level three. So spirituality is not just a state of the mind.
Spirituality is a state of being. State of mind would be level two. But spirituality is level three.
It’s a state of being. So when we practise spirituality, the kirtan that we do of sacred sounds, that kirtan acts like an elevator for our consciousness. So when we let that sound come into us, we enter into that sound.
Our consciousness enters into that sound. And the more our consciousness enters into the sound, the more our consciousness rises upwards. As the consciousness rises upwards, we start feeling calm.
We start feeling a sense of security internally. We start getting a sense of clarity externally. Yes, I am safe.
I am secure. I am a soul. I am indestructible.
And okay, this is happening. This has created this emotion within me. How can I respond to it? And this sense of security and clarity that can help us to face adversity that might come in our life.
The negative situations will come. The negative emotions will come. But our reactions don’t have to be negative.
Our reactions don’t have to make things worse. If we can situate ourselves in our spirituality by our practise of yoga or bhakti yoga, by practise of mantra chanting, by various practises that raise our consciousness, then from there we can observe ourselves. And by observing ourselves, we can change our response to the situation.
So I will conclude with one story. I have been coming to the US for several years from India on speaking talks. The first time I came, several years ago, I had gone to a university.
And there I spoke to a vegetarian society there. And the Bhakti Yoga Troupe had organised that programme. So I spoke on regulating our mental diet.
Vegetarians are here to regulate the physical diet. I talked about how we need to regulate our mental diet also. What we take in.
And then after that, one boy met me and he told me that just before this class, I was contemplating suicide. I said, what happened? He said that he had been in a steady relationship with a girl for a good amount of time. But suddenly she had broken up with him.
And he was shattered. So as he was involuntarily wandering around the campus, he saw a poster of my programme. Something within him said, let’s go for this programme.
So when he came for that talk, he said, now I am understanding that it is not I who want to commit suicide. It is my mind which is suggesting to me. It’s a horror movie starting with it.
Come on, commit suicide, commit suicide. And then he said, I don’t have to listen to my mind. I told him, this is literally a life-saving insight that you have got.
So I encouraged him to read the Bhagavad Gita to better understand the mind. I also write every day on the Bhagavad Gita on a blog called Gita Daily. I write 300-word meditation on the Bhagavad Gita.
So I encouraged him to read that. And then every year when I come once or twice to America, if I go to that uni, I meet and talk with him. So last year, when I came, he told me that again he had faced a similar situation.
He had again been in a relationship, and somehow that girl had broken up with him again. And he said, as soon as she texted that to me, she said, I don’t want to talk with you, I am blocking you, don’t try to contact me. I just felt a sense of the world crashing down on me.
He says, I just went straight to my room. And he closed the door, closed the windows, he pulled down the drapes, he turned on the lights. And over the three years he had been in between practising Bhakti Yoga, he was a good musician.
He liked to play violin and he liked to sing. So in our Bhakti Yoga tradition, we chant the Hare Krishna mantra. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare.
So he liked to chant. So he, just in that complete darkness, he picked up his violin and he started singing. And he said, I sang continuously for six hours, pouring my heart into the singing.
And he said, I was feeling so gloomy and desperate at that time. I just kept singing, singing, singing. He said, I felt as if I was being embraced by some divine presence.
I felt I was being bathed in some sublime light. I felt deeply enriched. What could have been an extremely depressing experience turned out to be an enriching experience.
So what happened for him, he may not have analytically understood this, but by the process of Bhakti Yoga, he was able to elevate his consciousness. From level one and level two, level one he experienced the rejection. Level two, he had that fear of abandonment, of loneliness.
Both of these were negative. Negative situation was there, the negative emotion was there. But by the sound of the holy names, by the kirtan, it acted as an elevator and raised his consciousness to level three.
And there he experienced peace. There he experienced joy. And thus, he not only was able to deal with that situation, but actually that situation made him richer internally.
Because he experienced the sublime power, the sublime joy of spirituality. So thus, by growing spiritually, by raising our consciousness to the spiritual level, we can deal with negative emotions. In a way, that even negativity can lead, not just to further negativity, but to its opposite.
That negativity can lead us to positivity, to help us to realise our spirituality, and thus help us become more positive, even in that situation, and go further through that situation. So I’ll summarise what I spoke. I spoke about overcoming negative emotions in four parts.
The first was explanation. I talked about how our emotions can disempower us. Like our fuel tank is full, but still the vehicle doesn’t reach its destination, because there’s leakage.
So negative emotions are like internal leakage, which prevents us from functioning normally in life. And I explained the bhagavad-gita’s three-level model of body, mind and soul, to explain where negative emotions come from. This is like the hardware, software and user.
We think the software can become corrupted by viruses. Similarly, our mind can become corrupted by negativities. And the impressions within the mind come from our past experiences.
It’s like if somebody has visited sports.com repeatedly, that comes as auto-complete. So our emotions, we often think that our emotions come from the situation. Because this person spoke rudely, I’m angry.
But our emotions come not just from the situation, that is physical, but also from the impression that is in the mind. And even if we can’t change the situation, once we understand the impression, then we can address that situation. The second was experimentation.
Where I talked about how we did the thought experiment and there’s an inner screen, which is our mind, and there’s an inner shield, which is who we are, the soul. And by this thought experiment, we understand that we are not our mind. We are the observer or possessor of the mind.
Then I talked about evaluation, where even emotions begin with thoughts. So a thought is like a snowpebble at the top of a mountain. And it grows, gaining mass and momentum, then it becomes like an emotion, an obsession, and it’s a destructive action.
So if we can stop it at the top, then we can save ourselves from a lot of trouble. And to stop it at the top, I talked about two senses of the word thought. I got a thought, I’ve given this a lot of thought.
So when certain thoughts pop up within us, either because of the situation or the impression, we may not be able to stop those thoughts from popping up. But we can choose whether we give them our attention. And to not give them our attention, this evaluation is not enough.
We need elevation. This three-level model, the body is level one, the mind is level two, the soul is level three. So by our spiritual practises, we raise our consciousness from level one and two to three.
And there, we experience security internally. No matter what has happened out there, no matter what thoughts are coming in my mind, still, I as a soul am indestructible. And that security can give us the clarity to deal with that emotion and to deal with that situation properly.
And I talked about how this boy would be suicidal earlier by becoming spiritual, was able to completely change the response. What would have been a depressing experience, a second breakup that became an enriching experience because he elevated his consciousness. So similarly for us, when we learn to overcome our negativity, when we learn this four-step analysis, explanation of what is happening, then experimentation, especially evaluation, evaluation, then even if negativities come in our life, at the physical level or the mental level, we can respond to it positively by focussing on our spirituality.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments? Do we have time? In the US, he goes to different continents. So I was just remembering while he was talking, he has some meditation cards also from Pankaj Gita.
So he wrote a beautiful thing, he wrote, just because a thought is persistent, does not make it pertinent. Speaking of these thoughts, he’s very prolific and very eloquent writer, speaker. So you guys can ask some questions, share something.
Do you have a question? Do you want to share something? Just one minute. In the second part, which I’ll be having in half an hour, I’ll speak on overcoming negative emotions. I’ll talk about how we don’t have to, when emotions come, we can go beyond expressing emotions and repressing emotions to processing emotions.
So that’s the second part of this talk. It’ll build on this, but it’ll be a distinct talk in itself. So if any of you have to leave and you want to come back by 12.15? Yeah, I can leave it.
Gary? By the way, we have to thank Gary first for uniting our country families. Lunch, and then we’ll come back for another 45 minutes. Is that right? Yes, but someone had a question.
Okay, thank you. The question I had was, is there a correlation between a charge around an emotion and how we can move energy towards a particular direction? For instance, the one story you talked about where the man had a girlfriend break up with him and he was feeling horrible, but then for six hours he chanted and reached this spiritual height. So does one correlate to the other in any way? Okay.
Does the emotion that we experience, the charge around that emotion, does it correlate with the kind of reaction we may have or we can choose to have? Yeah, yes. Actually, this is largely going to be addressed in my next talk, but I’ll just mention briefly over here that within us is our emotional side and another is our rational side. So certain situations will prompt certain reactions within us.
And depending on how strong that impression is, that is the force of the emotion that will push us in that direction. Going back to the snowball example, if the mountain is filled with snow and it’s a very steep cliff, the snow will raise down very fast. If there’s not much snow and the mountain is also gently sloping, it will be much slower.
So say if somebody is a drug addict. Now somebody might just have taken drugs a few times and somebody offers them a drug at a certain point in time, they won’t take it. Some desire may come up.
But if somebody is a very compulsive drug addict, then as soon as they see a drug, the desire completely dominates them. So the force of the impression that determines the strength of the impression that determines the strength of the emotion. The deeper the impression, that means the more a person is in touch with that in the past, the deeper the impression has become, the greater becomes the force with which that emotion comes.
And when that emotion comes forcefully, at that time, if we can distance ourselves from it, this is coming only from my impressions, this doesn’t mean I have to act, no matter how strongly I feel about it right now, then we can change our reaction. Rather than just getting carried away by it, we can respond more healthily. So the negative response depends on what kind of negative impressions are there within us.
The positive also depends on what kind of positive impressions are there within us. So for this boy, because he had been doing kirtan for some time, because he had developed a taste for the kirtan, that is why when this situation happened, the negative impression came within him. He has closed his room, he went to his door, he closed it.
Somebody might think that he is doing this so that he can just end his life. But the negative emotion came within him. But the positive spiritual impressions were also there.
And they prompted a different reaction. So he chose that positive. So that capacity, for all of us, there will be negative impressions and there will be positive impressions.
And depending on how strong the impression is, the force will be there correspondingly. So if we don’t know in the future what negative situations are going to come in our life, what negative impressions are going to pop up. But right now, what we can do is create more spiritual impressions.
So by coming for spiritual get-togethers like this, this also creates an impression like this. This is also a way to experience a deeper aspect of life. To go deep within oneself.
So when we create such impressions within ourselves, they help us to deal with they will stimulate a positive response within us, even when that negative response is there. And the deeper the positive impressions, the more the likelihood that we will choose the positive response. Does it answer your question? Yeah, I mean, I guess I’m just wondering… The deeper the impression, the stronger the emotion.
The stronger the emotion and then a healthier way of being will also be amplified. Yes, that’s true. So, thank you very much.