Intention, thought and emotion
Remember, we are trying to expand on our model of self mastery by working up another "triangular outline," this time of universal law. This second triangle is pointed down, the top left angle is named attraction, for the law of attraction, and the top right angle is named intention, for the law of deliberate intent. Summarily, the first can be rendered, like attracts like. The second can be rendered, you get what you want and what you don’t want. You see, the universe reads human intention, human wanting, as deliberate, whether you are conscious of your intent or not. When you produce a thought form, its like you’ve generated a little magnet, and similarly vibrating forms in the universe begin to accumulate to it.
Daskalos, aka Stylianos Ateshlis, is a favorite teacher of mine (who left that body a few years back) from whom I have borrowed much language about these subjects of introspection, intention, and thought forms. You can read about him in the trilogy documenting his way of looking at the world my Kyriakos Markides, or you can listen to tapes of Daskolos himself (if you enjoy thick Greek Cypriot accents, which I do!). Daskalos makes an important distinction for this business of intention when he talks about a thought-emotion vs. an emotion-thought. This distinction can be another way to help you navigate the potential pitfalls and hurdles of conscious intending and the purposeful alignment of your will with the will of the source of all.
As I understand it, we are all commonly generating emotion-thoughts quite unconsciously. The more undisciplined we are in our emotional life, which is to say the more knee-jerk reactive we tend to be, and the more unaware we are of the choices we have put on auto-pilot, the more we are generating emotion-thoughts. In general, emotion-thoughts are the “thought forms” generated by our emotional reactivity, rooted in our “petty time and place personalities.” For an emotion-thought, the thought piece is merely an after-thought. The thought is simply a post-reactive rationalization, justification and reiteration of the primary emotional reaction. This primary emotional reaction is based in fear, anger, lust, greed, desire for control, narcissism, and so on.
So you have an emotional reaction to something, or an emotional attachment arises to something, and then you tailor your subsequent thought processes to justify your reaction to yourself and those around you. You react with emotion and support it with thought. When you do this, you build a little “demon magnet,” to mix metaphors in a big way. In producing the emotion-thought, you energize an intention built up from your own emotional reactivity, and set it loose like the magnet it is, with the power to attract like unto itself, all of which will ultimately come back to roost in you. Daskalos called the forms we generate, whether emotion-thoughts or thought-emotions, “elementals.” We create them constantly out of the energetic components, the “material,” of emotion and thought. They are our legacy, whether consciously formed or not. They are the inheritance which we create for ourselves. Coming from us, they attract like unto themselves, and return to us for more energy, tethered to us as they are, like children who, bent on growing, keep returning from their play for food and water, which we give them. But because our emotion-thoughts are untrained, undisciplined, unruly children, given that they have sprung primarily from emotional reactivity, they are like little demons that return larger than when they left, and often with friends in tow. When we reinforce them through the unconsious repetition of our cycles of emotional reactivity and self justification, they are created anew to return stronger still again.
VERY, VERY often, when from the victim’s perspective it appears that something keeps “happening” to you, you are playing the role of the victim to your very own elemental, an emotion-thought which you yourself have generated unconsciously, returning to you for another boost! This is when a circumstance arises again and again in your life, and you continually refuse to practice some introspection to try and figure out exactly what is your responsibility for the life experience which seems so frustrating or disappointing. You react to it anew, and so charge it up and assure it will come back to haunt you once again. It is an unconscious intention running amock!
The “trick” from the perspective of self mastery in handling these unruly elementals is to recognize, acknowledge, accept, choose and act anew. You need to practice introspection to come to terms with the choices you have made, however unconsciously, and their effects. Put another way, you need to generate a thought-emotion, a counterbalancing elemental, to diffuse the charge and vitality of the one you are intending to overcome. Whereas an emotion-thought is like an undisciplined child, a little “demon magnet,” as I said before, the thought-emotion is not the product of emotional reactivity. Rather it is the fruit of conscious intention. When you consciously intend something, and then purposely charge that intentional thought with emotional energy, you create a different elemental altogether. You create an elemental that is obedient to you, a well behaved angel magnet, as opposed to a naughty and reckless demon magnet.
Another way to think of it is that you generate a habit through the repetition of the new thought which, because it is contrary to the troublesome one, has the effect of diminishing it. Contrary acts dissolve a habit. If you are in the habit of worrying needlessly about things over which you have no control, for instance, constantly imagining all sorts of terrible things happening with a fearful mind, well, you are producing a certain kind of emotion-thought, out of thoughtless habit. If you want, you can consciously choose to think otherwise. You can think, “all will be well, and all manner of things will be well,” and you can spend some moments attempting to actually feel in yourself the good feelings which you feel when all is going well. Now you’ve created a thought-emotion, a consciously intended elemental, which, when repeatedly charged, will actually begin to dissolve the former habit of fretting over nothing. Although one act does not create a new habit, the repetition of the act will. One act, one powerful thought-emotion, can, however, set you on a course for dissolving the old and generating the new. The next time you catch yourself fretting, instead of getting worked up into a lather and charging the emotion-thought as you have in the past, take the opportunity to intentionally generate anew the contrary thought-emotion, the elemental “all will be well,” and give it your emotional juice instead. The new elemental is bound by the same univeral law as the old one, with the difference being, you are happy to see it again when it comes round for an energy refresher. It is your own little angel, out growing in the universe and returning with its accumulations of heavenly treasures, the like-minded vibrations that accumulate to it when it is out and about circulating in the general milieu. It returns strengthened to your advantage, rather than to your frustration. You know what it is, because you created it consciously. As you come to recognize all of your elementals, positive and negative, for what they are--consciously or unconsciously generated emotion-thoughts and thought emotions--you will relinquish the temptation to play the victim to them. You will recognize them and name them and command obedience of them, like stray dogs in need of a master. You can intentionally dissolve the harmful ones, and strengthen the beneficial ones, and create new ones out of your commitment to serve. In so doing you will leave this place better than when you got here!
Daskalos, aka Stylianos Ateshlis, is a favorite teacher of mine (who left that body a few years back) from whom I have borrowed much language about these subjects of introspection, intention, and thought forms. You can read about him in the trilogy documenting his way of looking at the world my Kyriakos Markides, or you can listen to tapes of Daskolos himself (if you enjoy thick Greek Cypriot accents, which I do!). Daskalos makes an important distinction for this business of intention when he talks about a thought-emotion vs. an emotion-thought. This distinction can be another way to help you navigate the potential pitfalls and hurdles of conscious intending and the purposeful alignment of your will with the will of the source of all.
As I understand it, we are all commonly generating emotion-thoughts quite unconsciously. The more undisciplined we are in our emotional life, which is to say the more knee-jerk reactive we tend to be, and the more unaware we are of the choices we have put on auto-pilot, the more we are generating emotion-thoughts. In general, emotion-thoughts are the “thought forms” generated by our emotional reactivity, rooted in our “petty time and place personalities.” For an emotion-thought, the thought piece is merely an after-thought. The thought is simply a post-reactive rationalization, justification and reiteration of the primary emotional reaction. This primary emotional reaction is based in fear, anger, lust, greed, desire for control, narcissism, and so on.
So you have an emotional reaction to something, or an emotional attachment arises to something, and then you tailor your subsequent thought processes to justify your reaction to yourself and those around you. You react with emotion and support it with thought. When you do this, you build a little “demon magnet,” to mix metaphors in a big way. In producing the emotion-thought, you energize an intention built up from your own emotional reactivity, and set it loose like the magnet it is, with the power to attract like unto itself, all of which will ultimately come back to roost in you. Daskalos called the forms we generate, whether emotion-thoughts or thought-emotions, “elementals.” We create them constantly out of the energetic components, the “material,” of emotion and thought. They are our legacy, whether consciously formed or not. They are the inheritance which we create for ourselves. Coming from us, they attract like unto themselves, and return to us for more energy, tethered to us as they are, like children who, bent on growing, keep returning from their play for food and water, which we give them. But because our emotion-thoughts are untrained, undisciplined, unruly children, given that they have sprung primarily from emotional reactivity, they are like little demons that return larger than when they left, and often with friends in tow. When we reinforce them through the unconsious repetition of our cycles of emotional reactivity and self justification, they are created anew to return stronger still again.
VERY, VERY often, when from the victim’s perspective it appears that something keeps “happening” to you, you are playing the role of the victim to your very own elemental, an emotion-thought which you yourself have generated unconsciously, returning to you for another boost! This is when a circumstance arises again and again in your life, and you continually refuse to practice some introspection to try and figure out exactly what is your responsibility for the life experience which seems so frustrating or disappointing. You react to it anew, and so charge it up and assure it will come back to haunt you once again. It is an unconscious intention running amock!
The “trick” from the perspective of self mastery in handling these unruly elementals is to recognize, acknowledge, accept, choose and act anew. You need to practice introspection to come to terms with the choices you have made, however unconsciously, and their effects. Put another way, you need to generate a thought-emotion, a counterbalancing elemental, to diffuse the charge and vitality of the one you are intending to overcome. Whereas an emotion-thought is like an undisciplined child, a little “demon magnet,” as I said before, the thought-emotion is not the product of emotional reactivity. Rather it is the fruit of conscious intention. When you consciously intend something, and then purposely charge that intentional thought with emotional energy, you create a different elemental altogether. You create an elemental that is obedient to you, a well behaved angel magnet, as opposed to a naughty and reckless demon magnet.
Another way to think of it is that you generate a habit through the repetition of the new thought which, because it is contrary to the troublesome one, has the effect of diminishing it. Contrary acts dissolve a habit. If you are in the habit of worrying needlessly about things over which you have no control, for instance, constantly imagining all sorts of terrible things happening with a fearful mind, well, you are producing a certain kind of emotion-thought, out of thoughtless habit. If you want, you can consciously choose to think otherwise. You can think, “all will be well, and all manner of things will be well,” and you can spend some moments attempting to actually feel in yourself the good feelings which you feel when all is going well. Now you’ve created a thought-emotion, a consciously intended elemental, which, when repeatedly charged, will actually begin to dissolve the former habit of fretting over nothing. Although one act does not create a new habit, the repetition of the act will. One act, one powerful thought-emotion, can, however, set you on a course for dissolving the old and generating the new. The next time you catch yourself fretting, instead of getting worked up into a lather and charging the emotion-thought as you have in the past, take the opportunity to intentionally generate anew the contrary thought-emotion, the elemental “all will be well,” and give it your emotional juice instead. The new elemental is bound by the same univeral law as the old one, with the difference being, you are happy to see it again when it comes round for an energy refresher. It is your own little angel, out growing in the universe and returning with its accumulations of heavenly treasures, the like-minded vibrations that accumulate to it when it is out and about circulating in the general milieu. It returns strengthened to your advantage, rather than to your frustration. You know what it is, because you created it consciously. As you come to recognize all of your elementals, positive and negative, for what they are--consciously or unconsciously generated emotion-thoughts and thought emotions--you will relinquish the temptation to play the victim to them. You will recognize them and name them and command obedience of them, like stray dogs in need of a master. You can intentionally dissolve the harmful ones, and strengthen the beneficial ones, and create new ones out of your commitment to serve. In so doing you will leave this place better than when you got here!
posted by Gil :-) at 2:03 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home