Basic, not base emotions

Often, I muse upon the subtleties between enthusiasm and optimism; risk taking and impulse, self-sacrificing and altruism, and so on. These are fascinating areas of thought, and inferences from a similar behavior may trace back to different origins. E.g. who do you think is more of a risk taker - the cricketer Sehwag, or Virat Kohli? Who is more of the impulsive businessperson - Richard Branson or Vijay Mallya?

If seen from a more coarse, or meta-level, what may be the basic emotions we experience as humans? I am left with what Master Richard McHugh taught us years ago. He said there are four basic forms that emotions take. Our brains are capable of focussing on finite chunks of emotion in given time, and as such, may not process each with similar vitality or intensity in the same moment. Yet, when distilled, there are 4 basic emotions to deal with as below.

1.       Joy – where celebration and the general word happiness exist. This may not be an absence of grief, but surely the discovery of meaning is a great contender here. 

      For me meaningfulness is an necessary reframing of grief at times, as the travails of nature hold up gifts through experiences of suffering.

2.       Grief – where the helplessness in loss pervades, and stymies the senses accordingly to a near foreclosure of options. It is grieving during separation, or death of a loved one that calls for a spirited appraisal of emotional investment. Grief is a coming to terms with nature’s cycles when ends are a renewal or a rebirth of life-forms.

3.       Anger – where not being able to get what one wanted is asserted in varying levels of intensity. Unlike grief, it is a contacting emotion, as the aim one can benefit from in the case of anger is a deepening of one’s relationship with the other with whom we are angry.

4.       Sex – and this is the counter-intuitive emotion. Sex is a procreating drive for most, but it is a life-assertive energy that when repressed causes more ill – physical, social and emotional, than we are willing to admit. Sex as bodily differentiation in gender and unity of species as life-form is slow but essential realization. Deep respect can only ensue from traversing the deep masculine, shallow masculine, and deep feminine and shallow feminine aspects of sexual identity in the same body. It is about tuning in to one’s body and its creative forces. It is also about understanding that repressed from civil discourse, we often confuse this with love – which, in fact is a decision, and more than a fundamental emotion.

Having made mention, it is useful to be clear about love. Love is a decision to give in conscious awareness all of oneself to oneself, and to others who may share in spirit, social relationship or ideology. In this sense, love is not a free flowing emotion. It is not an object of manipulation either. As Osho Rajneesh once mentioned, it is psychologically impossible to love another without loving oneself. Self-acceptance and self-improvement are both components of self-esteem, and impoverishing either reduces the chances of loving others.

Loving others as oneself, therefore is a whole new meaning - a joy to live into!

What do you think?