Emotions

[joshrp]

Hi,

Somehow during the course of my browsing through the university library today, the subject of emotions popped into my mind. I find that I have a hard time thinking about emotions, and try not to be affected by them at all. I have had a lot of bad experiences with emotions, my own and other people’s, and I try to keep them from interfering in how I think about things. I think this is a reaction to a lot of the romanticism and sentimentalism that basically tried to rip the mind and creative reason out of all experience and decision making and reduce everything to what makes one “feel” good or bad in the here and now. But of course, I seem to take it to the opposite extreme, focusing mostly on the mind with lack of development of the emotions in accordance with that God given reason I so highly appreciate. I almost severe the two faculties. There is no proportion or harmony or reciprocity between them. I feel angry that there is a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but none to the Divine Mind of Jesus, the Logos, or Creative Reason of God.

First of all, please pray that all people will develop a healthy relationship between their heart and their mind, their reason and their emotions, in their relationship to themselves, to other people, and most importantly to God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Anything you can add that will assist me or other people on this subject please do so.

God bless you all on CAF!
Joshua

 

[Trishie]

Joshua, if you re-read the gospels you will perhaps be struck by how much emotion Jesus experienced and showed, so that cutting yourself lose from human emotion isn’t Christlike, but as you suggest, the important thing is to have them in balance. Jesus is God, truly God and truly man, so if emotion played a healthy part in His life it is right that it should in ours.
We have emotions. We have logic…but keep in mind that every person doesn’t operate with the same logic. Our minds have neither absolute emotion or absolute logic. We can sometime think ours the totally justified emotion, and is the utterly correct logic.
In living as human beings we can’t divorce these functions completely from each other…or heaven help the people we live with!

Regarding holiness

Dear Jesus, please reveal brilliantly to all, that You do not require that individuals need to be regarded as Saints, in order to be Your saints. Assure them that holiness is Your action, not ours!

Let them read the gospels and reflect on what they read, discovering that You were truly human, that you wept, felt pain, joy, and exasperation, “How long do I have to put up with this faithless generation!”) [Mark 9:19]

You became righteously angry [in the Temple]. You were sometimes disappointed, sometimes weary. You who spent so much time teaching and ministering to others, sometimes felt the need to be alone, and the desire to escape a dreadful ordeal (“let this cup pass from me”). [Luke 22:42]

Then in the depths of suffering, You found faith difficult, (“My God, why have You abandoned me?”) [Psalm 22:1] Yet humbly Your cried out “Not my will, Your will be done!” and “Into Your hands I commend my Spirit”.

Why did not the evangelists record Your laughter! How sober of them! However, they do record as Your lyrical delight over little children, (“Blessed are You, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth! You have revealed to little ones, the mysteries of Your Kingdom!” [Matthew 11:25]

Jesus, ask Your people to observe that You lived the ordinary life for about thirty years. If You had not wanted to make such an issue about being vulnerably human, You could have come as a glorious, fully developed human Personage.

Jesus, truly human, truly God, help us to become fully human, fully whole, created as we are in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26)

 

[northernstar]

Hi,

I find that I have a hard time thinking about emotions, and try not to be affected by them at all. I have had a lot of bad experiences with emotions, my own and other people’s, and I try to keep them from interfering in how I think about things. I I feel angry that there is a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but none to the Divine Mind of Jesus, the Logos, or Creative Reason of God.

Joshua

Emotions are the basis of who we are as human. Do WARS start because of logic, no. Do people change because of logic no. Okay, I eat to much, logic would say eat less, but I don’t why because of emotion. Find a job you love - emotion.

It is silly, to think a logical world could exist. We use logic to help us understand others. All very scientific- what if I experience what XyD experiences in life, how would I behave (emotion) how can I relate to and keep the peace. All very emotional.

I hope you get it…we are emotion/logical creatures neither force is better. Pure logic separates us from the other person’s needs, pure emotion pushes us away from the other person’s ability to give.

Adulthood is the balancing your personal needs of times to be emotional and times to be logical.

Jesus’s mind is seen in everything he said, it needs no special devotional to because it would be nothing without - love. Opps, love that is too, emotional. The beauty of being an adult is to have both reason and emotion, for as the bible said, without love are nothing.

I know you are just growing up, Josh but you need to learn to have charity, to use your brain for what intelligence it has, and to show empathy, which is an emotion. Just work on that to understand empathy, and that God for the gift of intelligence.

 

[OneSheep]

Hi,

Somehow during the course of my browsing through the university library today, the subject of emotions popped into my mind. I find that I have a hard time thinking about emotions, and try not to be affected by them at all. I have had a lot of bad experiences with emotions, my own and other people’s, and I try to keep them from interfering in how I think about things.

For me, one avenue of awareness is to really pay attention, and distinguish, which emotion I am feeling at a particular time, and the associated need. I have a list of feelings and needs that I downloaded from the CNVC site (Center for Non-Violent Communication), and I use this list for my own use and when I work with helping teenagers become aware of their emotions and drives. I have found that is very easy to react to emotions, as you allude to above. It is rather automatic, and almost universal, to feel resentment towards our anger, jealousy, desire for more stuff, sex, popularity, power, control, and a bunch of other emotions and drives we share with many other of God’s creatures on this wonderful planet.

We have no choice, upon our birth, to have the capacity to feel all the emotions. We are born with a bunch of needs, which we can certainly control, but we have to deal with. We can accept all our drives and emotions as gifts, or we can resent them (I think it is more natural to resent them, since they come upon us without invitation). When we resent them, we create within ourselves a dualistic mindset, which I think is our default mode. We split aspects of our egos into good and bad categories. I think this actually helps us to keep our emotions in check. Later on, we hopefully learn to accept and see the goodness in all that we are, and allow compassion, rather than self-judgment, be our guiding factor.

Thanks for posting this topic. I have obviously thought a lot about the subject, and I like to write about it. I will pray, thanks for asking.

 

[joshrp]

Thank you for your responses. They are helpful.

 

[Bookcat]

I suggest a study of the section in the Catechism:

Article 5

THE MORALITY OF THE PASSIONS

1762 The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions or feelings he experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it.

I. Passions

1763 The term “passions” belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.

1764 The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man’s heart the source from which the passions spring.40

1765 There are many passions. the most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. the apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.

1766 "To love is to will the good of another."41 All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved.42 Passions "are evil if love is evil and good if it is good."43

II. Passions and Moral Life

1767 In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way."44 It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason.45

1768 Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. the upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.

1769 In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord’s agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude.

1770 Moral perfection consists in man’s being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God."46

IN BRIEF

1771 The term “passions” refers to the affections or the feelings. By his emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil.

1772 The principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness, and anger.

1773 In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite, there is neither moral good nor evil. But insofar as they engage reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them.

1774 Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the virtues or perverted by the vices.

1775 The perfection of the moral good consists in man’s being moved to the good not only by his will but also by his “heart.”

vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P5U.HTM

 

[Bookcat]

By the way…we follow the* Logos*

The Sacred Heart…is his heart.

(but one needs to quickly add that devotion to the Heart of Jesus is of course to his person…and it is not all about emotions…though some “devotions” that some have written may tend that way)

Read Pope Benedict XVI on such. He uses the term Logos all the time for Christ.

(see him for the rich meanings of the term…)

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini_en.html ** et al**

read too: vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

 

[joshrp]

By the way…we follow the* Logos*

The Sacred Heart…is his heart.

(but one needs to quickly add that devotion to the Heart of Jesus is of course to his person…and it is not all about emotions…though some “devotions” that some have written may tend that way)

Read Pope Benedict XVI on such. He uses the term Logos all the time for Christ.

(see him for the rich meanings of the term…)

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini_en.html ** et al**

read too: vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

I love this Pope so much! I’ve read at least 40 of his full length books, as well as all three of his encyclicals and Verbum Domini and Sacramentus Caritatis. I just donated all the books I owned by him (at least 30 of them) to the Catholic Center at my University so that others could read them, as I had read some of them 2 or 3 times. It was the idea of Jesus as the Logos or Creative reasoning Word, that attracted me to the Catholic Church in the first place.

Thank you for quoting the parts of the catechism that talk about this subject. I was surprised that they had a section on this when I looked at your post. I’ve read the CCC about three times straight through and there always seems to be something I missed. That is such a rich and beautiful Church document!

The first reading from yesterdays Sunday liturgy said something like “My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord”. I’m always trying to figure out this.

God bless you again!
Joshua