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The Big Idea: Emotions are transitory data points—like weather—that inform our physiology and can be influenced by changing our internal environment.
Key Highlights:
- The "Enmeshed" Experience: Why you cannot separate your physical sensations from your emotional or mental states.
- Big vs. Subtle Emotions: Why strong emotions like anger act as "blunt force objects" that override subtle feelings like bittersweetness.
- Physiological Correlates: Recognizing how anger puts energy in your limbs (fight or flight) while joy directs it toward the heart and mind.
Mindfulness Minute: When a strong emotion arises, don't judge it as "bad data." Instead, look for where it lives in your body—is it an "itchy" feeling in your hands or an opening in your heart?
Memorable Quote: "No data is bad data... it's just data and you're going to use it to cultivate a process."
Creators and Guests
What is A Mason's Work?
In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.
[00:00] So yesterday we talked about the physiological senses, the body senses, and I'm not trying
[00:07] to make a meaningful distinction because I'm not sure there is one between the emotional
[00:11] experience or the cognitive experience and the physiological one.
[00:15] You know, what your body's feeling and what your emotional states are and what your mind
[00:20] states, they're easy to talk about as separate things, but they're not.
[00:24] And so I'm very clear here that anything that you're going to have experiencing is going
[00:30] to be deeply enmeshed and interconnected.
[00:32] And that's kind of the way it works by design, if you will.
[00:38] And so that said, the same process that you went through perhaps yesterday, hopefully
[00:45] do that kind of body scan where you're figuring out what was actually emerging out of your
[00:50] sense data.
[00:51] Um, you can do the same thing out of your emotional content, uh, and out of your mental
[00:58] content.
[00:59] Uh, and so each of these domains provides rich and nuanced sort of information for you to
[01:05] act upon.
[01:06] The emotional content, uh, is where I want to spend a little bit of time today because,
[01:10] uh, emotions are pretty slippery.
[01:13] Uh, and when I say they're slippery, what I mean to say is very much like, um, uh, trying
[01:21] to grab a cloud, uh, your emotions tend to change the moment you put your finger on what
[01:27] they are.
[01:28] Uh, emotions are very, um, uh, sort of transitory, right?
[01:33] Uh, it's like the weather, uh, emotions change like the weather.
[01:36] And so, uh, when you get a better sense for the emotions that you're experiencing, the
[01:44] moment you kind of seem to have your, you know, handle on it or an understanding of what
[01:48] it is, uh, it tends to shift and change.
[01:51] Uh, there's, um, uh, good news though, that they tend to shift and change in a sort of pattern.
[01:58] Uh, and, and that's something that you're going to discover in your own experience over
[02:02] time.
[02:03] Uh, I can't tell you what your pattern is.
[02:05] I can tell you what mine is, but, uh, that's only of marginal utility, I suppose.
[02:09] So when you look at, uh, what you're experiencing though, those emotions, um, understand, uh, that
[02:17] they have kind of an order, um, uh, of, um, magnitude, right?
[02:24] So, um, each of those, each emotion you have, uh, is going to be, um, perhaps have a certain
[02:32] strength.
[02:32] Okay.
[02:33] The strongest emotions like, um, sadness or shame or anger or love or, uh, joy or elation,
[02:42] um, don't have a ton of, let's say nuance to them.
[02:47] Uh, they're big blunt force objects.
[02:50] Uh, you can't have that emotional volume run through a feeling, uh, that has subtlety
[03:00] to it, like bittersweet, right?
[03:03] Bittersweet is this, uh, for, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it's like a,
[03:07] uh, half sad, half happy melancholy that comes up, uh, for me when I'm feeling sentimental.
[03:13] Uh, so I get this kind of bittersweet sense of, um, you know, how wonderful things were and
[03:19] how much I miss them and how much, you know, that's not happening right now.
[03:23] Um, that emotional, uh, response though, that nuance again, isn't one of the stronger emotions.
[03:30] And what will happen with strong emotions is strong emotions will inform your physiology.
[03:35] So when you are angry, uh, most people, when they're angry, we'll get one of two physiological
[03:41] responses.
[03:42] They'll get, uh, energy in their hands.
[03:44] They'll get a kind of a, a good, um, uh, almost like a, uh, positive itchy feeling almost, uh,
[03:52] in their hands or in their legs.
[03:53] Uh, and that is basically the origin of the fight or flight response.
[03:57] This is the, the organisms under threat in some capacity.
[04:01] Um, I need to either run really fast or I need to start throwing hands.
[04:05] Um, and so that fight or flight turns into that physical experience.
[04:09] Strong emotions like anger tend to do that.
[04:13] Um, other emotions that are strong, like joy and elation, um, don't put, um, don't put energy
[04:22] into the limbs as it were, uh, that puts, they put energy elsewhere into the mind to better
[04:27] record, uh, the process of what's happening, uh, into the heart in an opening and, uh, embracing
[04:33] kind of empathetic kind of way.
[04:35] Um, the, the way these strong emotions feel physiologically, again, varies from person to
[04:43] person.
[04:43] So don't take what I'm telling you as exact gospel for the organism that you're kind of
[04:47] currently running.
[04:48] Um, but when it comes to, uh, your experience, starting to reach into these emotions and
[04:56] understand the physiological correlates and how this informs my bodily experience and how
[05:01] this informs, uh, the way my thoughts operate, uh, is a really important sort of next step
[05:07] to help you get a better control of, again, the process data that you're working with.
[05:13] The other thing that's really important to understand is, um, just like the weather, the,
[05:19] uh, the emotions you're experiencing are a product of the kind of life that you have set
[05:25] up till now.
[05:27] Everything you've built, everything you've done, uh, in the past has led you to these
[05:32] emotions arising and that's okay.
[05:36] If you want to change the overall weather patterns of your environment, the emotional
[05:41] weather patterns of your day-to-day experience, if you want to increase joy, for example, or
[05:46] increase, uh, serenity or any of those kinds of emotional, uh, responses, you need to change
[05:53] the environmental conditions and allow those things to emerge.
[05:56] And that means obviously cognitive work.
[05:58] It probably means some physiological work.
[06:00] It probably means, uh, you know, spending time with your thoughts and going, you know,
[06:04] to the gym or whatever.
[06:05] Um, when you take these pieces and you start to put them together, uh, no data is bad data,
[06:11] right?
[06:11] You may be having a horrible emotional response in any given moment.
[06:15] Um, but it's just data and you're going to use it to cultivate a process that creates
[06:21] better environmental potentials for future emotions to emerge.
[06:26] We'll get into more of this stuff in the weeds as we go.
[06:28] Uh, but that's it.
[06:30] Have a great week.
[06:30] Have a great week.