Counteracting Negative or Inferior Emotions

We need to learn what to do when we have an ego that takes over our Emotional Center. We need to have a contingency plan, so that we can do something to take back control of ourselves. Negative emotions in particular are dangerous not only to ourselves and our physical health, but also have a detrimental effect on others and therefore the world around us. So we must learn how to fight against them and how to combat the Egos which originate them.

.: Listen to the lecture HERE :.

Methods to Counteract Negative Emotions

“Among the Centers that we have in our organism, there is not doubt that THE MOST DIFFICULT TO CONTROL IS THE EMOTIONAL CENTER. Although it may take some work, we can more or less control the Intellectual Center through certain disciplines. The Motor Center is also controllable. One can control the movements of one’s body, you can walk if you want to walk, raise an arm if you want to raise it, or not lift it if you do not want to lift it; wrinkle the brow or not wrinkle it. Thus, all the activities of the Motor Center are under the control of the willpower, but the Emotional Center is terrible: The issue of the NEGATIVE EMOTIONS, feelings and sentiments, etc., turn out to be difficult to control.

In Hinduism, the Emotional Center is compared with an elephant, a crazy elephant: so what do Hindustani people do in order to control it? They place two healthy, sane elephants on both sides of the crazy one (securing them so they will not leave) and then those two (sane elephants) end up teaching the crazy elephant to be sane, and finally the crazy elephant becomes sane.

The Emotional Center is an “elephant”, the Intellect is another “elephant” and the Motor is another “elephant” (the Motor-Instinctive-Sexual Center). These two elephants (the Intellectual and the Motor), have to control the “crazy elephant” of the emotions.

If in one moment we want to explode with emotions of desperation or anguish, that is to say, if we are identify with some Negative Emotion and feel bad, what should we do? We lay on the bed, we relax and we empty the Mind. In relaxing ourselves, we are acting over the Motor Center, because when we relax, we relax the whole body, we loosen all the muscles, all the tension in the organism; we empty the Mind [literally: put the “Mind in blank”], that is to say, we lead the Mind into stillness and silence, and in doing so what happens?

Then the Emotional Center does not have any other option but to calm down a little, to make itself serene and in the end the Intellectual Center and Motor Center dominate the Emotional Center (they are the two “sane elephants” that tame the “crazy elephant”).

It is also possible TO CONTROL THE INFERIOR EMOTIONS THROUGH THE SUPERIOR EMOTIONS. There are many types of Inferior Emotions, (we all know this very well). If a relative dies: We scream, we cry, we are in desperation. Why? Because we do not want to cooperate with the inevitable, and that is the worst of the worst (in the life, we have to LEARN TO COOPERATE WITH THE INEVITABLE).

We do not want to agree with the fact that our loved one is dead, and we scream with anguish and we do not accept it, and even when we are seeing the body in the coffin, we do not want them to appear dead to us, and we do not want to believe it, it is not possible for us that they are dead; and we are the victims of anguish and desperation. All of this is terrible!

How can we dominate this internal state? In two ways:

first, we could use that “pair of elephants” (the Motor Center and the Intellectual Center),to relax the body and to reach the stillness and silence of the Mind.
second: We could switch to a different emotion, a Superior Emotion.

We could do ourselves a favor, in those moments, by listening to the Symphonies of Beethoven, or “The Magic Flute” of Mozart, or submerging ourselves into profound meditation full of superior emotion, reflecting upon the Mysteries of Life and Death.

Then, through a Superior Emotion, we can control the Inferior Emotions and annihilate the pain that the death of a loved one brings.”

– Paraphrase from “The Fire and the Emotional Center”
called “Prodigios y Misterios del Fuego” [Prodigies and Mysteries of the Fire] in Spanish,
which is lecture #106 in El Quinto Evangelio (p.928-941)

An Exercise to Control Anger

“Do you feel irritated or full of anger? Are you nervous? Reflect a little: remember that anger can provoke gastric ulcers. Control anger through breathing: inhale the vital air very slowly (through your nose, keeping your mouth properly closed), mentally counting 1-2-3-4-5-6. Hold the breath mentally counting 1-2-3-4-5-6. Now exhale the breath very slowly through your mouth, mentally counting 1-2-3-4-5-6. Repeat the exercise until your anger subsides.”

– Paraphrase from Ch. 1 of Introduction to Gnosis

Working Against Negative or Inferior Emotions

“The Emotional Center is very interesting, but we have to take hold of the Inferior Emotions, in order to control them, subjugate them, and this is possible by applying the principles of Gnostic Psychology…

The Inferior Emotions are those which are found
• related to bullfighting;
• in most modern movies, plays, and television shows;
• those found at so called great “parties”;
• those of people who win the lottery;
• those from reading articles in the newspaper, or magazines;
• those promoted in the military or pro-war groups,
• Inferior Emotions like those that come [from drinking] tequila,
• Inferior Emotions like those which only serve to strengthen the inhuman psychic aggregates that we carry inside and help to create new ones…

It is necessary to eliminate the Inferior Emotions, and this is possible through Superior Emotions; to learn to live an edifying and essentially dignifying life is fundamental! on the contrary without doing so, no progress of any kind would be possible.”

“When you are assaulted by some negative emotion(s), express yourself in the best possible way in regards to it. If a negative emotion has arrived, if an emotion of envy is consuming us, let us express ourselves concerning it in a harmonious way, not in favor of the envy, but for the well being of others.

If an emotion of anger is shaking us in a given instant, let us speak with extraordinary sweetness and, instead of feeling bad because of what has hurt us, let us speak well of the one that has offended us. In this way we will not be internally injured.

It is not an easy task to express oneself well when one has a negative emotion, but we must strive to do so. If we have an emotion of anger, because someone has upset us, let us speak with love and in favor of the person who has upset us. At the very least we must do this while we eliminate the “aggregates” which have produced the negative emotions, so we will not be hurt.

It is clear that we must not be superficial: we need to eliminate those undesirable psychological elements that have provoked the negative emotions of anger, envy, hatred, lust, pride, etc., in us. Unquestionably, the whole world is being shaken by negative emotions and they are more contagious than bacteria and viruses.”

– Paraphrase from “Alcyone and Negative Emotions”
called “La Agonía de la Tierra en la Era Acuario” [The Agony of the Earth in the Aquarian Era]
which is Lecture #165 in El Quinto Evangelio (p.1432-1441)

Dissolving the Ego with ‘Blue Time’ or ‘Rest Therapeutics’

See this document for an explanation of how to do this.

The Contagiousness of Negative Emotions

“We know that bacteria and viruses can cause many illnesses… Negative emotions are more easily contracted than viruses and bacteria:
• those grumbling people, full of envy, that are bothered at all times;
• those people full of morbid thinking at every moment,
• those who have a ‘persecution complex’, that feel bewitched, who believe that everybody hates them,
are negative and infect individuals and groups.

In our work we isolate those people, and if they do not understand it, if they feel annoyed because of it and believe that we do not love them, they are mistaken. Yes, they are loved, and we only suggest that they try to become positive, sympathetic and magnetic; they receive an opportunity in our studies, but they are isolated in a certain way, because they are dangerous for others. A negative person can negatively infect other people, and if this person gives a lecture, they can infects lots and lots of people (they are more dangerous than the viruses and bacteria).

It is necessary to specify what negative emotions are. If a person is screaming all day long, grumbling and yelling, would they be positive or negative? If a person is into esotericism and feels “bewitched” all the time and their life unfolds in that field, would they be positive or negative? If a person is tremendously lustful and their life processes itself in and around lust; if they see a sexual opportunity in each person of the opposite sex, what could we say about this person? If the glance from another person disturbs them and is enough to make them be lustful every time, what could we think about them?

Obviously, we are dealing with a negative person and that person can infect other people. If a person is always carrying negative emotions from instant to instant, they infect everybody them come in contact with. The angry person that is always “going off” infects others with their anger. A person that always feels persecuted is negative. People like that have to be separated from the groups; people like that do not understand that they are negative, they believe that others do not love them, that they are being persecuted, etc.

Simply put, they are contagious people that impede the profound internal development of their Being (which is serious). We should never get carried away by the negative emotions. When a negative emotion shakes us, it is worthwhile for us to recognize what kind of psychological aggregate has produced it and then, after we have observed the aggregate in action, submit it to the technique of meditate in order to disintegrate it.”

Negative Emotions make us Liars

“What is most serious about all of this is that the negative emotions turn us into liars. The lie produces a mistaken connection with our own Divinity, because the energy of the Ancient of Days (the Being of the Being), that flows harmoniously through the 10 Sephiroth of the Hebrew Kabbalah, to finally reach the kingdom of Malkuth (the psycho-physical person), this energy becomes misconnected and produces an intentional dislocation or disconnection of the mind, and as a consequence of it, the lie appears.

Negative emotions make us into slanderers and liars, both consciously and unconsciously. In either case, it is a negative connection of the mind with the Superior Centers of the Being, which produces a dislocation between the mind and the Superior Centers of the Being.

One must tell the truth, at any cost; to say the truth and only the truth. This is the crude reality of facts!

Negative emotions turn people into liars, and the Karma of the liar is the monstrosity. The children that are born with two heads or deformed, have incorrectly connected themselves with the Superior Centers of the Being. As a consequence of it, they come into existence with a deformed body (and this is a result of the lie).”

Remember that the Ego itself is a lie!

“So, we must pay much attention to this aspect as a manifestation of the negative emotions.”

What are Negative Emotions?

“So what are “Negative Emotions”? Gnostic Psychology uses the term “negative emotions” for all the expressions of the “I’s” located in the inferior emotional center and controlling it, such as fear, jealousy, self-pity, self-consideration, anger, boredom, untrustworthiness in oneself and in others, etc.

We usually accept negative emotions as something completely “natural” and “necessary” and people also frequently call it “sincerity”. Of course, these emotions are unnecessary and unnatural, and have nothing to do with sincerity; they are simply a sign of weakness, a sign of the egoic condition and the inability to learn how to receive the unpleasant manifestations of our fellow man with pleasure.”

To be sincere with ourselves would be to recognize that we have “I’s” controlling the emotional center, and not allow those “I’s” to express themselves through us.

“In Gnostic Psychology, there is a saying in regards the struggle against the negative emotions: “If we want to transform ourselves radically, we need to sacrifice our own suffering”.”

Right now we are suffering, but we do not realize it because we a so accustomed to it and consider it normal and natural.

“The so called “modern art”: theater, drama, soap-operas, magazines, etc., are based on these negative emotions that cause so much harm to humanity. With the negative emotions the “I”, the ego, the myself, fortifies itself obstructing all the possibilities of inner development. It is clear that we have to review our behavior everyday, we must become more reflexive, more careful with our critical judgments, but especially: we must be more attentive to our negative emotions.

In the field of psychology, we find a lot of disorders among people; everybody is dragged by their negative emotions, and this is really serious. There is nothing more harmful for profound internal development than negative emotions.”

– Paraphrase from the Prologue to“The Negative Emotions”
which is an article from American Gnostic Association

Demonstration of the Practice with the Rose for Emotional Pain

See the second page of this document for more information.

The Need to Sacrifice

“Sacrifice is necessary because without sacrifice nothing can be attained. But if there is anything in the world that people do not understand it is the idea of sacrifice. They think they have to sacrifice something that they have. For example, that they must sacrifice ‘faith’, ‘tranquillity,’ ‘health’. They understand this literally. But in reality we do not have either faith, or tranquillity, or health. All these words must be taken in quotation marks.

In actual fact we have to sacrifice only what we imagine we have and which in reality we do not have. We must sacrifice our fantasies. But this is difficult for us, very difficult. It is much easier to sacrifice real things.

Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering. It is also very difficult to sacrifice one’s suffering. A person will renounce any pleasures you like but they will not give up their suffering. We are made in such a way that we are never so much attached to anything as much as we are to our own suffering. And it is necessary for us to be free from suffering. If we are not free from suffering, if we have not sacrificed our suffering, we cannot make progress in this work.”

– Paraphrase from Chapter 13 of In Search of the Miraculous

What is Sacrificing Suffering?

“In order to understand what Sacrificing Suffering is, we must distinguish between Conscious Suffering vs. Mechanical Suffering.

Everyone suffers mechanically. What is mechanical suffering? It is something so intricate, so apparently contradictory, so subtle, and so historically long-standing that it is basically a psychological habit of ours which we do not observe. We do not see its continual, inner, private, petrifying action, like that steady drip of calcium-charged water that builds up those strange pillars between floor and roof in deep caves.

Gnostic Psychology teaches that we all have mechanical suffering and that this is the only thing we have to offer as sacrifice. In order to change, one must sacrifice something. Understand clearly and ask yourself this question: “Can I possibly change if I do not give up something?” This simply means that you cannot change if you wish to continue as the same person.

To change is to become different. If we want to go to Portland, we must give up being in Denver. Now notice carefully what we have to give up. The sacrifice Gnostic Psychology seeks is that of our habitual, mechanical suffering. Of course, people will at this point justify themselves and say they have no such suffering, or that what suffering they have is logical and reasonable.

But notice especially where this teaching begins in regard to what you have to give up. According to Gnostic Psychology one of the greatest obstacles to our internal development is being identified with “Mechanical Suffering”. We must sacrifice our suffering because mechanical suffering leads nowhere. We cannot awaken if we retain this dreadful weight of our mechanical suffering, and continue to nourish it, by a continual process of justifying it.

How can there be justice in a world of sleeping people, of people who are not yet conscious, of people who are governed by their negative emotions and hate? [remember that hate is the opposite of Love]

Now how, when you begin to see your own mechanicalness in your behavior, can you blame others who were equally mechanical? Did you not think that your suffering was caused by those same people who you now see as mechanical? Remember that in such a case you can only forgive, which in the Gospels is called “canceling” the debt. This is possible according to our level of being.

A low level of being forgives no one. It only sees its own merit. And this is certainly a key of how to reach a higher level of being. When, through self-observation and work on yourself, you see more and more clearly that you are as bad as anyone else, then you work to ascend the Ladder of Being which bring us to our Divine Being who forgives all, a thing we cannot even remotely understand while we have all our negative emotions.

Why? Because we all have a low Level of Being, which means we include very little of what we really are in our consciousness, instead we projecting on to others all that we cannot accept as being in ourselves, so we are very quick to insult, judge and condemn.

But as our Consciousness increases we include more and more of who we really are, with an increasing lack of conceit or self-love, until finally we cannot be insulted at all. Nor, then, do we judge. How can we judge others if we realize we are worse than others? At present, of course, we pretend we do not judge and our False Personality imitates every virtue, so that we “look good”. This is a matter we all have to reflect upon.

Gnostic Psychology teaches that mechanical suffering is useless because it leads to nothing, but that conscious suffering leads to inner development. In one of the Ancient Gnostic Books called the Acts of John (which are not included in the ordinary New Testament), there is a passage which says:

If thou hadst known how to suffer, thou wouldest have been able not to suffer.
Learn thou to suffer, and thou shalt be able not to suffer.”

– Paraphrase of Section called ‘Amwell, 6.11.48’ (p.1239-1242) from
Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky – Vol. 4

Conscious or Voluntary Suffering

The Key to understanding what Conscious or Voluntary Suffering is, is to comprehend our present condition and the way to get out of it. Right now we are a Human Organism which has its centers controlled by “I’s” or egos. They make us think, feel and act in almost any way they choose. But we consider ourselves to be those “I’s” and this is the ultimate problem.

In order for us to fight against them, to take back control of our Human Organism, we have to stop doing what the egos or “I’s” push us to do. And this is where the Struggle, the Battle, begins.

When we start to confront ourselves and our habits, we discover that we are comfortable with this or that “I”, it makes sense to us. Making efforts to go against an “I” is a bit painful. Why? Because it is hard to be honest with ourselves as we presently are…

Gurdjieff said:
• “Sincerity is the key to self-knowledge and to be sincere with oneself brings great suffering.”
• and “Sleep is very comfortable, but waking is very bitter.”

Because the truth is that the false personality:
• likes being proud
• likes being greedy
• likes being lustful
• likes being lazy, etc.
Its easier, it is supported by nearly everyone around us (in addition to the mass media), and it also gives an immediate sort of ‘satisfaction’ (although the egos are never really satisfied). So to go against all of this seems absurd, but it is the only way…

To Consciously Suffer is to intentionally do something that goes against what our ego wants simply for the purpose of confronting the “I’s” and not being mechanical. In those moments when we are facing
• our old enemy,
• a deep fear
• an activity we despise, etc.,
we feel the ego fighting in us, thrashing about, trying to control us and make us think, feel or act in its way. This is the suffering: when we ‘taste’ the bitterness of the ego while we work to remain conscious of ourselves and our goal or ultimate purpose.

It is a Conscious Suffering when we intentionally CHOOSE to do this in order to discover ‘who we really are’. To confront ourselves, to recognize that an empty life of being dragged from one extreme to the next is fruitless, to realize that we have spend 15, 20 or 30 years feeding an ego
• that serves no authentic purpose,
• that only makes us a vehicle of pain,
• that does not create anything permanent or real,
is hard to do unless we have an inner ‘longing for change’ (a permanent center of gravity).

– = Read the NEXT PART =-