Quotes about Emotion

 

Reality can be perceived when emotion is set aside.

I think that perhaps we always fall in love the very first time we see the man of our dreams, even though, at the time, reason may be telling otherwise, and we may fight against that instinct, hoping against hope that we won't win, until there comes a point when we allow ourselves to be vanquished by our feelings...

You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.

Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body's reaction to your mind — or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.

“Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear, and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom.”

From its abstractionist posture, intellectualism typically conveys the impression that it is chiefly or only from passion that rationality can suffer; the folk-wisdom among rationalists is that emotion is the primary pollutant obstructing rational processes. But it is also, and far more pertinently in our age, from apathy that rationality suffers: when people do not care enough to think about received opinions, when they have no inherent drive to dissociate themselves from the dogmas and biases of their age, when their own freedom and the transcendence of the truth mean so little to them that they will not endure the painful task of self-reflection, when the very scale or profundity of problems the modern age has generated invite a defeatist attitude, then indeed it is truer than ever what Kierkegaard wrote a century and a half ago: "What the age needs is passion," not barbaric but sublimated energy. Hegel's truism about history--that "nothing great is ever accomplished without passion"--explains a great deal about our effete culture, our sterile education and stagnant politics. Like Marx and Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Hegel wrote out of a prodigious reservoir of passion that did not in the least prevent them from being critical and rational. In our present era--wracked by a morbid boredom and an unshakeable conviction that there is nothing worth learning and preserving--I believe the lesson is clear. Difficult and risky as it may be, heat as well as light is called for.

A failproof formula for liberation: dare to keep expanding your heart even if you've been justifiably wounded by pain or disappointment. The effort is never wasted.

Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, and that one is prepared in the end, to be defeated, and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.

"Don't look for perfection in me. I want to acknowledge my own imperfection, I want to understand that that is part of the endlessness of my growth.  It’s absolutely useless at this stage in your life, with all of the shit piled up in your closet, to walk around and try to kid yourself about your perfection. Out of the raw material you break down you grow and absorb the energy.  You work yourself from inside out, tearing out, destroying, and finding a sense of nothingness.  That nothingness allows God to come in.  But this somethingness— ego and prejudices and limitations— is your raw material.  If you process and refine it all, you can open consciously.  Otherwise, you will never come to anything that represents yourself...The only thing that can create a oneness inside you is the ability to see more of yourself as you work everyday to open deeper and say, fine,  ‘I’m short tempered,’ or ‘Fine, I’m aggressive,’ or, ‘Fine, I love to make money,’ or, ‘I have no feeling for anybody else.’ Once you recognize you’re all of these things, you’ll finally be able to take a breath and allow these things to open."

Emotion is not meditation. When emotion is finished and one is motionless, then one will be able to meditate

If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even ,you experience them fully and completely You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, "Alright I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight of the soul.

We would never move forward in the face of negative emotion. There are many people who would teach you otherwise. They say, you've got to face fear to get over it. And all they do is desensitize themselves to the point that they get themselves into situations where they have no idea what's going on, and the end of them comes rather abruptly... And then everyone calls them brave.

When awareness is brought to an emotion, power is brought to your life.

If we do not accept our humanness, which frankly always comes with feelings, then we actually bear ourselves down and bring resistance to our own rise to potential.

Decisions that apply meanings to your feelings are the cause of great suffering.

Passion isn't just acceptable to the living, it IS a necessity for the truly living person.

Emotional intelligence also matters. As Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo says, “Above the 99th percentile of intelligence, there is an inverse correlation between leadership and intelligence.” In other words, many exceptionally intelligent leaders try to be the smartest person in the room and impose their views. They don’t get the best out of their people. Leadership is about much more than IQ, and requires you to develop yourself through the mosaic of all your experiences.

I was encouraged from the beginning to see the Earth as the best teacher and in addition was taught the old Gypsy arts of surviving the gaujo [non-Gypsy] world, much of which involved surviving the world outside your door emotionally.

A few weeks ago, one of the senior managers in my group told me about a very difficult critique session he'd had with one of his women employees. He had hired her, with great expectations of an outstanding performance. Instead, she had not adjusted well to her new job, and her performance was lackluster. An appraisal and perhpas a "caring conftontation" were in order.

When he told her she was not doing the job well enough, she began to cry. She knew, she said, she was letting him down, and her own disappointment in herself embarrassed her. Thus she cried.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"What could I do? I felt terrible. I cried too," he said, and I couldn't help thinking about the big-time management consultant and his box of Kleenex.

In my view, that manager demonstrated two things: He cared enough about the work that he was willing to confront someone he had a special interest in, and he cared enough about her to be hurt that she was upset.

But let me make something clear: *I'm not talking about management for and by the wimps.* In fact, I am talking about the most difficult management there is, a management without emotional hiding places.

You just can no longer be the tough guy, and you also can't come on as the impassive, icewater-in-the-veins "cool head." On the other hand, the kindly parent who listens-and-understands-but-does-nothing approach also won't work.

No, in every situation, you must lead with your real self, because if you're going to be on the leading edge of management, you sometimes must be on the emotional edge as well.

In every situation, you must lead with your real self, because if you're going to be on the leading edge of management, you sometimes must be on the emotional edge as well.

Love is not an emotion, it is your very nature. Learn to live in the mystery.

When our knowing exceeds our sensing, we will no longer be deceived by the illusions of our senses.

Feel me.  I am strong and fierce, yet I am soft and gentle.  I have much power, yet I am peaceful and loving.  I can defend myself, yet I remain kind and giving.  Feel who I am.  I have much joy and passion, yet I am not dramatic.  I do not indulge in negative emotions. 

Think with your Heart Feel with your Mind

There is danger for the eye in seeing too clearly, danger for the ear in hearing too sharply and danger to the heart from caring too greatly.

Apart from Love, which is not a human emotion, of all the rest my last words would best read: It's all for the experience.

The human story is both personal and universal. Our personal experiences of pain and joy, grief and despair, may be unique to each of us in the forms they take; yet our capacity to feel grief, fear, loneliness, and rage, as well as delight, intimacy, joy, and ease, are our common bonds as human beings.

Love is the great insulator from every ill which can attack the body. Love is the great balance wheel or spiritual gyroscope which makes it impossible for one to injure his own body by emotions which poison his body.
Every emotion of any nature which is not based upon Love poisons the body and tears every nerve to the extent of the variance of that emotion from the balance which Love alone insulates one from.
He whose emotions are based upon Love commands the light-waves which compose his body. The most virulent pestilence could not touch one who is thus insulated by Love. He who eliminates Love from his thinking, and its consequent emotion, is slave to his body and exposes it to toxic dangers in the measure of his unbalance, and his mind to the ravages of unbalance which lead to insanity.
The principle which governs such variations is electric balance between both opposite pulsations of the heartbeat and their fulcrum from which they spring. All mental and physical illnesses arise from unbalance between these pulsations.