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The last few weeks I have invited you to consider something which is extremely hard to “see.” Today will be much easier. Remember, our goal is to learn how the human machine is designed, and then use this divine architecture to incrementally and permanently transform of our lives.

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Emotions are everywhere. Despite the common assumption that women are “more emotional” than men, the truth is they are not. What is true is that women express their emotions with far greater ease than men. Men tend to be more stoic and controlled, but they are just as susceptible to emotional fluctuations and distress. It’s my opinion that as women have taken leadership roles in education, psychology, news, government, and aspects of business, that they have influenced our culture to embrace emotions as indicators of reality.

They are not.

All emotion distorts reality. No emotion is safe enough that we can give ourselves to it. Modern society considers emotions to be seat of truth. Younger generations have grown up hearing that emotions are valid and should be expressed, and suppressing them is unhealthy. Our world no lives on eggshells as it protects the feelings of others. The data shows that the focus on emotions has made us worse.

Emotional problems are accelerating. Since 2009, emotional distress (anxiety, anger, depression, sadness, loneliness, drug use, etc…) increased from 24% to 31% globally. This coincides with society’s wholesale adoption of psychology and psychopharmacology. My conclusion is that we’ve normalized medicating our emotions, instead of training ourselves to become free from emotional distortions of reality.

Emotions are surface level reactions which germinate from a deeper part of our architecture known as the affections. Affections are “soul level” affinities, desires, or longings which trigger our emotions. For example, we each have the affection for acceptance, validation, or approval. When an institution, tribe, family, group, or person accepts us for any reason, we feel positive emotions. If instead these reject or marginalize us, we feel negative emotions.

Thus, our emotions reveal to us our deeper affections.

The key to lasting transformation is gaining the skill to see this internal process in real time, which is known as insight.

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” (Proverbs 4:7)

Everyone over reacts emotionally at some point. People who “blow up” or “breakdown” or “go into their hole” are examples of people living NOT from their emotions, but from their affections. Tell a “hot head” to calm down, or a “hider” to show up and things get immediately worse because they already know they’re not in control. When we try to change, stifle, stop, or minimize our emotions, we usually fail, because we’re intervening too late in the process. By the time our emotions are inflamed, it’s often too late.

Emotions are managed in the affections.

The affections are managed in the intellect.

The intellect is managed in our foundational truth assumption.

See how this all stitches together, and why insight is so vital? This is why I’m steering you toward the practice of contemplation and stillness. Once you begin to observe the “thinker” within your mind, you can recapture where you place your attention…and this is the key…READY?

Wherever you place your attention, your affections follow.

Contemplation is the experience of being, specifically the Being of God, in and as our own life. The existence of God is forever giving existence away, experienced as our existence. This wordless prayer, this Cloud of Unknowing (click link for book) is the Ground of awareness before it splits into subject or object. Religions all make God into the subject or object of our consciousness, but contemplation as Meister Eckart frames it, reveals that God is not what consciousness knows, but what consciousness IS.

Our emotional distress is thus our mind untethered from conscious existence. Emotional dysfunction isn’t caused by neurotransmitters, trauma, or family…but blindness to the truth of existence. Emotions are an ungrounded mind which places attention on every fleeting, noisy, distraction of life.

I remember first practicing stillness in 2015 at the Living School. I hated it. My overactive, theologically focused mind protested and diminished this “worthless” practice. I remember sitting in the back because the twenty minute “sits” made me so anxious, nervous, and fidgety, that I often extracted myself from the room. What if we don’t have ADHD, anxiety, depression, anger, sadness, (which have nearly doubled since 2009), but instead have trained ourselves that stillness is boring, empty, or fruitless? Wouldn’t every strategy of regaining oneself be another acceptable distraction?

The test of this is obvious. Can we can take five minutes and stare into the gaze of Ultimate Reality? Why would we avoid a quiet place, a humble inner posture, or inner bow? Why do we fill silence with our words?

Observe how silence reverberates with thoughts. Don’t go with any of them. Let each go and return to Presence. Our affections and emotions wait immediately behind our thoughts, waiting to pounce. Keep returning to the longest five minutes of silence. Pick a word to bring yourself back to center after you drift. My words are: “Father” or “Please”. Practice this as often as you can, until you can sit with no intrusions for five minutes. This is the skill of catching your reactive mind and preventing downstream emotional distress. Fighting our emotions is how we remain lost within them. Instead, let’s place our attention upon our “Being in God” and our emotions will obey without effort. We’ll soon join the Psalmist: “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” (Psalm 84:10)

Affections follow attention.

Some may ask: “Why do I need wordless prayer? Why can’t I just place my attention on something healthier for me?” You can, and many coaches do just that. But it will only be another distraction from Reality. The only way to know yourself and thus what you truly want, is time with your Maker. Only by applying ourselves to the discovery within our silence, will we become authentic and begin living the life we’ve always intuited.

This isn’t just head knowledge, it’s experiential knowledge. It’s gaining true consciousness of ourselves. This is true self awareness…true insight…and this experiential knowledge will rewrite everything you understood as reality. Our transformation will last so long as we don’t break faith with our awakened hearts.