Do we control our emotions?

I agree with Lausten, it’s all the other stuff, you wrap that insight into, that I believe gets you into your dead end.

How can’t you consider that an answer?

What is it you want to know, what god is thinking?

When it comes to how we deal with, what we know - it seems dang relevant.

That’s the God’s Eye View.

If you enjoy nihilism, guess it makes sense.

But I enjoy having people in my life, even if they can be a pain sometimes; and I have hours in a day filled with chores & activities that help bring satisfaction, job well done and all that; and I have desires that I strive towards.

Life is dynamic and has plenty of meaning to me, which is important to all sorts of people within my larger family groups (that gets complicated, trust me), even if I occasionally think I’m worthless, I still matter to them, so I’d better matter to myself. Of course, none of that matters to the rich or the starving people scattered all over the world - that’s were a healthy respect for relatively is helpful.

Of course, I also discovered something about me, that I suspect is true for many - realizing it feels good to be needed, and to care about others and to help others. I have the feeling that has a genetic/evolutionary aspects to it, meaning it’s not just my imagination, there are also physical aspects to it.

But your “irrelevance” is relative.

Reminds of getting tired of a kid’s questions and defaulting to “because”.
Says everything, says nothing.

Who’s the they? I certainly didn’t. I keep encouraging you to give a real scientist a try:

I don’t agree with all his interpretation, but the man certainly knows his physiology and that’s worth taken into your little mental bank account, to process as you see fit.

I mean you keep complaining about these quacks you’re told to read, well stop reading them (you know garbage in garbage out, and all that) and start digging your intellectual teeth into something with some heft.

Good luck.

Not really, it just tells us that live is programmed to propagate itself. IT doesn’t show that life is an imperative or that we HAVE to live just because it’s programmed in us.

Again, appeal to nature fallacy.

This again isn’t an answer and there isn’t such a thing as the “god’s eye view”.

I also posted a link to what the guy mentioned how you don’t enjoy the people in your life, they don’t make you happy, just like how he mentioned that you just want the feeling when it comes to bonding with people and you can just make the feeling rather than go through the bonding stuff:

Because you have no answer.

Not really, the fact that we make meaning proves everything is meaningless even making meaning.

Okay. Is that supposed to mean something?

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[quote=“inthedarkness, post:142, topic:10660”]
Not really, it just tells us that live is programmed to propagate itself. IT doesn’t show that life is an imperative or that we HAVE to live just because it’s programmed in us.

Therefore it has meaning to all living things, whether they know it or not.

Fundamentally, Hellstrom was correct when he said: "Life must take life in the interest of life itself”.

It’s more to acknowledge the real heart of the issue.

But this is far from the original point. The point was about beliefs being the reason we feel X or Y and that nothing “makes” us mad or not. But that then begs the question of how beliefs “make” us feel stuff. And I never got an answer from him or an explanation of how it works.

More to the point though if nothing “makes” us feel anything then how do we make decisions about what to do? How does one learn about oneself if externals aren’t the cause of emotions? Isn’t it a two way street with beliefs and the things themselves, so wouldn’t it be wrong to say stuff doesn’t make us feel a certain way.

You seem to be right, he knows just enough psychology and Buddhism to write stuff like this but not enough to actually know what he’s talking about.

Yet despite that after reading that I haven’t been able to feel things from doing activities. Every time a feeling comes up his “that’s the lie I want you to catch” comes up.

How do you feel about that?

Bad obviously, I’m not sure what to think or feel. If he says we choose how we feel then I am to blame for feeling bad or getting angry. But then what if someone mistreats me, is it my fault for expecting not to be treated like that? What about if someone “makes me happy”, is that just what I believe about them and not what they do?

Like, I read it over and it doesn’t make sense. How do beliefs cause the feelings? I asked and got no answer. He said he revised it a bit to clear it up but I’m not making another account on there just to check.

All I know is that whenever I asked questions about the stuff I never got an answer. I either was told to skip it, or you just don’t get it, or that you have to believe that you are not the mind for it to make sense. Whatever that means. Though from my experience many of them believe in things that are outright wrong or mistaken.

Like that video where he says the mind creates reality just because sound and color are made by the brain, but that blog you showed me explained this is not exactly true. Color and sound do exist, our experience of them is real, same with smell. It’s just not what we think it is. They said something similar about consciousness being an illusion, it’s not saying it doesn’t exist just that it’s not what we think it is.

Is it obvious? You seem pretty confused about how to feel. You keep going over advice that you say is wrong in some way, but you try it, then say it can’t be, so you have a feeling about it, then get back to asking how to feel.

Go outside. Do something fun. Eat your favorite food, unless you’re on a diet, then don’t, and congratulate yourself for making a good choice. Be yourself.

I can’t be myself, I don’t know who that is. I can’t do something fun because what he says keeps popping up in my head interrupting what I feel.

It doesn’t help that when I try to google stuff about beliefs and emotions it’s usually a bunch of spiritual stuff like this:

When I try to google what a belief is apparently there are different definitions for it but they don’t seem to fit what they mean by belief here. Rather it seems like the academic version of it based on evidence.

Some say emotions affect beliefs and that’s true, none really show how beliefs affect emotions. I’m sure beliefs have an emotional component to them but then where does that come from if beliefs affect emotions? Also how do beliefs do it?

I don’t put any credit into Quora. I was on it for a minute and decided it was crap.

Then you are someone who is struggling to discover who they are. That is a higher state of consciousness than most people on the planet.

Ironically, the thing he tells you not to do, to not let someone else’s words make you feel one way or the other, that’s what you’re doing. Stop googling, just be. Be quiet for 20 minutes in nature and the birds and animals will get used to your presence and you will become part of it.

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Yeah I’ve been learning that after a lot of issues I had with it. Anyone can post on there and the answers usually aren’t good.

More like something since I was a kid. I never really knew what I wanted to do so I just did what people said is “correct” or ought to be done.

Not really. He says that if you start thinking that something makes you X then to catch yourself in the lie and say “that’s a lie”. He’s not saying to not let someone’s words make you feel that way but that to say that is the lie, that it’s really your beliefs system causing it and not them.

I’m not even sure how this is supposed to be reclaiming your power, if anything it’s the opposite. If nothing makes you feel, then how will you know what you want? Why do something if it doesn’t make you happy? Is the death of someone you love not supposed to make you sad?

PS: Animals don’t get used to your presence if you stay quiet for that long, I know…I’ve tried.

Deer hunters and people who sit in duck blinds would disagree.

Below is my favorite meditation. I do it with yoga. It’s about finding the silence in the midst of sound. Listen to the whole thing to get what that means. It includes a lot of silence, giving you time to absorb the words. It takes a bit to get to the part about intuition. I see you have a good intuition about the things you are reading, that they have something not quite right about them. I think you are right. Now, keep in mind I can be wrong. It’s pretty difficult to put this stuff into words. It’s easier to slip back into the attempts to get something out of the very thing you are questioning.

As she says, listening/feeling/sensing is not a “thing”. It’s something you know how to do intuitively; you were born with that. There’s nothing to get. It’s there. Through the meditation and putting it into practice, that need to “get” something collapses. Here’s the kicker though, we can’t make it collapse. If we do, that’s our ego making something happen and congratulating ourselves for doing it.

It seems circular if you are trying to make the words fit some logical pattern like we do with Newtonian physics. Try observing as this meditation suggests.

Well they usually mask their scents among other things.

This seems awfully wooey for CFI.

But listening and feeling and sensing is a thing, it’s not intuitive. People can hear sure but listening and feeling is a skill to develop. The fact that she is guiding you through it all is kinda proof of that. I also doubt we can do it without a brain.

The part I have doubts about is the stuff about subject and object, no me, things like that.

Like there was stillness and my head did quiet, but I don’t see how this is supposed to help. IT seems to run into the same problems I have every time I do meditation like this, I lose all desire to do anything and to want anything. People can’t live like that. Even now it’s effort to just get up and type this.

So what was the point of doing this? To make me into a rock?

I wasn’t talking brains here. Of course you need a brain.

Defining words is such a struggle with you. I can’t see ever getting off of square one.

I’m saying that because people in these meditation circles often say consciousness isn’t the brain or a product of it.

But again what was the point of it. I did it and it did quiet things down but also caused other issues.

Consciousness isn’t the brain!
The body/brain produces consciousness in conjunction with what is happening around us.