Emotion Defined

     The lower three chakras of creativity are commonly associated with our experience of emotion.  When we think of these centers as pure energy, they represent the only two basic emotions that we're capable of in life: love and whatever we think of as its opposite.  As strange as this may sound at first blush, as we'll see below [see the section titled Feelings Defined], this definition shows that the joy, hate, and peace that we may have thought of as emotions in the past are, in fact, the feelings that result from the use of them.

     We've all had experiences of love in our lives.  And because we're all unique, these experiences have been as well.  So when we talk about love's opposite, it can mean different things for different people.  For some, it's the experience of fear; for others, it may be that of hate.  Regardless of what we call it, however, when we get right down to the bare essence of the deepest teachings, love and its opposite are really tow aspects of the same thing, two polarities of the same force: emotion.

     Emotion is the power source that drives us forward in life.  Love or fear is the driving force that propels us through the walls of resistance and catapults us beyond the barriers that keep us from our goals, dreams, and desires.  Just as the power of any engine needs to be harnessed for it to be useful, the power of emotion must be channeled and focused for it to serve us in our lives.  When we don't have clear direction, our emotions can become scattered and chaotic.  We've all known the drama and chaos that often accompanies people who deal with life purely on this basis.

     While these two emotions are a source of power in our lives, clearly this can be a mixed blessing.  Our emotions can serve us, or they can destroy us.  Which experience we have is determined by our ability to harness them and give them direction.  And that's where the power of thought comes in.

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From the book The Spontaneous Healing of Belief--P. 64 & 65
by Gregg Braden
Published by Hay House 2008

Feeling Defined

     A thought without the emotion to fuel it is just a thought--it isn't good, bad, right, or wrong.  By itself, it has little effect on anything and is the imagining of a possibility that remains in the mind: the seed of what could be, suspended in time--harmless, and relatively powerless.

     We call a thought without the emotional fuel that would bring it to life a wish.  While possibly well intentioned, our wishes probably have little effect on our bodies or the world--until we awaken them.

     [W]hen we marry the thoughts in our minds with the power of the emotions that emanate from our lower energy centers, we create feelings.  Thus, a feeling is the union of what we think with the fuel of our love or fear for our thought.  And now we have a definition for feelings and a way to understand how they're different from emotions.

     Of course, while there are only two basic emotions--love and fear--we can experience an infinite number of feelings.  Examples are anger, compassion, rage, jealousy, gratitude, disbelief, and peace, to name only a few.  In engineering terms, they are a vector form of energy.  In other words, they are where the action is and can really get things done!  Our feelings can change the world.

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From the book The Spontaneous Healing of Belief--P. 67 & 68
by Gregg Braden
Published by Hay House 2008

Honoring the Vibe

     We defined feeling as the result of thoughts that are fueled by one of only two possible emotions: love or fear.  What makes belief a special case is that it sometimes seems to happen without any thoughts--at least without any that we're consciously aware of.

     We've all experienced a belief that just seems to "happen" and comes out of nowhere, such as a conviction that we're in the wrong place at the wrong time.  While there may be no obvious reasons for it, we just know that it's definitely there.  And it's usually in our best interest to honor our beliefs in the moment we have them.  Later, in a safe environment, we can look back and explore what may have caused our "inner alarm" to sound.  When we do, it's not uncommon to find that our beliefs have been sparked by something beyond the emotions of love or fear that vreate our typical feelings.  That something is the power of what many people simply call the vibes of body truth, body resonance, or plain resonance.

     In its simplest form, resonance is an exchange of energy between two things.  It's a two-way experience, allowing each  "something" to come into balance with the other.  Resonance plays a huge role in our lives in everything from tuning our televisions and radios to our favorite station, to the unforgettable feeling that we have when another human looks directly into our eyes and says, "I love you."  Oue experience of what we believe is all about resonance between us and the facts with which we're being confronted.

     To get a clear idea of what resonance is, let's look at the example of shared vibration between two guitars placed on opposite sides of the same room.  As the lowest string of either guitar is plucked, the same string on the second instrument will vibrate as if it were the one that was just plucked.  Even though it's on the other side of the room and no one has physically touched it, it's still responding to the first guitar, because they're equal in their ability to share a particular kind of energy.  In this case, the energy is in the form of a wave traveling through space and across the room.

     And this is the same way we experience belief in our lives.

     Rather than two guitars in a room tuned to match one another, we're beings of energy with the capacity to tune our bodies and share particular kinds of energy.  When our thoughts direct our attention to a sight that we see, words that are spoken, or something that we otherwise experience in some way, our physical selves respond to the energy of that experience.  When it resonates with us, we have a body-centered response that tells us that what we have seen or heard is "true"--at least it is for us in that moment.  This is what makes body truth so interesting.

     Whether or not the information or experience is factual isn't what this kind of thruth is all about.  The person experiencing resonance believes that it's true.  And, in that moment, it is true for him or her.  The individual's past experience into what he or she feels in the moment.

     Equally interesting is the fact that the same person can face a similar situation a weel later and find that it no longer resonates with him or her.  Because it doesn't, it's no longer true.  This happens because the individual's filters of perception have changed and the person simply no longer believes as he or she did a week earlier.

     In their experience of body truth, people oftenhave physical sensations that tell them they're resonating with what they've just experienced.  Goose bumps; ringing of the ears; and a visible flushing of the face, upper chest, and arms are common expressions of body truth.

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From the book The Spontaneous Healing of Belief--P. 68 & 69
by Gregg Braden
Published by Hay House 2008