A Mason's Work

[00:00] So yesterday we talked about the physiological senses, the body senses, and I'm not trying
[00:07] to make a meaningful distinction because I'm not sure there is one between the emotional
[00:11] experience or the cognitive experience and the physiological one.
[00:15] You know, what your body's feeling and what your emotional states are and what your mind
[00:20] states, they're easy to talk about as separate things, but they're not.
[00:24] And so I'm very clear here that anything that you're going to have experiencing is going
[00:30] to be deeply enmeshed and interconnected.
[00:32] And that's kind of the way it works by design, if you will.
[00:38] And so that said, the same process that you went through perhaps yesterday, hopefully
[00:45] do that kind of body scan where you're figuring out what was actually emerging out of your
[00:50] sense data.
[00:51] Um, you can do the same thing out of your emotional content, uh, and out of your mental
[00:58] content.
[00:59] Uh, and so each of these domains provides rich and nuanced sort of information for you to
[01:05] act upon.
[01:06] The emotional content, uh, is where I want to spend a little bit of time today because,
[01:10] uh, emotions are pretty slippery.
[01:13] Uh, and when I say they're slippery, what I mean to say is very much like, um, uh, trying
[01:21] to grab a cloud, uh, your emotions tend to change the moment you put your finger on what
[01:27] they are.
[01:28] Uh, emotions are very, um, uh, sort of transitory, right?
[01:33] Uh, it's like the weather, uh, emotions change like the weather.
[01:36] And so, uh, when you get a better sense for the emotions that you're experiencing, the
[01:44] moment you kind of seem to have your, you know, handle on it or an understanding of what
[01:48] it is, uh, it tends to shift and change.
[01:51] Uh, there's, um, uh, good news though, that they tend to shift and change in a sort of pattern.
[01:58] Uh, and, and that's something that you're going to discover in your own experience over
[02:02] time.
[02:03] Uh, I can't tell you what your pattern is.
[02:05] I can tell you what mine is, but, uh, that's only of marginal utility, I suppose.
[02:09] So when you look at, uh, what you're experiencing though, those emotions, um, understand, uh, that
[02:17] they have kind of an order, um, uh, of, um, magnitude, right?
[02:24] So, um, each of those, each emotion you have, uh, is going to be, um, perhaps have a certain
[02:32] strength.
[02:32] Okay.
[02:33] The strongest emotions like, um, sadness or shame or anger or love or, uh, joy or elation,
[02:42] um, don't have a ton of, let's say nuance to them.
[02:47] Uh, they're big blunt force objects.
[02:50] Uh, you can't have that emotional volume run through a feeling, uh, that has subtlety
[03:00] to it, like bittersweet, right?
[03:03] Bittersweet is this, uh, for, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it's like a,
[03:07] uh, half sad, half happy melancholy that comes up, uh, for me when I'm feeling sentimental.
[03:13] Uh, so I get this kind of bittersweet sense of, um, you know, how wonderful things were and
[03:19] how much I miss them and how much, you know, that's not happening right now.
[03:23] Um, that emotional, uh, response though, that nuance again, isn't one of the stronger emotions.
[03:30] And what will happen with strong emotions is strong emotions will inform your physiology.
[03:35] So when you are angry, uh, most people, when they're angry, we'll get one of two physiological
[03:41] responses.
[03:42] They'll get, uh, energy in their hands.
[03:44] They'll get a kind of a, a good, um, uh, almost like a, uh, positive itchy feeling almost, uh,
[03:52] in their hands or in their legs.
[03:53] Uh, and that is basically the origin of the fight or flight response.
[03:57] This is the, the organisms under threat in some capacity.
[04:01] Um, I need to either run really fast or I need to start throwing hands.
[04:05] Um, and so that fight or flight turns into that physical experience.
[04:09] Strong emotions like anger tend to do that.
[04:13] Um, other emotions that are strong, like joy and elation, um, don't put, um, don't put energy
[04:22] into the limbs as it were, uh, that puts, they put energy elsewhere into the mind to better
[04:27] record, uh, the process of what's happening, uh, into the heart in an opening and, uh, embracing
[04:33] kind of empathetic kind of way.
[04:35] Um, the, the way these strong emotions feel physiologically, again, varies from person to
[04:43] person.
[04:43] So don't take what I'm telling you as exact gospel for the organism that you're kind of
[04:47] currently running.
[04:48] Um, but when it comes to, uh, your experience, starting to reach into these emotions and
[04:56] understand the physiological correlates and how this informs my bodily experience and how
[05:01] this informs, uh, the way my thoughts operate, uh, is a really important sort of next step
[05:07] to help you get a better control of, again, the process data that you're working with.
[05:13] The other thing that's really important to understand is, um, just like the weather, the,
[05:19] uh, the emotions you're experiencing are a product of the kind of life that you have set
[05:25] up till now.
[05:27] Everything you've built, everything you've done, uh, in the past has led you to these
[05:32] emotions arising and that's okay.
[05:36] If you want to change the overall weather patterns of your environment, the emotional
[05:41] weather patterns of your day-to-day experience, if you want to increase joy, for example, or
[05:46] increase, uh, serenity or any of those kinds of emotional, uh, responses, you need to change
[05:53] the environmental conditions and allow those things to emerge.
[05:56] And that means obviously cognitive work.
[05:58] It probably means some physiological work.
[06:00] It probably means, uh, you know, spending time with your thoughts and going, you know,
[06:04] to the gym or whatever.
[06:05] Um, when you take these pieces and you start to put them together, uh, no data is bad data,
[06:11] right?
[06:11] You may be having a horrible emotional response in any given moment.
[06:15] Um, but it's just data and you're going to use it to cultivate a process that creates
[06:21] better environmental potentials for future emotions to emerge.
[06:26] We'll get into more of this stuff in the weeds as we go.
[06:28] Uh, but that's it.
[06:30] Have a great week.
[06:30] Have a great week.