Taming the Emotions

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers 

within yourself that you have built against it   

-Rumi

They say happiness comes from within. They say it's created there - within. They say it's self-triggered. If we haven't figured out how to trigger the creation of happiness from within, it's only because we don't know where to look. We don't know how to look. They say it's the same for all human emotions, positive and negative. They are all triggered and created within.

Since love is an emotion, its creation must also take place within. Its creation must also be self-triggered. We create it. If that's true, that we create the love we feel, then how much does love depend on the person we are with? On how beautiful they are? On how intelligent? On how successful? Or on the other hand, how much does it depend strictly on us?
20%? 50%? 80? I'm telling you it's closer to 100%.

Months ago I was speaking about romantic relationships with a friend and I told her I was feeling rather peculiar about them. I felt as if it were possible to make any relationship work. Not via the usual route of discussion and compromise, but via regulation of our own emotions, inside. Why do we break off relationships? Because we feel upset, jealous, frustrated, tired, bored, pressured, constrained, insulted, offended. We feel one or more of these (and other) emotions so strongly that we feel we must take action to stop their rampage. But what if we could regulate all of our emotions? What if we could willingly influence their intensity and their frequency? Then perhaps we would never break off relationships. We wouldn't need to. No matter what may come, negative emotions that would normally cause us to flee would dissipate before ever reaching such heights. It's not easy to do, nor have we ever been shown how, but like any skill, it can be learned and trained.

Perhaps then we could spend a little more time sharing with others the love we create within.
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On a personal note, I was lucky to meet someone special recently who inspired me to write this post. Studies are going well. Lots of reading but I am fascinated by all of the material. Topics include social psychology, abnormal psychology, research methods, and emotion. I've been spending a considerable amount of time exploring two thesis ideas. Once they've taken a bit more shape, I'll choose one and share it here.

Big hug to the readers :)