Teachings,+Sith+assignment+III

Sith Assignment III
(By Miles)

Anger, Hate, Happiness, Love: extremes of emotion both positive and negative. It could be said that the four are the four pillars of the emotional experience, though I would personally replace Hate with Sorrow, and Happiness with Joy.

All emotions have power. Emotions, being the perception of our natural primal impulses, often activating very physically and chemically various areas of our bodies, allow for us to perceive a world with a vision beyond the rational, a world with great potential for not only a mental satisfaction with our life, but an emotional and physical satisfaction as well.

Anger is often the result of frustration or fear. To understand Anger one must understand its origin. Understand the frustration or fear and you can defuse or embellish it at will. Anger sets in motion the single focus hunting mind of our ancestors. It brings into focus our intent and desires to exercise our will. It can also increase our focus so tightly that we become blind to all else. Anger when held within, unresolved, is a fire emotion, and will consume us if left too long. Without fuel it will find anything it can to keep itself alive until it leaves nothing but a spirit of ash.

Hate is but a modification of Anger, where the focus takes on a personage or idea. We give it form that we can identify, to target, to destroy. Because of the close relation to Anger many of the same things can be said, and much of the same is true. This is why I prefer Sorrow.

Sorrow is different than Anger, and represents another aspect of our emotional being. Sorrow is the depth of despair that comes from loss or helplessness. We turn inwards and the focus of our attention is within. Sorrow, like water, has unfathomable depths; forever growing colder and darker the deeper one travels. Eventually one freezes, and in the isolation, far away from the surface, one is lost to sorrow. However in the darkness of that isolation one is forced to look at the self with the most critical of mirrors. If one can come out from the depths, they emerge with greater strength having faced the one enemy that we most dread, our nemesis … ourselves.

Happiness, which I will refer to as Joy, is the euphoric state of all being right in the world, and is a supremely mental emotion. We gain great rewards when we experience joy, and are filled with a positivism that is infectious. It is akin to the Air in lightness and whimsy. From one leaf to another we flit, pulling with us all that we brush against. It is a powerful force of inspiration. Joy has little focus, however, and like the breeze, or the dragonfly upon it, pass with surprising speed. And when allowed to overwhelm all, the tempest will rise and destroy all in its path, like a giant child walking through sand castles.

Love is the foundation of all emotion, the one that without, our lives are without purpose. This is the earth of our emotions. It provides the base of stability for our emotional world. It can inspire us to take any action to preserve our love. It stands strong against the world. Without this we are cast adrift into the sea of Sorrow, Swept up in the fires of Anger, or tossed about in our joy. We need the stability to be complete, a place from which to observe all of these. But this is but one aspect, for love can also make us complaisant. We must be mindful not to fall into the slumber that love creates, for we will sleep for a long time, perhaps even the rest of our lives. Love is necessary, but love is not all.

In the end it is our awareness of these emotions that we must continue to pursue, and the experience of life that comes with it. To shun or to suppress these emotions does not resolve them. To suppress anger is to allow it to consume you from within, to suppress sorrow is to drown, to suppress joy is to be made mad by the fairies, and to suppress love is to have no love at all. We must be mindful, aware, and actively engaged in our emotional world, or we will certainly reap the rewards of failure.