Emotion & Spirituality

stevenmu

Personally, I believe that our conciousness is made up of a combination of our physicall, animal selves and our spiritual selves. Reading the Abortion Is Murder thread on Humanities got me wondering about the nature of emotion and where it fits into this picture. Some 'feelings' such as hunger and pain, naturally come from our animalistic side, but others seem more complicated.

Science seems to be leaning towards claiming all emotions are caused by various chemicals interacting with our nervous systems, and this is a position I can relate to. I had (very) minor surgery earlier this year, on a scale of seriousness it was only a little higher than having a tooth pulled, so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. They didn't tell me before hand though that the local anastethic also had a shot of adrenaline thrown in, so I found myself in the unusuall position of still feeling quite relaxed, but a little puzzled as to why my body was so terrified it wanted to get up and jump out window. I've also on occasion fallen in 'love' from a combination of too much alcohol, and too much testosterone. Apparently several narcotics invoke feelings of euphoria and/or love. Having done some cross-country running and weights training, I'm pretty familiar with the 'runners high' the endorphines they generate can give us. So there is certainly some truth to claims that chemicals do influence emotions.

In addition to this, some belief systems indicate that we should strive to seperate or distance ourselves from our emotions, claiming emotions are a product of ego, our sense of self which equates, to me anyway, with our physical/animal self.

On the other hand, I have felt emotion stronger than mentioned above and in ways that felt much 'deeper'. I have (unfortunatly rarely) felt love much stronger and deeper than anything a combination of alcohol and hormones could produce. I have felt fear that chilled me to the bone, despite there not being any sense of physical danger, and I have felt joyous happyness and deep sadness which were associated with events distant from me, not how much excersise I'd done, or how much chocolate I'd eaten.

Again in addition to this some belief systems all teach that emotion is a thing to be embraced, in particular the good ones like love. I think the idea in general is that even more than our bodies, our emotions are a gift from God and are part of what make us closer to him (or her) than the animals.

Naturally, being a guy, the whole topic is very confusing to me
What do others think ?

Dades

I lean very much toward a physical self only. Thus the emotions are, as you suggest, part of a chemical process that goes on within our bodies. I know on the surface this seems to dehumanise our life experiences, but it doesn't have to be.

Accepting that we are a bag of bones with crazy chemical reactions doesn't mean we can't enjoy them. We enjoy a few pints even though we know the buzz is artificially induced. So why not enjoy our "natuarally" produced chemical reations (i.e life) similarly. Nihilists miss out through over-analysis.

I would imagine knowledge of the "emotions" of animals would give an interesting slant to this topic. It's not something I know much about though.

scorptech

Hi, Anyone know where the development circle forum has moved to. My search facility is disabled??

Ta

stevenmu

This one ?. It's half way down the page

wexhun

Yes I agree I am coming round to the fact that we are as you say a bag of bones and a series of chemical reactions. Having suffered from fairly debilitating depression in the past and having undergone sucsessful treatment with medication to correct the balance of chemicals in my brain I do beleive that there is no 'God' as such.

stevenmu

Sorry, forgot all about coming back to this

The Athiest wrote:

Nihilists miss out through over-analysis.

I agree, but then analysis can be fun in it's own right as long as it doesn't take over.

The Atheist wrote:

I lean very much toward a physical self only. Thus the emotions are, as you suggest, part of a chemical process that goes on within our bodies. I know on the surface this seems to dehumanise our life experiences, but it doesn't have to be.

Accepting that we are a bag of bones with crazy chemical reactions doesn't mean we can't enjoy them. We enjoy a few pints even though we know the buzz is artificially induced. So why not enjoy our "natuarally" produced chemical reations (i.e life) similarly.

wexhun wrote:

Yes I agree I am coming round to the fact that we are as you say a bag of bones and a series of chemical reactions. Having suffered from fairly debilitating depression in the past and having undergone sucsessful treatment with medication to correct the balance of chemicals in my brain I do beleive that there is no 'God' as such.

While I easily accept that chemical reactions make up a large part of emotion, I guess maybe I have a sentimental attachment to my feelings, and I'm not quite willing to accept that they're purely the reult of biological processes. I've nothing to strongly back this up but there are some hints.

Depression is a good place to start. I've been lucky enough to never suffer from clinical depression, so I don't know a huge amount about it, but I think it's generally down to biological factors leading to a shortage of seratonin or endorphins being produced. I'm of the impression that sufferers of clinical depression can still feel happy and laugh and generally feel pretty good about things, despite their lack of whatever chemicals, it's just that the the chemical imbalance inevitably leads to them feeling depressed again shortly afterwards.

Even with the close link between emotion and chemistry, it's hard to say conclusively which effect causes the other. There are many emotional 'triggers' in everyday life which generate emotional responses, which I can't see any biological or evolutionary reason for them to cause a chemical change in us. Most of us are immune to anything we see on TV these days, but many people react with great sadness to images of war, famine or other disasters we see in the news. These images and the scenes they portray generally hold no threat or danger to us, and yet they still cause strong emotional responses. Also, altough much less often because it doesn't create as much ratings, good news, such as people surviving near tragedys, or overcoming amazing odds often make us feel happy, even though we personnally don't stand to gain anything.

Especially in strong emotional events in our life, the emotional response can strongly outweigh the biological impact of the event linked to it. When a close friend or family member dies, except for children whose safety and development is threatened, the physical consequences are very very small and insignifigant compared to the emotional ones.

I guess the reason I'm so interested in this is because if emotion isn't completely caused by chemical processes, than it must be part of our spiritual selves, so understanding it better can help to better understand what spirit or soul if any we have. I know it's something people have been trying to figure out forever, but it can't hurt to thrash it out here anyway.

tj-music.com

The Atheist wrote:

I would imagine knowledge of the "emotions" of animals would give an interesting slant to this topic. It's not something I know much about though.

I am a Reiki practicioner and also do a diploma in holistic animal healing and got to know animals and their feelings a bit better now. It is quite interesting to see that animals know what is good for them. If they feast on their pray in the wild the always go to where the nutrients are first and if they have an upset stomach they seek out exactly the trees and plants that consist of the ingredients they need to cure them meaning that they are indeed very wise beings and that there seems to be a knowledge of surviving skills to be handed down to them.

It is also very interesting to see that companion animals, especially dogs, often act like a mirror, they even develop symptoms of sickness and disease later to be found in their owner as if they are trying to warn us and show us "the way".

Domestication has its pros and cons - on the one hand one can more easily study animals and get to knoe them better by being part of the pack and on the other hand side animals in a domestic situation do depend a lot on their owner and loose some of their skills.

joseph dawton

This brings us to asking where does the soul fit in. Without the spark of life we are just a bag of flesh and bones, where does the soul reside? Obviously we think and feel with our heads but our emotions are linked to our physical and mental and spiritual condition.

All these things are connected, any holistc treatment such as accupunture or reiki works on this basis and anyone who's been treated successfully with these woudl recognise that they work in a symbiotic way on many levels. Modern western thought since Decartes has attempted to rationlise human existence but I believe that we cannot separate our emotional life from our physical and mental well being, if we try and do that it leads to stress related illness or depression - very much diseases of the modern world caused by fragmented ways of living and working that are detached from nature and the emotional areas of life.

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