After having navigated through the Emoenergetica’s cosmology in previous chapters, it is time to start what will be the most voluminous part of this work: the neoshamanic psychology in the domain of Emoenergetica. We are going to look at and study emotions and the human mind from a very different perspective. I will try to connect this vision with the context and the world of today, with these times in which we happen to be living. It is necessary to remember that all this material is dedicated to the modern seekers of consciousness, to those warriors who try to balance their life within society with a real spiritual path. Because of this, and because of the current modality, I believe that it is necessary to have systems through which the spiritual aspirant not only cultivates their faith, but also learns and understands from an intellectual point of view. However, neither faith nor understanding is sufficient in and of itself, given that discipline and practice are essential. I will therefore take this teaching into a practical framework later on through the chapters dedicated to meditation, relaxation, introspection and recapitulation.
In order to begin with emotions, we first need to talk about the mind. For practical reasons, we can say that we are formed by three major structures: the physical body, the mind-psyche and the energetic body. I have earlier referred to the set of these three systems as the individual matrix.
The word 'psyche' comes from ancient Greece and meant soul (that which is attached to the body during life and which is detached from it at the time of death). Later, its usage became less spiritual and the term was assigned to the set of phenomena that, in general, are related to the human mind. Even today, referring to the mind-psyche has its difficulties, since it is a rather vague and elusive term in regards to its meaning. One of the definitions drawn from conventional psychology says that the mind is a set of functions that emanate from the brain but are not the brain. Obviously, this is an insufficient definition.
In Emoenergetica, the mind is one of the three principal structures of the individual (along with the two bodies) having its framework at the assemblage point. A basic part of the assemblage point is the emotional core. This is a system formed by the six fundamental emotions (joy, fear, sadness, motive force, love and recreation) and the 18 channels through which they relate to each other. Each of these emotions is endowed with its own structure, as well as precise properties and functions that emerge from the six great levels of tonalic organization present in Creation and in all its parts: expansion, entropy, fragmentation, contraction, cohesion and symmetry. Each of the six core emotions is, in turn, connected and fed back again into each of the six senses (including language) and vice versa. The senses are organized in the sensory nucleus, which is also a fundamental part of the assemblage point. The senses give us information about some of the characteristics present in the universe in which we live, while emotions organize, intensify and unify this sensory information, thereby creating an experience that integrates the individual with their body and with the environment in which they are situated. Personality, attention, sense of identity, memory, rational thought, imagination, creativity and other cognitive and psycho-emotional functions would be some of the products resulting from the combined work carried out at the assemblage point by both the emotional and sensory cores. These two nuclei also underpin and shape the explanation of the individual world, and participate in the explanation of the collective world, which in turn is part of the first ring of power, the dominant interpretive system in the attentional bubble or collective consensus in which we find ourselves.
As with any structure-system, the functioning of the individual emotional core and the fulfillment of its natural objectives are conditioned by its capacity to organize itself and to be efficient in the management of its resources and in the capacity to gain or lose energy in its relationship with the environment and with itself.
But, let us digress a moment in order to review some essential concepts that will help us put the mind and emotions in their proper context:
- For Emoenergetica, the genome is an expression of the so-called systems of images. In general, one could say that the systems of images are moulds. An individual's genes are fundamentally located in the tertiary systems of images (remember that the primary system collects the natural laws of the local universe and the secondary system the particular characteristics of the species to which it belongs; the quaternary system corresponds to the explanation of the world and inventory that the individual acquires throughout his or her life). Genes encode programs or instructions, which are a map of how to organize and shape a fundamental part of the individual: their physical body. This, in turn, is the container of the particular sensory and cognitive characteristics of each species (the secondary systems of images). Organic living forms use the genetic code as a means of storing and transmitting information about the forms, functions and learning accumulated through generations (ancestral biological learning). In some way, living beings, in addition to manifesting inherited functions, have a certain potential to continue learning and developing, both automatically and volitively. This potential, in turn, depends to a large extent on the inherited genes. The genome is the precursor of the physical body and at the same time it needs it to exist, develop and reproduce. The physical body is the organic form-structure, the physical automaton, the medium or point of union of everything else, including the mind, while one is alive on this existential plane. The genome is an automaton that possesses a strong replicating impulse, which is manifested through the colossal reproductive instinct present in living beings. This automatism is basically the engine of life and biological evolution. For the genome, the species comes first and the individual second.
- In human beings, the mind is the set of memories and programs that sustain and, in turn, are sustained by the quaternary system of images (explanation of the individual world, inventory and identity) and by the other previous systems of images (primary, secondary and tertiary). The human psyche develops in the individual through the combination of the data of the five senses and the sixth, language, along with the modelling, integration and intensification provided by emotions, plus the selection of objectives, decision making and the feeling of identity.
- The primary function of our mind is to maintain and develop individuality and consciousness throughout life. In theory, for the psyche, the individual is first and the species second. In the fetal and childhood stages, the mind is in its infancy. It needs to develop itself by incorporating and imitating socio-cultural archetypes of the time and place in which we undertake language learning. The human psyche is also nourished by the belief and identification systems coming from parents and other figures (especially adults) present from infancy to post-adolescence and early youth. Currently, in addition to the processes of identification with nearby figures, there is a phenomenon of imitation of identities conveyed by idols or media personalities, with whom there is virtual pseudo-contact by means of the mass media, music, literature, cinema, video games, sports, advertising, the Internet and social networks. The psyche is also nourished by all kinds of intellectual, socio-cultural, creative and emotional learning in order to form the unique whole that is the person.
- The development of the psyche is also conditioned by one of its most fascinating and mysterious functions: decision making. Part of the mind is an automaton and yet the mind is also the container of the selfhood. This latter element is an expression of the nagual in the individual, and is what gives the individual their volitional capacity, the ability to choose, which is part of their innermost nature as an individual being. For this reason, although the selfhood is influenced by the automaton that it has inherited and by all its previous learning and experiences, it is not completely conditioned by these. The room for manoeuvre available to the mind to make decisions other than inertial ones (for which it needs to invest a certain amount of energy) is called the degree of freedom.
- The six senses are channels that extract and distil sensory information from the external world (the environment plus the body) by means of perception. The data obtained are immediately combined, reinterpreted and integrated by the emotions. A small portion of this information becomes conscious (where we "are aware") and a large part is assimilated unconsciously or subliminally (where we "are not aware"). The whole mental structure works together and often without making a clear separation between conscious or unconscious processes. This is one of the reasons why we are sometimes surprised or find it difficult to control our own emotional reactions and feelings. In any case, the result of the perception is dumped in the memory so that the information is manageable and coherent at both the psycho-emotional and the corporeal-biological level, thus becoming part of the internal world, which will react by emitting responses – both towards the exterior and towards the interior. This whole process is mediated by programs belonging to the different systems of images, which transform external information into an individual experience.
- Information is presented to us in our mind, interpreted in different formats such as sensations, sensory representations, pain, pleasure, excitement, fatigue, thoughts, feelings, reactions, behaviour, skills, knowledge, understanding, needs, motivations and sense of identity, among others. As we know, the organs of the senses and consciousness are pre-configured by the genome, organized by the emotional nucleus and enriched or impoverished by the psyche.
- The mind is the inner world, the dwelling place of the observer, so that everything else is the outer world. Astonishingly, the psyche has the ability to observe itself. The inner world is made up of interpretations, thoughts, imaginative creations and reveries in which the senses and emotions can be focused in a similar way as they are in the outer world. When information from the universe reaches the individual matrix, it is instantly distilled by the assemblage point and that distillation usually ends immediately in the inner world. At that moment, a response is produced in the form of a new flow of energy-information that is already processed and interpreted, which is divided into three flows that are directed to three different locations. One of these is dumped towards the environment in the form of some kind of intervention or reaction. Another current is put into the body itself. The third flow is taken out of the inner world and immediately reintegrated back into it, into one's own mind. This manoeuvre results in this information being processed again by the psyche as if it were new external data. As we can observe, this configures an endless feedback mechanism (at least while we are alive) in which the data or nutrition that reaches the individual matrix continuously provokes recurrent processes of assimilation and responses to the outside and the inside that link one moment with the next and connect body, mind and environment. As can be seen, some of the information that seems to come from the external world actually comes from the internal world itself. Hence the importance that thought and belief processes have in our interpretation and manipulation of reality, and even how these processes can influence the body (for example, the placebo effect, or, in a negative sense, the pathological psycho-somatizations or nocebo effect) or the mind itself (through biases and prejudices that lead us away from reality).
- The observed is a mixed state of the external world plus the internal world. The observed is influenced by the observer and the observer by the observed. Individual existence is a mixed state of the observer plus the observed.
- All parts and components within Creation are connected to their environment, and thus to the rest of the universe. Systems, living or inert, can do nothing but receive, transform and emit energy-information to the surroundings. In living beings, these processes are the most complex, varied and dynamic of all those that occur in nature.
- All systems have to be nourished, or at least connected to the environment, and therefore need to incorporate or exchange energy in different formats and intensities. Organic living entities obtain this primary nutrition through processes such as respiration and feeding. However, as human beings with a psyche, we also need a secondary affective-mental-emotional type of nutrition-feedback.
- In the process of existence-relation-perception of a system with its environment, there are only two options: either energy-function-structure is lost (entropy) or energy-function-structure is gained (symmetry). The phenomena of loss and gain of energy-information in living beings are related to the appearance of experiences in the form of pain and pleasure.
- There is an interdependent relationship between the physical body, the psyche, the energetic body and the environment.
And we now return to the emotions and the emotional core. Let us make the abstraction that this organ is an independent entity. Like any system, it would have form-structure, function-content and energy-information. It would constantly be in communication with its environment (the external world and the internal world), absorbing, transforming and emitting energy-information, losing or gaining functional energy, depending on the efficiency with which it functions. If there are many experiences within the individual that are not adequately assimilated by their emotional core (loss of energy and increased entropy and mental and emotional disorganization), then they will undoubtedly have a tendency to make bad decisions; they may live with a growing sense of unease, poor character and frequent conflicts, at least in their inner world. They will also present a significant number of excesses and shortcomings, as well as a need to malign themselves and others. Their social relations will be based on emotional dependence, bribery or blackmail and on sustaining their unfavourable situation, or else they will project it towards their surroundings, in a perverse defensive mechanism in which they will sweep away those who are unable or unwilling to defend themselves. All this will negatively feed back into their psyche through recurrent exposure to bad or distorted experiences that will make achieving a better level of emotional and mental balance increasingly difficult. By contrast, if, throughout life, the experiences that are processed and absorbed by the emotional core have helped the person to develop (increasing his or her energy and symmetry) and the decisions made have been correct, the psychic and mental balance will be enhanced. A particular and growing richness of nuances, a sound capacity for reasoning, as well as a better adaptation to the surroundings and the social environment, and an absence of significant excesses or deficiencies will all be manifested.
All the same, what I have stated in the previous paragraph is not altogether correct. I have observed how there are people who get along very well in their lives and who do not appear to have great emotional disharmonies or a negative relation with their environment. They may even be very successful social figures who are examples to follow in the world in which we live. However, when I do readings of such people, it is extraordinarily difficult for me to find someone who has a developed emotional core, that is to say someone with a high degree of emotional symmetry. Years ago, when I began to have the ability to perform these bioenergetic readings, I was shocked to see how apparently balanced people failed the test completely. Nowadays I understand how this is possible. Obviously, we must first rule out those cases in which the person appears to be very balanced, but then furtively manifests perverse or even criminal or sociopathic behaviour out of sight of their nearest environment. Once these are removed from the equation, I will explain the cases in which the person does not really manifest deviant behaviour, and yet their emotional core is in a very poor state. On the one hand, there is the cave effect. Hardly anyone has ever left the cave in which we live, and so we believe that the shadows we see represent reality, and, at most, we are sometimes able to distinguish between different categories of shadows and mirages, while at other times we are not even able to do this. The other reason is that our psycho-social and educational development is completely focused on the acquisition of sensory, but not emotional, competencies. Many people have succeeded in replacing emotional functions with sensory skills, that is, they are capable of doing valid and complex things, as well as relating to others by manifesting actions through their senses, body and language. I call this development experiential symmetry, the combination of intellectual, social and economic functions. This is why it is so difficult to explain how important it is that we also develop our (truly) emotional side. Later on, in the chapter on emotional symmetry, I will expand on this.
In any case, the emotional core inevitably forms part of the mediating structure between the internal and external processes within the psychological and cognitive realm, and supports the development of the individual and their consciousness during their own lifetime. It starts out immature and also preconfigured with a series of inertias and characteristics: first of all, those of the species, but also with other more particular ones on an individual level, all of which need to be developed through their contact with the external world and through feedback from the internal world itself.
Emoenergetica redefines the emotions in order to overcome the limitations that are present in our culture. Emotions are not the same as feelings, they are something more fundamental. Feelings are intensified by-products of the six core emotions or a combination of them dumped on the senses, especially kinesthesia and language.
In this way, the six core emotions form the emotional core, which, in turn, forms part of the assemblage point, which is the machinery present in the luminous cocoon through which the biological entity becomes the selfhood that is and that exists. The precise description of the processes of interaction between the six core emotions and their phase-shift cycles and control, once understood, offers a new and revolutionary vision. From here on, it is possible to understand the psyche and emotions, no longer as something nebulous, but in a clear and almost mathematical way.
- Joy is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests expansion and continuity.
- Fear is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests discontinuity, limits and entropy.
- Sadness is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests separation, the void, fragmentation and the division of the whole into parts.
- Motive force is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests the contractive aspect, pressure, effort, impulse and reaction.
- Love is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests connectedness and unity.
- Recreation is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests organization, renewal, beauty and symmetry.
The emotional core has the shape of a hexagon whose vertices are occupied by emotions. Joy is situated in the upper vertex. If we move clockwise from joy, we find ourselves with fear and afterwards with sadness. Following this path, in the lower vertex of the hexagon, is the motive force. Then, on the left side, there is love and, above it, recreation. The six emotions are connected with all the others through 15 channels (which in reality are 18). These channels accurately mark how information circulates from one emotion to another under fixed rules. One could also say that emotions form 15 pairs or dualities.
BLUEPRINT OF THE EMOTIONAL CORE:
PAINFUL CORE: FEAR, SADNESS, MOTIVE FORCE.
PLEASUREABLE CORE: LOVE, RECREATION, JOY.
THREE POTENCIES (diagonals):
CREATIVE POWER: SADNESS, RECREATION. Thinking. Learning. Usefulness. Intelligence.
CONSERVATIVE POWER: FEAR, LOVE. Feeling. Protection. Capacity. Will.
TRANSFORMATIVE POWER: JOY, MOTIVE FORCE. Doing. Movement. Power. Intent.
GENERATIVE-INFORMATIVE CYCLE (external hexagon):
JOY shifts towards FEAR.
FEAR shifts towards SADNESS.
SADNESS shifts towards the MOTIVE FORCE.
The MOTIVE FORCE shifts towards LOVE.
LOVE shifts towards RECREATION.
RECREATION shifts towards JOY.
LIMITATIVE-CONTROLLING CYCLES (triangles):
(Gain-Loss-Conservation)
JOY limits SADNESS.
SADNESS limits LOVE.
LOVE limits JOY.
(Generation-Destruction-Movement)
RECREATION limits FEAR.
FEAR limits the MOTIVE FORCE.
The MOTIVE FORCE limits RECREATION.
The generative and limitative cycles (external hexagon and triangles) have a clockwise circulation of energy. Each of the three potencies (diagonals) has two channels, one in each direction since the energy in them can circulate in either direction.
As has already been stated, there are six great bands of core emotional energy on account of the fact that they are the reflection of the Primordial Tonal and its Three Potencies (the Trinity). Creation is composed of clusters of primordial emotions that unify, drive and organize all natural phenomena, and in them the appearance of dual properties is easily observed. The emotional core can evolve through the dynamic balance of its parts by means of a phenomenon called complementarity without dominance, under which dualities, instead of behaving as opposites, behave as complements.
As can be seen from the framework of the emotional core, three of the core emotions are gratifying (pleasure mechanism) and three are painful (pain mechanism). This has enormous philosophical and practical implications, as it means accepting the energetic fact that half of the universe-creation is constructed out of pain. Although all beings experience this extensively throughout their lives, human beings have often tried to deny the universality of pain, considering it only as an experience to be eradicated. However, each of our functions is a microcosmic reflection of the existing macrocosm: as above, it is below; as inside, it is outside. Pain indicates damage, loss and wear. It intensifies blockages and entropy and transforms them into a conscious cognitive experience. Thus it becomes an essential part of the mechanism that stimulates the search for balance and evolution in beings, although often the distortion in emotional symmetry makes the human being suffer and suffer far more than necessary.
The concept of pain in Emoenergetica refers to both physical and emotional pain, as well as to any unpleasant feelings, including those of discomfort or those resulting from work or effort. We can learn to trace effective paths that will take us from recurring painful states (blockages, loss, wear) to those of bliss (connection, renewal, expansion), enriching ourselves over and over again in experiences, knowledge, virtues and energy. In this way the correct vital attitude is developed, one which avoids stagnation when things are easy and defeatism when they are difficult. However, the attempt to eliminate or conceal pain without further ado is a Russian roulette, an action that is sometimes reckless under the false belief or hope that if the pain ends, the problem is solved.
For different reasons, in human beings, it is common for some of the core emotions to be blocked, some in excess, some in deficit and others with reversed polarity (inverted functions). This means that sometimes they will provoke responses that are insufficient, exaggerated, contrary to what they ought to be, out of place, intensity, or out of time. These deformations or losses in the symmetry of the emotional core, as I have already indicated, are partly inherited. They are also strongly influenced during the fetal stage, as the fetus must necessarily respond to the uterine environment (its external world), which is basically the mother. In this period the individual will be in strong contact with the maternal emotional core which, on the one hand, is connected to the collectivized egoic mind of her time, and on the other hand, will almost certainly not have reached the ideal emotional symmetry. This is partly due to the fact that the mother was also once a fetus: she needed to adapt to the world, the emotional core and the mental processes of her own mother in the same way and so on until the beginning of time. I believe that the myth of original sin refers to this phenomenon. We are born with a blemish; our ideal state of emotional symmetry, which is glimpsed for a moment at conception, begins to fade away by the mere fact of living in an environment that is at times hostile, at times overprotective. Such is life, I don't think that it is either good or bad, it is just part of the game.
The individual, at the time of conception, has an innate emotional core, which is the result of the combination of inherited genetic information plus that contained within the ancestral soul that fuses with the embryo in the weeks or months following physical conception. We are a being that inherits an innate emotional core and personality, which, when it comes into contact with the world, becomes a person, who also has no other choice but to create a reflection of themselves, through which they relate to existence. In this realm, the egoic personality takes over and culminates the process of the loss of the original potential symmetry (the departure from paradise, and the loss of communion with the Spirit). The egoic self is sustained through inner dialogue, the explanation of the world, and the feeling of identity (the quaternary system of images). Throughout life, the person will incorporate developments or involutions, depending on the experiences they have lived, on how these are assimilated and on the decisions taken, thus showing their personality toward the outside and at the same time feeding back into it through their own social, interpersonal and individual behaviour, and also through the skills they have set in motion in their relationship with the world and with themselves.
At the risk of becoming somewhat repetitive, it is important to remember that our cognitive process is divided between the external world and the internal world. In turn, each of the two worlds is integrated into the individual through its sensory and emotional dimensions, and these two aspects are finally distributed into conscious and unconscious processes.
The fraction of the psyche formed by the union of consciousness plus personality is what we usually call “I”. The self is the spearhead through which we relate to others and to ourselves. The problem is that the "I" is nothing more than that spearhead, a reflection, a small part of who we are, although it has the capacity to create the sensation-illusion of being almost the only thing that exists, since it is the depository of the feeling of identity. This gives rise to a large number of our conflicts and problems, since the identification processes are sometimes incongruous, unbalanced or simply inefficient.
For the symmetrical balance and development of the emotional core and its by-products, personality and self, it would be important at least to:
- Gather a good number of experiences throughout life that enrich the structure of the emotional core and promote its balance and development, regardless of age.
- Make an effort to sublimate the mechanism of selection of objectives and decision-making. Give up choices and behaviors that are already known from experience to be negative. Address problems as challenges that lead to a greater degree of awareness.
- Give up toxic or excessively dependent relationships.
- Promote the reduction of emotional dependence (need for affection, need for attention and need for support).
- Learn to identify and thereby try to correct the six emotional deviations by modifying one's own behavior: manic patterns, phobic patterns, depressive patterns, addictive patterns, obsessive patterns and compulsive patterns.
- Strengthen the six essential virtues: motivation, prudence, patience, persistence, kindness and temperance.
- To limit in oneself to the pillars of the ego: feeling of superiority, feeling of inferiority, feeling of personal importance and feeling of offense.
- Cultivate the idea that life is a flow of perceptions, reactions and movements. It is necessary to learn to dance elegantly with life and its circumstances, even if it takes time to achieve it.
- Remember time and again (without tension or fear) that we are going to die at any moment.
- To make use of procedures and strategies that serve to unblock the psyche (such as the recapitulation, which will be discussed farther on), and the healing of the energy body (through techniques such as Bioenergetic Resonance) with respect to inheritances or poorly assimilated or toxic-entropic experiences and learning, allowing for the recovery, repair and integration of lost "pieces of oneself" and the refocusing of existential motivations.
- Become an excellent student of life.
- Accompany yourself with good mentors and teachers who understand and manifest in them the principles of Emoenergetica.
We are going to devote the next chapters to deepen in each of the six emotions, going through them separately in order to better understand their individual characteristics and the relationships they have between them.
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Emotions by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.