Sadness is the core emotion that perceives, memorizes, automates, represents and manifests separation, emptiness, fragmentation and the division of the whole into its different parts.
Along with recreation, sadness is the nuclear emotion with the most number of functions. The combination of both causes the emergence of complexity.
The fractal aspect of reality reflects the nature of sadness, since it is analytical and catabolic, that is, it has the capacity to divide. The fragments it produces are ordered by recreation, endowed with continuity by joy, limited by fear, intensified by the motive force and integrated by love. The result, cognitively speaking, is a set of images or interpretations that are placed in the inner world to form the personal inventory, which is used to construct and sustain the explanation of the world.
Sadness is reflective. A mirror is always devoid of its own content and separated from what it reflects. The images are reflections, replicas, copies and imitations that are removed from reality, but they produce concrete occurrences that living beings can experience. The inventory composed of these images is reinforced through categorizations and conceptualizations that are made, above all, out of words, which are themselves reflections of reality, although they are not reality itself. For human beings, language is the main sustainer of the explanation of the world and, with it, of the collective consensus in which we find ourselves.
Sadness stimulates language in its function of naming things, since words serve to separate one cognitive object from another, one category from the other. In addition, the descriptions or meanings we attach to words are linguistic reflections of the particular characteristics of the objects they represent, so sadness also participates in the elaboration of conceptualizations.
Sadness is evaluative. It knows that the value of anything is directly proportional to the void left by its absence. Thanks to this ability to value, sadness – if it functions properly – knows what is needed and what is not, what brings benefits or what causes loss.
Separation and lack are felt as loss. Sadness is repulsive in nature, because no one wants to lose or to feel empty.
Organization is synthetical and belongs to recreation, unlike evaluation, which is analytical and a function of sadness.
Sadness also knows how to make comparisons based on differences.
Sadness is responsible for the perception of duality by dividing reality into opposite or complementary pairs.
Being the emotion that detects emptiness, sadness feels and anticipates needs and lacks, that is to say, what one does not have – as a result of having lost something or not having achieved it – or, indeed, what might be needed. The feeling of emptiness or loss is intended to create discomfort (pain) so that the system feels the need to regain balance. Nature has a tendency to fill in the gaps. Once the loss or need has been analyzed, sadness looks in the inventory to see if it has a previous strategy or knowledge that will help to resolve the situation. If it does, it sets this in motion, handing over control to the motive force. If not, it instructs the system to develop, seek or acquire new learning by stimulating recreation. Strategies, in essence, are always compensation plans to prevent losses or to meet needs, an attempt to regain or maintain balance and to limit the progression of entropy or disorder. Losses are part of the mechanism that stimulates the ability to adapt and learn. From the point of view of Emoenergetica, evil is what results in losses of symmetry or resources, and good is what promotes the proper conservation of resources and gains in symmetry. From this perspective, there are no possible value judgments, only energetic facts.
Dysadaptation is the result of having lost the opportunity to learn to fill a void symmetrically, or of having been overwhelmed by the challenges arising from it. True adaptation is surmounting the challenges resulting from a particular void, deficiency, or problem. This is, in part, the result of taking advantage of the opportunity to learn, an option that lies behind any difficulty. The learning that results from true adaptation leads to the conquest of a new place, which is more symmetrical with respect to the previous one. In order to be more symmetrical, first of all, one has to become fuller and less empty, but not full of just anything: we need to be imbued with intent, will and intelligence, with consciousness, and also with knowledge, both of the environment in which we live and of ourselves.
Every being comes to this life as an unfinished project, with a particular configuration of voids or puzzles to be solved. If the resolution of these is delayed for too long, there will be new losses and other challenges that will be added to the original ones, thus compounding the number of problems. The resolution, or non-resolution, of the existing problems in the individual matrix leads the being to different places, since existence implies fitting perception into a place that is produced through volitional or decision-making processes that the being is forced to make within the system called life. As we already know, places are the different coordinates of the fractal of possibilities that a living being possesses, called the map of destiny or master matrix. Creation is made up of places, which are actually static frames of potential reality. The force of time is what pushes consciousnesses through places, giving them a sense of reality, of being and of existing, of movement and continuity due to the constant succession of stills, which are perceived through the focus of attention on one or other of the pre-existing possibilities. Each place has been reached from an adjacent place in reverse order to the arrow of time, and in turn is surrounded by an indeterminate number of adjoining places in the direction of the arrow of time. Time pushes, urges and obliges in an inexorable way so that consciousness bound to one place abandons it and chooses the next within the possibilities granted to it.
Time presses the bubbles of consciousness that we are towards a dominant inertial direction, which is the result of the sum of all the previous moments, of the inherited automatisms and of each one of the decisions or volitions that we have taken as luminous cocoons since the beginning of our lives. To let oneself be carried away by inertia is to choose to enter the next place where the least amount of work is required in order for it to be reached. Sometimes, this is not favourable, since evolutionarily superior places often require an extra investment of energy or effort to be reached, and the degree of freedom available must be used efficiently. The day that human beings accept and understand this is the day when they will be the true masters of their destiny.
Sadness is what perceives absences but also potentials, hence its importance when it comes to learning and development, work that is done in synergy with the rest of the emotional core, although especially in collaboration with recreation. The use of pre-existing learning in the individual matrix is controlled by sadness, owing to its ability to choose. Repetition gives the possibility of perfecting skills and abilities. When sadness deems it necessary to develop new learning, it signals this to recreation.
Sadness and recreation are a couple. They form one of the three diagonals of the emotional core. They balance and complement each other, forming the creative power, whose meta-function is intelligence.
Sadness is also responsible for separating the contents of the body and mind (parts of you, up until that moment) that are no longer useful or harmful, and therefore deals with elimination and evacuation.
Sadness manages investments, as it is necessary to invest (lose) in order to develop, to satisfy needs or to compensate for losses (as a consequence, it also manages the spending of money). The result of this compensation, if it is carried out in an effective way, implies an increase in symmetry-knowledge and a decrease in entropy-ignorance. Because of this, the painful nucleus (fear, sadness and motive force) is the driver of development, as it stimulates the need to regain balance, which is lost due to the set of rules inherent in the life system on Earth – which promotes the recurrent appearance of blockages, voids and wear and tear.
Sadness is able to perceive the passage of time through its parts: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and their divisions, past, present and future, likewise perceiving its recursive repetitions and cycles. This is why sadness is also forward-looking. We lose each passing moment forever and yet this allows us to exist in the present, to be and to continue to grow (advance).
Since sadness is the emotion that recognizes loss, it uses fear to detect the lies that are told or that we tell (to ourselves and to the world). Lies are empty of truth and separate from reality.
Gratitude is, to a large extent, dependent on sadness, since it is a form of surrender or compensation (empathetic or practical) to others, usually to balance previous help received, or also as a future investment. There is a deal of confusion on this subject, as it is thought that one gives only out of love. There is no such thing as unconditional love, not in a world made of energy. Once you give and receive, you can care for or unify what you have in common with the other person or group, and this truly is an expression of love and gratitude.
Sadness must take care of love. Love protects what needs to be preserved in order to move forward. A truly wise individual is one whose discernment leads them to recognize what is to be cared for and protected, identifying and discarding what needs to be eliminated, focusing and directing themselves towards what still exists and can be achieved, symmetrizing love and sadness within themselves.
The essential virtue of sadness is patience, since it allows us to endure the resulting emptiness between the moment in which we find ourselves and the moment in which we would like to be.
The energy of sadness is the daughter of fear and the mother of the motive force. Endings are sad, and necessity must trigger movement.
Sadness is controlled by joy and in turn exerts control over love. Continuity limits fragmentation and separation prevents clumping.
The synergy between sadness and recreation is called complexity.
Sadness forms the painful core, along with fear and the motive force.
The emotional deviation of sadness is expressed by depressive patterns, that instead of properly signaling losses, they simply increase them.
Together, perverse sadness and motive power generate anxiety.
In order to maintain itself and to continue, every system needs to spend energy as time goes by, generating movement (working). The movement produced by the motive force's processing unit results in energy expenditure and the appearance of a certain amount of entropy. This brings about the emergence of needs and problems – it is a natural cycle. Faced with a loss of balance, sadness will again assess the situation and choose a previously memorized strategy or ask recreation to develop a new one.
Problems cause more energy to be lost, and needs are those that if not met within a certain time frame become problems. From problems and needs, there arise concerns about past, present and future losses. Worries and deprivations are the third source of suffering. Sadness anticipates, and, consequently focuses on the future. Limiting over-focusing in the future, with priority given to the present, is one way of compensating for an excess of worry.
Sadness is the energy that allows us to accept that living is indissolubly linked to loss. Even Spirit (the infinite abstract consciousness) separates from itself to become concrete through the generation of finite consciousnesses, which emanate within a small fragment of time, which ends in death. Sadness knows how to recognize and accept the loss resulting from the end of things. To accept a loss, one must first renounce the desire for things to be different, which is sad, yet necessary. In this way, we will be able to redirect the energy we have gained to our worries towards the seeking, elaboration and execution of solutions.
Sadness by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.