The paradigm should not be an unfamiliar one. Many things in life present to us some form of duality. While they are truly but one thing, they appear to bo of two sides, two faces. Though these sides can not exist, one without the other, for they define each other… they create a spectrum. Light and Dark, Good and Evil, Life and death, Fear and Desire. These coins, Illumination, righteousness, Emotions, and many others would have us worry about what side they land on, rather than whether or not they have any value to begin with. Perhaps, each coin should first be measured by its content… before we find ourselves walking around with pockets full of sand dollars.

Emotions, are the language and currency of the ego. An entity defined by fear and desire.  It fears not having what it desires, and desire not to be afraid. It is often in our fears that we find our desires, and in our desires that we find comfort from our fears. But this is little more than perspective, which side of the coin we chose to look at, never seeing the whole of the coin. And so we are deceived by these emotions, deceived into seeing and believing what we need to move forward… until we no longer need to be deceived. Do our emotions come from external sources, since they must be inspired into existence. Or do they come from within, wherein we are our own inspiration. In truth, they are a product of both, such is the way we perceive the world. both through our own fears and desires and through those who play upon them, those who introduce their own fears and desires. The strangeness of emotions is that they cannot exist in complete solitude, when the mind is free even of the thought of an outside world, of other life forms. But even an imagined world can bring them to stir and boil. In this way we can say that all emotions are imagined by ourselves, but we must have some muse to conjure our imagination. A story, a kindness, a gesture of desire, an act of familiarity, there are so many sparks to light the flames of our emotions. Some given, others taken, some personal, some simply observed, but all are the result of knowing the world and the lives that surround us. In this way, emotion are the result of interaction, of engaging with the world… they are the world we chose to see, whether it be through rose colored glasses or muddied waters, it is in our choosing which lenses we wish to see it through. Or maybe we take off the lenses, and see things as they are. For our emotions are but tools, to show us possibilities, or to be used against us. Perhaps it should not be such a difficult thing to set them aside, and use them only with intention. Have they not become just another drug for us to abuse, another distraction to slow our progress. What purpose do they serve if we learn nothing from them, if we are forever reliant on such cruel tides.

For me, this is not such a hard thing. I’m an extremist. Everything is binary… all the way on, or all the way off. When I allow my emotions to surface, it is without restriction. They are given complete freedom, making them practically impossible to hide from others, though I admit I have no desire to hide them. Yet, I cannot imagine a way to experience their un-shamed nakedness, while keeping them from others… as this would be in contradiction. On the other hand, when they are off, I am at peace, unmoved. Though I can sense when they are provoked, and know in what direction they might be expressed, I am not at their mercy or distraction, I am calm, swayed only by reason… and I am content. Even the strongest emotion cause only the subtlest reactions, without my permission, and never are they allowed to influence my actions or decisions. Should such a thing be considered strange, just because it is unusual? Should it be feared or mistrusted, because it is unfamiliar?  Or perhaps, should it be aspired to, that it might become familiar, usual, common place? Perhaps we should start trying to decide what we should be as a species. Maybe it is impossible to find ourselves individually, under the oppression of who we are as a whole. Should we not be more flexible and accepting as a species, more willing to change. Because the future of who we are now, seems not so bright, that we should cling to it, with such might.

In hopes, that we can one day come to live free from our fears… that we might set aside the coin of ego, and be reborn.