- As short and to the point as i can make the subject that could be stretched into multiple books.
You as a living being experience, comprehend and understand reality with two fundamental main abilities, not just one. You think about reality and you FEEL it. You understand reality intellectually and emotionally at the same time. Always, all the time.
All living beings comprehend and understand reality in these two major ways.
In case of humans those two major ways of comprehending reality have evolved the most and became the most complex of all living beings. But we haven't correctly figured out one of these. The older one. The oldest, primordial, the earliest primary "interface with reality" all living beings have - the physical one. Our emotions.
This oldest ability to understand reality with, that even single cell organisms had in times when life barely started to exist on this planet, was created by our first physical sensations of the environment. Very simple, very, very basic back in those times 3,9 or 4 billion years ago.
All living beings comprehend and understand reality in these two major ways.
In case of humans those two major ways of comprehending reality have evolved the most and became the most complex of all living beings. But we haven't correctly figured out one of these. The older one. The oldest, primordial, the earliest primary "interface with reality" all living beings have - the physical one. Our emotions.
This oldest ability to understand reality with, that even single cell organisms had in times when life barely started to exist on this planet, was created by our first physical sensations of the environment. Very simple, very, very basic back in those times 3,9 or 4 billion years ago.
As living beings became more complex and evolved this ability to physically feel reality of our environment evolved alongside of us.
And it didnt stop only at physical sensations of natural environment.
Those first primordial physical sensations became more complex and evolved into feelings which evolved, became more complex and became - emotions. We are still evolving. We are somewhere in the early middle of our evolution.
When you feel something, you understand something in a different way then your intellect does. Its the other way of comprehending and understanding, not just a chemical or hormonal reaction in your body. The chemicals and the hormones are tools this ability uses, not what it means, what it is. Just like a great song is not the radio waves, or just the "sound", the pressure waves propagating through air or similar medium in specific frequency.
The wind on your skin, in your hair, the smells it brings, the way it moves and embraces you. The way it bites and howls in the winter. The warmth, or heat of the sun, coolness of the rain and thousands of variations any of those make you feel at any time. The feel of her/his skin, and her/his hair, the memory of her/his smile. The yearning, the sadness and the grief. The fear and the bravery. All the disappointments and all the joys. The feel of that perfect jacket, jeans, sneakers or boots in that specific moment. The way your cat or a dog slept on you, the purring vibrating through your skin and bones, the fur under your fingers, that synchronicity when you are together in the same moment, of the same mind, when you understand each other without words, without thoughts. What you feel about your friends, family, lovers. How other random people make you feel. How their feelings make you feel. How you react to one kind of news or another, political issues, financial issues, anything and everything.
Anything you think creates a corresponding emotion. And how you FEEL changes and influences what you think.
All of these different events in reality come in millions of diverse and different variations which your primordial physical interface with reality interprets in as many diverse physical sensations and feelings which create Emotions.
You do it all the time, especially when you "think" you suppressed your "feelings" or when you try to deny them because they feel weird and difficult and sometimes make people feel bad. While denying them sometimes makes people feel better.
You feel any which way you try to run from it.
As i explained in the previous article, or a post here:
Our emotions are our earliest primary physical interface and direct physical connection with reality we exist in. Our senses are limited and we mostly just feel our immediate local surroundings but all the same, It is literally our (all living beings) earliest, primordial, fundamental ability to experience and understand reality with. Ability that existed billions of years before any kind of minds or even brains evolved. Way, way back when you and me were just single cellular organisms. Or even earlier then that, when we were just first organic molecules. Moving. Combining. Growing. Getting influenced by the environment and constant changes in it, the temperature, the pressure, chemical composition - so we had to constantly adapt and evolve.
Emotions are our ability to physically experience and correctly understand or comprehend large part of the complex layers of reality as a "whole" - all at once. That experience of the whole is limited by our senses and their own limitations, but what we can feel is a real part of universe. As real as any physical matter.
That first fundamental and deepest physical "interface", our direct physical connection to all of reality our physical senses can FEEL emerged and evolved from the very first physical sensations living being FELT, ever since the earliest forms of life on this planet came to exist. Those primordial physical sensations were of course very simple back when we were very, very, very simple. They evolved and grew more and more complex through 3.9 or 4 billion years as we living beings evolved into more and more complex forms and created more complex connections and interaction with the natural environment and each other. And as we created environments of our own.
It is the reason why you FEEL.
It is why you Love, and why you hate, why you can feel sad, ecstatic, morose, bored, calm, fulfilled, joyful, empty, scared, terrified, disgusted, gentle, kind, merciful, ... and any other of the millions of variations of these known major emotions and feelings corresponding to every part and combinations of parts, of ever changing, evolving reality that we are a part of.
Speaking of Love... i might as well tell you what that "feeling" is. Just, not any kind of superficial "love". I mean the True Love, of the deepest kind.
Years back i chanced upon a science news article that mentioned that any particle can become quantum entangled with any other particle. I stopped and stared at that sentence, at that tiny word “any”, transfixed... because understanding blossomed through me in a fusion of feeling and rational logic at the same time. Then i read it again and double and triple checked that they really said what i thought they said. Verily – they did say – ANY.
No restrictions, no special conditions, requirements or holds barred. Any as in, any particle in this universe. As in, even those inside of you. Any particle or more of them that make "you" or anyone and anything else. Such a seemingly small and simple word – Any.
So...
Love is spooky action at a distance.
:)
This is why you sometimes feel the deepest possible connection to some other person, why some people feel their loved one as physical part of themselves and can sometimes literally feel them and their state of being physically, instantly, even when separated by great distance. This is why most parents feel deepest physical connection to their children. This is the reason why when we lose someone we feel a part of us has died too. Because it did.
And this is also the reason why you feel a sense of connection with the Universe.
Because you are literally connected. Physically, deeply, fundamentally connected. All the way down and into the Quantum levels. Into the emptiness that binds. Because the very "atoms" that make you are.
Because you are literally connected. Physically, deeply, fundamentally connected. All the way down and into the Quantum levels. Into the emptiness that binds. Because the very "atoms" that make you are.
Those connections are so numerous and deep and complex one could write whole books just listing them all. From the most direct obvious connections like being a body of mass in this planet field of gravity, to being a biological entity in this planet ecological systems and physical limitations they impose on that biological body, to literally being made out of atoms created by stars, to literally being made out of chemicals and molecules of this planet - to multitudes of finer and continually variable connections to your family, romantic partners, temperature of the day, shadows of the clouds, breath of the wind, feel of rain, sunsets and sunrises, music, laughter and literally anything else you can think of – as well as thoughts and feelings other people and living beings around you can have.
This is why we feel like we are a part of something greater then ourselves. Because we literally - physically are.
You FEEL all of this and the reason why you feel it is because - its all true and real.
And it is physical.
***
Have a fact - this fundamental primordial interface with reality enabled us living beings to experience and comprehend reality in a way our intellectual minds cannot ever achieve.
It enables living beings to FEEL the whole of reality (limited by extent of our senses) in an instant. And react to it - in an instant. Our minds cannot do that. They are too slow.
Thinking - reducing and separating complexity of reality into single specific meanings - or thoughts in the form of "words" takes time. We living beings would never had survived if we depended only on our minds early in our evolution, even if we magically somehow had rational minds that early. We would never even get to be multi-cellular life forms, let alone mammals and then hominids.
We all know that animals don't have human kind of intellects, or more then rudimentary language in form of sounds that signify or carry specific simple meanings. (which is what "words" are, see the previous article on their origin).
That directly proves that the primary physical interface with reality we call "emotions" is sufficiently accurate in its understanding and comprehension of reality to enable survival and evolution of all living beings that ever existed.
It is accurate enough to enable living beings to survive and thrive for billions years before any brains developed and deep and powerful enough to cross the threshold of individual death. Deep and powerful enough to get chiseled into the very DNA and then live again in our offspring as potential for future development, as default basic physical understanding, as basic "instincts".
Look at Lions hunting Gazelles. No rational mind, thoughts or language to speak of. And they are pack hunters, coordinating with others and cooperating in the group effort.
Look at a slow motion movie of a Cheetah correctly and precisely judging every step, every move and tensions of every muscle and balance of its whole body in a high speed chase of an Antelope.
Or look at that Gazelle or an Antelope escaping such apex predators - with no rational mind or "thinking" involved at all. Yet "something" is there, correctly understanding and judging every important part of reality. Something far older then the mind or thoughts.
Look at the Hawk or an Eagle expertly flying and hunting with brains the size of walnuts. Again, no rational mind, no language, no thinking in words, no reduction into "wait, i should move this feather this much, and that feather that much, and angle my tail just this way now... No, now, NOW! Beak down, beak down! Flap, flap!"
Then look how a lowly simple slime mold can correctly transverse through a human made labyrinth and reach food in the most efficient shortest routes. It can even remember that route and any place that hurt it even if most of it is destroyed before the experiment is run again – with no brain or thoughts - at all.
Look at the athletes reacting to events almost instantly, faster then any word or a thought can travel across the brain and the rest of the neural connections of the whole body.
All of it, every single step, every reaction, every single judgment of distance, angle, speed, mass, acceleration and comprehension of the whole of the physical environment is done through the Primary Interface with Reality.
Physical sensations evolving into feelings evolving into emotions.
In the "zone" they call it. A state of enhanced comprehension of reality, drilled through years of physical training, practice - and intellectual studying. A zone where the two fundamental abilities meet, each doing the part they were created for but instead of fighting against each other they cooperate and improve each other, creating something more complete, higher, faster – better.
The Truth is - we need them both.
Both of these abilities are crucial for our survival and existence. They literally make us who we are as living beings and as humans as we currently are. We cannot remove or suppress either of these fundamental abilities because doing so would make us inhuman, fundamentally broken, deranged, self mutilated monsters doomed to self destruction and extinction.
We need them both because they are mutually correcting systems. The mind can correct the mistakes of our emotions in some situations, the emotions can lead, correct and provide the anchor for our minds.
We need both of these abilities, because both are limited and faulty by their own. Thats why we have these two seemingly so different and separate ways of comprehending and understanding reality. If we are to evolve forward, instead of devolving, we need to become actively aware of the crucial need of getting these two abilities we have into some kind of balance. Because we are at our best when they work to compliment each other, and at our worst when they dont. The whole of our history is the proof of that.
We need them both because they are mutually correcting systems. The mind can correct the mistakes of our emotions in some situations, the emotions can lead, correct and provide the anchor for our minds.
We need both of these abilities, because both are limited and faulty by their own. Thats why we have these two seemingly so different and separate ways of comprehending and understanding reality. If we are to evolve forward, instead of devolving, we need to become actively aware of the crucial need of getting these two abilities we have into some kind of balance. Because we are at our best when they work to compliment each other, and at our worst when they dont. The whole of our history is the proof of that.
***
The problem we humans have these days is that we started to think that only our "rational minds" should count, or that our intellect is more important and more valuable - to the exclusion of the other main ability. Our emotions.
We try to ignore, deny and hand-wave away that other primary fundamental crucial ability - which cannot be ignored, denied or separated from us - and that results in a toxic schizophrenic dichotomy and a lot of bad consequences for our emotions and for our minds too. Because they are not separate at all.
When we misunderstand and deny influence and value of emotions that only enables them to affect us even more in all the wrong ways. Unseen, unchecked and misunderstood in the depths beneath our superficial layers of thoughts and thinking in words, they mutate into cancer of our souls and minds. Constantly eluding and refusing to be dismantled into distinct constituting parts we can control and stop influencing our very thoughts and minds. You know the drill: chemical reactions, "feelings", some sort of signals of our chemistry and biology, evolutionary leftovers, - instincts.
We bombard them with chemicals, drugs, alcohol, with psychotherapy, with seances, trances, meditation, entertainment, desperate attempts of hedonism and many religious scriptures and commandments. But none of that makes us able to completely control or remove that whole other fundamental side of our nature and psychology. In fact, the harder we try to suppress them the stronger their influence on us becomes. Because doing so pushes them out of our awareness.
The mind, intellect and our “rational thinking” emerged and evolved from our primary interface with reality to provide a specific service. To help taking apart complexity of the whole of reality into specific important and meaningful pieces of information. It does that function relatively well. It brings real valuable results from that process of untangling of webs of physical and material laws, principles, rules and equations and their fundamental causes. It helps us differentiate and notice important details that make a difference. This ability is responsible for all the material and physical advances and privileges we currently enjoy. Notice the word – enjoy. The other fundamental ability is always there, just under the minds surface. Medicine, science, architecture, industrial revolutions, computers, air conditioners and airplanes. All discovered and created by our intellect and its methodology of reduction. But not fueled and motivated by intellect alone.
When we try to apply that specific method of understanding that our minds are specialized for to our emotions we don't get very far. The minds specific methodology cannot disassemble and reduce emotions because whenever you try to disassemble emotions and reduce them into basic components they stop being recognizable as emotions anymore. Because the gestalt is lost.
Funnily enough, the same happens when we try to use reductionist method to figure out our own minds and our consciousness. We end up left with results and pieces that don't fully explain these fundamental abilities we have. We can see a part of the picture of our consciousness and understand parts of it - but not the whole. Because the whole is more then the sum of its parts. A strong emergent "virtual" gestalt arising from our biology that affected the development and evolution of our biology from the very start.
We have a well known and much simpler example of the same kind of architecture and its resulting gestalt effects in our everyday lives. The emergent virtual environment which is created by and arises from the hardware of computers.
That is a weak emergent virtual phenomena in which we play, watch, listen, experience and even create all kinds of content which is as real as anything else, but cannot be found in the hardware itself. While at the same time that specific content we desire pushed for and influenced the specific development and evolution of the hardware.
No, this does not mean "we are like computers". The opposite is true.
The computers are like us. Limited, simplified and specified versions of some of the natural functions and abilities that living beings have – because those abilities are very efficient in creating greater emergent environments and phenomena. Like video games, or the internet, or in case of biology, minds and emotions and living beings.
In more specific details at this link:
Both our minds and our primary interface with reality, our emotions, are strong emergent “virtual” phenomena. Together they create the even higher emergent phenomena of consciousness.
You have to understand and accept that to FEEL is not just to experience a sensation of an emotion or "just a feeling" as if its some kind of chemically induced illusion. Instead it means you physically experience and understand a part of reality in a very old and very efficient way. Its not perfect, its limited, it misses the details which can be crucial - and that's why our brains and intellectual minds evolved.
I am not saying we should just become very, very emotional. We are already plenty emotional as it is and we made ourselves blind to it. Our minds don't properly understand this old ability.
What i am arguing is: we should acknowledge and accept the fundamental importance of emotions as our oldest primary ability and tool for understanding reality. As a force that fueled and shaped the evolution of our very minds and biology that supports all of that. We literally have two hemispheres of the brain specialized to support these two main abilities. Do yourself a big favor and check what dr. Iain McGilchrist has to say about all of that. (some links bellow)
I am arguing we should accept them as fundamental as they are, so we can be actively aware of them and so understand them better to even have a chance to balance them with our "rational" minds.
Because we need both. In balance with each other.
***
We need to think and feel in ways that compliment and support each other, that work together, that correct each-other mistakes.
To even start to move towards that goal we must become aware and accept we have two ways of experiencing, comprehending and understanding reality.
Our rational minds and our primary fundamental interface with reality, Emotions.
These are not separate entities that should be at war with each other but deeply connected and intertwined abilities that cannot be separated or denied although the mind in its extremes sometimes foolishly thinks that way.
Intellect alone is empty without wisdom, the mind alone without emotions looses the anchor and connection to the reality and either malfunctions, looses itself in extremes of solipsism or gets subjugated and destroyed. If you don't already know a million examples of that ask any psychotherapist about it. Emotions alone are too strong in their extremes and cannot properly comprehend many distinct causes and their consequences. Emotions also cause us to feel other emotions. Which again creates errors, mistakes and tragedies. Each of these abilities are imperfect and have their own specific limits. When we lose the balance of our emotions and our minds, we fall into hell of binary extremes.
We are all aware that our “spiritual” development has been lagging, that we haven't evolved our “souls” enough while our minds and technologies made great leaps. This is the reason why. This is what we have been missing.
Quite literally, if we don't step onto the path in between extremes, if we don't have anything else except extremes, they will pull us apart and make us destroy ourselves. You can see that happening all around you more and more. Our technology has become too powerful on a global, planetary scale in the last century. Too dangerous to be left to extremes of only our emotions or of only our minds working in denial of each other.
When we manage to balance and use both together to support and keep each other in check then we are working at our best, most optimal performance. That is when any of us are at our very best.
But that is not easy to achieve.
In fact, it may be one of the hardest things we humans will ever achieve - if we can achieve it at all.
Relevant links:
http://iainmcgilchrist.com
A Brainless Slime That Shares Memories by Fusing
All Hail the Blob, the Smart Slime Mold Confounding Science
It’s the End of the Gene As We Know It
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