The Emotional Quotient (EQ) has been gaining importance nowadays as it is becoming increasingly evident that in spite of being intelligent, educated and rich our emotional problems of anger, jealousy and frustration are dominant. Issues like dealing with praise and criticism or success and failure persist.
Emotions are feelings that have great power and influence on our thoughts and actions. Certain emotions bring agitation, unhappiness, conflict, struggle and cause misery, while other emotions evoke feelings of peace, happiness and harmony.
The negative emotions of anger, hatred and jealousy immediately cause agitation. Love, on the other hand, always brings proximity and closeness. When we are close, there is no need to shout. Have you seen two people in love sitting together, two close friends having a chat or a mother caressing her child? They all speak softly. Moreover, when we pray to God with devotion, our heart just whispers and total silence follows. For when there is full identification, there is communion without words.
We want to eliminate the negative and cultivate the positive emotions because we have already divided this world into good and bad, beautiful and ugly; we have categorised people into friends or enemies and all objects into likes or dislikes or as positive and negative. And as long as we continue to divide, our problems, conflicts and struggles will remain. Anger and jealousy are only desires manifesting in other forms. If we desire something and someone else gets it, we become jealous. But if we do not desire it, we are unaffected. Emotion is a power and desire is also a power — they are one and the same force. When desire is not fulfilled, it gives rise to a display of negative emotions.
Let us, therefore, not create the division of positive and negative. Understand that it is one and the same force taking different forms. Secondly, look upon all as your own Self, but do not consider them to be “like” yourself. Lastly, let us “divinise” the emotions. Take the example of an ordinary wire and what happens to it when an electric current passes through; it becomes charged and is suddenly transformed. Even though the wire looks the same, a different quality has entered into it. In the same way, emotions can bind us, but if “divinised” they can elevate us.
In our Hindu scriptures we are taught to divinise all aspects of life. They enjoin us to look at our parents as God, our teachers as God and to treat all elders and guests as God. Cultivating such an attitude, we will slowly change from within. In Narada Bhakti Sutra it is said that if we must have desire, let it be desire for God. Express all emotions to Him, pray to Him and He will liberate you.
Slowly rise to this level of thinking, “It is divinity alone that is present everywhere!” Feel that presence of God everywhere and rise above duality and the pairs of opposites. And eventually it will become a way of life.
How emotions present themselves will depend upon our attitude and circumstances. We may feel jealous of a successful person, but we are never jealous of the success of our own children. On the contrary, we are proud of them and rejoice that they have surpassed us. Thus, because of love, we do not feel envious or resentful, we feel happy. How does that happen? It is because we are able to see our Self in them and that is called pure love.
Thus, when we see ourselves in the other person, love comes naturally. And when there is love, there is no room for violence, hatred, enmity or jealously. Love alone is a substitute for everything, but there is no substitute for love. And when that love becomes divine, nothing else can be said about it!
We need to understand the place of emotions in our life; that is very important. But that is not enough! We also need to bring harmony and integration to our thoughts, emotions and actions. Therefore, see that oneness, rise above the sense of duality and divinise your thoughts and actions by directing them towards the Higher.
— Swami Tejomayananda, head of Chinmaya Mission Worldwide, is an orator, poet, singer, composer and storyteller. To find out more about Chinmaya Mission and Swamiji, visit www.chinmayamission.com
Links:
[1] http://archive.asianage.com/swami-tejomayananda-626
