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Emotional Freedom

Emotional Freedom is rare, we only achieve it through practice and reason. When we lock ourselves into fear, we have no freedom. Typically, in normal life, you lock yourself into your emotions and fear. In doing, you give them a superpower of importance. Yet emotions are fleetingly unimportant, unless we get locked into them and they cause bodily pain and worse.

Emotional Freedom is being in, and understanding, your emotions. Normally our emotions are a roller coaster of pleasure and pain. Yet emotions have a part to play as they are essential in monitoring how well you’re doing in the survival game. They give you a snapshot of your current state. Therefore, they give you feedback to what gives you joy and what gives you pain. Your emotions are the perfect barometer for how life affects you right now.

Emotional Freedom

Love according to Spinoza

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Spinoza's Love

Spinoza’s conception of love is a form of knowledge. He sees it as an intellectual activity that leads to a piece of intuitive understanding. This knowledge does not depend on its objects but on the intellect that composes it. From this, we can see that for Spinoza, love is not something that happens to us unavoidably, but something created by cause and effect. Spinoza’s definitions of this feeling are love, devotion, approbation, over-esteem, compassion, pride, gratitude, dissipation, drunkenness, avarice, and lust.

Desire and pleasure are the beginning feelings of this sensation, which are done away with by virtue and reason.

“By love we merely desire those things which we think pleasant,” Spinoza explains. He also states that one can keep feeling other people’s ‘love’ by trying to fulfill their desires. Therefore, without virtue, this feeling is merely an emotion that people who do not want to let it control them can control.

There are many forms of this sensation, and when he talks about love, he is talking about the most intense passion or emotion for someone or something. By it, he means pleasure, accompanied by the idea of an external cause. As the cause is external, it is impossible to desire to be united with the object of his desire. This desire drives him to seek action and achieve some return to this source of pleasure.

Romantic 'Love'

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
6. Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

This idea closely relates to the romantic notion of ‘love’, even though his definition is a little more scientific. Spinoza does not talk about how he feels about the person or how they make him feel, but how he reacts to the person. This is purely physical and, hence, a cold love because there is no genuine beloved, merely an unobtainable idea or a desire to unify with the beloved.

Compassion

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
24. Compassion is love insofar as it so affects a man that he rejoices at another’s good and feels pain at another’s hurt.

Spinoza’s definition relates to other things, such as compassion. Compassion is a sense of favoring people who make one feel happy or enlightened because of how he can help them. Compassion is about gaining power over someone else due to their diminished state.

Lust

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

48. Lust is also the desire and love of sexual intercourse.

To Spinoza, lust was simply one of the desires that would arise in men who wanted to please themselves. They wanted sexual intercourse with women and thought it would bring them happiness. Lustful people always want more than they already have, thus being greedy in their passion for sexual intercourse. As Spinoza saw it, Lust brings no happiness to the person who experiences it. It is a form of selfishness that will cause much unhappiness.

Devotion

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
10. Devotion is love toward one at whom we wonder.

To Spinoza, people can misconstrue devotion as love because he makes it seem that it is a natural force in the world. It is “an overestimation of an object accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” It is an inclination of desire toward something or someone at whom we wonder.

So, if we often think about the object of our wonder, we shall cease to wonder at it. So, we see that the emotion of devotion can quickly degenerate into mere affection. According to Spinoza’s view of love, “the more we know [the object of our devotion], the less we adore it.”

Approbation

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

19. Approbation is love toward one who has benefited another

To Spinoza, approval is a reaction to some action in which we see a quality we approve of. Approbation is arbitrary and is valued if it causes us to agree and unite with others. It is also arbitrary if it involves a change of desire and feeling according to the evolution of external cause, as when one thing we like changes into another that we like better. As with all emotions, it is temporary and dependent on the pleasure and power it proffers to the individual.

Gratitude

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

34. Gratitude is the desire or eagerness of love [amoris studium], whereby we endeavor to benefit one who, from a like emotion of love, has bestowed a benefit on us.

Therefore, the more someone benefits us, the greater our gratitude towards them.

This definition is similar to what Spinoza felt about love as a whole. He believed it is natural that all people tend towards gratitude because their environment makes them desire to be happy in the face of a hostile place. Gratitude for Spinoza is thus an innocent thing that is earned and resembles something we feel when we are in need and want to be helped by others. He believed this was important because there would be fewer feelings of happiness or joy without it.

Dissipation

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

45. Dissipation is the immoderate desire, or also love, of sumptuous living

This is the opposite of temperance. Spinoza’s idea here is not based on the idea that one should love what one has. It is merely based on the idea of having a dear object with which we wish to have unity. It also points to a need for more and more gratification. So much so that that desire is unsatisfiable.

Spinoza’s argument is this: we start loving something because we love the object. We have something to gain from it. Therefore, we can love it. He then says that if it is a beautiful and good thing, we naturally desire to please it. If they are virtuous, they will return the favor. Thus, in Spinoza’s view, a thing can be loved because of its relation to another good thing.

The point of Spinoza’s definition is that it is not about ‘love’ because he does not feel that it involves a powerful desire for something physical.

Avarice

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
47. Avarice is the immoderate desire and love of riches

Avarice is not only defined as a greedy desire for money but also as self-preservation. Self-preservation is an attempt to keep alive by employing the things associated with one’s life.

Avarice, like lust, is a self-centred monster. Selfish desire is the basis for avarice, and it causes people to look down upon others as inferior in needs and ways of life. Avarice was thought of by Spinoza as a way for people to gain more power than they already had.

Spinoza felt that people are often driven by the desire for more money, thinking it would give them happiness. Because they realize that money can buy them things like food and clothes, they desire money over everything else and are blind to the possibility that abundance does not satisfy them.

Over-Esteem

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

21. Over-esteem is to think too highly of someone by reason of love

According to Spinoza, over-esteem is thinking too highly of someone through love. Even though it may be for a good reason, the over-esteem is usually driven by a desire of some sort.

Spinoza defines this emotion as “desire, accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” He then establishes the idea of ‘love,’ saying that those with this emotion are “eager to unite with other things, thinking them desirable and pleasant.”

In Spinoza’s view, the word ‘love’ is only a product of the imagination.

Pride

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
28. Pride is thinking too highly of oneself by reason of self-love

It is simply a belief that one is better than other things. It contradicts the idea of humility and manifests itself in many areas of life, such as in the arts or politics. Pride is the uncontrolled love of oneself. According to Spinoza, pride is an emotion that makes one think he is better than others when this is not indeed the case. They genuinely believe it is true, so there will eventually be a downfall.

This is the problem with over-esteem because they both share a common source of thought, namely, “inclination to excess.” These are the kinds of people who wish to rise in society but fall in the end because of their faults.

Drunkenness

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
46. Drunkenness is the immoderate desire and love of drinking

This is the opposite of sobriety, which has a sober state of mind. Spinoza defines drunkenness as “a state of mind which proceeds from a preceding excess of drinking; one without moderation.” This can be connected to over-esteem because the desire for alcohol becomes too great and therefore causes one to become drunk and intoxicated and is an escape from the harsh reality of our situation.

People turn to alcohol because of their love for it and are driven by the desire for it, which causes them to become drunk. “If he lacks the drink, then he is sad.” This is an example of Spinoza’s argument that happiness comes from a union with an external object.

Drunkenness is a desire that is acquired through our interactions and experiences. It can be contrasted with the love of wine. Wine is the thing that causes one to become drunk, but it is not an active object in itself.

It only has the power to manifest itself in its different forms. When one drinks wine, they love it because of their interactions with it as a drink and as an event that causes pleasure or pain.

Altruism

Also, altruism (“unselfish love”) is the same as ‘duty.’ It’s a duty born of pity. It is the virtue of acting as if we were not free but determined to do so by forces outside ourselves, like nature. Therefore, we are forced to be altruistic by telling ourselves that we are driven by unselfish love. However, it is not necessarily the case that one is so generous that they have to act. It can just be an idea. Although this seems contradictory, Spinoza believes it makes sense to assert this because it is our way of viewing the world and what we think virtuous behavior is.

This makes Spinoza’s definition of love more physical than one would initially believe. The definition of love is not based on a definition of virtue, like the ancient Greeks would have thought. Instead, the cause of our love, pity, drives us to be virtuous.

The idea that we are forced to be virtuous drives us toward the imagined virtue of being “selfless” or altruistic. Because we often believe that if something were to happen wrong in our life, we would be forced to act out in virtue, we feel it is a duty we must bear. Therefore this action and belief come out of self-interest. Therefore altruism is simply an expression of power. This is why so many wealthy people like being seen as altruists because it enhances their expression of power.

The Ethics

The Ethics (Spinoza) contains many references to love. Its most prominent idea about love is the following: “The third kind of love is the improvement of self through persistent action with conscious awareness.” Spinoza is speaking loosely about the third kind of love here, but it can still be assumed to be part of his philosophy on life and love.

Spinoza was a materialist. He understood two “contrary” emotions, Love and Hate. He held that all-natural occurrences had effective causes or events that physical principles found in nature could explain. This can cause problems in defining love because it is not a definition of social psychology or cultural behavior but a definition of physics. He said that “the human is a corporeal substance.”

According to him, all emotions are also found in the body and participate in love and hatred. The body has the ideas of good and evil, or ‘gods,’ which it may or may not believe. This is because both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actions had to be accepted by the mind to influence the degree of pleasure experienced.

Love is Power

So, the illustrious position we have given love in modern-day society is an illusion. What we feel is simply what we believe to be accurate but is an attribute within ourselves. When Spinoza speaks of love, he speaks not of emotion but passion. He believes that all things in life arise from a root of cause and effect, which explains why he calls the feeling of love a passion and not love itself. All love is internal, as we have learned in daily life.

When Spinoza talks about love, he is talking about the affection one can experience for oneself about other things. He does not believe that one can share a love for another person but that one has a sense of pleasure from what that person or object may bring to his life (namely, enhancing his material wealth and comfort). This is one reason why some philosophers have argued that Spinoza’s conception of love is too rationalistic and scientific.

Spinoza’s view on the origin of emotions is more clearly presented in “The Ethics.“.

Take a look at this post on Power

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Emotional Freedom

Social Deconstruction

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Social deconstruction & deconditioning.

Most people have no interest in learning about themselves or the world. Social deconstruction is unpopular. This kind of conduct doesn’t help them get closer to achieving the goals that society views as desirable. These people are not always happy, but happiness is frequently traded in favour of success, notoriety, influence, and convention.

Success and achievement require a belief that an individual can achieve his or her desires. I would suggest that a belief in the ability to achieve desires is also required to achieve success because if you do not believe you can do something, you will surely not even try.

A successful life, socially speaking, is one where all the social markers are in place: a respectable job, a good education, a pretty wife, kids and dogs. And you must do anything outside of that quietly.

Yet, many people who have all these things are unhappy. Why?

Is it because they did not get the things they really wanted? Or is it because they are living an illusion of what they think they should want?

It is in this quiet that I address you now.

The Unexamined Life

Others are less content to live an unexamined life, and they start to wonder what it all means, what the point of life is, why people suffer, and even why there is something rather than nothing. Deconstructionizm is a discipline devoted to understanding the truth of our existence and how we can most effectively navigate life to return to what is genuine. Here, we deconstruct the beliefs and conditioning we have absorbed from people around us. This art frequently goes against tradition and even the laws of nature. Being a contributing member of society is not something we are especially interested in doing.

Adaptation & Disintegration

Adapting to a damaged society and becoming well-adjusted is not a virtue. The main difficulty in deconstructing conditioning is that often, we have no idea where to start. We have seen conditioning everywhere: in the media, in politics, and in our own lives. We see it used by others to get what they want, but never consider how they use it on us.

When we interact with people, we accept their ways of looking at the world instead of questioning them. When people are sceptical of things we say, we are quickly put in our place. Everyone assumes that the ways in which they see things are the best ways of seeing them.

Conditioning & Social Deconstruction

We believe that the world can only exist in a black and white way due to our conditioning. Everything is either true or it is not true. Truths are absolute, and as such, they do not change with time unless proven to be false somewhere along their history.

Yet, the only truth available is how you feel right now. Either you are in pleasure or pain. In other words, truth is exclusive to whatever is happening right now. Since the truth of what is happening right now is temporary and since we do not know what will come, we believe in things that are not true from social conditioning. The idea of absolute truths becomes an addiction & needs fixing before our life has any meaning.

Think Again

Deconstructionizm provides us with the means of looking at everything from every angle until it makes sense. We deconstruct our conditioning by taking a close look at how it is working on us. When we come to understand that life has no meaning at all, we are free.

Watch this insightful video, Expect Nothing , from Martin Butler.

For more about this topic, look at the blog posts.

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Emotional Freedom

What Is Emotional Freedom?

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How do I Achieve Emotional Freedom?

Emotional slavery is responding to things that happen around you. For this reason, you are a victim of your circumstances. By accepting your part in the situation rather than blaming others, you are on the way to emotional freedom. Blaming your trauma on others is a thing of the past when you observe and understand your behavior and others. When you own your involvement with understanding, you become emotionally free.

Patterns tend to repeat again and again with different people in different situations. The only common factor is what happens to you.

When you were a child, you were a survival machine. For this reason, you respond to your caregivers as they wish you to respond. Yet, this obedience no longer serves you as an adult.

As an adult, because of your conditioning, you are not united with your true self. This distortion often results in inappropriate behavior and can come with inner rage and resentment.

You do not need to be like this. It is not suitable for you or anyone around you physically, mentally, or emotionally. To overcome this, the practice of observing and understanding your emotions will give you the power to be in control of your responses to other people. Being true to yourself is all that matters because through this, others will find it easier to be with you.

Emotional Freedom Through This Practice

This practice centers on building your observation ‘muscle.’ You will work with transformational exercises and observations to investigate your behavior and that of others. Above all, you will learn to unlock your emotional power and free yourself from damaging fears and emotions.

It is a process that can be achieved by first accepting the situation and then letting go of the negative emotions.

When you let go of what holds you back, it is unnecessary to remove yourself from the situation. It is more about how you respond to these situations that change your perspective.

Blaming your trauma on others is a thing of the past when you observe and understand your behavior and others. When you own your involvement with understanding, you become emotionally free. Emotional freedom is not about escaping. It is about accepting the situation and letting go of the negative emotions.

The mental exercises include questioning and talking to yourself (experiments of thought). You’ll also do some role-play in which you are the victim to see what it’s like to have attitudes and behavior dominated by others.

You will learn how to observe any problem in your life that is causing you distress or emotional suffering. Your problem may be a relationship issue, a work issue, financial pressure, lack of self-esteem, or fear. Once you have identified the problem, then set up an experiment for yourself as to what helps.

The first step to overcoming emotional slavery is acceptance within your situation and yourself. It is also gaining an understanding of how other people behave in similar situations. You can do this by observing their behavior, taking responsibility for your role in the problem, and not blaming others.

Martin Butler has produced many videos that can help you to understand this practice.

Find out more about this practice here

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Emotional Freedom

How To Declutter Your Life

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Let It Go

Declutter Your Life. When you cling to the past it holds you back. When you no longer need something, let it go. Make space for freedom in your life.

Making Space for Freedom

You declutter your mind and body when you go through your belongings, sift through your memories, and are getting rid of those things that no longer serve you. This task may take time, so be gentle with yourself and take as long as you need to take with it. Your efforts will yield rewards outside of a more organized home and a tidier mind. Removing items that no longer serve you – and may even cause you distress – frees you from the negative emotions attached to them. You also gain more space.

De-cluttering can be a helpful tool when you can observe the attachment you had to things you kept and why they no longer serve you. We keep things that evoke emotions, yet some of those emotions and memories may not be positive. They may not enhance you or give you power. So why would you want to bring them into your everyday experience now?

As you sort through your things, observe how they make you feel and whether you instantly feel good when you consider them. How do you feel in your body? What are your emotions and thoughts around them? If the feelings are good, enhance your power, and you have space for them; these life-enhancing objects might be worth keeping. Remember, you are examining these things for your positive emotions attached to them. You are not your stuff. If you don’t want to have it with you, or it makes you feel bad, then let it go.

As time goes on, you can repeat this process and remove the things that no longer serve you. If they do not serve you as uplifting objects that help your mind return to a time when you had greater power in your life, let them go.

Take Your Time

If you no longer want something, let it go. When you don’t love it, or use it, give it away. If you are keeping it out of guilt, you need to forgive yourself and not be that negative memory’s keeper. This exercise is about clearing your mind and your physical space and creating more space for new things and experiences to come into your life.

Your efforts may take time. They will also yield rewards outside of a more organized and tidier mind (plus closet, room, or house). Removing items that no longer serve you and may even cause you distress frees you from the negative emotions attached to them and make space for a more positive attitude.

When I do this, I like to pack things into boxes and give them to a charity that helps those in need. There are many ways to give away your worldly goods. Consider this step as beneficial to your own growth and development, as well as giving back to the community.

I threw out some things in my own life, including several pieces of furniture that I hung on to because they belonged to my parents and grandparents. This process also helped me go through my closet and give away clothes in extra-large sizes that no longer fit me. I got rid of bags of old photos with unhappy memories and out-of-date documents. It was liberating to throw out papers that no longer hold power or usefulness for me. Yes, some grief is involved in this exercise (emotions are not logical), but the ongoing benefits outweigh the temporary pain of parting with negative ‘stuff.’

Learn To Let Go of Pain

This exercise might be helpful. As you go through your things, write down the following things:

What are you discarding?
Why did you keep this?
How do you feel about it now?
Do you want to bring this into your future? (If not, why?)

Consider each item as a part of your life and your history. Keep the items that you still feel empower you. If there is no longer a purpose for it or it makes you feel sad, then let it go.

Decluttering is a great metaphor for what you will be doing with your life in the work of becoming your authentic self, free of society’s conditioning. As you go through things, observe why you kept them, how they make you feel now, and whether you want to bring them into your future or not.

If you no longer want it, let it go. If you don’t love it, or use it, give it away. If you are keeping it out of guilt, you need to learn to forgive (not be that thing’s keeper). This exercise is about making space for freedom.

When the time comes that you no longer need something, then let it go.

You might be surprised at what you find. It reveals how you feel now by looking at some of the things you have kept and held onto when you examine why you keep them. The intention behind this exercise is to learn to let go. So what if you can’t wear a shirt? Who cares? Donate it, sell it, or use it as a gift for those who need it more than you.

Martin Butler

Any efforts toward freedom and joy should always be a stripping away process.

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Click ‘More About Power’ to know more about this practice and how to empower your life through understanding.

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Emotional Freedom

Is Fear An Emotion or Thought?

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What is an Emotion?

Some argue that fear is an emotion and not a thought. And while this might be true for some people, it’s important to remember that it isn’t universal; if you believe that afraidness is the reaction of a person to their thoughts about a potential threat, it may not be an emotion. Something else entirely could also trigger the fear — say, someone shouting at you from across the hall in a library or seeing a spider crawling up your arm. To both of these, you will respond according to your current level of understanding.

Fear is often an emotion triggered by imagination. We fear something that has not happened yet. When we fear, we also hope. These emotions are mirrors of one another. All emotions have their mirrored emotion. However, fear occurs in the body through electrical signals. Even if it does start in mind, it manifests in the body.

For each positive emotion, there is an opposite negative emotion. Love has its twin in hate, hope in fear, joy in sadness, etc. We fluctuate between the two constantly throughout our lives, and for most people, these emotions control us as we are unable to control the emotions until we genuinely understand them.

Love and Hate

When we say words like “I love you,” we know specifically what it means for us. We feel a sense of warmth in our chest and a smile on our faces. We cannot force or fake this; feelings cannot be mimicked or feigned the way that actions can be — they must inherently exist within us, and then they will manifest through external action.

By the same token, when we say, “I hate you,” we know precisely what it means. Anger and rage replace our sense of warmth and well-being. We can have wholly negative or wholly positive feelings. These emotions are entirely up to how we have learned to feel under the given circumstances, and no one else but ourselves can determine how they will manifest.

By consciously observing and learning to understand our emotions, our lives become simpler and more fulfilling in a myriad of ways.

Why Do I Fear?

We do not need to fear anything to be happy; we experience happiness as part of the roller coaster of passion or emotion. The desire is to feel joy and happiness; what else is there? If we cannot find it within ourselves, then it does not exist. The stronger your emotions, the more you will express yourself through action or inaction, yet both are just reactions if you do not observe and understand them and will cause you pain.

When you observe your emotions, negative emotions are better understood, and you can lessen the impact of the roller coaster of hope and fear, pleasure and pain. The better your understanding, the more you will be able to express yourself freely.

What Are Harmful Emotions?

Emotion is an integral part of life and helps us survive in many situations. However, it can also be a dangerous thing when we get carried away, and we can get ourselves into a lot of trouble. Fear is one of the most common emotions that people associate with; however, other emotions can be just as bad if not worse. Below has been outlined some of the most harmful emotions that people experience when they do not understand them:

Anger

Anger is a very destructive emotion and tends to lead to more anger. It is a natural, albeit very destructive, emotion. It is a destructive emotion to have because if you cannot deal with your anger efficiently, then anger can trigger and cause even more problems. Anger can lead to various problems in your life as it causes you to do things that are not healthy for you or your loved ones. One of the most significant problems is divorce. People get so angry that they decide to end their relationships with their partners and spouses, which can cause them even more significant pain and suffering. If they understood the accidental cause of the anger, they would understand that it occurs within them rather than from the external imagined cause.

Jealousy

Jealousy is also one of the most common and likely the worst emotions you can experience. Feelings of envy and jealousy are two intimately linked emotions. You can sometimes feel both of these emotions, as they are both very alike. The critical difference between the two is that feelings of envy focus on something external instead of jealousy that focuses on emotional aspects. Jealousy can cause many problems in a relationship as well as with yourself. It can cause significant arguments, which may lead to breakups.

Hate

Hate is the most repulsive emotion that you can experience. If you hate someone intensely, you must first love that person so that if you think about them it brings you great pain and agony. If someone truly hates, they will want to do the most harmful thing possible, no matter how much they hate that person.

In Proposition 38 of Part II of The Ethics, Spinoza said:

If someone begins to hate a thing he has loved, so that the love is completely destroyed, then (from an equal cause) he will have a greater hate for it than if he had never loved it and this hate will be the greater as the love before was greater.

Just because someone hates a particular person, it does not mean that they have to be violent or harmful in any way whatsoever. If they can observe it, that emotion can fuel them on to move forward in life with greater understanding.

Fear

Fear is one of the most common and dangerous emotions that there are. People are frightened by a great many things, for a great many reasons. Fear is the emotion that dictates how we behave in difficult situations, and we act in a certain way because of our fear. The way we act though is usually not the best thing to do.

So, is fear an emotion or thought? When we talk about fear, we usually use examples of big things like dangerous animals or criminals. However, the most destructive fears are the ones that seem insignificant to us, and they are the ones that cause us to feel a great deal of anxiety. You don’t have to be afraid of physical harm to be harmed. You can be harmed emotionally by something that may not seem harmful on the surface. Fear is the most common emotion that people feel in their lives, and it completely takes over your life as you look for ways to avoid feeling afraid.

Looking At Things Differently

The issues that are associated with emotions can be easily solved just by looking at them differently. If you can view everything from a different perspective, it is easier to solve them and forget about them altogether. The emotional issues are not going to disappear from your life immediately.

Fear, an emotion, or a thought, is always a bodily sensation. We fear a lion that is charging us because we imagine that it will eat us. This idea leads to panic, which gives rise to the flight/fight response in our bodies. Ultimately every coupling of the emotions, such as hate and love, anger and delight, jealousy and contentment, come down to fear and hope. We are normally at the mercy of our emotions and ride a roller coaster of pleasure and pain, driven by hope and fear.

What if you could get off this roller coaster and be able to live without constantly being in this ride of pain and uncertainty?

Find out more in this podcast

Mastering Emotional Pain

The Practice

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Emotional Freedom

In a relationship with a ‘Relationship’

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In a relationship, you’re not seeing the other person. People believe that a relationship means they will have their needs met by someone else. They’re wrong.

You think that you’re having a relationship with ‘someone’, a significant other. But when you have a ‘relationship’, the relationship gets in the middle and separates two people. Each person is expecting something out of the ‘relationship’ bubble, but the bubble is a barrier to two people getting to know one another. The idea of a ‘relationship’ is romantic imagination. The other person is meant to fulfil your needs. This is nonsense.

It’s a mistake because you try to mold that person into the perfect someone you want to be with and cannot accept them as they are. Often, you don’t even like that other person and that person does not meet your needs. They don’t change their underpants often enough, they smell bad, if only they could change that one little thing… and so on. They are also too busy trying to meet their own wants and needs from you too, to be able to consider your needs. If they do consider your needs all the time they come over as clingy and weak, and probably are.

When you are in a relationship with the ‘relationship’, you have expectations, hopes and fears, rather than doing your thing and allowing the other person to do their thing. A ‘Relationship’ clouds your interactions with someone through your own expectations. The imagination of the other person is not ‘real’, the expectations you have are your imagination of how things ‘should’ be for you (in an ideal world).

Instead of being in a relationship, interact with other people as you would if you were meeting your own needs and see how it goes. Allow them to be who they are, and you can be who you are. If it works, great, if not, you have nothing to let go of because you were never in a relationship with ‘them’ in the first place. You were lost in a dream of what a relationship should be.

If you have an expectation of the other person, express it, so they know what you want. If you don’t tell them, they will never know what you want, and they can only guess. They will not get into your head and think ‘Oh yes that’s what they want’. If they could do this, they’re missing their vocation as a mind reader.

Instead, they are trying to second guess what you want and will miss the mark. Communication is essential between people, not hoping the other person will know you so well that they will instinctively know how to meet your needs. Only you can meet your needs, no one else can do that. So, if you want your needs met, either do it yourself, or tell them exactly what you want. Otherwise, you will feel hurt that they got it wrong, be resentful of them and withdraw from them. This is unfair because they have no idea what you want.

When you want something – ask! If you don’t get it, get it for yourself. No one owes you anything and you don’t owe them anything. The only person you owe to is yourself, so nurture yourself and drop the idea of what a relationship is. Accept what it is and work it out from there.

Read About Jealousy

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Emotional Freedom

Relationship Jealousy and You

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Relationship Jealousy

Relationship jealousy is a basic human driver. A relationship is something we think we need in order to make ourselves a functioning member of society. But what is the other person looking for in me?

Simply put, a man is after sex, a woman is after a nest. For most individuals this dynamic is taking place. He wants to have sex with her and she wants him to make her a nest. This is why relationship jealousy differs so much between the sexes. Men are sexually jealous and women are resource jealous.

Why isn’t cheating the same?

When a man cheats on a woman, it’s not so much the sex that she minds, it’s the fact that he’s spent resources on the other person. This is true whether it is a prostitute or whether it s a mistress who he has set up in a flat.

For a man, the jealousy is sexual. If she cheats, she’s allowing another man to potentially impregnate her. This means that any offspring she has might not be his.

These basic fundamental instincts occur whether the woman is on the pill, or the man has had a vasectomy, etc. They are basic drives that have been learned and adopted from our animal nature.

Can we overcome them? No. It’s a natural drive to feel relationship jealousy because of the will to life we each have within us. We all have a strong ‘will to life’ drive, a striving inclination to persist in your own being. This is not only your current being but also any legacy, resources, family, or descendants that continue to exist after our existence. It is our existence and legacy.

Partners are naturally jealous of one another because they are fighting to maximize their own power and ensure their partner is loyal to them. I have seen this repeated in gay couple, where one partner is sexually jealous, but the other is resource jealous. It would seem to be a human pattern.

It’s A Power Battle

Jealousy is a normal part of the power battle. If someone has been unfaithful, whether with sex or resources, it’s natural for the other person to feel cheated. This is our basic animal instinct and natural sovereign right.

How do we deal with it in our own relationships? Acknowledge where you feel jealous and observe your own behavior. There can be a tendency to excessive jealousy in insecure individuals. Either the relationship is rocky, because of the partner not giving you what you want, or perhaps your own demands are unreasonable. This occurs in a man when a woman looks at another man, or when a man tips generously. If you react this way, you’re struggling in the relationship and need to look at it now. Communication and negotiation are important here. Find out what the other person wants, and discuss it. If it doesn’t work for you, find out why?

Or are you really in a relationship with the relationship?

For more on the reality of life, see Martin Butler’s article on security or freedom.

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Emotional Freedom

Why Envy Harms You

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Envy Harms You

What is Envy? Envy is a form of hatred. It is a form of hate directed towards someone who has been favoured by fortune. Why do we feel envy? Because they have something that we would like. Envy harms you alone.

If someone near to you wins or inherits a large amount of money, you may feel envy because you too would like lot of money. And you then get a contrast between the situation you’re in and the situation they are in. You have the impression that they have more, or are more likely to survive. Their prospect of survival is enhanced, and yours is still the same. But, you feel diminished because there’s a greater contrast taking place. And so, you experience this hatred towards them because they’re a source of pain for you. They’re reminding you of something you do not have, and so you hate them. Your envy cannot affect them but the envy you feel harms you.

Be honest with yourself

Sense how the feeling of envy harms you. No one else matters when it comes to how you feel. It’s tough to look at these emotions and to be honest about them and see that’s what’s going on. Once you understand this, and by the word ‘understand’ I mean you have been in that situation where you feel envy. Then you’ve had the honesty to acknowledge that in yourself, and the ability to analyse what is going on.

When you can do that, then envy will diminish. You don’t have to make it decrease; it will just decrease because by understanding emotions they somehow lose their power.

What about Fear?

It’s the same for fear. In fear you must understand why you are feeling fear. We all feel fear because we think our survival is being threatened in some way or other. So , you might have a concern that you could lose your job soon. And of course, that relates directly to a diminishing of your survival prospects. You look at the situation. Why you are feeling fear? What does that refer to? It relates to your feeling of diminishing survival prospects.

A curious thing about these emotions is that they have a certain amount of energy. They are like storms. By sitting with them and being with them and looking at them, the storm loses its power. In effect we absorb the energy of the storm. So instead of the storm stealing power from us, we take its energy. These are a few examples of how understanding the emotions causes the emotions to become less troublesome.

How does the work help?

What you are left with when you have done this work for a long time is greater peace. This is because the emotions are not so troubling. Emotions are essentially an animal legacy that we have, and whether we should be in that state or not is up for debate.

Some traditions consider the state of uncontrollable emotions to be a fallen state, a fall into sharing characteristics with animals, i.e., the emotions, the passions.

To recap, knowledge is nothing. It’s just stuff you hold in your head. You are like a computer with it. It has no bearing or no weight when you’re considering how you feel about yourself and what you are.

Understanding is tied to being and being is related to experience. Understanding and being go together. It might be worth investigating understanding. It’s nowhere near as sexy as enlightenment or cosmic consciousness or any of these things that the enlightenment gurus are touting, but it’s more real, the benefits are more robust, and it’s a way to progress in your move towards peace and towards happiness.

More about Understanding

It might be entertaining to watch this YouTube post on Slavishness to the Emotions

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Emotional Freedom

Your Emotional Barometer

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Your Emotional Barometer Can Help You

Your emotional barometer is your body. Every emotion is felt through experience and understand in your body. You need courage to face your emotions head-on.

Usually, we don’t understand how or why, but understanding is vital for dealing with the things that hold us back, and the only way to understand our emotions is to face them head-on.

When you’re navigating your everyday life, it’s useful to understand that your emotions are literally just a barometer of how well you are surviving. That is all. So if somebody walks in tomorrow with a contract for a movie you’re probably going to be pleased. Your emotions will do somersaults, and you will feel all the excitement and anticipation inside you.

Survival Prospects

Why? Because your prospects for survival have been enhanced. “Here’s 100 thousand for making this music”, your survival is enhanced, you feel happy. Or if some gorgeous person you fancy comes to you and says, “you’re the most attractive person I’ve ever seen, I want to go to bed with you.”, you’re going to feel pretty good about that because it is, again, about survival and power.

For a man, you’re disseminating your seed and are potentially creating more copies of you. That’s what it’s all about, all the time. Similarly, if somebody comes to you and says, “I’m afraid you’ve got terminal cancer,” then you’re gonna be pretty distraught because it’s diminishing your power of survival.
That’s all emotions are; they’re just measures of your survival at any particular moment in time.

See Reality As It Is Not As You Want It To Be

One of the things you have to do is to see reality in little bits. You can then see what this huge machine called ‘you’ is doing while it operates unconsciously through time. More importantly, you can also understand where your possible escape route is because there is an escape route. But it depends on how much you value your freedom and inner peace. Real freedom is freedom from your emotions, from your passions, that is what freedom is. There’s no other kind of freedom. That’s the freedom that we’re all after. So, freedom means not being devastated if things go badly and it’s also the freedom not to get carried away when things go really, really well. It gives you calmness within yourself by understanding the way things actually are in life.

The whole thing is about power and freedom; that’s really what the work here is about. The work is your work, it’s not a once a week session and you’re cured. It’s about you understanding your life and the way you live it, so through the understanding and appreciation of what is healthy and unhealthy for you, through this work, you are better able to live an authentic life that is true to you.

Are You In Denial?

Most people are in denial about how they feel. We don’t want to feel envious, we don’t want to feel shame. Enjoy the shame, revel in it, lay about, and surround yourself with it. It’s important to do that because while you’re trying to deny it, you’re making it stronger. The only way to deal with these things is to let them have full throttle and just suck the energy up consciously. There’s no point in doing it in your head. This emotion exists in your body. When you think it, that’s just mechanical, but to consciously try and grab the whole thing up…. “so I slept with somebody [else] last night and I’m just a terrible person. Fuck, I’m such a dreadful person. I’m surprised that anybody has anything to do with me, I’m such a shit” ramps the whole thing up.

How Successful are You?

One little ditty of “what you resist tends to persist” sounds like bullshit but it isn’t. It’s actually a really, really important point. Whatever you’re resisting in yourself will grow. It’s just the way it works. So whatever emotions you have, indulge them as far as you can. That way you become more familiar with them and you become more comfortable with them. When you have self-harming emotions, when you avoid them, they just come chasing after you. Emotions are just a barometer for understanding how well you are surviving.

More on this from Martin Butler

More On Emotional Freedom

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Communication Emotional Freedom Inner Peace Power

Conditioned to Conform

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Conditioned to Conform

We are conditioned to conform and be good members of society. But at what cost? The true cost of fitting in is to contort ourselves in so many ways that eventually become unbearable and the prison we’re in has to break. When this happens we’re usually at a loss and keep turning in circles, ending up at the same point where we started. With understanding about suffering, what causes us pain and what causes us pleasure, we’re able to work through it and achieve peace.

Families are a strong source of conditioning. Everyone in a family feels that their needs have to be met. Though they’re not listening to one another so no one’s needs are met. They talk behind each other’s backs and each family member has a fixed expectation. Once cast in a role, it’s almost impossible to escape. It can be very painful when your needs are not met and there are constant demands made of you.

Why Negotiation is vital

Negotiating your needs is very tricky. People are used to you in your role, they don’t want to make changes. If that’s OK with you, then stay as you are.

Alternatively, there is a way to deal with improving your situation and having your needs met. Like anything worth having, this means effort on your part. You can’t magic up a hero who will do it all for you – you are that hero!

Start by letting others know that you’re not OK with the way things are. Let them know what your needs are. Communicate simple needs at first, because any need will be seen as a challenge. Once you get that need met, allow others to get used to your new position before attempting to make other changes. If they will not listen or think things are OK as they are – that’s because they are – for them, not for you. This is when you realize that there is no one other than you who is going to improve things for you.

Let’s get your needs met!

Learn to Negotiate

More on Conforming

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