Emotional people are not spiritually evolved people

By emotional people I am not talking about the level of emotion in the average person but those who are overly emotional, they are never spiritually evolved people because their entire life is ruled by this base animal nature.
In the same way a very sensual person (often a nice way of saying a slutty person) is never a spiritually evolved person for the same reason they operate on a lower animal wavelength then even the average human.

The Buddha said the root of all suffering is attachment, he taught the way of non attachment. Suffering is an emotion so we could reduce this to all emotion is caused by attachment,therefore the unattached are never emotional people.

a reply to: zinc12

Yet those are the folks that Jesus chose to minister to directly; he hung out with them and drank and ate.

You are on the right track.

Just loosen up. Maybe pick a girl-friend that is all about that.

originally posted by: CranialSponge
a reply to: SomeDumbBroad

Emotions are a chemical reaction.

Which is apparently bad. Very very bad.

Having emotions means you are:

- not evolved spiritually
- makes you a lower base animal
- makes you an airy-fairy
- puts you into the 'emotional hippy category'
- causes you to become high-strung
- automatically makes you attracted to spiritual gatherings

Bad... real bad.

Bad.

Bad.

Bad.

No need to get all emotional

originally posted by: zinc12
When out at a club or music venue I would sometimes see a person who got carried away with the music, the beat. Some people call it "having soul" but eventually I realised its the exact opposite, these are people who get washed away by their emotions.

Emotions belong to the lower base animal nature of man, not something to cultivate.

An unique characteristic of the 'highly spiritual,' Voudon religion is the invocation of the 'Loa,' or ancestral/archetypal spirits into the body of an undetermined celebrant during a ceremony. Cascades of music and emotion generate & set the atmosphere, and are targeted to be appealing to the Loa invoked, and remains now as it has been, something almost indescribable to one not privy to this beautiful and powerful spiritual path. Just before possession, a member of the congregation will seem to stick out as getting a little too carried away with the beat, and overcome with emotion in the heat of the wild and otherworldly atmosphere - shortly thereafter, their body becomes a vessel for the soul of the Loa. The celebrant writhes on the ground and is overcome in a manner that is not only shocking, but it is also very real, as the celebrant's identity is subdued such that they appear to be a completely different person. They appear to move different, their voice changes, and a haunting gaze is cast from eyes which only the bold would dare to meet - for they indeed are housing the soul of another conscious and very ancient being.

Lastly, holding that emotions are better left uncultivated undercuts your entire position: uncultivated emotion is the screaming child at Wally World who reasons largely by instinct and emotion. Cultivated emotion is what you are affirming in your op. Just sayin.

May you find what you are looking for,
kiSsY!

originally posted by: AboveBoard
People without emotions are known as sociopaths.

I don't think that's very spiritual either.

Gurus are all about Love and being connected, one, with all life, etc. They are usually wise about emotions but do not say you shouldn't have them.

The Hindu Scriptures speak of managing ones emotions - it is represented by a team of wild horses pulling Krishna's chariot. He says if you do not take a firm hand with your own passions they will control where you go, but if you command them your passions can move you under your direct power. (Paraphrased)

He does not say you should shoot the horses and have no passions.

Anyway. Not sure if you meant it all that way or not but that's how it came off to me.

AB

Yes I have read comparison. The mind is the chariot driver, the body is the chariot, the horses are the emotions/senses and the reins is the breath. An emotional person is therefore pulled all over the place, clearly not a spiritually evolved person

originally posted by: GoShredAK
Spiritual gain, social loss.....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

If you look into the lives of many of the great saints of the past you will see they often retreat from the masses.

originally posted by: zinc12

originally posted by: AboveBoard
People without emotions are known as sociopaths.

I don't think that's very spiritual either.

Gurus are all about Love and being connected, one, with all life, etc. They are usually wise about emotions but do not say you shouldn't have them.

The Hindu Scriptures speak of managing ones emotions - it is represented by a team of wild horses pulling Krishna's chariot. He says if you do not take a firm hand with your own passions they will control where you go, but if you command them your passions can move you under your direct power. (Paraphrased)

He does not say you should shoot the horses and have no passions.

Anyway. Not sure if you meant it all that way or not but that's how it came off to me.

AB

Yes I have read comparison. The mind is the chariot driver, the body is the chariot, the horses are the emotions/senses and the reins is the breath. An emotional person is therefore pulled all over the place, clearly not a spiritually evolved person

People have emotions. It's part of being human for the vast majority. Those without emotions are not generally considered healthy human beings. Those who are erratic with their emotions or completely impulsively out of control are often mentally ill to boot, so that extreme is unhealthy as well.

So, are you saying people should not have emotions at all, or are you saying that mastery of emotions is generally present in those who are more spiritually evolved, in your opinion.

The person you were being critical of, who broke into tears over something, may be going through things or have been through things you simply don't know about and was finally able to have a space where they could get in touch with how they felt about those things, and process those feelings.

Being judgmental of people's feelings isn't a good example of being highly evolved either...

- AB

originally posted by: onequestion
Power in threes, mind+emotion+grounding.

Ding Ding Ding !!!

Winner.

a reply to: kissy princess

To me those people who work themselves up into a fever are an example of emotion overload therefore not spiritually evolved

a reply to: AboveBoard

If to become enlightened one must give up the ego then can you give up the ego without giving up the emotions.

The photo of the hippy's in the op are hugging trees and crying, would that suggest a mastery or would it indicate that in fact they are less evolved spiritually then even the average human.

a reply to: zinc12

The youtube link is one example, but not an accurate sample of this religion. I encourage deeper research.

Attachment/desire is a motivating force.

Every human will know success & gratification just as surely as they will know failure & suffering.
While the teachings and practices of Buddhism are valuable to exercise parts of the mind & brain that aren't normally employed by most people, I nevertheless regard the religion as a political device for controlling populations so as to supress the general discontent of the larger populace for having been exploited for the benefit of the smaller ruling classes. Buddhism is the flip-side to the Western-style marketing, and has worked very well for hundreds of years.

In the West, the formula is to instill a desire for a product in the mind of the consumer - get them to believe they need something that they really don't, so that when it is obtained, the consumer feels happy, and is content until the next advertisment is subliminated. In this fashion (yay, pun!) the populace is too occupied with consumerism, and their emotions are very strongly directed to petty things, and weak joys, creating in turn a disposition of indifference to political matters insofar as their consumerism remains unaffected. In this manner, the populace remains pacified.

In the East we have Buddhism, on the other hand; but just like other right-hand path religions, it offers the castration of desire as a means to pacify the public - except that the instillation of the "Desire for Non-Desire" is programmed by means of its apparent simplicity & logic so as to appeal to the individual's sense of self-worth, integrity, and an honest look at their surrounding reality: it is an attracive philosophy because it is realistic (eg., 'Life contains suffering - just look around you.'), and it also offers the illusion of having all the answers (which it doesn't) by explicitly contenting oneself with not caring about neither the question or answer. At last, its basic tenents and logic give a push for the individual to feel 'smart' by manner believing himself to be free, or at least with greater potential towards a rather vaguely defined 'freedom.'
Yet the reality is only that the practitioner has become the administrator of his own sentencing, and the guard of his own prison - all for the 'crime' of being born with a desire to Be, and Become.

*computer died - belated edit: ....forgot what I was going to write.

Spiritually evolved people can be whatever they need to be, in their incarnations. They might live lives that aren't spiritual at all, they may have other objectives. They're not all 'spiritual masters' in the traditional sense.

I often wonder about New Agers though, they seem so similar to one another to me, and the art they prefer is so tacky I think they're lacking in taste. And their pretensions of being spiritually evolved with their incessant talk of love and light is almost sickening. If spiritually evolved people act like New Agers I don't think I like spiritually evolved people..

But I'm a cynic and an asshole, I could never be spiritually evolved so my opinion is moot.

a reply to: kissy princess

You don't think Buddhism is a path to enlightenment then?

The instructions are clear, the path is clear. It's a complete science for spiritual liberation. There's a whole corpus of specific teachings for all stages of the process. Practice this and that will happen, it is a repeatable science. A repeatable science with any number of success stories.

I don't think any other esoteric tradition can compare really. I doubt the esoteric dimensions of the Abrahamic religions could compare but I'm no expert.

Otherwise I might agree with your post.

interesting topic,

You might not recognize a spiritually evolved person, if there is such a thing.

originally posted by: 3NL1GHT3N3D1
Someone who is spiritually self-aware will not let their emotions get the better of them and will catch themselves before going off the deep end.

If putting yourself in a position where someone who lacks empathy and patience can exploit your honest, upfront show of emotions is the litmus test for spirituality, I think you and the OP are examining the wrong party's lack of spirituality in the hypothetical scenario.


ETA: BTW, I think passive aggressive people are the least spiritual. People need to be upfront and honest about their feelings, IMO.

originally posted by: TheLaughingGod
a reply to: kissy princess

You don't think Buddhism is a path to enlightenment then?

The instructions are clear, the path is clear. It's a complete science for spiritual liberation. There's a whole corpus of specific teachings for all stages of the process. Practice this and that will happen, it is a repeatable science. A repeatable science with any number of success stories.

I don't think any other esoteric tradition can compare really. I doubt the esoteric dimensions of the Abrahamic religions could compare but I'm no expert.

Otherwise I might agree with your post.

What is enlightenment? Wholeness/unity with the mechanical laws of the universe? If this objective can be achieved, then isolate self-awareness cannot exist; and what is the point to dissolution of the Self? I think people have an idea that this type of 'unity,' presuming it can be achieved, is sought for two reasons: 1. The state of Earth kinda sucks, and suffering sucks - so if the mind can be trained to 'tune-out' how #ty reality is then a better quality of life can be expected, even if it is illusory. 2. If an individual can become in harmony with the laws of nature, the cosmic, divinity, etc - then we might assume that such a person could manipulate these laws & mechanisms to end suffering or get rich or something. The problem with this is that if Unity is achieved, then self-awareness is lost, and, again, such an 'individual' has by this point in the game lost his desire to affect the changes in his environment constituent to the employment of his mastery of these various cosmic laws.

I think that there are plenty of valuable teachings and practices in Buddhism - I make no war upon it or is practitioners - I'm sure most sincere practitioners are well-meaning people. I just do not agree that 'Enlightenment' is becoming a Redwood tree (rather, modeling our consciousness to be something akin to that of a redwood). I want to maintain and expand my consciousness because I am not a Redwood tree.
I like that I exist, and want to continue to exist when & after my physical body expires. I remember as a little kid thinking, "Why is it that I am ME, when I could just have very well not have BEEN at all?" I don't quite know where I came from - my reason for BEing, I know not why; I'm scared 'cuz I'm unsure what might happen after I die - all considerations for the moment aside, I do know that I am going to do my best to enjoy the ride!

What is spirituality?

Spirit is the breath of life,
Spirituality is living and feeling, emotion is the essence of living.

originally posted by: zinc12

Over the years I realised that emotionally highly strung individuals are attracted to such spiritual gatherings, but emotional people are not spiritually evolved people, the spiritually evolved are not emotional people.

I think I love you.

Thanks for stating that.

originally posted by: Annee

originally posted by: zinc12

Over the years I realised that emotionally highly strung individuals are attracted to such spiritual gatherings, but emotional people are not spiritually evolved people, the spiritually evolved are not emotional people.

I think I love you.

Thanks for stating that.

Good lord. I felt like that was one of the most simple-minded statements I've ever read on ATS....and you're in love?

Wow. It's like middle-school in this thread.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye

originally posted by: Annee

originally posted by: zinc12

Over the years I realised that emotionally highly strung individuals are attracted to such spiritual gatherings, but emotional people are not spiritually evolved people, the spiritually evolved are not emotional people.

I think I love you.

Thanks for stating that.

Good lord. I felt like that was one of the most simple-minded statements I've ever read on ATS....and you're in love?

Wow. It's like middle-school in this thread.

Yes.

I understand it.