Now let us understand the significance of emotions in our life. I think each and every action we take in our life is because directly or indirectly we are trying to fulfill certain emotions. In fact it happens so fast that we do not realize that this is happening in the background of our subconscious mind.

Let us take an instance from our daily life and analyse. I would like to take an instance of buying clothes. Why do we buy clothes. I am sure you will say “Obviously it is one of the basic necessity and to protect ourselves”. If that were the case we could have just covered ourselves(like they used to do during the primitive age of human civilization) with some leaves or a sack. But we buy a particular clothing, a particular brand, sometimes we buy only branded and sometimes higher end brands. Why do we do so? Have we anytime sat and thought about it. If it was all about covering ourselves, any piece of cloth would have sufficed. But in reality, it is not so. If we carefully analyse we buy clothes for a specific emotion. Emotions are purely subjective, as in, some buy for status symbol, some buy for feeling comfortable, some buy for style etc.. Let me take an example of a person buying clothes for status symbol. What will status symbol mean to the person? The answer may be it will give a sense of prestige. What will prestige mean to the person? The answer may be , it may give a sense of respect from others. What will getting respect from others, mean to the person? The answer may be he/she feels  a sense of being accepted in society. So what does being accepted mean to the person?The answer may be it may give him/her a sense of fulfilment. So if you analyse in this instance , by repeatedly digging deeper and deeper , finally it is an emotion , a person is seeking for. Here I have randomly picked an instance of buying clothes. This will hold good for any activity we do in life.

I would like to pick another instance , just to reiterate my point that everything boils down to satisfying an emotion which is hidden in us. So now let me select a very common desire we all have. The desire is wanting to have more money or “financial freedom”. So again let us analyse this desire. Question:Why do want to earn more money?

Answer: To do whatever we want in life

Question: What will happen if you are able to do whatever you want in life?

Answer: We will get a sense of freedom

Question: What will having freedom mean to you?

Answer: No need to worry about earning money

Question: What does not worrying about earning mean to you?

Answer: We will get a feeling of relaxation or peace and no stress

So if we analyse the above instance again it is clear that everything we are doing in our life boils down to fulfilling our emotional needs. So now the next question is , is there no end to this vicious cycle? So should we continuously go on and on fulfilling our emotional needs? I think the answer lies in the fact that firstly we must understand the nature of emotions.

Emotions , as I had already mentioned in Part 1 of this blog is arising because of some expectation is not met or something is not going as it was supposed to go. Now if we look at it objectively rather than subjectively, our entire perception may change radically. So I would like to say that this process of fulfilling or satisfying our emotions is never ending. It can be compared to an oil lamp. The emotions is the lamp and the actions we take to fulfil it is the oil. So the more actions we take the more the oil we are pouring in to the lamp and obviously the lamp will keep glowing more and more brighter. So your question may be “so should we cease to take any action?”. Absolutely not! What we need to do is to look at it in a totally different perspective. In other words what I am saying is , now you very well know that there is an oil lamp. So , you need to change the oil. Replace the oil with water. We all know that the moment water comes in contact with lamp, the lamp will cease to ignite. Now you must be wondering what is this water. This water is nothing but knowledge. If you remember, I had mentioned in Part 1 that , as soon as the trigger is there for a particular emotion, begin telling yourself a particular sentence or a phrase. I also had told to repeat it a number of times, so that it gets permanently stored in your brain. This sentence or phrase is the knowledge I am talking about. So I believe that “Knowledge is only potential power.” Unless and until I use this knowledge and apply it in my life, nothing is going to change. So what is the knowledge in the above two instances. For the first instance dealing with purchasing clothes the knowledge one must have has is “ I want to feel comfortable and I will buy clothes which I will feel comfortable”. So here you need to be mindful of the fact that you are not trying to appease anyone or demanding attention from others. Now in the second instance, dealing with earning lot of money, the knowledge is “  I will enjoy the process of earning money, as in, enjoy the work required to earn money and my focus is only that. Period!” When you do so, you are not concerned about money , but still your emotional need of being enjoying is happening.

Conclusion:

I would like to say that human emotions  is like a treasure, we all humans have been endowed with. Unfortunately instead of understanding it and making use of it constructively, more often than not , we have first of all not understood it properly and on top of that, we use it destructively, as far as committing heinous  crimes like murder , rape, suicide, robbery etc.