by CNSCSNS | Jan 18, 2021 | What is the deepest emotion?
“There is no answer to this question, as each emotion can be felt equally ‘deeply’. In other words, fully embodied love, fully embodied fear, fully embodied apathy, and so forth, are all equally deep emotions.
Picture each emotion as a magnet, pulling in a certain direction. Each shares a core essence – a complex coalescence of feelings. Depending on how these feelings come together determines the emotion, which in turn, affects our thoughts and actions.
We habituate to certain emotions, which plants the seeds and allows them to sprout more regularly in our life. The more we experience certain emotions, the more they influence our sense of identity and the lens through which we see the world. Thus, perhaps, one could argue that these emotions are one’s personal ‘deepest’ emotions, as they dictate our lives to the greatest extent.
Fear is the most common example of this point. Bombarded by fear-mongering in different facets of our modern society – from the media to scarcity-based economics, to rugged individualism – our garden is lined with weeds of fear. Thus, we become accustomed to experiencing our consciousness through a lens of fear and our thoughts and actions reflect this.
The universal law of cause and affect is that positive thoughts and actions yield positive results, and negative thoughts and actions yield negative results. Though there is no true judge of a positive and negative action, our intuition is pretty darn good at this role. Positive emotions – those of joy, gratitude, loving-kindness, empathy, and compassion – usually lead us to positive thoughts and actions. Negative emotions – those of fear, selfishness, anger and hatred – usually lead us to negative thoughts and actions.
While we cannot always choose what emotions arise in a given moment, we can choose to water the seeds of positive emotions when they arise, and alchemize the seeds of negative emotions. Take anger, for example. Someone cuts you off in traffic. This ‘negative’ emotion arises. Cultivating first, the awareness of that emotion – ‘I am experiencing anger’ – is fundamental. Next, make the choice NOT to continue to play out the story. Instead, take a step back and breathe. Third, the choice to access our wisdom and skillful means to use this experience as an opportunity for growth. ‘Oh, I experienced anger when that car cut me off. Why? What may have been behind the anger? Engage only as much as feels right, then let it continue to flow downstream.
Emotions are a profound and integral part of the human experience. They are like stars which guide us like boats through the night.”
by Akif A | Jan 18, 2021 | What is the deepest emotion?
“Of course, our perceptions of emotions are entirely dependant on our own mental approach to them, but personally, I would expect a large majority of people to agree that the deepest emotion a person could ever feel is “love”. This may sound quite cliche, but once going through the deep infatuation of love towards someone, one begins to understand just how vulnerable they are to being hurt and still be able to forgive.
A very powerful example of this (of which I am sure many people could relate to) is the inability to walk away which is caused by love. Many a time we may have somebody in our life who decides to leave us without notice or explanation, but as mad as we may be for them causing mental and emotional turmoil to us, we still fail to block them out and know would rekindle the relationship at the very first chance we are given to.
The power of love is also seen in family and God. It is a natural feeling for a person to turn to their most trusted circles at the time of dire need, majority of the time, these are also the people whom which we love. The deepness of sensation is seen here as we are able to trust others with the sincerest of our secrets and believe that they would not use that against us. Love.
To conclude, there has never been and never will be one emotion that can strive as the deepest, but for sure, the most commonly deepest emotion we all go through is undoubtedly love.”
by Mark R | Jan 18, 2021 | What is the deepest emotion?
“I believe there are two core emotions and they are opposites. One dissipates the other and vice versa. They are Fear and Love. They come in many more subtle forms like anger, sadness, happiness, playfulness, and everything in between. But you asked for the deepest, so I will try to speak to that.
I take your meaning of “deepest” is to feel as much and as hard as possible. Maximum Magnitude!
At one far end, you have complete and total terror. The most Fearful place you can imagine times 1000. A place where you feel, at the core of your being, absolutely disconnect from everything and every one and you are in life-threatening immediate danger.
At the other far end, you have complete and total Love. A place where you feel, at the core of your being, absolute connection to every other being and everything around you. You are as safe and complete, where nothing could harm you and you want for nothing. Loved and connected.
While absolutes are good for academics, our reality is thankfully not so extreme. Feelings flow and ebb and are very fluid. Fear and Love are opposing feelings, but I find there to be much overlap and nuance in the moment of actually feeling them. I have heard others describe these feelings as layers of emotions or several emotions at once.
These include Love and Fear simultaneously in varying degrees.
I have felt these on a few occasions. Like that time I helped my wife deliver our child, yup massive LOVE and FEAR. Most parents can relate. Getting married, duh. First job, first kiss, first … you get the idea. We feel them both often. We call them something else like jealousy or nurturing but its all fear or love, just different ways of going about it with some particular tilt or perspective taken.
If you want to feel the deepest emotions, you will need to get very comfortable with feeling both because you can’t just pick one side. It’s an ebb and a flow. Anyone who has had one of the proverbial “best days of my life” may have also noticed the happiness hangover in the following days. Typically the higher you go and the longer you’re there, the lower you will go and the longer you’ll be there. But I also think the cycle can be embraced and you can get the deep feels whenever you want. It’s one of those simple yet not easy conundrums of life. The best one in my opinion 🙂
Life is an experiment, test your self.”
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