“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.”