Emotional Choice Counselling
Happiness - Love - Hate

Article extracted from a workshop & book called:

DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOU - by Dieter Luske© - Gold Coast

... all following articles, are written as workshop manuscript
... questions were asked to stimulate active participation.

ARTICLE NUMBER - 21 - Chapter 3

The "Functional" Meaning of Emotions - (Emotional Message)

EMOTIONS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

How to help emotions of Happiness - Love - Hate

HAPPINESS

Happiness, have you got it? We are all striving for it. It is definitely more than just an emotion, it is a goal, a destination. Eternal happiness, can it be reached?

Let's see what we know about happiness. - It is long term, a goal, a value. It can be reached in some parts of your life but may be lacking in others. Happiness very often feels painful before reaching it. The way to happiness may be rough, but whether you perceive it as rough, depends on your attitude. Once you reach happiness, perhaps in something personal, you would have achieved something else at the same time. You feel really happy-blissful. That still does not mean that you are happy in every part of your life. As the saying goes, a job well done is rewarded with a harder job. The more happiness you find, the more you become aware as to what life is really about.

Lack of happiness is not an indication of missing something on the external, like something material. That's where the saying, "you can't buy happiness" comes from. If you are missing happiness in your life, then stop looking on the outside and start looking on the inside.

What is missing on the inside is what really counts, and once you notice that you have everything you need on the inside, true happiness will come.

Everything on the outside will give you only momentary satisfaction, which may be confused with happiness. When you get a new car, you feel really good. Two weeks later it is 'old hat'. Then, to get that really good feeling back, (which could be confused with happiness), you buy yourself something new again, and so it goes on. Your so called living standard is rising, but to finance that costly lifestyle you work harder and thus have no time to enjoy your possessions.

I am not in the habit of painting a black picture and therefore you will have to work out yourself whether you have become a victim in striving for a confused happiness, stuck in the old rat race, or whether you look on the inside for happiness, and instead, do, or work at what you love to do.

THE POSITIVE FUNCTION of happiness is to strive for it, to get a glimpse of it and then go for more. You can not be happy and live a lie. True happiness will uncover your victim positions and make you aim for more happiness.

THE NEGATIVE FUNCTION is to confuse happiness with fun, or to think you are happy when you haven't even discovered happiness yet, living a lie instead, stuck in the rat race, a victim to your material dream world.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against material wealth, as long as it is not the reason for your life. If you truly do what you love to do, prosperity will come without concentrating on it, as sort of a bonus or by-product.

LOVE

A big word, a big emotion and only a small paragraph on it.

THE POSITIVE FUNCTION of love is, it is highly recommended, it can transcend all other emotions. To feel and have unconditional love is to have achieved what you are here for.

Love is your birthright, you have it already but do you recognise it?

THE NEGATIVE FUNCTION is to deny love, to be untouched by its deep feeling; to have a fear of falling in love or being unable to express love; to use the word love without meaning; not responding to love; not letting it grow and not doing what you truly love.

HATE

I taught myself for years not to hate, without realising that nothing is good or bad, that all emotions are there to be experienced as part of the lessons we learn while on this planet. Each emotion teaches us something and once we look at its function we learn even to appreciate hate and use it correctly.

It is obviously a strong emotion (and so it should be), so don't confuse it with anger and don't use the word without the emotion.

THE POSITIVE FUNCTION of hate is that it is such a powerful emotion that it will motivate you to act in a positive way against whatever you hate.

By example, if you hate injustice, really hate it, then you had better make sure that injustice is stopped.

Don't wait too long before you act, do it now, or your hate turns into a victim position and eats you up.

One word of caution here. Because hate is such a strong emotion, before taking action, make sure you react on facts, and not on what you think is the truth.

THE NEGATIVE FUNCTION of hate is either to react to your emotion and lash out, or another way is to sit there and let it eat you up. This is a strong emotion and it contains a strong message.

I can't see any point of hating a person or a group of people or even whole nations.

I often get to hear, "but what about a vicious killer?" or something like it.

I always ask myself "what kind of life has this person been through to have done whatever s/he has done, whatever it is, this person is either totally lost or mentally sick, in either case, this person needs help."

Forgive that person, don't carry hate in your heart, carry love.

In any case, you don't really hate that person, you hate what that person has done, and the cause of this needs fIxing and this will never be fIxed by hating or killing that person.

People are good, it is the system which has to change for the better.

As long as we have a win/lose system, we will have people who can't lose any longer and we will have people who want to win, and that at all cost.

Obviously a bad system is better than none. If there was no system, there would be chaos, and everything would self-destruct. The solution is to change the system to a win/win system. This would automatically cut out most fears at the same time.

... to be continued with: Anger - Overwhelmed - Hope

Article provided by the Editor - Dieter L.

Excerpt from a workshop & book - published 1993 - titled; "Do you believe in You" www.usenature.com - Dieter Luske ©

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