Emotional Mastery – How It Helps Us Navigate The Complexities Of Life

Hello again!

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be exploring emotional mastery.

Why it matters, what it can do for us, how it supports us in finding joy and peace within a life that is ALWAYS going to contain pain, confusion, conflict and undesired experiences, and how we can slowly work towards it without getting into a situation where we’re pushing, forcing or using any form of shame, blame or guilt to achieve this end.

Because the truth is, putting in the time and energy to develop emotional mastery ISN’T about trying to perfect ourselves, it’s not about trying to become emotionless or about trying to ‘fix’ ourselves so that we never feel or express a negative emotion ever again.

Rather, emotional mastery is all about learning how to work WITH our emotions - using them as TOOLS to help us in this life and learning to embrace that they will always be there, that we aren’t always going to have a perfect response to them, but that we can progressively get BETTER at using our emotions to help us in life, rather than feeling that they are a constant hindrance or something we are ‘doing wrong.’

So let’s explore how emotional mastery serves us, why it’s worth it to build our emotional mastery skills, how this may relate to some people’s ideas about ‘enlightenment’ and what it means to live in that enlightened state, and how we can work, with great gentleness and care, with our current emotional capacity - slowing increasing our ability to feel, process and get messages over time.

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What IS Emotional Mastery Anyway?

First things first - let’s define our terms and get clear on what we’re talking about here.

Emotional Mastery is, simply put, getting ourselves to a place where we are able to see our emotions as the temporary messengers that they are.

It’s about learning how to use our FEELINGS as a guide to help us reconnect with true reality and to help us see through the conditioning that we’ve received that takes us away from real reality.

It’s about getting to a state where we are able to allow our emotions and feelings to exist, where we can go through the experience of big emotions and feelings - and know where we need to express something, where our emotions are guiding us to change in some way, where our emotions are simply something we need to allow to happen and flow through us, and where we need to slow down and allow ourselves the space and time to be with and process our emotions rather than rushing to try to find some sort of resolution or conclusion.

Emotional mastery isn’t about becoming the perfect stoic figure who never flinches or ‘loses control’ of their emotions. It’s not about attempting to be PERFECTLY aware of all of our emotions at all times - knowing what all of them mean, why they’re there and how to respond to them.

Rather, it’s about slowly working towards being more compassionate with ourselves as we experience our emotions, building more capacity to be gentle on ourselves as we feel what we feel, building a capacity to FEEL our emotions more and more without needing to numb or run away from them (again understanding that there may ALWAYS be times where our emotions are too much and we DO need that space to check out/numb out in order to properly manage) and about building our capacity to understand them and what they are trying to say to us/do for us.

It’s about learning how to befriend our emotions - this massive part of our humanity that culture has, for the most part, taught us to deny, repress, get rid of, guilt away, pretend aren’t happening or only express when they are ‘positive.’ 

Emotional mastery is about reclaiming this HUGE part of ourselves from a system that tells us that emotions and feelings make us weak, vulnerable, illogical, unproductive and unworthy of respect - and realizing that having a healthy relationship with our emotional selves is a foundational key for having healthy relationships with others and with life itself.

It’s about understanding that the more we understand ourselves on an emotional level, the more true self awareness we have - because even though the emotions themselves are temporary and move through us the more we allow them to, this doesn’t mean that we aren’t inherently emotional beings that that our emotions aren’t telling us something ABOUT our true, real selves.

Our emotions are there as a guidance tool.

Our feelings are there as a guidance too.

They are there as PART of what we need to navigate this life with understanding.

They are not something inherently separate from the intellect or our logical selves, but rather they are a PART of our capacity to logically understand life and they are a PART of the information we need to help us figure out what to do, when, where, why and how.

Without our emotions, we only have the intellect. The intellect is great - and we aren’t here to try to get RID of the thinking mind or to try to REDUCE the thinking mind in any way. The idea that the mind is the root of all pain and evil is again a big misunderstanding that leads a lot of people to a place of battling with a part of themselves that they are never going to get rid of because it’s inherent to our human experience. Rather it’s about learning how to unite the intellect and the emotions so that the two can work together.

Emotions and feelings are different things, so I want to use both terms here when we are talking about emotional mastery. Both are important - sadness, anger, grief, happiness, joy - these EMOTIONAL responses to life are a big part of our guidance system.

Feelings like attraction, repulsion, opening up, closing down, tingling, numb, shooting, pain and all the other energetic/physical experience we have in our bodies are another aspect of emotional mastery that we are going to utilize to help us sort out what’s real in reality.

So when we talk about emotional mastery, know we are talking about BOTH emotions AND feelings, not just emotions as we tend to think of them independently.

The Mind Is The Manager The Emotions And Feelings Are The C.E.O

If you’ve been interacting with the content around here for a while, you’re likely pretty familiar with the metaphor that I often like to use when talking about the different roles that our minds, bodies and emotions play in our expression of life.

If we think of ourselves like a company - we can understand that our emotions and feelings play the role of the C.E.O of that company. Our emotions and feelings are all about the BIG picture, what we haven’t experienced yet, where we’re going, what is and isn’t working on the larger scale and how we can better align with reality in order to have better outcomes in our lives.

The mind is like the manager. The manager is all about systems, implementation of systems, figuring out how to take that grand vision from the C.E.O and making it a reality. The mind is all about scanning for problems and WHY they are happening, scanning for solutions and coming up with formulas that enable daily work-flow to happen in the most efficient way. The mind isn’t great at dreaming and coming up with future projection - rather the mind tends to work with what is KNOWN, what’s already been experienced, what’s already working and not working - and the mind relies upon the emotions, as the manager relies upon the C.E.O for the bigger vision, the information that goes beyond what we’ve already created/experienced/know and for the insights that allow for growth and change - rather than simple repetition and commitment to a chosen path.

The body is then like the workers in the company. The people who are actually DOING the things that are required for the company to run. The body is how we actualize all the dreams of the C.E.O and the plans of the Manager. The body is the executor. 

I would put in here that the ‘spirit’ is like the ethos of the company. The spirit is the driving principals, the driving forces, the ‘why’ behind the company. The spirit part of self is akin to the VISION for the company as a whole, why and how it was birthed and it’s the ENERGY that supports and drives the mission of the work being done. Our spirit is that unchanging, ultimate expression of the company that is constantly breathing life into all other parts of the company - the deep, complex nature of the company that again oversees the whole operation and guides it in a specific direction - the direction of ultimate expression.


When we understand that no part is good or bad, no part is right or wrong and no part is perfect but rather that all parts RELY upon the other parts in order to function optimally, we can start to understand that there’s really no wisdom in trying to ‘get rid of’ any aspect of self, nor is there any wisdom in labeling one part of the self as ‘good or bad’ - rather the reality is that all parts have their ideal PLACE and ROLE.

That no part is going to function optimally when it’s being asked to do something that isn’t natural to it, nor will it function well without the support of the other parts.

Emotional mastery is about letting the emotions and feelings take their role and place as C.E.O, and learning how to use the mind, body and spirit to utilize the gifts that the emotions have to offer us.

Emotions and feelings are the higher perspective/vantage point/direction - but they aren’t something we want to just follow on a whim or from knee-jerk reactions. They aren’t something we want to OVER emphasize, or are they something we want to get rid of or label as illogical or otherwise unhelpful when we don’t understand them.

Everything that comes from the C.E.O must be processed. It can’t just be taken on a whim. The C.E.O, being the dreamer, big picture part of the company that is you and your life, isn’t great in the management role. The emotions need to be given space to exist, to dream, to feel, to move, to come up with all sorts of ideas, to react to all the changing environments and all that big picture information - without being placed in a role of deciding what we are going to do, how we are going to respond and what direction we’re going to take WITHOUT consulting with the feet on the ground managers first.

Every big dreaming C.E.O needs a great manager - and we are exactly the same.

Our emotions and feelings need a strong mind so that we aren’t blown this way or that and constantly running and chasing the current feeling of the day.

At the same time, we don’t want the managers to be placed in the role of C.E.O.

We don’t want the part of self that has no future vision, that only knows what we’ve already experienced, that only has the information about what has come before and that needs a plan, needs to understand, needs to be in control at all times to be in the MAIN drivers seat of the company of our lives.

We don’t want to be limited by the mind in our ability to dream and create - to see and feel that bigger picture, to see what’s coming, to notice what’s not working before it becomes apparent within the work-flow.

We need each part in their role and we need to learn how each part works best and is supported best by the other parts.

THAT is emotional mastery.

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Alright, that’s more than enough for today.

Let’s take a pause here, and come back next week for more on pain and pleasure, how they relate to our emotions, and how we use pain and pleasure to help us understand and relate to our emotions in a healthy and productive way.

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