This article is a transcript of a talk with a male student. It starts with a discussion of an exercise he has been given and then expands into the subject of the intellectual and emotional centers, feelings and thoughts. He is very shy and lacks self confidence. He has been given the exercise of talking to at least one new girl every day. He could get a date, but the point of the exercise is to approach and talk to the most attractive girl he can find, as that would be the most intimidating, to build self confidence. He has been practicing this exercise for two weeks and is reporting on his negative emotions and disappointments.
Anyone, boy or girl, can apply the principles of this article and exercise, please open your mind to how it applies to you.
The value of an exercise, and most exercises have many values, is to learn that when you do something – for example ask a girl to go out, the obvious purpose is for the girl to say yes. That is the problem with people, we look only for the obvious purpose. In other words if I do something I must achieve an obvious success. If till the field to plant corn I must grow corn, that is why I’m doing it.
But if we do not look for other values or long term possibilities, we will not see the hidden meaning of any situation. For example some people know what another person is going to say before they speak. That is because they have learned to see the hidden meaning of things not just the obvious meaning. This example exercise of asking at least one girl on a date every day is for you to really get the understanding that you are going to ask a girl to go out but that is not the point. The point is for you to have the courage to talk to a new girl. That is the purpose of the exercise.
If you get sad because she said ‘no’ you do not understand the ultimate purpose of the exercise. You are stuck at the obvious external purpose rather than working with the subtle hidden purpose which is for you to talk to a girl and her response does not matter because for her to go out with you is not the point, the point is for you to talk.
If you truly understood this, you could talk to 1000 girls and if they all say no, you would never get discouraged or sad because you have 1000 successful cases because you talked to them, talking is the point.
Because we think we understand something, we stop thinking and say “Oh yes, I understand the point”. But you see your emotions tell us you do not understand. That is where our intellect stops us from learning because we think we understand but we do not and thus stagnate in growth.
You need to understand it in your heart because intuition, knowing what others are thinking as well as good ideas for business, happens in the heart, intuition. It takes some time to develop this but that is what we are trying to do now. Continue to do this exercise and any time she says ‘no’ and you get discouraged you should remember “This is not the purpose. The purpose is for me to speak to the girl.” – then you will develop much greater intuition and you will start to develop the organ of your heart – spiritual heart – and this opens your mind and intelligence to many other abilities.
So it means that till now you have failed, not because she said no, but because you are still looking at it with your head saying “If I talk to a girl therefore she must go out with me”. You have to change the way you see it. The purpose is just for you to talk to her.
Intellectual Emotions
What is happening is that you think you feel an emotion, you feel depressed or rejected. It is NOT an emotion. This is intellectual. You have made yourself think you are sad and depressed and rejected. That is why it is so hard to change and become positive and encouraged to continue, because it is not true emotion, it is intellectually thinking you have an emotion. This makes it impossible to fix, because you believe it is an emotion when in realty it is a thought.
This is so important because it limits our life without our even knowing it. We think that we are feeling but we are not feeling we are only thinking. How we prove this and correct it is exactly this exercise. The purpose of talking to a girl is for you to be able to talk to her but in your mind you are thinking “If I talk to a girl she must go out with me, that is the point of talking, if not then I’ve failed and get sad”. We can feel an emotion in our intellectual aspect. In the All IS Mind course and book, we learn about the intellectual, emotional and moving centers. In each centre you have all three in parts. What happened is you went to do an exercise which was an intellectual act and you said “I must ask a girl out” and intellectually she said “no” so intellectually you failed and you have an emotion in the intellectual centre, so it is an intellectual emotion – not a pure emotion.
Whereas, if you are in the emotional centre you could be aware without thinking that you are very self-conscious and shy – you feel inferior – so you are going to talk to a girl to allow yourself to be free so you have the courage to talk to anybody, it is pure emotion, and that is why you are doing this exercise to allow your heart to be open and not scared. The intellect is like the shell or armor around the heart – its body guard. It keeps everything outside. The intellect protects the heart because it is too delicate.
This exercise is to let your heart open and speak sincerely about what you feel to a girl and it does not matter how she responds. You are saying what you feel. You are letting your heart speak. You have achieved your goal of speaking freely. You cannot actually get rejected because you succeeded already, you let yourself speak from your heart because the spiritual or higher emotional heart only gives and feels love and does not need to receive something back. The intellectual heart is what needs to get something back in order to feel happy. And here is the definition of an intellectual emotion versus a true emotion. To give for the sake of giving or to give in hope or for what you will receive.
Think about it like this: there is God and there are humans. What makes a human special is a little piece of God that is our spiritual heart, our highest emotional centre. This means that when I speak from my heart it is that little piece of God that is within me who is speaking.
Let me ask you a question: what does God, the original source of all things, want or need? God doesn’t need anything, It is perfect. Therefore that piece of God that is my heart which just wants to tell a girl; “I think you are very beautiful, to look in your beautiful eyes makes me feel happy because I think you are a beautiful person”. This is simply giving love from the voice of my heart which is God, which is perfect. It doesn’t need anything. Her response is irrelevant. It does not matter because you do not need anything other than to give what you feel – to let that out. You cannot fail by speaking from your heart.
Because we are stuck in the intellectual centre, you may not feel such emotion all the time, but that does not matter. Speak to any girl any time, and get your intellect to become accustomed to speaking freely to strangers so that it releases its thick walls covering your heart and one day you will be able to feel and speak purely with great confidence.
When we are truly living from the emotional centre, then, at that time, we are speaking from that part of God within us and we cannot possibly feel sad or any other negative emotion. God cannot get depressed. It is not logical for that to happen. If you say something to a girl and you get sad because of her response, that shows you are in the emotional aspect of the intellectual centre so your emotion of sadness is only intellectual – it’s in your mind, it is not truly an emotion. You only think it is an emotion, and that is why we get sad. That is why you can feel shy or uncomfortable – you are only thinking – you may think you are feeling but really you are thinking.
This exercise, where you talk to a new girl each day, if you feel rejected you can say “I see, this is intellectual because I want a result from the girl – but if I really speak from my heart just to give her a gift of words to make her smile, without wanting anything back then I am speaking truly from my heart and emotional centre and I can never get hurt.
The day you can do that is the day you become free. That is the day you graduate. Then you are truly balanced – living from your heart – and you can never get hurt after that. You cannot get upset unless you go back to thinking that you’re feeling. We can achieve this state maybe once, but it doesn’t mean it becomes permanent. You have to keep working because you don’t become perfect in a second you know.
This exercise is so important because it will take you away from all of the intellectually based emotion and put you into the pure emotional centre in which you will never be shy or uncomfortable again. Also you get the ability to know what other people are thinking, but you don’t know that you know what they are thinking. You see for me, I just get the idea to do or say something and after I do it someone says “that is just what I was thinking”.
Q: I don’t know what to open with when I see a girl.
Of course not, you are thinking and not just feeling, your question is from the intellect. What you want is to just be walking, and you stand next to a girl at the red light and you say “you have very beautiful eyes” and that is it. Maybe she talks to you, OK, maybe not. Maybe she slaps you, it doesn’t matter. Just see what you feel and think and just say it, that is the whole exercise. The more you do that the more you will be opening your true heart, the spiritual heart. That is what we need to do, because right now we can say you are an emotional nature but really you are intellectual with a very strong emotional aspect in the intellectual centre.
Everything you feel is by thought and this is proven because the truly emotional centre is the spark of God and it is not logical to say God can feel depressed or God feels inferior or shy, this is crazy, it makes no sense. If we have any of these problems it must be the intellectual centre which has been told that you are not good enough. Because if you look at the movies and you see James Bond so handsome, so strong and then you look at yourself and you say “What gorgeous girl will want skinny balding me!” This is an intellectual emotion, you have seen and learned you are not good enough and feel insecure which is purely intellectual. That is why I say that you think you are feeling but you are not truly feeling, only thinking.
Just stop the girl and talk to her. It is just a matter of habit. You have a habit of thinking “what can I say, what is good”. Just practice this exercise. You get to be able to do it by just doing it, just don’t think. You see any girl, any time and you just talk to her. It is just a matter of doing it. That is how you will get stronger. Do it, don’t be thinking.
Q: That is hard for me.
It is hard for everyone. The only difference is that most people will not do anything about it. They will say “no that is not true – or that is normal” and so they never change. You are trying to be free, and you are just being intellectual “How should I do it, what should I do?” Very intellectual. But now you are trying to not be so intellectual, but more spontaneous and just act instantly with what you feel. By doing this exercise you will see yourself thinking. That is how you will correct the problem. It is like the mosquito in the bedroom. You’re in bed and there is a mosquito, it’s dark but it’s buzzing in your ear – “ohhh I can’t stand it, I can’t sleep with this mosquito” so you turn on the lights and you look for it. When you see it you can kill it and then it will stop bothering you. This exercise is the same thing, your intellect is controlling you but you do not see it. By noticing how you are thinking “what shall I say, what will I do” – and say “OK – there is my intellect”. You just have to feel what you feel and speak.
We’re trying to break a life time habit. Notice how little children say anything that comes to their mind? That is what we’re aiming for. A child just says what they feel – right away. This is the example of how you must be – like a child. But now you can be smarter – you don’t say something that will hurt somebody.
When I was maybe 5 or 6, my auntie was taking some blood pressure medication which made a lot of hair grow on her face and I said “how come auntie has a beard like a man?” You see the child doesn’t think – it made my auntie feel very bad because women do not want a beard. The child doesn’t know that – says what he thinks and your mother says “Oh, you shouldn’t just say what you think – or whatever you feel like saying, you must think and be careful”.
And that is where you get destroyed from the young age where we just say whatever we feel, our parents and teachers tell us it’s wrong so you grow up being very intellectual and you have destroyed your emotional centre and now the intellectual centre becomes like a prison guard keeping you under its control in a small cell – to make sure that any messages from the emotional centre going out are filtered and checked that everything is OK – and in the same way any emotions coming in get protected and we have to check – nothing is going to hurt my heart so I make sure I filter everything that comes in intellectually. That is where we get destroyed – where the child says anything and the parent says “that is wrong, do not do this”, and now you are trying to correct this problem. Go back to being the child but now you know what will hurt somebody and what you do not say.
Of course, modern society is doing everything it can to make sure none of us develop our true balance of centers or become emotionally free through the plagues of political correctness and personal boundaries. You must not say anything that could hurt anyone and at the same time over sensitivity is being cultivated by the encouragement of building and developing personal boundaries.
Take an objective look as if you are from another planet of people who are emotionally free and never get hurt or hurt others. Look at modern humans with their political correctness, cannot say anything for fear they will get sued or lose their job. Or how humans have so cleverly created a means of avoiding responsibility or being told they are wrong and improving themselves by having high boundaries and breaking into tears at the least indication that they have done something wrong they must improve. We cannot speak and we are afraid to feel. Where is the future of humanity!
We are born with three natures, Moving, Intellectual and Emotional, as mentioned earlier. We each have a primary nature, and within our primary nature, there are aspects of all three. But this is not a single level system. Each aspect is further divided into the three sections, and again each is divided, a great multiple of times.
As we have discussed here, the child is quickly made intellectual by being taught what to say, what is appropriate or inappropriate, think think think. Thinking is good, but not when it stifles emotions. Unfortunately that is what has happened to all of us, but we were too young to remember. Our highest emotional centre never developed as we have been formed into a purely intellectual being and then only using the emotions in our intellect. Examine all your emotions deeply and you will find that there is thought, somewhere in your feelings, especially the negative ones, there is thought. Your feelings are thoughts about feelings which trigger what you think are feelings.
And so humans are very limited. There is a reason we only use 5% of our brain and capacity. Because the other 95% functions through our highest emotional centre, which also has the psychic powers that are attributed to only the great saints, mystics and geniuses who have cultivated themselves.
That cultivation is the process of breaking through the intellectual barriers and reaching the highest emotional centers where intuition and spiritual experiences reside. Look for your intellectualization of every thought and feeling, starting with all negative emotions and you will find the devil in you, your programmed mind. Look for how society is making you think about feeling, analyze your emotions, demanding you to describe them, talk about them, express them in words. That is not possible. You cannot truly describe love. A feeling is a feeling but a child is forced to describe what they feel, and they struggle with this impossible task until they finally give up and put inadequate words to feelings and from then on live through words rather than experience. That is the end of our potential unlimited happiness and unity with a spiritual experience. We have put the eagle in a cage.
I ask you to rebel against all the conventions of the world of political correctness, fear not the emotional damage that can be done to you and welcome any destruction of your intellectual emotions. As you tear apart your negative states which are thought forms, you will release your spiritual heart and soul from its dark prison cell and be free without any of the learnt fears and self limiting thoughts.
There is so much to say and tell you about this and how to achieve it. I have put it in other works and teach it in courses, but you must accept responsibility to do the work on yourself as you are your own master as well as prison guard.
As long as it takes, as painful as it may appear to be, you cannot yet begin to imagine the bliss of a life free from intellectual emotional limitations.
Join the discussion
Thank you for sharing this I found it very enlightening. I will be mindful of these things as I observe myself and will look for more ways to challenge these intellectual barriers.
Thank you David, this really helps me understanding more of what you talked about last week at the course. I shall re-read this article many times to get better understanding each time.
Kind Regards,
Andre