The Emotional Heart

Since writing the book, Jauhar has increasingly focused on stress-reducing habits such as yoga and meditation, spends more time with his family, and is better able to understand his patients.

A lot of people assume that (their) emotions come from the heart. Some actual ’emo people’ think that their emotional experience and their emotionally driven behavior means that they live from their heart. And that is a serious misconception. Emotions are a ‘product’ of the brain! All the time. In fact, emotions play their role at the level of the lower brain. You’ve heard of the emotional brain, haven’t you? The word says it all. There is a big difference between pleasing, affection, affection on the one hand and love on the other. But a lot of people confuse those concepts. Love is not an emotion but it is a quality and expression of spirituality. Love is always unconditional and is placed from the heart ‘above’ everything that is going on in the brain over human nature. The emotions that can be triggered in us by certain circumstances around (real) love are completely separate from that love itself; Those feelings, those emotions are secondary and come from our brain and are never about (real) love but about circumstances and about our ego: the fulfillment of our needs, need for…, desires, pleasant feelings, I want… Real, unconditional love doesn’t want anything, it is.

Continue reading the very nice article about this by Paul Jansen: Emotions come from the Brain, not from the Heart

Many people will also recognize themselves in the following relationship scene: man and woman are talking to each other. It’s about a personal issue, small, but still a pebble in the shoe. Talking can be dangerous and make the wounds deeper,… Without realizing it, words have fallen that hurt the other. Something arises on a heart level and emotional level. One is hurt, sad, does not feel understood and/or accepted, and the heart closes for a moment. Love encapsulates itself back. After all, one cannot open oneself. A pure emotion lasts 90 seconds.

If we haven’t learned to deal with emotions, the following happens. The next day, the person still remembers the conversation, feels the hurt emotions. Thoughts now take over and keep repeating the scenario. In consciousness, the story becomes more painful and worse, the emotions repeat themselves constantly and are a plate on which the grooves are dug deeper and deeper into the brain through repetition. Emotions are stored in our cell memory, repetitive thoughts only confirm the situation even stronger… and the heart remains closed. Just by… repetition… Through memory, the activity of the brain, which usually lives in the foreground for all of us.

From the navel to the brain

One more thing. The quality of the mind has changed. In Patanjali’s time, in the past, the center of the human personality was not in principle the brain; it was the heart. And before that, it wasn’t even the heart. It was even lower, near the navel. In the time before Patanjali, before Patanjali, it was the navel – the center of the human personality. Thus, hatha yoga developed methods that were useful and meaningful to the person whose personality center was the navel. Then the center became the heart. When the center became the heart, only bhakti yoga could be practiced, nothing else. So Bhakti yoga developed in the Middle Ages – never before – because the center changed. And a method has to change depending on the people to whom it is applied. “Now even bhakti yoga is no longer relevant. The main center is further away from the navel. Now it’s the brain.” *1

As these changes occurred, more and more meditators found that they had difficulty forcing their bodies to stop, or staying in a fixed position, with potentially dangerous consequences. For modern people, whose center is furthest from the navel, the problem becomes even more acute…

“All religions in the world have taught people to do something: stop the thought process, force the body to a silent posture. That’s yoga – a long-term practice to force the body to be still. But a forced body is not silent. And all the prayers, concentrations, and contemplations of all religions do the same thing to the mind: they force it, they do not allow the mind to move. Yes, you have the ability to do it. And if you persevere, you may be able to stop the thought process. But this is not real, it is absolutely fake.”

That’s also Vipassana, sitting completely still, not moving. And observe what is there. But many people can’t sit still. Forced sitting still becomes a problem. It’s a simple psychology: you’re not prepared, you haven’t done your homework, and you’ve started a job that requires a huge background of experience.

“When you dance insanely, the opposite happens inside you. With a crazy dance you start to become aware of a still point in yourself; With sitting still, you begin to become aware of madness. The opposite is always the point of consciousness. With your mad, chaotic dance, with your crying, with your chaotic breathing, I allow you madness. Then you begin to become aware of a subtle point, a deep point within yourself that is still and motionless, as opposed to the madness at the edge. You will feel very happy; There is an inner silence in your center. But if you only sit, then the inner silence is the madness; You’re quiet on the outside, but on the inside you’re insane.” *2