Spiritual Role of Emotions

[Anonymous]

The best part of it is that the human brain doesn’t even realize it’s made a decision irrationally much of the time.

We do tend to think of the irrational being a bad thing (is that itself irrational)? Emotions are often shortcuts. If you have had previous good or bad experiences regarding X, Y or Z, then your emotions will tend to remind you without having to think it out. It doesn’t always work perfectly of course.

This kind of pattern recognition even when wrong has allowed humans to survive. If you see a shadow or hear a noise when you are alone out in the woods and it scares you, then it gets you out of there. If you stick around and think out, “is this a threat?” or “did I really see/hear that?”, you may end up eaten or attacked during the time it takes you to do so… but if you hightail it out of there, even if you are wrong, you will probably survive or have a higher chance of survival.

We often have an inbred fear of a big fire, falling/heights, deep water, darkness, tight spaces etc, because these can represent various threats to us. Likewise, many of us appreciate love & friendship, good food, warmth and light because all of these benefit us and it’s not worth overthinking them.

Emotions can work the same way in less dramatic situations – that person you like or dislike without apparent reason is triggering old emotional cues in you, which are based on previous experiences. Sometimes we can be horribly wrong of course. But at other times we may be picking up on someone lying or using aggressive body language, even when on the surface they are making an apparently logical case.

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