The more I think about it the more I come to realise the importance of LeDoux’s theory of the emotions being hardwired into the amygdala.* We are led by our feelings. Normally we respond to the tasks that have to be done – job, looking after children etc. In my case, with the whole day in front of me, I have to set myself tasks. I write in the morning and, in theory, walk, or garden and do reading and research in the afternoon and evenings. Whether I do any or all of these depends on my mood. And so I often arrive, as this morning, with a feeling of having wasted the last few days and accomplished nothing. This tends to lead to a feeling of depression – that my life is non-eventful and nothing is being achieved, that my life now has no meaning, that I am wasting my time etc., etc.; a general feeling of uselessness and purposelessness.
All this went through my mind this morning during meditation. I had just been reading Kadowaki on karma and sunyata (emptiness). One reads ideas but one is very slow to see how these ideas might exist in the reality of one’s own life. I think I am still too much of an idealist, in the Platonic, or Hegelian sense – that power does reside in the conscious mind, if only one can learn how to access it. I now realise that a) the conscious mind has no control over the emotions and b) that emotions and feelings shape the what, the how and the meaning we attach to living. All the conscious mind can do is to choose to ignore or to go along with the push and pull of the emotions. I see I am being very Platonic here in assuming a tripartite structure in the mind. I am not sure how independent the will is of he emotions.
Previously I had gone along with Freud and Jung and accepted that the unconscious is the repository of unwanted, or too-uncomfortable-to-bear emotions and memories. I thought that all one had to do was allow these to be aired, look at them objectively in the light of day, and their power to hurt, or to control would be dissipated. I think this may be true for memories. I know that in meditation allowing forgotten memories to come to the surface and dissipate robs them of their power to hurt. I had thought that this then gave control over that particular feeling, be it anger, or hate, or lust, or whatever. I now see that is not the case. Memories can be healed but the feelings are still there, autonomous and powerful. Given the appropriate stimulus they will be triggered with all their power. If one doesn’t want the feelings then one has to avoid the stimuli – what in traditional spirituality used to be called the occasions of sin. This has all sorts of drawbacks. I remember an old monk telling me that whenever he went out he had either to wear his habit or a dog-collar. He didn’t trust himself not to do something sinful otherwise. So avoiding the occasions of sin may help avoid sin but it does not help one to grow, to become integrated and whole.
I am beginning to understand what Zen calls the Great Death. In meditation one is face to face with naked feelings. Because there is no escape into day-dreaming, or ratiocination, the impact of feelings can be very powerful and often make the continuing of meditation impossible, or seem to be impossible. Not to go along with their impulse, simply to sit, focused on awareness of the body and all that it is feeling, is like dying. One is detached from the body in the sense that one is not responding to instinctive impulses, and yet totally attached in the sense that the body is the focus of awareness. Then, in this attached detachment, aware of bodily and mental limits as limits, the possibility of a beyond all limits arises.
*http://www.cns.nyu.edu/ledoux/