Just a small recent practice observation: Emotions light things up.

They are like flares or glimmers on the bodily and mental channels that cause them to come online and show themselves, like streetlights or garden lighting, like fireflies that light up a forest in the summer, showing where the spaces are for fireflies, like neon illuminating the tube it is in when current goes through it.

Seen this way, they are just illumination, just clarification, just further information, just a signal on a wire, but also, when seen this way, at this particular point they seem to either miss something in a very nice way, or they dissolve into something pleasant naturally, and, paradoxically, more attention makes them more pleasant, even if they would typically have been something unpleasant, just like jhana responds well to more attention, but I am not sure the parallel signifies equivalence.

Anyway, for those giving emotions some attention, this view has proved useful to me, or at least it seems to me at this time.

Daniel

That's an interesting/pleasant way to look at it.

What about the 'neutral' emotions? Like boredom, vague aversion, etc. To me these seem like large blots of neutral-ness that just block out sensory stimulus - the opposite of 'lighting up'.

(I perceive the stronger positive/negative emotions the same way - attention seems drawn to them and blocks out whatever else is going on. Though definitely, the thing the attention is drawn to, is kind of like a lighting-up, of certain neural pathways that were previously inactivate. I guess I have paid more attention to the what it blocks out rather than any info gained from it, in a more averse way than your post indicates.)

Hi Dan,

Its interesting to investigate the relationship between emotions/energy/counsiousness (as one and the same). Some traditions view it as a waste of energy (emotional release) and aim to redirect this energy back into the picture through blissful release (kundilini/prickling energy) which if attentive is observed to brighten the surroundings with increased clarity of perceptual exeperince (the picture)

If you are aware of this mechanism you will notice sound becomes clearer and louder and the visual brighter and senstitivity sharper

cheers

Jeff

I don't quite see it for myself, it really seems that emotions do the exact opposite thing, they cover up the actuality, perhaps it is different with 4th path... But I wonder if I am doing the same thing as you but thinking of it totally differently. Recently I've been placing attention on the actual sensations that occupy the same space as they affective ones. If I can keep an extremely continuous (no split-second lapses for either self-reference, dualistic thoughts, or shifts of attention to the affective sensations) focus on the actual sensations while holding a perception in my mind that they are the only sensations actually in this area, the affective stuff drops away, if I relax the focus of the attention it sort of shifts into affective well-being.