"EMOTIONS"

Psychology demonstrates that many men and women are so worn with inner conflict that they are chained and frozen, unable really to make up their own minds or free to choose their own scale of values. These personalities vacillate like a pendulum between extremes. Religion has always taught the danger of rigid pride, of insincerity, the corrosive effects of cynicism and hopelessness, the need for consistency in emotion and in action.

When we are unhappy if others do not conform to our wishes and our ideas of what is proper and acceptable, we show that we are not certain of the rightness of our inner pattern. He who is sure of himself is deeply willing to let others be themselves. He who is unstable in his own character must reassure himself by trying to compress others into his mold. Fear of love turns some women into frigid marble statues. Our fears sometime cloak themselves in the garments of physical pain.

Psychosomatic medicine has demonstrated that a whole gamut of illnesses, from a common cold to crippling arthritis, can be traced to deep-seated fears. Some people find refuge in tuberculosis rather than face the battle of actual life. It is so much easier to be sick than courageous. The ill-health enjoyed by many chronic invalids is nothing more than an elaborate disquise for neurotic fears.

Some men, aware of the fragility of human life, have tried to ape the stone by becoming as indifferent and callous, as uninvolved with feelings as possible. The Buddhist thought that lifes' pains and sorrows could be avoided by making no commitments to others, showing no love, no tenderness. "Make thou, in all of the world, nothing dear to thee." This is a cure that's worse than the disease, for the glory of life consists in our ability to feel deeply; it is the part of wisdom to taste of the cup of joy and sorrow without inner rebelliousness.

Religion can teach man that there is a time to be proud and a time to be humble, a time to be independent and a time to be dependent, a time for detachment and a time for attachment. Both Christian and Jewish ethics focus attention on the sin of pride. Rigid pride and uncontrolled anger are among the great dangers that every man faces in his emotional life. A man who becomes a slave to anger sets up a strange god in himself which he worships. There is an illegitimate pride which reveals itself in the unfeeling, unemotional ideal of absolute self-sufficiency. Stoicism in its many forms has conspired to make men and women ashamed of their natural emotions. It began as a great ethical system, but its end results in many human lives having been warped and distorted.

Enlightened religion should condemn the exreme stoic way of life, since it leads to emotional callousness and to false pride. A man will say "I always keep my problems to myself. I refuse to seek help from others because that is a confession of dependence and cowardice".....such a man has set up his self-reliant little ego as his god; he worships at the shrine of his own competence. He is a "self-made man" --and as Ring Lardner remarked: "Whenever I see a self-made man,
I realize how bad a job he has done."

Constantly, without our knowing it, we are sources of infection for good or evil. We are the carriers of health and disease--either the divine health of courage and nobility or the demonic diseases of hate and anxiety. No one can be immunized against us; as long as we live, we make the world freer or more enslaved--nobler or more degraded. This is a task which places unsuspected burdens upon each of us. Our emotions and our moods, as well as our words and our deeds, penetrate human life and make those who come in contact with us either the beneficiaries or the victims of our presence on earth.

The terrifying truth about emotion is this........unless it flows and gushes freely, it will choke the soul that produces it. There never existed a soul that did not yearn to overflow with natural emotion.

The falsification of our emotional life destroys us. We are profoundly compelled to tell the truth to ourselves and to others if we desire the victory of love and courage over grief and death.

If man has never learned the art of proper self-love, but is enslaved to a compulsive, greedy, never-to-be-satisfied selfishness, how can he create a good life for himself or a godlike society for others? How can such a man know earthly peace?

--Author unknown--

This was in another one of my mother's
collections from 20 years ago.
Thanks again mom for letting me share
them with others. "I love you"

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Animated Book by NIKKI