Hey look at this psych article this is what the whole post is about sort of.

Psych article summarized: Articulate your sadness. Don’t articulate your happiness. It dulls emotions.

BUT it will strengthen your opinions for utilitarian experiences.

Does this suggest that our emotional snap-judgements are stronger than our cognitive ones? It seems that in order to form strong opinions, we need the help of confirmation bias (basically, we need to rile ourselves up, one way or another, via explaining our experiences to ourselves). But in order to feel strong emotions, we need to not think (that is, we should not analyze or conceptualize).

So, in order to grow up big and strong, our cognition needs cognition, while our emotions need to be left alone? I don’t think so. At least, not necessarily.

Let’s talk about meditation. In my humble experiences with meditation, there is a distinction between conceptualizing and simply being, or the “thinking mind” and the “animal body.” One goal of many meditation sessions is to let go of your thinking mind and to live in your animal body, that is, to free yourself from conceptualizing.

Now, I think that a lot of people reading this psychology study may infer (which I initially stated above) that refraining from thinking about their happy feelings is the best way to preserve them. I think this is a common sentiment, even outside of this study. We’ve all heard the phrase “just enjoy it while it lasts” or seen sitcom scenes where the love-struck teenagers get frustrated while trying to explain why they feel so great. So emerges a wariness about over-conceptualizing one’s happiness.

So the dangers that this study demonstrates, that is, the dangers that the cognitive mind poses to happiness, are not foreign ideas to us. I’d even venture to say that most of us get nervous when we start dissecting why we feel happy. I know that I do. Maybe we are distrustful of our cognitive brain, wary that it could shed a pessimistic light on what makes us feel “good.” So many of us shove our “good” feelings out of our mind. Keep them out of conscious acknowledgement; surely they will still affect our moods positively, just so long as we don’t ruin them.

Need I bring up the Orpheus myth? Where he loses his love, Eurydice, because he goes against orders and looks at her? Or that Bible parable where the people turn into rice? (Sorry for lack of details; it goes against my mental health philosophy to read any of The Bible for a blog post.)

Our society seems to have a common approach to preserving emotions: ignoring them.

Now is the point where I ask, isn’t there a better way? Ignorance is rarely the best route for preservation. I think I might have an alternative. Think back to that bit of meditation theory I earlier graced you with. One of the reasons for spending time away from the thinking mind is to “sit with” your animal body, and to observe the feelings within it. Now, I’m not crazy advanced, and I haven’t yet mastered this sort of sitting, but I have experienced bouts of simultaneous physical and emotional clarity. Which causes which, I don’t know, but I can testify to the very real sort of clarity that one can achieve by simply locating their awareness in her physical, present self. It takes some learning, but it is absolutely possible to experience the same intensity of awareness that comes with deliberate, cognitive conceptualizations, in a purely emotional and physical way.

So, the concept-free awareness, which can be achieved through meditation, may be the best way to experience happy feelings.

That’s a whole lotta talking out of my ass. Hopefully I’ll soon be able to follow up with some more informed evaluations on the practice of sitting with an emotional state.

Anyways, just go meditate.