Emotional Intelligence – EQ

Courtesy of Interspace.org

Intelligence at different levels

For the past 4 to 5 years, emotional intelligence has become a very popular topic. The increasing pace of technology has created a change in the way we work and the way we organize ourselves, particularly in organizational contexts. To manage and lead others, as well as ourselves, requires a process of good decision-making. As a result, the emphasis on intelligence has reduced.

For a couple of centuries there hasn’t been the need to explore emotional intelligence because life has been very slow and easy, and so rational intelligence has been the foundation of our thoughts. The rational mind is the linear process. It takes a lot of time and energy and it’s very logical. This is how we’ve been taught to think about the world and ourselves.

20 years ago as the pace of life increased, we had to make quicker decisions. Developing our intuition is the method that we use to do this - making decision based on your feelings.

About 5 years ago, someone said it’s not about rationality or intuition but the most powerful influence on our decisions, choices and directions in life are our emotions. The energy of our emotions is consciousness.

The essence of EQ - emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman - is that if you take an absent minded professor whose brilliant at chalk, talk, formula and theories and put that person in front of another human being, (perhaps at a party), they’re absolutely lost because they can’t pick up the emotion of the other. They’re not sensitive to the feelings of another human being on a one to one basis. They’re own emotions are raging and they don’t know why they can’t control how and what they’re feeling. In those moments they’re not aware of the other person’s feelings and emotions. They’re overly dependent on the rational side.

Another form of intelligence is called SQ, spiritual intelligence. Spiritual Intelligence is nothing to do with religion or belief systems. It’s everything to do with your sense of identity - a sense of who and what you are; why you’re here and your ability to make your life meaningful. It’s to be free of that voice that you hear inside during the day that says ‘What’s the meaning of life?’

The only way to answer that voice is through meditation. It’s not to go outside for answers but to go in and understand the relationship between my own heart and mind. These are the different levels of intelligence and most of us are only operating on one level most of the time - the rational, because that is how the world works. Very few of us have even begun to discover the spiritual.

Emotional intelligence looks at the difference emotions that we experience and the way to understand and manage them.

Different types of Emotions

There are 3 main families of emotions that arise and knock on our inner door every day.

The first is fear. Fear has many faces, such as worry or anxiety, tension and terror. Fear kills human beings more than any other thing in the world. It is the number one enemy and yet we don’t do anything about it because paradoxically we have been taught that fear is necessary - that it is a natural part of human life. It’s as if that belief stops us from turning and doing the work of freeing ourselves from fear. If we don’t do the work of setting ourselves free eventually it will not only affect our ability to think straight and make good decisions but it will also affect our health.

We experience fear because we misuse our creative ability. The mind is a blank screen used to create our life. Everything in our life starts with our thoughts, the images that we put on the screen. If we put the wrong images on that screen then we distort the energy of our consciousness and that is what generates fear.

We believe that it is natural to worry. We absorb these beliefs and as a result we do not do the work of freeing ourselves from worry. Worry is another word for fear. Worrying is simply the misuse of my imagination. I create an image of the future, which is either disastrous or slightly pessimistic and then I use that image to frighten myself. This reflects misuse of my creative ability. I have not learnt to use my mind in a positive way. I haven’t learned to harness the energy at the centre because I spend most of my life on the surface - outside in what everyone else is doing. I use that as the material to create whatever is going on inside and suddenly worry becomes a part of my nature, it becomes a habit. It’s much easier just to continue to worry because everyone else worries. So it must be all right. The reason why the NHS is having a difficult time is because we are making ourselves sick. We are not managing the energy of our consciousness our emotions. We are not in control.

The second family of emotions is anger. The child of anger are moments of irritation. If you water irritation, it becomes frustration. If you water frustration, ie if you keep giving energy to the emotion, it will grow. It will become anger and if I keep watering that, it will become rage. This is the family of anger and so why is that there. Again it comes back to a belief that I have learnt and absorbed in the past. The belief is that the universe should dance to my tune. When the universe does not dance to my tune that is my justification for getting upset and that is why we spend most of our lives looking for reasons to be offended. We have been told that if you do not express your anger you won’t get things changed around here. If you don’t tell people how you feel they will keep doing it and so we believe that anger is good and that belief is our excuse for not doing the inner work of getting rid of the anger.

Eventually if I keep getting angry then it will affect my physical body. Ulcers, high blood pressure and cancer are the physical manifestations of this one emotion. There are a growing number of clinics which teach you how to re-empower your mind, how to visualize, so that you can change the energy that goes from your mind into your body and in this way you heal yourself, if the illness is not too far gone.

The third is the family of sadness. Sadness always comes from a sense of loss - a belief that you can lose something. For example, missing out on an opportunity, object, person, or a bus. Beliefs are not the truth. There are 3 letters in the word belief (lie) that tell you that beliefs are not the truth. Every belief is a lie. The truth is that you cannot lose anything because you never have anything to lose. We are taught the illusion that we own things that we possess things. Depression is a very deep habit of sadness. One of the reasons why we walk around with long faces is not only do we think that we are losing things but we are under the illusion that we are losing other peoples things also

These are the three families of emotions and because we believe that these emotions are part of life we don't do the work of setting ourselves free and that makes us emotionally confused. This confusion starts because we are taught that pain is pleasure. The reason why we confuse pleasure with pain is because the body generates adrenalin, when we get angry or when we experience fear. We get addicted to the adrenalin and as a result we become dependent on these emotions. We enjoy being stressed. Stress is fear, sadness and anger.

We also confuse relaxation with stimulation. The things that we do to relax, such as watching TV, or going to the cinema, or theatre are all examples of stimulation. It is another form of dependency. No one teaches us how to relax our busy, over stimulated mind. We go on holiday to relax and then when we get there, we spend most of the time running around looking at as many sites as possible. When we come back from our holiday we then say, thank god I'm back now, I can have a rest. We need to learn a method that will bring our energy back to the centre.

Another confusion is where we confuse worry with care. We learn this from our parents who say it’s because we love you that we worry. In that moment we learn that worry equals care. However worry is fear and care is love. They are complete opposites and cannot exist together. For the rest of our life we believe that it is good to worry. In fact, we worry when there is nothing to worry about. This is the lesson that we hand down from generation to generation. We teach our children how to generate fear and eventually we shorten their lives.

We confuse excitement with happiness. Again it is stimulation. We believe that what we feel inside comes from outside and we spend the rest of our lives searching for something that will make us happy. Happiness is not a dependency, it's a decision.

We confuse anger with assertiveness. We think being assertive requires anger. Assertiveness comes from the ability to have a very strong sense of self-respect. It is not an emotional behavior like anger. Anger chases self-respect away.

Controlling our Emotions

1 Learn to use your mind positively. Destroy any negative thoughts.

2 Stay focused on the present. If you worry about the future then the image of worry that you create will come true. It's a creative process. To stay focused, learn how to meditate. Meditation is a mental exercise which increases our self awareness and self-control.

3 Anger is a statement that says, I disapprove and I'm trying to control somebody else. Accept people for what they are and for what they do. This helps to free you from anger. If there is a lack of acceptance then I move into resistance and that is the seed of my anger.

4 Just remember the evidence of your life, that everything comes and goes. This is called the river of life. The moment you grab onto something then you are inviting sadness/pain because the universe will come and take it away. Keep saying to yourself that the river must flow. Don't hold onto anything. The moment you hold onto something, you lose your freedom to what you're holding onto. You're stuck at that moment because you are not allowing energy to flow.

5 Challenge your beliefs, because those beliefs are ruling your thoughts, decisions and behaviour. Your beliefs are not the truth.

Understanding Emotions and Feelings

The difference between an emotion and a feeling is that an emotion is a disturbance. It is the price you pay for the wrong beliefs. When you are emotional, you are not in control. You've given control to something or someone. When this happens you feel the emotion because you are capable of feeling and this happens at three levels.

1 When you touch a piece of material you can feel the quality of that fabric. You perceive it through touch and that is a physical feeling. It's through your sense organs.

2 You also feel things through your mind. You can use your rational ability or your intuitive ability.

3 The deepest level in which we feel things is spiritual. We have spiritual feelings. The deepest feeling is when you go in and feel yourself. At the very heart of every one of us is love peace and happiness. We can choose to experience these qualities. The method for that is meditation - the inward journey to the center.