The Radiation of Pure Emotion
To Awake the Emotional Side
While we might “know better otherwise,” we often imagine ourselves as having a single mind or consciousness, neatly tucked away in the brain. Nevertheless, in the Work, we are depicted as complex “machines” governed by several independent functions —the Intellectual, Moving, Instinctive, and Emotional (centers)—each possessing their own speed, function, and capacity for registering impressions.
Among these, the emotional center—which can be referred to as sentimental man—holds the primary energy necessary for self-development and awakening. Yet, paradoxically, it is often the most disorganized and wasteful part of the human machine. Understanding and training this center is not merely helpful; it is absolutely necessary.
Designed for Finer Fuel
To grasp the emotional center’s potential, we must consider the nature of the fuel, the “hydrogens”, that power our functions. Our lower centers operate on different grades of matter: the Intellectual Center works with H48, while the Moving and Instinctive Centers work with H24.
The emotional center is designed to operate on a much finer, more subtle substance: Hydrogen 12 (H12). This center is an apparatus much more subtle than the intellectual center. If it could work at its proper speed—a speed depicted by the idea of thousands of different feelings being experienced in the time of a single thought—it would dramatically increase our faculties and perceptions.
Unfortunately, the ordinary emotional center usually runs much more slowly, using only H24 like the Moving and Instinctive centers.
An Artificial Center
The primary obstacles preventing the emotional center from fulfilling its natural role are negative emotions. All our violent and depressing emotions— anger, irritation, fear, worry et al—are deemed unnatural. Curiously, and crucially, they do not have a real center. Unlike instinctive negative emotions (like instinctive fear, which warns of danger). negative emotions work through an artificial center—a “kind of addition” that is gradually created in us from early childhood through imitation (a moving center act).
This artificial center is responsible for the largest leak of energy in the human machine. A strong or violent negative emotion, amplified by identification, affects all centers, leading to wrong thinking, eating, breathing, and working. Negative emotions serve no useful purpose whatsoever. A burst of anger or irritation can consume all the fine energy produced by the organism for the day. Negative emotions are supported by two “friends”: identification and negative imagination. Without these, they cannot operate.
The Path to Control
Because the emotional center houses the chief energy, the path to inner development ultimately leads through its training and activation. The intellectual center is merely auxiliary in this process and has definite limits, beyond which only the emotional center can progress.
The path begins with practical steps to conserve energy and dissolve the “artificial center.”
1. Stop the Expression of Negative Emotions: The very first step in self-study is learning not to express negative emotions. This conscious resistance is necessary not only to save energy but also to create the internal friction needed to make emotions visible for study. It is necessary to understand that while a person may experience temporary relief from expressing anger (feeding the inner “worm”), this only makes the emotion stronger and increases its control over them.
2. Struggle with Identification and Imagination: Since negative emotions rely on identification (being absorbed by an idea or emotion) and negative imagination, struggling with these habits is vital.
3. Right Thinking: Ultimately, control over emotions is exerted only through the mind, though this process is indirect and slow. If a person consistently engages in right thinking—realizing, for instance, that negative emotions are useless, that causes of irritation are internal, and that nobody can be guilty against them—this thinking becomes a permanent attitude that helps conquer negative emotions over time.
It could be said that these efforts are the beginning of the Work.