The only emotional intelligence I know
Questioner: I listened to your podcast about Emotional Intelligence. It sounds like you were ridiculing it!
GC: Not at all. I simply looked at it neutrally, to see if it made sense. Not with the lenses of the knowledge I had about it in my head. Does it make sense? There is a difference!
Questioner: I don’t understand.
GC: See, if I listen to it with the knowledge that I have in my mind, acquired over time, then I might tend to be biased about it, and agree or disagree with it, or understand it from the point of view with that knowledge. Where did that knowledge come from? Did I invent or make it up?
Questioner: No, I suppose not.
GC: It is a theory invented by someone else that I inherited. Then you see, we are always analyzing with the knowledge and information we have in our minds in a mind that is conditioned. So it’s very difficult to change a mind that is so structured. So I simply put all of that aside (if I can put it that way), and looked at it for what it was - from a point where I knew very little about it.
Questioner: So then, why is emotional intelligence not so useful?
GC: With all due respect, I never said it wasn’t useful. But I questioned, that besides awareness of the self, none of the other components are really necessary.
Questioner: But the ideas of empathy, and kindness, aren’t these essential in life?
GC: Of course, but are you trying to cultivate them with a mind that is in constant confusion, chattering, dealing with so many issues. How can such a busy mind cultivate anything but what it already knows how to cultivate? Isn’t it better to first understand why the mind is so confused? Can a broken instrument fix itself?
Can I ask a more important question. To understand this deeply, what do we mean by emotions? The only emotional intelligence I know is the intelligence to be aware of emotions, not engage with them, label them, or perceive them, or try to manage them, judge them, etc. Do you see the problem? So let’s ask, what we mean by “emotion”. Is it a response of the senses? Some reaction to something? Or sensation itself? We describe emotions with words, such as love, anger, frustration, happiness. Then we seem to categorize them. Some of these emotions will be judged as negative, and others as positive. We give them opposites. For example, was say that calmness is the opposite of anxiousness. See, watch you reaction when I say some of these words. Some say the opposite of hate is love. Is love an emotion, or a sensation? Aren’t the words associated with emotions in our memory. We have learned that a certain reaction can be labeled as some word which can be either have a negative or positive correlation.
Questioner: But if we can observe these emotions while they happen, we can control and manage it before it happens…
GC: Wait, you see. This is the issue. You are trying to control, or prevent it from happening again. But the fact is, it does happen again but you learn to control or suppress until the next one comes. Let me ask, forgive me for cutting-in. Are you aware that our emotions so powerful that it drives our action? First, one needs to be aware that emotions come with actions related to some perception of what you have learned over time. Not to run away from them in order to control or manage them. Can you observe these emotions in such a way that you don’t run away from them, that is, without the difference of yourself, and the emotion as two separate things.
Questioner: I don’t understand.
GC: I’m going to explain it. Are you able to observe in such as way that there is no duality - there is no separate me doing the observing of the emotion itself. Can you see that we are so accustomed to looking at it this way? There is only the action associated with the emotion which is the fact. I’m not referring to the word, for example, anger. But that there is no separate “me” looking at a separate “anger”. Now, what are you going to do about the “me”? Because until now, you have been “dealing with”, controlling, suppressing emotions which is potentially causing you a lot of biological damage. When there is separation, a separate “me” and then that emotion, I can do something about it. This is what we are always doing. Now we are saying, if I am aware that it is “me”, then I can’t do anything except observe. There is no action to be taken because the moment I do, the “me” steps in to do something about it. It says, “Oh, I am observing that I am angry and I must not be angry”. Then at that point, I’ve begun to get away from the problem. But when I am observing and acknowledging that the is no “me”, meaning, I’m not introducing the concept of running away from it. I am observing without my biases, or opinions, or judgements about that emotion. It just is. Then you have rendered it powerless. It has no energy to generate anything. It’s like a cat that watches a bird. Before it attacks, it prepares, watches every single move. It tries to predict what it’s going to do but then the bird disapears, and the cat is left with nothing but emptiness. There is no reason to charge or attack anything because the separate entity doesn’t exist.
So with Emotional Intelligence, which teaches you to observe your emotions (very important by the way), but then teaches you to manage them and comes up with a nice picture or image of what someone who can’t manage their emotions look like, and someone who can. Of course where there is comparison, and a score, the people who are considered to have a low emotional intelligence will of course want to go off, create a plan, and become great at it. You see this is the pattern we fall into? What I’m say is that if you are just completely observing things as they are, without the separation of self and thing, without any thoughts arising that interfere with your observation, you have no attachment to the perception of the emotion because thought is not operating based on some previous conditioning. Does it make sense?
Questioner: Actually, it does. But I have another question. Maybe you know…
GC: You want to know how to stop the me from interfering?
Questioner: Yes!
GC: First, why don’t you try this it. Observe anything in the same way as you would observe your emotions in the way I described. Can you observe with a still mind? Why don’t you try it for yourself? You will see it because your natural instinct is designed to see danger. Physically, when you are in danger, you act almost out of impulse. When you come to see the danger of the emotion, for example, anger, you will come to the root of it. The cause of it. You will understand the conditions for why fear, anger, anxiety, stress, frustration, jealousy, possessiveness is being created. Once you see it, without the separation of self, there is a different kind of action.
Then, emotional intelligence is something very different. Because if I observe my emotions without the interference of thought, then there is an awareness that there is no reason to engage with them, label them, or any possibility to perceive them in any way (positive or negative).
Love and light,
GC