All very true. You've been reading Don Miguel Ruiz, haven't you?
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No I have not read him but I will now.
Its all cause and effect science to me.
We all make choices that impose consequences upon us and others.
You can just react to your circumstances and external conditions based on the way you feel or you can make your choices using 4 uniquely human attributes.
Conscience, free will[volition], imagination, and self awareness[knowledge].
Animals lack these attributes.
You have the freedom to think before making choices that effect you and others.
We can all affect our emotions by our actions. Acting in certain ways can cause us to experience certain feeling. Positive actions tend to be accompanied by positive feelings and vice versa.
When you react your actions follow your feelings.
If you feel unloving, you may act in unloving ways, and often justify your unloving acts by referring to your unloving feelings and blaming them on the other person.
If you disregard those feelings and instead follow your loving values despite your feelings , you often find your feelings change.
Acting in kind and loving ways causes us to experience kind and loving feelings. Love the feeling is the fruit of love the verb. The act of loving creates the loving feeling.
I am sharing ideas I became aware of by reading Stephen Covey.
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I agree with the last sentence. Two people must be on the same page when it comes to ideas and the reality of love. Your statement about the broken heart is truly reflective of what Don Miguel Ruiz states about emotions. We ARE responsible for our emotions, but how do you prevent a self inflicted wound to the heart?
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The heart you speak of is an abstract idea. Your response to the bad things is what hurts you most. We call situations bad when they rob us of something. All loss is painful, particularly when we lose loved ones or part of the life and vitality that we've come to rely on. But the fact is these losses cannot cause us lasting harm. The main damage comes from bad circumstances is the damage we cause ourselves if we become so dependently attached to things that we become resentful and self pitying when we lose them.
LOSS can blow you away like dry leaves in an autumn wind if you fail to understand loss and gain are corresponding emotions. You can never gain without risking loss. Life is about suffering. [BUDDHA] Accept that fact and its no longer an issue. You can then move on to crisis prevention and strategies for relationships. Life is not a feel good every moment experience. If you dont embrace the pain you will never know the pleasure possible. If you know you are the cause for the pain effecting you it's easier to cope with it.
Love is an abstract idea. You define it and agree upon it in relationships. Life is a series of moments. We deny our mortality daily to remain sane. I say expand your levels of awareness and experience. Open yourself up to what's beyond the edge of your own patterns of thinking.
Emotional pain comes with the territory. So does bliss, euphoria, joy, and enthusiasm for living. There are universally accepted laws for living and loving.
THE EVENTS YOU MENTION DO NOT CAUSE YOU TO EXPERIENCE EMOTIONAL PAIN. ITS YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THOSE EVENTS AND FEELINGS THAT CAUSE YOU THE PAIN. YOUR RESPONSE TO YOUR OWN FEELINGS ARE WHAT HURTS YOU THE MOST. THE SOURCE OF YOUR PAIN IS INTRAORGANIC NOT EXTRAORGANIC. It comes from within you. You create it. I never said don't experience it. Just understand the source of your emotional pain is you .
IT IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE but I am more into walking my talk than just talking it..anybody can talk ..my actions speak for me. Intellect before emotions is a way of being I value. Its an abstract idea. I realized, conceptualized, and actualized it. I find your approach to my ideas curious. I would never argue perceptions. I would seek to understand yours before asking you to understand mine. Perceptions are not right or wrong because they do not reflect reality.
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Avoiding relationships altogether? Morph into a sociopath? Seems a rather masochistic view of love, and although I think in a small sense we do perpetuate our own pain, I think love is more complex than that. Love is not only about happiness, unconditional acceptance, and thoughtful action. When there is love, there is loss, whether through separation, divorce or death. Yes, how we feel about that loss is our responsibility, but claiming those events can't cause emotional pain is not true in my book of experience. I understand the point of your statement, don't get me wrong, but I think it's much easier said than done.