Spiritual Progress and Emotion You know.... I have always found the Bible a bit confusing. On one hand God is portrayed as condoning murder and genocide, child sacrifice and adultery, as well as many other negative practices and beliefs. God is portrayed as a bully, a blackmailer, as being angry, jealous and quite willing to damn people for all eternity if they don't do what they're told. On the other hand God is portrayed as being 'all loving', supportive and always willing to give 'his people' a second chance. Now, I don't know about you, but if I am to choose a god then I certainly don't want anything to do with one that exhibits negative emotions, encourages negative and hurtful behaviour and seems to be more than a bit screwed up. No, this God is not just a bit screwed up this God is psychotic. For myself, I want to get as far away from this God as possible and as quickly as possible. Yet this is the God of many of the religious literalists in this world...... How sad. Jesus' God is portrayed as quite a different sort of god. His God was kind, caring, supporting and loving. In fact this God is often seen as being the embodiment of love. This God would always give us another chance to do the right thing. So what are the hopes and expectations of this god? Well, in Matthew chapter 22 verse 37, Jesus, in replying to a lawyer's sneaky question about the 10 commandments said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself." This is further reinforced in Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, verse 14 when he says that "the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, you shall love your neighbour as yourself." The one word of course is love. So what does this mean to us and more importantly how can we achieve this? It seems to me that what these Jesus commandments are implying is that we should become the embodiment of love. In my view this love has nothing to do with the more physical love of passion and desire of early love. Passion and desire which are held up in our society as being the goal and trumpeted by all our forms of media. Rather, love is nearer to that gentler love that comes with long contact with a partner when their 'quirks', shall we say, have become accepted. Of course, you understand that I don't have any quirks at all! However, this state is about accepting the other person as they really are and not trying to change them but loving them anyway. If we can love one person in this way, and many do, then why are we unable to do it with all people? All the mystics across the millennia say it can be done. Further to this they say that it must be done in order to move forward (if there is a direction) on what is called the spiritual path. The first reading this morning suggests that it is important to separate from the 'sense-storms'. In the second reading we hear that Meister Eckhart said, "God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction." So what is it that is subtracted to become pure love and loving? It is obvious from the words that we have to stop doing something that we are doing. Something that is preventing who we really are from shining out. Anthony de Mello says, "No event justifies a negative feeling. There is no situation in the world that justifies a negative feeling. That's what all our mystics have been crying themselves hoarse to tell us." So why don't we do it? Why don't we get rid of our 'negative' feelings, our 'negative' emotions? Why can't we do this? It seems so simple! Well, it is because this is hard and furthermore, we don't know how to do it......... Or do we? Let us turn away, for the moment, from the sometimes wishy-washy world of the mystic and spiritual advisors. We should ask ourselves 'does science have anything to say about this'? The answer seems to be yes, but the research has only been done in the last thirty or so years and is only just beginning to filter out to the public at large. So what is science saying that relates to this quest to become the embodiment of love? What science is saying, to me, is quite shocking and totally unexpected. What is being said is that we are addicted to our emotional states. Addicted? I don't feel addicted! How can this statement be true? No emotion would mean that we would have no worry, no fear, no anxiety, no depression nor any addictive behaviour. It would mean that there would be no casinos or bookies. It would also mean that we would have no smiles, no laughter, no love...... and we wouldn't care. Is that what they are saying? Well no. Not quite. It seems that we do need emotion. An emotion or the brain's chemical version of it is what fixes memories into our brain. The down side is that when we remember something, that thought comes flavoured with the original emotional fixative. For example when you bite into an apple, and we like it, the chemical version of this sensual pleasure fixes the memory. When we think about an apple we get the memory complete with a replay of that sensual experience. Of course if your first taste of apple was coupled with a clout round the ear because you had pinched it then that emotional hurt would be played out every time that you thought of an apple. We would then, of course, develop an aversion to apples and never eat them - at least fresh apples. So why are we like this? Couldn't our bodies have found a different glue to fix memory. Well I don't know for sure but this 'emotional glue' can be traced back way down the evolutionary tree, right back to single celled animals and plants. Yes and plants. This is because some single celled plants are mobile like single celled animals. The same basic chemicals are in use at this level to make the organism respond. That response is to move away from that which could damage the cell, the emotion is chemical 'pain'. The other response is to move towards, or stay put, this emotion is chemical 'pleasure'. So from an early evolutionary state simple organisms had a stimulus and response mechanism. And so do we. Press the right button and we will invariably respond in a particular way - pain or pleasure. This is what underpins all our emotional states and this is what is relived when we remember. Some form of pain or pleasure. But this doesn't necessarily mean that we are addicted, or does it? In the 1970's the theory was that the brain produced a range of chemical emotions, called neuropeptides, which would dock into cell walls to influence the brain cell to do something. But nobody had actually found these chemicals nor where they docked on the individuals cell wall. Then one day a scientist called Candace Pert fell off a horse and ended up in hospital. To combat the pain she was fed morphine twenty four hours a day. As she lay there she wondered what this chemical was doing to her body. This then became the focus for her scientific career. She was the first to find opiate receptors in cell walls. Three years later a research team in Scotland found the neuropeptide endomorphine which is produced by the brain and causes the 'buzz' that runners get. The trouble was that the receptors that Candace Pert found were on all the cell walls of the body and not just brain cells. It seems that we are hardwired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Is this addiction? No it isn't, these chemicals are useful. It is what helps us to take our finger out of the fire or off a hot pan on the stove. It is what helps us to enjoy the feeling of different textures. This is not addiction. So why are scientists saying that we are addicted? Lets say something about how scientists say addiction happens. If you inject heroin the chemical opiates flood throughout the whole body. These opiates dock onto the cell walls of cells across the whole body and the cell receives heroin and the heroin user experiences a 'high'. Repeated use of heroin causes the opiate to be locked in position on the cell wall causing these receptors shrink and become less effective and the cell more desensitised. The effect of this is that the heroin user needs more heroin to gain the same effect. This is the point when addiction occurs. Now lets take our emotions. When you have an emotion the appropriate neuropeptide is produced in the brain and it floods throughout the body. These neuropeptides dock onto the cell walls into a matching receptor. The cell receives the neuropeptide and the person experiences an emotion. Repeated experience of the original emotion increases the neuropeptide flood which causes the specific neuropeptide to be locked in position on the cell wall. These receptors then shrink causing them to become less efficient and the cell is desensitised. This is the point when addiction occurs. How can we see the effects of an emotional addiction? Well, a thrill seeker pushes moves towards more extreme activities - bungee jumping from airplanes; an insecure student goes on ever more courses of study; a power hungry politician seeks higher and higher office; the sexaholic becomes ever kinkier and kinkier, the domineering constantly put others down; the controlled constantly choose domineering partners; the abused constantly go into abusive relationships; the saviour mentality which is played out by needing to look after others, will always move on and find a new ineffective, while ineffective people generate something bad in their life, in order to attract a new saviour. Yes, these are extreme behaviours and I am not saying that we are all like these examples of addiction but addiction when it starts is at a low level and the exhibiting behaviour also is at a low level. But it is there. Are you one of these that can't leave food on the plate; can't waste food; has to be right; needs to do a certain thing at a set time of day or in a certain way; likes a particular sort of film or book like horror, adventure or detective or romance for example? Science is saying that all repetitive behaviours reflect an addiction. But there is worse to come. When a cell becomes desensitised by locking off receptors it increases the load on the remaining receptors. So when the cell divides, which is normal, the resulting daughter cells will have more receptors matching the particular addiction. But this means that there are fewer other receptors. The knock on effect of this is that cell membrane becomes less efficient at taking in what the cell needs on a day to day basis, the cell becomes starved, stressed and doesn't work properly. These cells become less elastic and may become less able to fight off attack or disease and, so it is said, our body ages. So...... emotions when overplayed are not doing us any good at all and as such can be seen as being negative. Isn't this what is being said in the wishy-washy world of the mystic and spiritual advisor? Yes it is! So they are right after all. If we can drop the negativeness who we really are will emerge. So how can we do this? Science is suggesting an answer for this. As we replay addictive emotion again and again it is cementing a pattern of behaviour in place. Therefore we use it more often. But the corollary to this also seems true that can be summed up like the old wives tale that says 'if you don't use it you lose it'. This means that you can break the cycle of addictiveness by recognising a repetitive behaviour and choosing not to do it. All it takes is 'awareness' and 'understanding' and non-action or perhaps a counter action – a sort of 'active not doing'.. If you can manage to not do a repetitive behaviour once, it once it can be done again. When you get a run of not firing off a particular emotion then it will become easier not to do it. If it is an addiction then at the start you will have a sort of withdrawal problem in that you may long to fire up that particular emotional circuit. But eventually the circuit will weaken and fade and finally disappear. It also means that you can become non-judgemental, calm, peaceful etc. by acting out being non-judgemental, calm, peaceful etc. It just takes time. Joe Potter  17/09/2006