by Nigel Percy

Created on: August 11, 2009   Last Updated: August 15, 2009

Have you ever seen someone read a newspaper article and lose their temper? They gesticulate. They raise their voice. They show their emotions in the most obvious way. In other words, something about the article triggered a reaction in them.

Their emotions were brought to the surface by what they read. There was no control, no self-discipline involved. They were at the mercy of their emotions.

Being at the mercy of something means that you are not free to ignore it. And that, essentially, is what emotional freedom is all about. It is not being free from emotions. Far from it! It is, instead, about having the freedom to choose when and how to express them. By being aware of what makes you react, you can learn to lessen that reaction, to curb the impulse, to live a calmer life.

But calm does not equal dull, lifeless or just plain apathetic. In its best sense, emotional freedom implies a freedom to express only the better emotions. It doesn't mean that your murderous instinct to kill or maim some political figurehead or sports person or even the annoying next door neighbor is simply repressed and let out later under the calm aspect of revenge or vengeance. It means that such negative emotions should be eradicated from your system so that you never have to have such unpleasant and disturbing feelings again.

That also is what is bound up in emotional freedom.

If we go through our lives reacting to first one thing and then another, we are at the mercy of whatever comes our way. We are, essentially, helpless. We laugh at this, we cry at that, we become angry at the next thing. And each time we react we never get to know why, nor do we have time to sit back and take a broader view of events and see them in the bigger picture. We simply exist in a sea of emotions, feelings, hurts, anxieties, stresses and fears.

However, if we take the time to examine ourselves, to find out why we react in such and such a way, or we try and understand something by trying to see it in a new light, we learn something of ourselves and the world we inhabit. That knowledge alone gives us some measure of freedom.

To be easily aroused to anger or to any emotional state similar to it takes away our judgment of ourselves. We have judged others instead. Again, that is not freedom, that is mere reaction.

Emotional freedom involves, at best, a calm acceptance of the world and its foibles. It also emphasizes greater tolerance of others, allowing us to live in a more calm and relaxed fashion. That very calmness or equanimity in turn lessens our stress and allows us to appreciate life more.

Emotional freedom, then, is not the freedom to have any emotion we want running riot in our systems. Such a state is anythng but free. To live in that fashion ties us forever and always to the surges of emotions which drag us wherever they will.

True emotional freedom lies in tranquility and acceptance; in delighting in the moment, in seeing the larger picture and in having compassion for others. It denies dominance to the violence and disruption of anger, hostility, intolerance and the like, encouraging and emphasizing instead compassion, love, tolerance and all those similar, gentle but no less profound emotions. The emotions encouraged and fostered by emotional freedom are those which are the higher values of humanity and which have helped to advance the human spirit throughout the ages.

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