The Dog of Emotion and how it is fed.

Ah yes, the Dog of Emotion! How it can twist and turn our humans, capable of taking us from the darkest places of fear and anguish to the highest peaks of pleasure and contentment. The question is, what is emotion? Why do some people seem void of any while others seem to be always crying in their soup? We all know how men in most human societies are raised to believe that showing emotions or being emotional is bad and un-manly. Men are taught that crying is a sign of weakness and so most spend their lives packing all of their troubles into a place inside them which never is dealt with. Women on the other hand, are taught that being emotional is expected of them, but still it is seen as a negative. The fact of the matter is that Emotion is just another Dog within each and all of us that is essential to our human health and well being. It can bring us the very best of feelings or make the bad seem even worse. There are many different emotions. Elation, anger, fear, boredom, sadness and guilt can all provide benefit to a human or be a detriment. The thing one has to now about the Dog of Emotion is that it never comes out of the doghouse alone and is always brought out to provide assistance to other dogs. It is the "reactive" dog, who, unless firmly held under control by the Dog of Logic, can take our humans to places of pain and distraction which are difficult to deal with. This is where the Dog of Emotion can cause the most trouble if the inner human self, “soul”, “inner child” or whatever you need to call it, does not have this Dog on a proper leash with a firm hand. Emotion is not evil or bad. On its own, it cannot make a human strong, weak, happy or sad, angry or glib. The Dog of Emotion is in a way like the stories of a twin who feels pain when their twin sibling is hurt. The properly leashed Dog of Emotion does not feel on its own, but rather it provides the response to our human that it deems appropriate during any time when one or more of our other Dogs are out, whether they are having a good time or a bad time. For instance, if a human has a Dog of Ego that is undernourished, it will call upon the Dog of Emotion to alleviate its state and provide the emotional sadness and psychological pain that it needs to justify why it is underfed. On the other side of the equation, if a person’s Ego dog is overfed, it will call upon the Dog of Emotion to support it’s glory, effectively patting this dog on the back and scratching its head for a job well done. If the soul is not in firm charge of the Dog of Emotion of the Dog of Ego, it can cause a spiral that will always be somewhat destructive. If a human is feeling that they are unworthy and their Ego dog is underfed, it may resort to hiding under the bed of the Dog of Emotion, letting tears be its sounding board for the world to hear. Emotion, no matter how it is manifested in our lives, is a necessary part of who we are as humans. It is often stringer than our Dog of Logic, which is why so many of us make the same mistakes over and over again, especially by letting our other dogs have too much leash. A Dog of Emotion with too much leash will often cause other dogs to follow blindly, caught up in the barking that eventually brings the entire human dog pound into a frenzy of noise and illogical behavior. It can cause us to act too quickly in some situations and to freeze in place in others. It can make us behave in negative and destructive ways, or to pull back in retreat from everything around us. The main point is that the Dog of Emotion is a pack dog and never runs alone. It is there in a positive form when our Dog of Ego needs to cry, when our Dog of Logic is asleep and when Dog of Aggression is allowed out but still kept on a tight leash. It manifests itself in negative ways when our Dog of Ego “needs” to win, when our Dog of Aggression has broken loose and when our Dog of Logic has become confused and is acting irrationally. Allowing all of our dogs to play with the Dog of Emotion is a critical part of finding enlightenment as humans. Our inner selves need to have all facets of the “Dog Pound” available and under control in order to become enlightened. If the dogs are doing their jobs, we can allow ourselves to experience all of the positive energy and full spectrum of our human lives. If a person goes through life without ever allowing his or her Emotion Dog have some running time, it will be impossible to find contentment, for the dog is underfed. If the Emotion Dog is allowed to leave the pound at will ad go wherever it wants it will overfeed itself and leave the human unable to hold back emotions that often need reining in. I know a man that at 60 years of age has never allowed this Emotion Dog to do more than stick his head out of his house before retreating quickly back inside. He has faced a lot of struggle in his life, lost loved ones to death and others because the only way to avoid the loss would have meant letting the Emotional Dog out for a run, which he could not do. These are the people we have all met at one time or another, that leave the room when any controversial or extremely personal subject is brought up, preferring to avoid than deal with them. Their Emotion Dog is like a beaten child. It hides deep within them and is only visible when the human is pushed to a far extreme. These are the people who often “crack”, as they say and can either end up lost in substance abuse or alcohol, or end up on the news in very negative ways. The longer a human’s Emotion Dog has been locked up, the harder it is to get it to even poke its head out of the door, for the only emotional focus it has been left is fear. Fear, another emotion, is as illogical as it is, well……frightening. It is merely an emotion, yet it can cause the Emotional Dog to emit such strong feelings to our humans that they will often shut down, not allowing any of the other human dogs out. It is generally not called forth by the Dog of Ego, for it only wants the Emotion Dog to provide specific stimuli, such as happiness and joy when our Ego has anywhere from enough to too much leash and like sadness if it is underfed. The Dog of Ego will also use the Dog of Emotion to bring forth feelings of guilt, whether to help the Dog of Logic see the right path or to further support an under fed Ego dog’s feelings of inadequacy. The emotions of fear are not always negative, since there are times when our Dog of Logic, (which we will discuss later), will call upon the Dog of Emotion to instill a feeling of fear to protect our human from danger that our Dogs of Ego and Aggression might otherwise ignore. It may also, through the Dog of Emotion, cause an over abundance of unwarranted feelings of elation caused not by good but by an out of control Ego that is overfed. It is easy to see how hard the balancing act of being a soul in charge of a human is. Imagine all of the people in the world and ask yourself what percentage of them has their dogs fully in check? Even people with most of their dogs in check are a rarity and it is not something that has a finish line where one can say, “I’ve made it! I have all my dogs under control!”. Even if one reaches the point where they have found enlightenment and who’s soul is firmly in charge of the dog pound, this control requires constant maintenance and review to assure that the dogs have not found a way to chew through the fences. Always remember that like all animals, it is instinctive in your human self to let the dogs run wild. This is why the early humans were primitive, not because they had a lower IQ or were not intelligent, but because they were new souls who had no concept of how to control their human selves. Yet even then, thousands of years ago, there were humans that developed faster than others, built better lives and inspired those around them to do great things. This is because even though they may not have understood what was happening, their inner self had more control over the Dogs of Humanity that many people do today. Whether a caveman or a business tycoon, without control of the dogs we are all just a pen around a whole lot of barking and until one understands this and grabs hold of the many leashes, he or she can never be free.


I will touch more on the Dog of Emotion in later postings, as it is a dog that overlaps into all other areas. Until then………………………………………..