How to control emotions?

Emotions are obviously not a mistake, but emotionality is. Emotions are neither good, nor bad. Emotions depend on the center that they are coming from. If the emotions come from a center of fear, of grief, of insecurity, then because they are arising from insecurity, you will be attached to the emotions themselves. Watching the emotions is not the same as being emotional.

Emotionality means being identified with the emotion; and being identified with emotion you cannot know it. You cannot watch the emotion. Then you cannot really see what is going on; then you are carried away by the emotion.

It’s like being money minded versus having money. Having money is not a mistake, but being money minded is a mistake. Having thoughts is not a mistake, but becoming a thinker or identifying with the thoughts is a mistake. And whether or not something is a mistake, the final test is suffering. Whether or not something is a mistake is proven only by whether or not it leads to suffering. Greed is an emotion, jealousy is an emotion, and all these make you burn from within.

What do you mean by emotion? All the thoughts that you have, they gain energy, they get connected to the forces, the condensed conditioning of your subconscious, and they start impacting you even more heavily than thought — that is emotion. So this is the second hand — the neo spiritual culture that has recently crept in. Emotions are neither to be suppressed nor glorified. In fact, emotions are not at all the matter. The matter is the heart from where the emotions are coming from.

So, must we control emotions? Let’s understand this with an example. Let’s say you are driving your car. Do you drive your car in a controlled way or in an uncontrolled way? Obviously in a controlled way. Now, what is all control about? You are taking your car to the right, and because you control it, you decide that you will not take it to the left. What is all control about?

When you say that your emotions are running amok, uncontrolled, then that is movement, right? Something is happening. And when you say that you the emotional one is now controlling emotions, what is really happening? In the name of control, you are continuing. The driver controls the car; does the car, or the control change the driver? You are the controller; you will change…