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Is it possible to banish your emotions?

04:20 / 24.05.03

Has anyone ever tried a magic ritual to get rid of your emotions? I'm thinking this could be a good technique to rid yourself of sadness, anger or stress during hard times so that you might be more cold and calculating while you try to find a way out of the mess you've created. Like an on/off switch.

Maybe staring at life size posters of Dolph Lundgren and Keanu Reeves, while some kind of mechanical techno music plays in the background, and you start moving your arms like a robot while you get rid of your emotions one by one, focusing on transferring them to the two actors and when they fail to act out those emotions, the emotions are destroyed.

I'm not sure what kind of ritual you'd need to get the emotions back.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

06:03 / 24.05.03

Better question is this a good Idea?

Maybe a ritual to put your emotions in a jar that you could later get them out of would be a better one.

10:46 / 24.05.03

Sounds like a terrible idea to me - our emotions are what make us human, and we don't listen to them enough, IMO. Transcending them won't make us more than human, it'd be killing a vital part of ourselves.

Dealing with these things so they're not dehabilating is another matter altogether, for which you have a multitude of remedies like meditation, relaxation techniques and so forth. However, just trying to stifle them won't get you anywhere - if there's a certain emotional response in a certain situation that's crippling you, that's something to work with, trying to channel it elsewhere, or see it from a different perspective - rather than simply banish.

There's a couple of threads around on Wilhelm Reich at the mo - "sex and Armour" in the Conversation, and "I dream of Organon" in the Lab. Reich had a lot of interesting stuff to say about how the surprssion of emotion cripples us.

13:54 / 24.05.03

I think its a good idea, why keep emotions just to nurse an ideal of what is human, why be sad if you don't have too. Sure you could raise the arguement that someone may use this technique, if indeed it works, to avoid truth, but so what. People are avoiding the truth all the time in one way or another. Hey Jack, why not invoke Mr. Spock, he doesn't have any emotions...

Spyder Todd 2008

23:51 / 24.05.03

I don't know. Part of me says getting rid of emotions is a bad thing. But another part says there are times when it would be better to get rid of them. So, I say that if you need to get rid of them, then do it.

11:46 / 25.05.03

Have a Google around for Steven Mace "Stealing the Fire from Heaven" - just been reprinted. he details a lot of techniques for channeling negative emotions/personal demons, into something postive - for example he details an operation where he bound the demon of his anger at the state, transforming it into liteary creativity. Good stuff.

Hermes - personally, I think we already bottle up too much stuff, in a way that's damaging to us. I'd rather try and deal with these parts of myself than pretend they doesn't exist. If a particular response to a particular situation is dehabilating to you, that's an opportunity to learn, IMO.

23:54 / 25.05.03

Za-Zen mediation is an excellent means to banish your emotions. The Death Posture, which folks like Carroll mention, is the basic means to banish your emotions. It doesn't really take a ritual. Just be quiet, mediate, count your breaths and RELAX!

Getting rid of your emotions to invoke a Gnostic trance is as much a skill as using strong emotions to achieve the same goal.

Regarding why you should banish your emotions, there are many reasons. One is that your emotions, no matter how well hidden, can seep through unconsciously into your behavior. After your boyfriend dumps you to run off and join the Society of Friends, you may wish to banish or change your emotions before that big meeting about your promotion with the VP later today. Another reason why I banish my emotions is that many emotions are not physiologically safe. Anger, for example, can cause long-term health problems, so if you have no need or if it is not logical to be angry, you may want to banish your anger.

That having been said, I find it is fair easier and generally more productive to change your emotions, say from anger to a feeling of awesome well being. I personally have problems transforming ennui into anything, however.

Hope this helps!

-Jesse

02:10 / 26.05.03

Good for you Illmatic, and thanx for the advice.

I found that turning anger into a form of spirit, and creating a statuette for it and dealing with it this way is a help. I usually evoke the anger into the figurine and then destroy it. I've found this to be very helpful. Another is to try to identify the various things that you are responding to with these negative emotions, and then come up with ten reasons not to respond to that particular situation that way. Pick the two or three that seem most believable, and try to react in the prescribed manner instead of the usual, at first it seems like acting, but over time you start to really behave according to the manner you wish, without effort.

14:58 / 26.05.03

Cheers H., interesting ideas. I

think it's probably worth trying to differentiate between different types of emotional repsonses - might add clarity. I'm quite a fan of the works of therapist/scientist Wilhelm Reich(I seem to be dragging him into every post at the moment - see this thread). For Reich, health was characterised by the free expression of energy, in terms of positive work, emotional contact in our relationships with others, a healthy sex life etc. - this is what I had in mind above when I said I think "banishing" is a bad idea. I think these are such core needs that any banishing attempted would simply be surpression or denial, and as such would come back to haunt you.

There's a world of difference between this kind of stuff and say, dealing with feelings of discomfort that arise in social situations, or a burst of anger 'cos someones' stepped on your shoe. Sorry if this sounds like I'm stating the obvious, but I thought it was worth making the distinction.

02:52 / 27.05.03

Dr. C. S. Hyatt developed a magical mediatative formula, based on Reich and Reagardie's ideas, outlined in his book Undoing Yourself w/ Energized Mediatation. It is very good. One of Reich's ideas was that emotion is contained in muscle tension and that by flexing and relaxing muscles, you release your emotional energy. Hyatt's excercises have a step by step process on how to release this energy.

02:01 / 29.05.03

I think it would be better to banish your obssessions.