The Quiet Mind
Anger, joy, humiliation, jubilation, despair, elation, mania, and euphoria are all extreme aspects of our emotions. They are also the states where our mind operates at its lowest because it drops its guard and spends all its resources on feeling and expressing these emotions. These emotions can also be seen through our bodily reactions. Our life is a journey from one extreme end of the emotional spectrum to another, and the closer we are to either end, the worse our performance gets.
Why does this happen? Emotions are our mind's defense mechanism because most of the time we are in survival mode without realizing it. Our anxious behavior is the most easily available evidence of our fight or flight response. But at the height of our anxiety, our mind redirects all its resources to our body, causing us to lose focus on the situation and instead become hyper-focused on futile scenarios.
When we feel heightened emotions, we are at the extreme end of the emotional spectrum, far from the optimum point where our mind can operate at its best. Our biology is designed to balance physical and mental processes. Most of our bodily responses are inherited from our ancestors through evolution. If our mind senses danger through our senses like sound or sight, it sends signals to our body to remain hyper-alert; as a response, your ears perk up, your eyes widen, trying to gauge the threat. At that moment, if someone asked you to talk about your kids or the delicacy you had yesterday, would you be able to describe it accurately? You wouldn't.
That's because we cannot be hyper-aware and hyper-alert at the same time. Hyper-awareness is a mental process through which you understand your circumstances, your choices, and interpret consequences; you also reflect on your suffering and ponder upon life's larger questions. Hyper-alertness is an evolutionary response to danger.
Why discuss evolutionary responses? Because it's crucial to understand how your emotions affect your judgment, and more than the "how," we need to understand "why" it happens. Like everything else in our life, this is rooted in our survival mechanism, a gift from evolution that has kept us alive.
When you truly grasp this idea, you realize that the brain cannot process ideas and thoughts effectively if it's metaphorically at the extreme end of the emotional spectrum. The crucial aspect here is balance. All the meditation described in ancient Hinduism, from which Buddhism and Taoism emerged, is about bringing your mind to that point on the emotional spectrum where your body is tranquil.
The state of tranquility is when your biology is equally aligned between your mind and your body. Your heart doesn't need extra blood, your veins do not require overworking, your senses do not need to operate in overdrive, and your mind can afford to be distracted from immediate surroundings to contemplate novel concepts about life. It's when resources are equally allocated to their designated tasks that our mind achieves tranquility.
Such a state is often referred to as calmness. In this state, your mind is not swayed by a perceived reality that pushes your emotional range to the extreme. It's when your mind is tranquil that you assess reality as it should be assessed. Decisions made from such a state will be more beneficial.
A decision made or a choice taken when your mind is experiencing extreme emotions, when we know it's not operating at its finest, when resources are skewed to counter perceived danger, cannot be wise. Wisdom requires assessing conditions, evaluating second and third-order effects of decisions instead of making quick choices to alleviate immediate fear and anxiety.
The path to wisdom involves looking beyond all possible choices by evaluating all potential consequences of those choices and then making a better choice. If your emotional state is skewed towards one extreme, you won't be able to assess those choices or their effects adequately. To make better decisions, you need to acknowledge that emotions might not be helpful for all the reasons mentioned.
What should we do when we are in the throes of extreme emotions? The simple answer is nothing. Wait for a while until your emotions subside and you reach a point of calmness. It's easy to wait when you're happy but not when you feel passionate anger towards someone. Discovering your girlfriend or wife has been cheating on you, it's tough to wait out the moment for calmness to return because calmness might never come until you address the situation.
In such cases where waiting might worsen your personal situation, you need to operate from the point of awareness. You need to recognize that you are feeling extreme emotions like rage, hatred, and vengeance, which can lead to violence. At that point, everything might seem justified because, as mentioned, your mind can't process second and third-order consequences of actions unless it calms down.
Once you acknowledge that the current state isn't conducive to making the best decisions, and to make optimal choices, you need to assess reality independently of your feelings, you will not only decide the fate of your cheating partner but do so with a coldness you might not have intended in the heat of passion. You will also realize that violence might hinder your future happiness and lacks merit, which is why avoiding violence is the optimal choice.
Remember, I'm not advocating for the suppression of emotions; I'm merely suggesting maintaining command over your decisions. When experiencing extreme emotions, you cannot command your decisions effectively, leading to outcomes worse than you deserve.