THE VOICE OF KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER 7
EMOTIONS ARE REAL
(The voice of knowledge is not real.)
Before you learn to speak, your brain is like a perfect computer, but without a program. When you are born, you don’t know a language. It takes several years for your brain to mature enough to receive a program. Then the program is introduced to you, mainly through your parents, as well as other people around you. They hook your attention and
teach you the meaning of words. You learn to speak, and the program goes inside you little by little by agreement. You agree, and now you have the program.
Well, if you are the computer, then knowledge is the program. Everything you know, all of the knowledge in your head, was already in the program before you were born. I can assure you that none of us ever has an original idea. Every letter, every word, every concept in your belief system is part of the program, and that program is contaminated with a virus called lies.
There’s no need to judge the program as good or bad or right or wrong. Even if we don’t like the program, nobody is guilty for sharing it with us. It’s just the way it is, and it’s wonderful because we use the program to create our stories. But who is running our life? The program! The program has a voice, and it’s lying to us all the time.
How can we know what the truth is when almost everything we learned is a lie? How can we recognize what is real in us? Well, it took some time for me to find out, but I found out. Our emotions are real. Every emotion that we feel is real, it is truth. I discovered that every emotion comes directly from our spirit, from our integrity; it is completely authentic.
You cannot fake what you feel. You can try to repress your emotions, you can try to justify what you feel or lie about what you feel, but what you feel is authentic. It is real, and you are feeling it. There is nothing wrong with whatever you feel. There are no good emotions or bad emotions; there is nothing wrong with anger or jealousy or envy. Even if you are feeling hate, it comes from your integrity. Even if it’s sadness or depression that you are suffering, if you feel it, there’s a reason for feeling it.
I discovered something very interesting about the human mind, something logical and important to understand. Everything you perceive causes an emotional reaction—everything. If you perceive beauty, your emotional reaction is wonderful; you feel great. When you are hurt, your emotional reaction is not so great. But you perceive not just the outside world; you perceive the virtual world you create in your head. You perceive not only your feelings, but your knowledge—your own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs. You perceive the voice in your head, and you have an emotional reaction to that voice.
Now the question is this: What is the voice in your head telling you? How many times has it told you, “God, I’m so stupid, how could I do that? I will never learn!” The voice of knowledge judges you, you perceive the judgment, and you have an emotional reaction. You feel the shame; you feel the guilt. The emotion is true, but what causes the emotion, which is the judgment that you are stupid, is not true; it’s a story. Again, this is just action-reaction. What is the action? The action is the perception of your point of view, which means the perception of your own judgment. What is the reaction? Your feelings are the reaction, and you react to the lies with emotional poison.
Let’s see if we can understand this a little better. Imagine that you have a dog. As you know, the dog is just a dog, and it’s a perfect dog, isn’t it? But what happens if you abuse the dog? What if every time you see the dog, you kick the dog? Very soon the dog will be afraid. You can see the emotions coming from the dog. It is angry; it might try to bite you or run away. Is there something wrong with the dog’s emotions? Does the dog’s anger make the dog evil? No, the dog’s reaction is just the result of being abused. The emotion is helping the dog to defend itself. It comes from the dog’s integrity.
Now imagine a dog living in the most beautiful environment with people who always love and respect the dog. That dog is the sweetest animal in the whole world, the most wonderful dog. Because that dog is not abused, he follows his nature; he loves everybody who loves him. Well, your physical body is just like that dog. It reacts emotionally in the same way. Why do you react with anger? Well, because somebody kicked you, right? But who kicked you? The voice in your head, the main character of your story—what you believe you are.
You also perceive your image of perfection, what you believe you are not, and this also creates an emotional reaction. How do you feel when you cannot live up to that image:? The emotion is not pleasant, but your emotional reaction is real; it’s what you feel. But is it true that you need to fit that image? No, it’s a lie. What you are perceiving is just a lie that you agreed to believe in. You agreed, and that lie has become a part of your story.
Humans are victimized by knowledge, by what we know. If we make a mistake in front of someone, we try to justify the mistake to protect the image we project. Later, when we are alone, we remember what happened, and we punish ourselves all over again. Why? Because the voice of knowledge keeps telling us what we did from the same point of view that we had when we did it. The voice becomes a powerful judge, and it’s telling us, “Look what you did!” And it’s telling this to whom? It was the voice that made us do it in the first place!
The voice of knowledge is abusing the emotional body. What is not real is abusing what is real. The action is to believe a lie; the reaction is to feel emotional pain. The emotional body perceives the voice, reacts to the voice, and just like a tiger, it attacks. We lose control, and we do things and say things that we really don’t want to do or say. Now the voice of knowledge is afraid of our emotional reaction; it judges our reaction, and makes us feel ashamed of our own feelings.
Then we perceive the emotion of shame, and use knowledge to try to justify the emotion, which means the voice of knowledge is talking about what we feel. The voice starts lying about our feelings, and even tries to deny what we feel. Then we perceive that voice, we perceive the judgment, and we have another emotional reaction. Now we feel guilty because we reacted emotionally. Then knowledge tries to explain the emotion of guilt. The emotional pain is growing, and now we are depressed. Can you see the cycle?
The voice of knowledge makes a story about our emotions, we perceive the story, and we try to repress our emotions. Perceiving that repression creates another emotional reaction, and soon we just want to repress everything we feel. “I shouldn’t feel this way. What kind of man are you? Are you a wimp or what? Real men don’t cry.” We pretend it doesn’t hurt. Yes it hurts, but it hurts because we make a story, perceive the story, and drag more emotions into the story.
Why do we hate? Because someone is abusing us. That’s why we hate. Why do we suffer? Because something is hurting us. That’s why we suffer. It’s a normal reaction to being hurt. But what is hurting us? Well, now the answer is easy. What hurts us is the voice of the liar in our head that keeps telling us the way we should be, but we are not. The hate, the anger, and the jealousy are normal emotional reactions that come from what is real, which means they come from our integrity, not from who we are pretending to be.
That’s why there is nothing wrong with hate. If we feel hate, the voice of knowledge speaking in our head is causing us to hate. The hate is completely normal; it’s just a reaction to what we believe. If we change the belief, then the hate will transform into love. All of our emotions change when we no longer believe the voice because the emotions are the effect, not the cause. Emotional pain is a symptom of being abused; the pain is letting us know that we have to do something to stop the abuse.
Why do people abuse us? Because we allow them to abuse us, because in our judgment we believe we deserve to be abused. But if we go a little deeper, we see that we abuse ourselves far more than anybody else abuses us. We can blame other people who hurt us and say, “I grew up being abused,” and we can make many excuses. But in the present moment, who is abusing you? If you are truthful , you find that mostly it’s your own voice of knowledge.
Every time we lie to ourselves, we abuse ourselves. Every time we curse ourselves, we abuse ourselves. Every time we judge ourselves, every time we reject ourselves, of course we have an emotional reaction, and it isn’t pleasant! Again, if we don’t like the emotional reaction, it’s not about repressing what we feel; it’s about cleaning up the lies that cause the emotional reaction.
The message coming from our integrity is clear. The voice of integrity is screaming to us, “Please, save me!” That reminds me of the movie The Exorcist, about a little girl who is possessed by demons. Well, there is a little girl inside us saying, “Help me! I’m being possessed by the main character of my story!” Oh, my goodness—and it’s true! Humans are possessed by knowledge. We are possessed by a distorted image of ourselves, and that is why we are no longer free. How many times have you heard someone say, “If the real me comes out, I don’t know what’s going to happen”? We are afraid that something inside of us will come out and destroy everything. And you know what? It is true. If the real you comes out, it will destroy all of the lies, and that is frightening.
I used to be possessed by the main character of my story. I was abused by that character for so many years, yet I pretended to love myself. What a joke! And not just that, I pretended to love somebody else. How could I love somebody else when I didn’t love myself? I can only give to others what I have for myself.
People have asked me, “Miguel, why can’t I feel love? How can I learn to create love?” I thought about this. Hmm…Create love? Then a little idea came into my mind. We don’t need to learn how to love. By nature, we love. Before we learn to speak, love is the main emotion we feel. It is natural to express our love, but then we learn to repress our love. And I tell them, “You don’t need to create love. Your heart is made to produce so much love that you can send your love to the entire world. If you can’t feel love, it’s because you are resisting love; it’s because you’ve learned how to stop expressing your love.”
When we are little children and people tell us that we shouldn’t be the way we are, we begin to express the expression of our authentic self. We repress our integrity, our own emotional body. We practice hiding our emotions and pretending that we don’t feel them. When we feel ashamed of our emotions, we begin to justify and explain and judge our emotions. We believe in so many lies that we no longer express the beautiful emotion of love.
The voice of knowledge tells us, “It’s not safe to love. I’m afraid to love because love makes me vulnerable. If I love, my heart will be broken.” So many lies. It’s not the truth, but knowledge tells you, “Of course it’s true. I have a lot of experience with this. Every time I love, my heart is broken.” Well, this isn’t the truth because nobody can break your heart if you love yourself. If your heart was broken in the past, you broke it with the lies you believed about love. Love makes you strong; selfishness makes you weak. Love doesn’t hurt. What hurts it the fear, selfishness, and control that come from the lies you believe in. If you no longer believe in lies, automatically love starts coming out of you.
After my experience in the desert, it was clear to me that every emotion I feel comes directly from my integrity. When I noticed this, I no longer repressed my emotions. Now my emotions are the most important part of my story because I know that my feelings are authentic. When I feel an emotion, I know it’s a reaction to what I perceive. My emotions are telling me how I am doing in my life, and by following my emotions, I can change my circumstances.
Whatever the feeling—from joy to anger, from love to hate—it is just a reaction. But being a reaction, it is important to see the action. If I am not happy, it’s because there is something in my story that is suppressing my happiness. Then I have to take a step back and see what is causing it. If I have the awareness, I can face the problem, fix the problem, and be happy again. As soon as any problem arises in my life, I resolve it in one way or another without even trying to make a story about it.
The universe is simple: it’s about cause and effect, action and reaction. If you don’t like the way you are living your life, this is a reaction to the program that is ruling your life. The liar, the program, is not even part of you, but at the same time, it is part of you because it’s the way you identify yourself. The program creates the story, then it tries to make sense of the story by explaining and justifying everything to the main character of the story. What a setup. What a creation. Humans create an entire culture, a whole philosophy of humanity. We create history, science, art, Olympic games, Miss Universe, you name it. It’s our creation, and it’s beautiful and wonderful, but it’s just a story!
The main character of your story is you, but the role that you are playing is not you. You have practiced that role for so long that you have mastered the performance. You have become the best actor in the entire world, but I can assure you that you are not what you believe you are. Thank God, because you are much better than what you believe you are.
I remember when my Grandfather told me, “Miguel, you will know that you are free when you no longer have to be you.” At that moment, I didn’t understand him, but later I knew exactly what he meant. I don’t have to be the way everybody wants me to be. I don’t have to be what I believe I should be according to my own lies.
Your story is your creation. You are the artist with the force of life flowing through you. If you don’t like your art, you have the power to change it. That’s the good news. You don’t have to be you anymore, and that’s the maximum freedom. You don’t have to be what you believe you are. You don’t have to be that anger or that jealousy or that hate. You can recover the sense of what you really are, return to paradise, and live again in heaven on earth.
POINTS TO PONDER
Every emotion that you feel is real. It is truth. It comes directly from the integrity of your spirit. You cannot fake what you feel. You can try to justify or repress your emotions, you can try to lie about what you feel, but what you feel is authentic.
The voice of knowledge can make you feel ashamed of your feelings, but there is nothing wrong with whatever you feel. There are no good emotions or bad emotions. Even if what you feel is anger or hate, it comes from your integrity. If you feel it, there is always a reason for feeling it.
Everything you perceive causes an emotional reaction. You perceive not only your feelings, but your knowledge—your own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs. You perceive the voice in your head, and you have an emotional reaction to that voice.
Every time you lie to yourself, or judge yourself, or reject yourself, you have an emotional reaction, and it isn’t pleasant. If you don’t like the emotional reaction, it’s not about repressing what you feel; it’s about cleaning up the lies that cause it. All of your emotions change when you no longer believe in lies because the emotions are the effect, not the cause.
Our emotions are real; the voice of knowledge that makes us suffer is not. Our suffering is true, but the reason why we suffer may not be true at all.
Humans are possessed by knowledge, by a distorted image of ourselves. That is why we are no longer free.
Emotional pain is a symptom of being abused; the pain is letting you know that you have to do something to stop the abuse. The emotions are the most important part of your story because they are telling you how you are doing in your life. By following your emotions, you can change your circumstances.
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