Self is powerful than emotions

The dictionary meaning of the amygdala says it is a mass of the gray matter inside each cerebral hemisphere, involved with the experiencing of emotions.

Now let’s explore how this almond size gray matter works on a human body and mind?

I would like to start with an example. Think about the feeling inside you, when you start to learn driving or going to a new city alone to complete your graduation or you are going to give a speech in front of the audience or anything that you never did before!!!

OMG will you not be scared? Yes, we all get scared to face something new, this is our habit to stop ourselves from going or doing new things as we get scared about it. Our brain says “no/stop” to the new.

One study says electrical stimulations of the right amygdala induce negative emotions, especially fear and sadness. In contrast, stimulation of the left amygdala is able to induce either pleasant (happiness) or unpleasant (fear, anxiety, sadness) emotions. Each side holds a specific function in how we perceive and process emotion. The right and left portions of the amygdala have independent memory systems but work together to store, encode, and interpret emotion.

The right hemisphere is associated with negative emotion, it plays a role in the expression of fear and in the processing of fear-inducing stimuli. Fear condition, that occurs when a neutral stimulus acquires aversive properties, occurs within the right hemisphere. When an individual is presented with a condition aversive stimulus, it is processed within the right amygdala, producing an unpleasant or fearful response. This emotional response encourages the individual to avoid fear-inducing stimuli and more importantly, to assess threats in the environment.

So, the amygdala is all related to our emotions, mostly with fear. As I mentioned before it’s better to give attention to yourself rather than the amygdala, I am not going to explain neuroscientifically in detail how the amygdala works in our sensory system to stimulate our emotional sector. The bottom line is the amygdala is controlling all our emotions, but what about ourselves? What about controlling power inside us? The power of Self?

Amygdala can create a sense of emotion, but it can’t control the Self. The power of controlling emotion is within us, it is the Self. Being an observer, the self has the power to make the decision and change the negative emotions to positive. From the viewpoint of non-dual philosophy, Self is consciousness.

So consciously we can avoid giving attention to the amygdala or emotions that lead us to negativity, stop us to reach the goal.