From sweets to saints, various attractions fill the mind. Diverse values activate emotional responses that are sometimes disordered. A lesson from psychology helps us order our value-responses gloriously.
Barbara Fredrickson is a psychologist specializing in the experimental study of positive emotion. Her research, set forth in Positivity, finds that the most common positive emotions are joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride (paired with humility), amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. (In a more recent book, Love 2.0, she sets forth love as the supreme “emotion” in this list.)
The theory for which Fredrickson has been accumulating evidence throughout her career is this: Positive emotions broaden our range of creative and constructive responses and build our character.
Despite these essential nourishing functions of positive emotion, observes Fredrickson, we commonly cut short our own positive emotions before they have a chance to fulfill their mission in us. We turn the page, click the next link, interrupt the rise of feeling toward a higher level.
But instead of hurrying through our positive emotional life, we can allow these blessings to blossom fully. When positive emotions begin to dawn, we take the time to let them to come forth abundantly—to permeate, uplift, open, and strengthen us.
Now let’s go beyond psychology to philosophy. Some philosophers have realized that emotions are responses to values. Values are what we strive for and rejoice in. There are diverse values on different levels, and the supreme values are truth, beauty, and goodness.
Now let’s move from philosophy into the spiritual and religious realm. Supreme values are what we can comprehend of divinity, and divinity is the quality of Deity. So when we become aware of the divine lure of truth, beauty, or goodness reaching out to us, our relationship with God has already become activated.
A positive emotion that begins in a simple, everyday way, if given the chance to blossom fully, could carry us from homey delight into worship.
Truth, beauty, and goodness surround us constantly, even though those values may remain in the background as we focus on the facts or more specific values in our daily tasks. Thanks to the quiet presence of supreme value suffusing reality around and within us, we can grow to become constantly illuminated by worship.
This blog post draws on page 98 in Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness by Jeffrey Wattles, which will be published by Cascade Books. It is expected to be released within two weeks. Once published, the book can be ordered by calling (541) 344-1528, by email to orders@wipfandstock.com, by fax to (541) 344-1506, or online at www.wipfandstock.com (though the book will not show up on the website until one or two weeks after publication). The paperback retails at $31.00. After publication, it can take 6-8 weeks to appear available on amazon; and for the Kindle book ($9.99) to be available takes 3-6 months.
Positive emotions are a good thing. They are apart of the human endowment. But I make a distinction between positive emotions of the mind and of the spirit. Positive emotions of the mind are to be had be all human beings, regardless of their status. The Father supplies rain and sun to all human beings, regardless of their status. Positive emotions of the mind can uplift us from the purely temporal ups and downs of living. They can shorten our negative emotional reactions to the tragedies of mortal living, but positive emotions of the spirit are linked to faith and trust in God’s goodness.
The positive emotions of the spirit are not subject to the ups and downs of the temporal life, they remain fully charged as we pursue the challenges of the spiritual journey, the journey toward divine perfection, in response to the Father’s merciful command to be perfect even as he is perfect.
These positive emotions of the spirit are available to the most unlearned and unsophisticated of God’s children by simply expressing the supreme desire to do his will. This simple desire to do his will surcharges the soul with boundless optimism which even the harshest material reality can not quash. These positive emotions of the spirit fills the soul with eternal hope as it struggles to break and eventually overcome the fetters of a material existence.
Dr. Perry
I’ve long been interested in the four candles of the Advent wreath which are: Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. I began to call them “spiritual emotions,” which it seems goes along with what you’ve said, James.
Jeff, you brought forth what Fredrickson said about the “nourishing functions of positive emotion.” When I was working on my book, Transcending the Everyday Temptations of Overeating, I recognized in myself, the tendency to overeat when I actually needed an experience of of hope, love, joy, or peace.
Thank you and best wishes,
Vicki