I have always maintained that I don't control my emotions or desires, I only control my reactions to those feelings. They happen to me, outside of my conscious deliberate control. If they are possible to directly control, I don't know how to do it.
While desires are not the same as emotions, they both seem to come from somewhere beyond the conscious mind, a place usually described as the heart. This is probably both because they are considered to be rooted deeper within us, and because experiencing them in a strong form can actually lead to feeling a physical sensation from that part of our body.
I have read some things about how you are supposed to lead your heart, instead of follow your heart, but I don't really relate to what they are saying, or understand how to do that. God puts desires in our heart, and there may be other desires there as well, presumably what Paul describes as "desires of the flesh." Biblically, those are to be resisted, but once again, I only know of ways to control my responses to those desires. I recognize there are certain desires within me, which are in direct conflict with my desire to follow God.
How does one go about changing their desires, and can one even truly "want" to? How can you want to not-want something anymore? Does it just come down to which desire is stronger? The only way I can imagine getting rid of the desires themselves, would be at a spiritual level, with God's assistance through prayer. And then what about those desires that aren't so black and white? They don't directly conflict, but may distract from God, or maybe they are from God. It can be hard to tell, because "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)
Emotions and desires are not the same thing, but they are related issues. Can we choose our emotions? How much influence do we have over them? I know that in a sense it is possible to suppress your emotions, so we do have some level of control over them. But is that emotional suppression a conscious action, or only an unconscious response to the process of consciously suppressing reactions to our emotions? And I don't think you can isolate certain emotions, but that in suppressing one, you suppress all of them. The defense mechanism that limits anger and sadness, also limits peace and joy as an unfortunate side effect. Being open to experiencing happiness requires risk.
It occurred to me the other day that the heart doesn't multitask, nor is it easily distracted. (Both physically, in pumping blood, and metaphorically) Our minds, by comparison, seem unpredictable, and usually much less focused. My thoughts on things fluctuate much more than my feelings about them do.
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