Many people don't know why they "feel" what they feel. They fall in love with the wrong person. They cry unexpectedly. They lose their temper trying not to. They pursue activities that ruin their life while knowing exactly why they shouldn't.
Many people trust their "feelings" more than they trust their own mind!
Many people say they rely on their "gut" and call it "intuition". (Non conscious source of data.)
But--they are wrong. As wrong as being misinformed can make them.
Here is why.
Our emotions are not a source of information. Our emotions are involuntary physical responses that happen for a reason. The question is: Do we KNOW the reason we experience those emotions?
Here are the reasons.
Emotions begin with values.
What we value results in an involuntary response (emotion) that reflects viscerally the value we hold.
Easy example. If you hate cats and you see one run over what do you think your emotional response will be? If you love cats, what is your response. The cat is just as dead either way. Right?
People who actively filter their thinking and consciously decide on what values they hold not only make decisions with awareness but experience emotions fully informed by that awareness. Meaning what?
We realize WHY we feel what we feel when we've CHOSEN our value while on alert. Contrast that with the person who is lazy about thinking. What means of information SUBconsciously gets fed? Rumor, innuendo, urban myth, social norms, legends, lies and half-truths. This sort of person doesn't KNOW why they suddenly experience emotional attachments that seem AT ODDs with CONSCIOUS knowledge. Passive thinking programs us unaware that we are feeding our emotions at the same time.
You see?
There is a disconnect.
When we disconnect from our emotional reservoir because of passive thinking we may embrace what we know to be poisonous!
A JW is programmed to be passive. You must accept what you are told and what you read as Absolute Truth. The filter is shut off. The skepticism is gone. The active awareness goes dark and you are spoon fed VALUES constantly that go deep inside you without YOU individually putting an active stamp of conscious approval on them. Your automatic emotional reflexes act accordingly.
This is how a person can consciously KNOW something is false and yet be emotionally stuck FEELING a warmth and attachment to the false belief.
The only cure for outright stupidity and hypocracy is an active and rational mind willing to go outside the comfort zone!
JW's as a group are intellectually dishonest, consciously confused and emotionally warped.
Consequently, unless we root out the connection between each and every emotion and identify the value we programmed it with--we are at the mercy of strong feelings we cannot now account for and may be ruled by.
Think about it.