Emotional Consciousness

Introduction

Since a few years ago it’s common to hear and read articles in magazines, books and

newspapers that talk about emotional consciousness. In fact, for some people this concept is

becoming a new oracle or key to success in business around the world. However, most people

don’t like read about it because it’s commonly associated to complexity or boring reading. In this

paper, I intend to go into a deeper insight of this concept. To teach you a little more about it is, in

addition to motivating the reader toward its knowledge and practice in real life, without implying

that I’m an expert in this topic. At the end of this document you will have your own answers to

the following questions which will leave you with enough motivation to find out more about;

“Why is this concept important?, Can it be applied to real situations, particularly in workplaces?,

Can it be learned?, How is related this concept to Emotional Intelligence concept?”.

Development

Before starting to develop the main questions above mentioned about emotional

consciousness, is important to know something about its meaning and its history. There are

many definitions, but for my intention, I am taking the followings that are easily found it in the

web. According to www.healthline.com › Reference Library: “We can define emotional

consciousness or emotional intelligence as the ability to become aware of their own emotions

and the emotions of others, including the ability to capture the emotional climate of a given

context”. In searching for the simplest definition, we can say that: Consciousness is: the state of

being conscious, awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc. the
thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or group of people: the moral consciousness

of a nation. full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life, awareness of something for

what it is; internal knowledge”. And according to Oxford Dictionary conscious is as simple as:

“having knowledge of something.” Going a little deeper in the history of this concept, I found

that the first use of the term “emotional intelligence” is attributed to Wayne Payne, in his

doctoral thesis: “A study of emotion developing emotional intelligence (1985)”. Was not until the

publication in 1995 of the famous book by Daniel Goleman, "Emotional Intelligence", when this

term was popularized.

According to Piotr D. Ouspenski, “The human being is normally in a state of

consciousness undeveloped. In other words, the human beings is a biological machine that is

responsive to internal and external stimuli with a base of memories. This human machine has

seven functions, which typically we only know the top five: Think, Feeling, Intuition, Motor

function, Sex, higher emotional function and higher intellectual function.”


For this author, there are 3 levels of consciousness: Physical which is predominate on physical

movements and instinctive centers, emotional where predominate the emotional knowledge,

intellectual where predominate the intellectual knowledge.”

Emotional intelligence studies the second level of consciousness, with the objective to let us

know to be aware about our emotions, understand the feelings of others and tolerate the pressures

and frustrations we endure at work, which are always needed in our ability to work together. All

of these situations are the reason why I consider that knowing more about EIQ (Emotional

Intelligence) is so important nowadays. Still why is so hard to learn and put in practice? The

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answer is simple, because the physical levels, as established by Piotr D. Ouspenski, usually

predominate over the second and third levels of consciousness. In other words physical levels are

powerful enough that we’re able to change our priorities in our daily lives. Imagine for a minute

when somebody is extremely hungry or thirsty, it may be very difficult for this person to take

control of their temper and feelings.

To advance in the maturity of our consciousness, we must know ourselves very well, or

in another way, to know ourselves and our feelings as well as possible. It is important to know

our feelings as well to handle them. Emotional intelligence has the bases in the role played by

emotions in the psychological functions of each person. That is, when we are faced with some

difficulties or important moments in our lives we take risks to face painful losses or to address

conflicts is which when emotional consciousness takes place. I found out a very simple way to

understand this concept without the use of complex physiologic terms. For this, I quote Aristotle:

"Anyone can become angry, that is very simple. But to be angry with the right person, at the right

degree, at the right time with the right purpose and in the right way, it certainly is not so easy. "

Therefore this concept must occupy a special place in our lives, in the world today and

particularly in a professional environment.

Many psychologists have been studying indepth human emotions for many years. In fact

they have even developed several IQ test tools not only to measure intelligence but also for

emotional intelligence or EIQ. If you want to know a little bit more about yourself, you can take

one of this tests. An example can be found of http://www.queendom.com/tests/. Now, I want to

share with you a paragraph taken from Goleman famous book “Emotional Intelligence” where

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he organized this concept into five capabilities; Know your emotions and feelings, Manage them,

Recognize them, Create your own motivation and Manage relationships”. Although all of this

sounds easy (as they say: easy to say), is not so easy to put in practice and it is also not easy to

develop these kinds of skills. However, everybody must recognize that every day more and more

concepts and practices need to be learned about emotional intelligence or emotional

consciousness.

Conclusion

Today emotional intelligence may be one of the most important aspects to be successful

in life, not only in our personal environment but also in our professional careers. Everyone needs

to compete to get a good job. Everyone dreams to have a happy family and in perfect harmony

with other people. I believe that everyone needs to improve and work hard on his or her

Emotional intelligence, in fact many think that emotional intelligence is perhaps more important

or at least equal to that of intellectual intelligence. Remember, today the world is social, you

can’t do almost anything without working together with other people, where emotions will be

always present in every second of our lives, we need to learn to manage and control our emotions

which may make a big difference in our lives.

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1. www.healthline.com › Reference Library

2. www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com

3. P. D. Ouspensky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

4. Inspirational Quotes, Http://www.beliefnet.com/Quotes/Inspiration/A/Aristotle/Anyone-

Can-Become-Angry-That-Is-Easy-But-To-Be-A.aspx

5. EIQ Test http://www.queendom.com/tests/access_page/index.htm?idRegTest=3037.

6. Daniel Goleman's five components of emotional intelligence www.sonoma.edu/users/s/

swijtink/.../goleman.htm

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