Read time 3 minutes. Explore how emotions arise from the tension between instinct and intellect. This stand alone article is part of our letting go series.
Our broader discussion around letting go moves another step forward as we examine the next layer of our emotional activity.
We’ve already seen that a kind of low-grade, existential distress leads to the ego’s ongoing effort to legitimize itself. These efforts shape our underlying emotional state—what we commonly call mood. Today, we take it a step further. We explore the more specific, pointed experiences we refer to as emotions.
Mood hides behind us. Emotion stands in front.
Previously, we explored the duality between conscious and subconscious mind. Mood arises from the subconscious. It’s hazy, undefined. It creeps up from behind. You don’t see it until it’s already left its mark.
Emotion, however, is more direct. It charges into the foreground. It makes itself known. That shift in dynamic reflects a deeper duality: the split between intellect and instinct.
We like to think of ourselves as one unified self. But we don’t act that way. We split ourselves without thinking—into categories like mind and body, rational and emotional. And that split has consequences.
Two intelligence centers. One power struggle.
The intellect is the part that calculates, evaluates, reasons. It says: I can fix this.
The instinct is the part that reacts. It says: This feels bad. Stop.
The intellectual center believes it can condition and control the world. The instinctual center doesn’t trust the world at all. It sees threat in every corner. It’s fight or flight. It works in binaries: good/bad, safe/unsafe.
The intellect works in ideas. The instinct works in form.
This is the core tension.
The ego resides in the intellect. It believes it’s in charge. When instinct lashes out, we say: I wasn’t myself. But maybe we were—just not the part of ourselves we like to be seen.
Emotion is the voice of instinct
So what does all of this have to do with emotion?
Emotion is how instinct speaks. It expresses its pleasure or alarm in response to what the intellect does—or fails to do. But it doesn’t use words. It uses tension. Joy. Rage. It’s not subtle. It doesn’t ask for a meeting. It hits the fire alarm and waits for someone to notice.
Sometimes intellect and instinct cooperate. Sometimes they don’t. But they are never in complete union.
That lack of unity is the deeper issue. It’s what gives rise to the emotional volatility we so often struggle with. It’s not just that we feel—it’s that we feel in opposition to ourselves. And the more alienated instinct becomes, the louder it shouts.
Explore more:
We are barely scratching the surface of the complexities and nuances of this mind/body relationship. For example, how and why these two intelligence centers develop independently of each other is an entire lesson in and of itself.
Mind/body dualism is a philosophic thesis that is as old as time. René Descartes is often attributed to be its founding father. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers and extensive overview of this theory.
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