My mother used to use the old saying, tripping the light fantastic, as a way to describe that sense of being happy to be alive and I think it goes to the essence of emotion. That sense of just bursting forth, like a flower blooming.

As I’ve tried describing it, reality is this dichotomy of energy radiating out, as form coalesces in. As such, emotions are that energy just bursting out, rather than the form of thoughts and judgements we try wrapping around them.

Given it is the heart and gut processing and circulating the energy that becomes us, we associate them with emotions.

As this desire is the essence bubbling up through us, it gets filtered through all the variety of lenses of our particular experiences, so it seems it is only real as these varieties of impulses, but think of it as the light shining through a film, while our focus is on the images being projected. Which without that light, wouldn’t exist.

Obviously the academy is more about the forms applied to our experience, than the energy driving it.