An emotion is something that conditions the mind and makes it adopt a certain perspective or vision of things.
Trying to define an emotion is a bit of a challenge and not something easily done, because emotions are felt, not necessarily described, as words may lack a certain depth and precision.
Emotions can be divided into: positive emotions (courage, justice, kindness, generosity, honesty, creativity, gentleness, love, patience, honor, openness, candor, compassion, trust etc) and negative emotions (sadness, sorrow, fear, anger, aggression, impatience, arrogance, violence, worry, laziness, selfishness, helplessness, discomfort, impatience, apathy, tension, confusion, boredom, guilt, envy, shame, distrust etc).
The positive emotions are constructive for our being and can even lead to healing the body (as they are radiated on a background of calm and lucidity, not fussiness). The negative emotions, on the other hand, are deeply destructive.
A destructive emotion is a mental factor that disrupts the mind and prevents it to observe reality as it is. In the case of destructive emotions, there will always be a discrepancy between the way things appear and the way they are.
In the long term, negative emotions lead both to illness and reckless and unbalanced behaviors, causing us harm.
Excessive attachment – desire, for instance – will not let us discover a balance between pleasure and displeasure, between the qualities of a thing or a person, instead it will make us believe for a while that the thing is very attractive, and therefore it will make us want it.
Aversion will make us blind to certain positive qualities of the object, causing us to have a negative attitude toward it, wanting to draw away, to destroy it or to flinch from it.
Such emotional states affect the judgment of a person, the ability to properly assess the nature of things. In other words, it darkens the way things really are, and so they will bring confusion at all levels.
Therefore, these emotions affect a person‘s freedom, chaining the thoughts, so that the person gets to think, speak and act in a biased manner.
It’s all right to have feelings, but it’s harmful to let them dominate us. However, we must allow ourselves to have negative emotions as well. Our goal should not be to hide, to repress or to ignore them, but to deal with them when they occur.
“Fear can be one of the most destructive emotions. It is, of course, also very important, if that fear sometimes stops you from doing stupid things. But it can also stop you from doing creative or exciting or experimental things.