A great many of us who consider ourselves intellectual or even spiritual, like to think of ourselves as having graduated beyond religion. And yet, we are raised in cultures and in a world that has been so influenced by religion, that it is embedded within us. The danger of this is that we can easily keep operating according to the same religious programming and simply use different words for it. Today, I’m going to expose to the world one of the major ways that humanity has done this with the hopes that if enough people see it, collectively we can break the pattern.

First, I have to introduce you to the religious idea of a “sin”. Sinning is a concept that is most closely linked to the Christian religions. This being said, nearly every religion on earth has a similar concept, it just simply goes by a different name. The word sin is actually an ancient archery term which meant to miss the mark. Yet, since the beginning, it has been used in a religious context to mean to fail or miss the goal. It implies an offense against God or transgression of religious law. In other words, a serious shortcoming, fault or reprehensible immoral act. To simplify this for you, a sin is anything that a religion sees as bad or wrong.

It is a tragedy, but many religions and spiritual philosophies see countless elements of humanness (and even humanness in general) as sinful. Many religions hold beliefs like a sinful nature is passed down in all men since the origin of man. Or that humans are created weak, fallible and prone to mistakes and therefore are prone to sinful behavior. Or that humans have negative sinful tendencies due to the allure of satisfying one’s pleasures. Even cultures that are formed by religions that do not include the concept of sin directly, are still imbued with the idea of badness or wrongness in many human characteristics and the goal is to transcend one’s humanness.

Various religions and therefore cultures have put so many things into the box of sin. To give you some examples of common things that have been put into that box, you have: Urges, desire, pride, greed, laziness, wasting resources, envy, lust, sexuality in general is very tricky because there are so many different rights and wrongs involving it, hatred, resentment, taking or paying interest, witchcraft, theft, not fasting during specific times, eating specific foods, murder, being immodest, cursing, homosexuality, lying, gambling, gossiping, breaking promises, being disloyal, attachment, believing in multiple gods, idolatry, ill will, ignorance and superstitions. You get the point. But a more accurate definition of a sin is anything you think, say or do that goes against what God wants… Ie: What a religion and therefore culture has decided is right and good.

Because of this, so many things are seen as bad and wrong and are therefore treated like a sin. And because of this, like a moral failure. And because they are seen as a moral failure (perhaps we can call it a character flaw for those of you who don’t like the world moral), any person who exhibits them will experience a loss of both social esteem and status.

In this very long list of things that are seen as bad and wrong by humans, and are therefore subconsciously seen and treated like a sin is: Emotions.

Emotions, especially the negative emotions and especially negative emotions that people associate with the disturbing of social peace, are the sin of today’s world. People who are having these “bad and wrong” emotions, feel wrong and bad for having these emotions on top of the pain of experiencing the emotions themselves. And people who are having these emotions are seen and treated as if they are bad and wrong for having these emotions in the first place. And in today’s world, a person’s non-emotionality and especially non emotional reactivity is seen as a marker of their level of enlightenment, maturity and moral character. In the same way that celibacy was (and in some cases still is) seen as a marker of a person’s closeness to Christ and therefore pureness of moral character. And this, is a big, big problem.

Let me give you two common examples of how this looks today.

First, let’s meet Cora. Cora dropped out of college to do some soul searching and quickly found her way into the new age spiritual community. Now, years later, she hosts retreats. She hangs out with yogis, energy healers, conscious creators, astrologers and self-development freaks. Cora hired a woman to help her with retreats, who pocketed money for herself and botched the company tax returns and as a result, Cora went into debt and was facing the loss of her business. She felt a flurry of desperation, rage, terror, fury, resentment, bitterness and revenge. When people asked her how she was doing, she would break into tears and tell them about how badly things were going and about how she felt. Essentially, she would express these negative emotions. And, as if things weren’t already bad enough, the results were terrible. The people in Cora’s community immediately saw that because of these negative emotions, she had lost her footing on the spiritual path, that she was out of alignment. That she had become so attached to money and to her business that she had let her ego get the better of her. And that she was no longer fit to be an example of being rooted in the objective universal plan, because she had been so affected by something that happened in this little day to day human life that we live. Because of this, Cora fell from grace in their eyes and no one referred anyone to attend her retreats anymore. She was met with a barrage of emotional invalidation and people suddenly seeing themselves as superior to her in terms of their level of consciousness. Essentially, they started seeing Cora as spiritually immature and treating her this way. Because in these communities that Cora was part of, negative emotions and emotional reactivity of any kind is seen as a sin. Of course, they use different words for it. But the mentality and behavior is the same towards Cora’s negative emotions as the mentality and behavior in a catholic community is towards someone who is committing adultery.

Second, let’s meet Grayson. Grayson is in court trying to maintain joint custody of his children in a case that involves parental alienation. His ex-wife will stop at nothing to try to get the judge to see him as the bad guy, so she can win full custody over the children. Today, she has managed to tell their children to tell a family therapist that Grayson and his new partner commit sexually lewd acts in front of the children in the house and that it scares them. When the child therapist, who has fully fallen into this game (not realizing the children have been groomed) testifies, she says she believes Grayson’s home is unfit for the children. Grayson is flooded with a rush of painful negative emotions. Angry and desperate and crying, he yells out in the courtroom, “That is a lie. That is a god damn lie and you know it.” Taking quick advantage of the fact that people see negative emotions as a sin, especially when someone is demonstrative of their emotions, her lawyer jumps in and says “Your honor, this kind of instability and lack of self-control is exactly why my client is seeking full custody.” And it is true. Being the bearer of bad feelings is seen as a character flaw and as evidence that he is ruled by emotions to the degree that he cannot be trusted to make the best and most rational decisions for his children. If you want to learn more about this pattern, you can watch my video titled: The Sickest Game You Can Play.

Religions have always been used as a means of creating social conformity and control. They are used as a tool for establishing social order. They reinforce things like the law, social norms, ethics and gender roles etc. Even without religion, governments seek to do the same thing. And even without formal government, you will see order being established in any human group regarding what is bad and wrong vs. good and right. When people started to associate negative emotions (especially certain ones) with negative behaviors (ones that can cause a breakdown of social conformity, control, order and peace), they made those emotions bad and wrong. And we are still existing with this mentality towards negative emotion today in this emotional dark age we are living in.

Emotions are not bad. Nor are they wrong. They are not a sin. Emotions carry a lot of information about our environment and about ourselves, most especially about our subjective experience of our environment and about our personal truths. It is helpful to think of emotion as a different language in which information is received and transmitted. And by making emotion bad and wrong, ie: treating it as a sin, we cause all kinds of damage to ourselves, to others and to the world at large. If you are looking to challenge your current views of emotions, I suggest you watch three of my videos. The first is: The Emotional Wakeup Call. The second is: Stop Trying to Regulate Your Emotions. And the third is: Non-Reactivity is not Necessarily an Indication of Health or Enlightenment.

The time has come for people to recognize that what we are doing is treating emotions in general, (especially negative emotions) as a sin. It doesn’t matter if we are using this word or not. The time has come for people to really question this subconscious mentality so we can change it for good.