Your Mood is Your Truth

Man, did I ever have shitty mood this morning. Funny how everything seems to deteriorate when your in a shitty mood. In fact, maybe our experience of 'world' is more a product of mood than any other aspect of self

We often like to speak of our experience of self and world by describing thoughts and feelings. But what about mood?

Often mood comes upon us for no apparent reason and we can't really place exactly what thoughts or feelings preceded our mood. Mood permeates our being to the core and it's the filter through which the world is, seemingly, lit up with light or veiled in darkness.

Yet, even though we often cannot identify the origin of mood, if it's negative we will desperately seek an exit strategy. We desire mood be positive at all times and those who fail to exhibit positive consistency of mood we label as "moody." We're really NOT seeking happiness, but a consistent positive mood.

Mood is ubiquitous and omnipresent. Mood gives meaning to every experience and IS experience. The whole shebang!

Psychology tends to consider moods as crucial to functioning. This is why the exalted "Psychiatric bible" (Diagnostic and Statistical manual of mental disorders or DSM-IV) tends to classify impaired functioning under two chief headings: disorders of mood or disorders of personality. Yet I don't want to discuss "mood" from a purely psychological perspective, but rather from an experiential or existential, lived-in experience.

Regardless of psychology's assessment, we tend to pay less attention to mood, than we do to specific thoughts or emotions. However, it seems we are more acutely aware of our mood when it is negative and this may relate to Freud's pleasure principle, in which we feel naturally inclined to move away from pain or discomfort and move toward pleasure or comfort.

This is because mood is all-encompassing and deeply pervasive to our entire Being. Mood is "who" we are.

Moods can last for hours and even days and often we cannot specifically pinpoint what particular emotion, behavior, thought, physical condition or external situation has resulted in our mood. Once we find ourselves sunk into a specific negative mood, we may find it excruciatingly difficult to exit and thus, feel existentially ‘trapped' in our mood. We tend to rate our moods along a positive/negative spectrum and mood can often change instantaneously with little notice. We often tend to label moods as up or down, pessimistic or optimistic, with many derivatives in between.

The most important aspect of moods is that they tend to shape our world. In fact, the famous (and somewhat infamous) western philosopher, Martin Heidegger, has posited the theory that moods have the distinct capacity to manufacture or construct our 'world' experience.

Mood IS the world.

We don't necessarily experience a world that then results in a mood, in accordance with what we experience, but instead press our mood upon the world and that is the world we experience. The important point is that mood and world interact as ONE.

Psychology holds that mood is the combination of interior states based primarily on cognitive interpretations of an external ‘world.' Yet, Heidegger's philosophical interpretation of mood (or "affectedness" as he refers to it) is different from most definitions of mood since it tends to expose, or "disclose," the world to us based on our mood and has little to do with what we believe we experience as a result of participating in the world.

Mood is an 'attunement' to the whole of humanity. However, Heidegger does not make the usual reference to any conventional term like mankind or humanity. Instead, he refers to humanity as "Dasein," which is the German word for Being-in-the world, hyphenated to demonstrate unity.

World and mankind are one 'unit' or composite, which can never be divided or split. However, in our moods we obsess on parts of the world as the origin of our mood and thus fail to realize it is our mood that gives splits off our experience of a world. Therefore, the world might be consistent, yet, we have no way of knowing since it is our moods that change and the world changes accordingly.

Mood gives us our ‘experience' of time, outside chronological or intellectual time.

Nevertheless, I feel that Heidegger's most important contribution is related to the terms authenticity and inauthenticity.

"The authenticity or inauthenticity of a mood is determined by whether it discloses the truth of Dasein [Being-in-the-world] or conceals this truth".(Quentin Smith, Heidegger's Theory of Moods, Michigan Univ., Phil Dept.).

For Heidegger, "Dasein," or Being-in-the world, is to be understood as a wholeness or unified state with no partitioning. Thus, mood's that reveal that wholeness as Truth are authentic, while moods that conceal this truth from us he considers inauthentic. Our moods tend to "disclose" and reveal truth. Truth cannot be found in the world, yet the world is not to be separated from truth as we and the world are of a unified status. Our moods either inform of this unity or depart entirely from it and we experience this in relation to our mood.

Our mood can have us magically engaged in our "being-in-the-world" or withdrawn and isolated from this truth.

For Heidegger the chief mood of existence is anxiety. Anxiety can be authentic or inauthentic. Inauthentic anxiety attaches to the activities of the world, the hustle and bustle of trying to make a living and seeking happy diversions from the doldrums of living. This anxiety conceals being-in-the-world or our truth. Authentic anxiety is related to death and not-Being, and is a deeper closing in on our very existence. It is what drives us to seek solace in religion and spiritual practices (this is my interpretation and not necessarily Heidegger's)

Yet, although he is considered the "philosopher of anxiety" he also deals with joy. However, this is directly related to authentic anxiety, "Although with the sober anxiety, which brings one before one's individual ability-to-be, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility" (Being and Time, p 310). To correspond with one's Being-in-the-world, or the truth of this unified wholeness; to have this brought to mind completely unconcealed and disclosed to us, is a mood of magnified joy.

I believe this often occurs with those diagnosed terminally ill. They feel compelled to engage with world and make it "disclose" its truth. This is often a very liberating experience.

This does not necessarily require any belief in an external "source," such as god or pure awareness. However, frequently spiritual paths facilitate this conceptualization as a way toward the self's experience of being-in-the-world as a 'wholeness.'

Nevertheless, we cannot deny that many have experienced this joy of unified wholeness without any conceptualized idea of god, universal consciousness, nirvana, enlightenment, awakening etc, etc, whatsoever. Although, because the experience is so unusual, the self seeks out interpretations for which to make sense of it. In any event, this blissful state is available to anyone at anytime and does not require any specified practices or ideologies for through which to experience. However, it does demand a deep engagement with your 'experience' of the world no matter how painful that experience may become.

Thanks,
mikeS