Not only do emotion and cognition share (and take shape through) much of the same neurological territory, but they are also linguistically intertwined, particularly through the mappings and articulation of metaphor.

Consider the container metaphor. I may be “filled with emotion” or “emotionally drained” or “overflowing with emotion” or “bottling up my emotions.” There are two main container images of emotion: (1) Emotions as fluids in a container (“I poured out my feelings” or “Emotion welled up inside me”); and (2) emotions as the heat of a fluid in a container (“I was seething with emotion” or “I’m about to blow my lid”). A lack of emotion -- or at least of emotional display -- corresponds here to either a lack of fluid in the container (as in “feeling empty”) or to a decrease in the heat of that fluid (as in “He’s so cold to me”).

The more intense the emotion, the experientially greater is the pressure in the “container” -- we may find ourselves in a “steamy” relationship; we may “burst into tears;” we may “vent” or “pour out” our passion, finding it very difficult to “keep it in” any longer. I might ask you to “contain” yourself. Or I might recommend that you get to “the bottom” of what’s troubling you emotionally. Such spatially oriented suggestions hint at the apparent depth of our metaphorical container -- the deeper the container, the more fluid it is capable of holding.

Such quantitative increase indicates a corresponding increase in intensity (as conveyed by “My feelings for you are getting deeper” or “My emotions are building up” or “My emotions are overflowing”), and it also may also bring to one’s conceptualization of one’s emotions the positive connotations of depth, in which inferred depth is taken as equivalent to sincerity and “realness” (as in “Deep down inside I feel...”). If I say, “In my depths, I really do care about you,” I am either conveying something that is unfeigned, wholehearted, genuine, or am trying to do so. Thus, one’s “innermost” feelings (or those that are apparently furthest from the surfaces of the container) are generally taken to be one’s true (or truest) feelings.

The equating of “inner” with “more real” with regard to emotional life may overlap with spiritual life -- or at least with the conceptualization of spiritual life -- wherein one’s “inner life” may be taken as the primary locus (and/or focus) of spiritual practice. “Look within,” we are advised by various spiritual authorities, for apparently “the truth” is “inside” (and we may, of course, have to “dig deep” to get to it!).

What is closest to the “surface” is then viewed as being less authentic -- “layer” after “layer” of false or neurotically constructed selfhood may have to be “worked through” or “unpeeled,” until we appear to arrive at our so-called interiority (which may turn out to be none other than just more of the “I”-manufacturing machinery of our subjectivity, now perhaps even camouflaged as “soul” or “atman” or some other transegoic entity!).

How could I “come out of my shell” or “jump out of my skin” (or even “be beside myself with fear”) if I was not already “inside”? And if I’m “inside,” then how could my emotions also not be “inside”? After all, isn’t that where I feel them? Such is the logic central to the container metaphor of emotion, wherein emotion is conceived of as an endogenous mass, whatever its form.

Other metaphorical expressions that apply to emotion also similarly conceive of emotion as an object or thing. For example, emotion may be represented as a natural force (“Emotion engulfed me” or “I was flooded by feeling”); an opponent (“I wrestled with my emotions” or “I’m trying to conquer my emotions”); a valuable or fragile object (“I’m guarding my emotions” or “My heart broke”); or as a living organism (“You hurt my feelings”).

Metaphors for emotion often suggest that we can be run by emotion. If I’m busy being “ruled” by my emotions, I may thus not be able to help being “swept away” or “consumed” by them -- my “storming out” of the room is simply indicative of my “being driven” by my emotions. My emotions may also “be written all over my face,” even if I’m attempting to conceal them. These apparently autonomous “happenings” easily can give rise to the sense that emotions are not under our control, which commonly leads to the conclusion that they should be under our control.

My “wild” or “untamed” emotions thus may, in their “unleashing,” be viewed more as “animality” than as civilized behavior. In this light, emotion can easily be seen or categorized as being irrational. Then rationality itself, as was described earlier, is commonly viewed in exaggerated contrast to emotionality, so that dispassion is favored over passion -- after all, if I’m “intoxicated” with emotion, how clearly (read: rationally) can I think? Being “high” on emotion generally has far more dangerous implications than being “high” on rationality! (Thus does “appealing to the emotions” gets listed as a fallacy in logic and ethics texts, which simply reinforces the valuing of dispassionate analysis over passionate advocacy.)

Another metaphor associated with the apparent irrationality of emotion is “emotion is a trickster.” If you have been “misled” or “deceived” or “fooled” by your emotions -- not to mention being “consumed” or “taken over” by them -- then of course how can you be held responsible for what you have done at such times? How easy and how convenient an alibi it can be to claim that one’s emotions clouded one’s judgment!

If we hold emotion as untrustworthy, or as less trustworthy than “reason,” then we are likely to treat it as we would treat anything else of such status, looking “down” upon it from our apparent headquarters (except perhaps when we feel “heady” with certain emotions, as exemplified by million-dollar moments).

Let us dig a bit deeper: If we conceive of emotions as residing somewhere inside us, and if we also conceive of them -- or at least of some of them -- as being dangerous or untrustworthy, then we may well find ourselves in the position of trying to distance ourselves from this “inner” threat. But just how far can we actually go from what is also “us”? If we “push it down” (as in the “stuffing” or “swallowing” of our feelings), who are we then? When we keep our emotions “down,” with what are we identified?

Are we then “dwelling” nearby the lid of the “container,” on guard for uprisings, breakouts, eruptions, explosions, or other such unbecoming behavior from “below”? Physically, we may work at keeping a “stiff upper lip” or an impassive countenance, recruiting sufficient energy to prevent a “loss of face” (or a significantly recognizable “loss of face”). Keeping our cool. Mentally, we may indulge in hyperrationality and disembodied abstraction, using our powers of cognition and recontextualization to remain emotionally dissociated, so as to minimize the danger of “falling apart” or “making a spectacle” out of ourselves.

Yet even to engage in such behavior is a confession of already conceiving of oneself as being in parts -- there is the container, there are its contents, and there are the reactions to those contents.

And, furthermore, there may be a number of possible views regarding these “parts,” all of which, when given sufficient attention, tend to refer to themselves as “I.” The “I” that wants to “cut loose” with anger; the “I that wants to do so less impulsively; the “I” that wants to muzzle and mute such anger; the “I” that’s weighing the pros and cons of these options; the “I” that want to do something altogether different -- any one of these may at various times assume or command the throne of self, without any significant awareness of the actual setting and scripting that’s animating “the show.”

Such self-fragmentation, however, cannot be significantly addressed until a transegoic capacity begins to be embodied; prior to this, “I” is not only a disjointed collective of would-be selves, but also seems to be “inside” a container (namely the body, and more specifically, especially in Western cultures, the head).

If our apparent center of experience seems to be thus “within,” then so too our emotions must also be “inside” the very same container, especially given that we “feel” them there, in our “heart,” our “guts,” and so on (when someone gets “under our skin,” we are feeling something “inside”). It is only with the advent of a legitimately transpersonal perspective that this “inside/outside” dichotomy can be sufficiently illuminated so as to be able to begin “giving up the ghost” (and even then “going within” may still be taken literally or romanticized , as can happen in spiritual practices that make too much of a virtue out of introspection).

Yet “inside” and “within” do not have to be limited to processes or practices of internalization; “going within” can be equivalent to “going beyond.” Skillfully reflecting on what’s apparently “within” actually decreases egocentrism, freeing us to more fully engage with more and more dimensions of our environment.

In such radical consideration -- which basically involves a decentralizing of one’s personalized locus of being -- emotion ceases to be an endogenous entity, a migrating mass within, and becomes instead a vividly vital process that both honors and outdances every metaphor (including this one!) that seeks to contain it.