Emotions As Coherence Detectors

Modern Energy brings emotions back onto the big whiteboard of human science; this naturally creates a paradigm shift as now, we have access to a lot more information than was available before emotions were excluded. 

At the heart of this paradigm shift lies the Modern Energy Chart, which shows us how human behaviour, including our capacity to "think straight," is directly modulated by the emotional states we inhabit. 

We understand that every person moves up and down the MEC as they go through life; and three decades of Modern Energy Techniques have resulted in a plethora of ways to raise energy as and when necessary. 

This has resulted in a vibrant field where new discoveries arrive every day and more and more people are learning that they don't have to be at the mercy of their own emotions any longer. However, beyond the case-by-case applications of techniques to feel better (aka to be more empowered in life), there is the matter of the energy averages which create our experience of the world in which we live. 

The energy average colours (modulates) the way we experience the world. This produces three very different world views which influence all the thinking that derives from this. 



On the negative side of the MEC, we find all the negative emotions. I think of those as pain signals that tell us something is wrong - in yourself, in your relationships, in your environment. 

In the middle, there's the nothing; and on the positive side, we experience the positive emotions which tell us that something is right, something is working. 

It makes perfect sense that any person who lives under significant, chronic permastress would come to the conclusion that the cosmos is out to get you. That life is an endless struggle that ends in death anyway, that all things decay in the end, and everything comes to nothing. 

That is the idea of entropy - things start out orderly and become more and more chaotic until there's literally nothing left. It is often falsely supported by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which states that CLOSED SYSTEMS eventually run out of energy; but a person isn't a closed system, and whether or not the entire cosmos is a closed system is beyond any scientist's paygrade. 

Against this dystopian interpretation, we can place the idea that the cosmos is coherence seeking instead. Things start out in gas clouds which come together to form suns, solar systems; single prokaryote cells get together and form multi-cellular organisms, eukaryotes like us, which together become more than the sum of their parts. 

The amoeba don't have a darkness receptor; they swim towards the light, and people do that too. Even when running from a tiger, a human will seek the best path of escape; that which gives them the best chance of survival. We are not "programmed" for fear, stress, "survival," we are designed to find the best fruit, the cleanest water, the most attractive mate. 

This is the idea that emotions are coherence detectors for human beings. As all human systems, their true functions do not become revealed until a person is at least at Plus Three. It is an interesting feature of humans that as they start to become more and more stressed, they know that their ability to know what's right and what's wrong becomes ever more impaired; that is why they will naturally orientate towards experts, leaders or any more stable energy system in the environment to guide them back towards coherence, towards better functioning.



At Plus Three, the coherence detector starts to function and now can tell the difference between something that is chaotic, incoherent, wrong, disrupted and something that is less so. 

At this point, choices appear that are not driving by immediate survival desperation, fear, anxiety or the need to struggle free from pain. We might say this is where human life begins - with the ability to recognise coherence and to actively (agentally, consciously, by choice, by volition) move towards it. 


Here is where the coherent cosmos comes into play. The more coherent the experience, the more attractive it becomes. The deep structural coherence of the cosmos becomes like a magnet; it has a movement that humans can use as the wind beneath their wings. 


If we allow ourselves to be guided in the right direction, an escalating information flow (energy flow) comes into being which leads from attention via fascination to a state of unconditional love where we learn as much about reality absolute as human beings are capable of learning. These are our Star Events, the scientific Eurekas, the experiences that make the difference between "believing" in a benevolent/coherent cosmos, and knowing this is so. 

In the meantime ... 

Each one of us is here, and each one of us has their built in, born with, undeniable coherence detector. Yes, there is endless stress and chaos, so much wrong in every way, so many people going stress mad and life isn't as easy as by all rights, it really should be. What can we do? We can stop telling ourselves that we're just crazy when we find something disturbing. We can raise energy to Plus Three and take another look at that. Here, we are in a position to do something to make the situation just a little bit more coherent in some way. Every move towards coherence, no matter how small, brings with it an alleviation of the suffering that the incoherence has caused. We can encourage ourselves and each other.

We can try to move towards coherence and that is going in the right direction. 

Emotions as coherence detectors may sound dry, technical and far away from crystals, angels and from love. I offer it as a lens to look at the one phenomenon known as emotions in a different way on the one hand, and on the other, to invite those who haven't thought about it, to try it on. 

The cosmos didn't give us emotions to punish us. It gave us emotions so we could have a north star to guide us home. 

Silvia Hartmann

May 2025