What's A Feeling and What Isn't

To feel or not to feel, that is really not the question. It's more like, what the heck am I really feeling and why should I care?

In this work of dismantling the illusion so that we can experience the real, the natural in life one of the elements we have to deal with is what we're feeling. This may sound simple enough but I am here to tell you it is anything but. There is so much confusion between what we feel and what we believe that I thought I'd take this opportunity to take a stab at clarifying it as best I can.

The basic feelings we all have would be sadness, fear, guilt, shame, sexual and happy. Anger is a secondary feeling that comes in, often at lightning speed,  in response to one of the basic feelings that we are uncomfortable with. For instance, I may be driving down the road and someone cuts me off, almost causing an accident. I become aware of being angry and may have a few choice words to say about the other driver, etc but that wasn't the first feeling I actually had in relation to this incident. I can guarantee I was scared first but who wants to feel fear? Anger is a much more powerful seeming feeling so it jumps right in there before I even know I was scared so that I won't have to feel so powerless. The same holds true when sadness comes up but it might not be quite as instantaneous. Sometimes we just get tired of feeling sad and helpless so anger takes over, once again giving us the illusion of control or power. Enough said about that.

So back to the basics. If you want to truly be able to be present to what you are feeling I find it important to be present to the feeling and not the belief associated with it, that needs to be questioned. The feeling needs gentle attention. Feelings are actually neutral in that they do not exist in a vacuum, they are the body's expression of certain ideas or beliefs. They are really messengers telling us there's something going on in the mental field that is creating a reaction. So there's really no point in killing the messenger, nor is there any percentage in buying into the feelings as being the truth. They're the truth about what we believe, not the truth about the way it really is.

One of the places I see people running into problems with the Liberation Process is often where they've misinterpreted a belief to be a feeling. 'I feel misunderstood', 'I feel small', 'I feel insignificant', 'I feel unworthy', 'I feel appreciated', 'I feel neglected', or 'I feel like they don't like me', 'I feel like I'm not wanted' (anything starting with 'I feel like...) are all beliefs based on decisions we made so long ago we just see them as the way it is. When we see these ideas as feelings there really isn't anywhere to go with them. If we just hang out with them nothing changes, we're just maintaining the status quo or reinforcing the BS we've been buying all our lives. The thing we need to be fully present to is the sadness, fear, shame, etc., not what we think about those feelings. What we think/believe is what we need to question. That's where the illusion is being generated. The feelings are where those beliefs are anchored in our bodies so when we focus on the places we feel things with compassion and openess we can become aware of what's been playing out in our minds that is without a doubt some belief or concept that is not usually making us happy. If it is, no worries, just enjoy. But if the thoughts and beliefs aren't making you happy why would you want to hang on? (That can be a topic for another blog entry)

The point I am making here is that it would undoubtedly behoove you to learn the difference between what you're feeling and what you're believing if you seriously want to dismantle the illusion and live beyond belief. If this little dissertation has brought up more questions than answers please leave a comment and I will do my best to clarify further. (Comments are always welcome by the way)