I find so many roads lead back to the same observation: That what motivates us to action is not what we think (at least not directly), not what we’re told to do, but rather how we feel.
I’d like to review that subject in what are more or less chapter headings, none of which I’ve developed yet. Or rather the writing team that seems to feed me these things hasn’t fed me that tape yet.
How we feel – our internal emotional and bodily state – is what we allow, in a high majority of cases, to spur us to action. It’s what we allow to determine the form, intensity, and other aspects of our action. It’s what determines our attitudes towards everyone around us – do I feel a way I like around them or do I feel a way I don’t like? Am I happy or sad? Am I grateful or resentful?
As a correlate, I suggest that what determines how the other will respond to us is them is what they know about how we feel. (Another chapter heading.)
I’ve watched others hold back from responding to me until they know how I feel about the matter in question. I usually ask people, “How do you feel about that?” before I act. I need to know that piece of information.
Most people aren’t aware that how they feel is what motivates them. This subject goes undiscussed. I can’t remember the last time I started a conversation with “I feel…,” consciously intending to explore that subject. 1979?
Ours is a society that does not go very deeply into discussing experiential knowledge (feelings, sensations, etc.). But that kind of knowledge is more refined vibrationally (“higher”) than intellectual knowledge. Realized knowledge is above the experiential. The experiential prepares us for the realizational. We have ourselves trapped in only attending to and believing in what we think.
If we were to experience our feelings completely, we wouldn’t leave our center and swing out onto the extremes of strong emotions like anger and hatred. “Feel to heal,” as Kathleen calls it. Others call it observing, “being with” the emotion, sitting with it like a brick in the lap, completing the experience of, and so on. All these names point to the same thing: giving bare, simple awareness to a feeling or sensation until it departs.
That having been said, how we feel is itself triggered by something else. Our feelings serve us in some way. The play a role or function in our lives.
They don’t have a mind of their own. They respond to the intellectual mind, which operates, by the way, on right/wrong, good/bad, etc.
How we feel is governed by what we think. Think “afraid” and we get fear. Think “wronged” and we get “hatred.”
The intensity of how we feel can often spur others into action. I had someone the other day explain her strategic use of emotional intensity to get what she wanted. Cool that she shared.
Once others confirm how we feel with us, their knowledge of it becomes a key motivator of action for them.
Our society, doesn’t encourage people much to be aware of how they feel. (Except sexually aroused.) Ask a person how they feel, and they’ll often respond “I feel that” or “I feel like.” Neither is a feeling.
Ask them again and chances are they’ll have a very difficult time naming how they feel. We’d probably have to remain with things for a minute or more to determine how we feel. If we even come out knowing. We need to increase our emotional knowledge.
But other people can see how we feel, just not how they themselves feel. We’re schooled in reading the emotions of others. Sometimes our lives depend on it. But we’re not schooled in feeling and knowing how we feel.
It took me six weeks at Cold Mountain Institute, in a three-month encounter group, to realize that I was out of touch with my feelings. First we had to cut through all my mistaken knowledge – if I even had any knowledge – on subjects like feelings. (1)
I got in touch with my feelings at age 30. I learned what love was for the first time at age 69. No wonder the sages say we learn very little from one lifetime to the next.
After the Reval, I’ll make it a matter of the heart to begin a new growth center like Cold Mountain. (2) To help us come alive to our feelings again.
Our society needs to move up Jacob’s Ladder of Consciousness from merely intellectual knowledge to the addition of experiential, existential, emotional and sensory knowledge as well. After that we’re ready for realizational knowledge, such as Ascension itself.
Footnotes
(1) That real men shouldn’t cry. That showing feelings was maudlin. That talking about it identified me as a “touchy-feely type.” Note the use of ridicule. Does it remind you of “conspiracy theorist”?
(2) It’ll have a three-month format, one encounter group meeting daily – in the evenings, usually – and five-day and weekend-workshops, with “circuit riders” – workshop leaders who do a circuit, either geographically or chronologically.