I am indebted to Donovan Copley who inspired this conversation, and to
Manal Maurice who contributed material.
I'm not what I feel, I'm not my feelings, I'm not even the "I" in the
phrase "I feel ...", the latter of which is the subject of
another conversation
which informs me (as
stoopid
as it sounds) "I" don't feel - literally. What's true is I
have feelings. More accurately (from an
observer's
experiential
point of view)
is "There are feelings.".
This conversation is about none of the above. It's not about whether
you agree "There are feelings" is more accurate than "I feel ...", or
not. It's not about whether it's smart to
identify
with your feelings (or with your "I" for that matter) or not. It's
about whether or not feelings - and feeling (quote unquote) "bad" in
particular - have the power to interfere with us
being in action.
It certainly seems as if they do. And there's a lot of agreement that
they do. Yet they don't. Feelings don't interfere with
being in action.
Here's a simple experiment to prove they don't: wait until you're
not feeling good,
then
raise your hand,
and watch what happens. Report back to me whether or not,
not feeling good
interfered with you
raising your hand
ie whether or not,
not feeling good
had the power to interfere with you
being in action,
or not.
Human beings have feelings. It's a fact. And there's
nothing wrong
with having feelings ... except that we futz with them
waaay too much. We try to stop them, get rid of them,
negate them,
fix
them,
analyze them,
explain them, justify them, soothe them, change them etc. Yet like your
fingernails growing, they're simply ongoing organic material ie they're
machinery embedded in
hamburger.
The thing is (and this is the cherished legend dying hard) they're not
subject to your control. And if they were subject to your control, I'll
bet you'd be controlling them so that you'd
feel good
all day, yes? (Oh, you're working on that? And how's it going for
you?).
As a goal,
feeling good
all the time, is naïve - moreover
futile,
frustrating, hopeless. Sometimes I feel good. Sometimes I don't.
That's it. That's how feelings are. No matter what I do about my
feelings, they're whatever they are, whenever they are. And
occasionally I'll have a semblance / illusion of control over them ...
until I no longer do, and I discover that at best, control over my
feelings is fleeting, temporary, fanciful. Like ships on the bay, they
roll away, they roll in, they roll away again.
The way (ie the appropriate way) to relate to feelings is to accept
them as beautiful, automatic (often
tyrannical)
components of life. I have all these
great feelings
... and all these not so
great feelings
... all those times
I didn't feel good
... all those times
I felt good.
If I could have figured out a way to control them, if I could have come
up with a way to have less bad feelings and more good ones, I'd have
done so by now. It's not for want of trying. You won't come up with one
because it's not an option - any more than human beings can come up
with a way to control stopping inhaling and exhaling (temporarily yes
... but permanently? and it's game over).
Although we
identify
with our feelings (actually we
mis-identify
with them) and are stuck in the twilight zone of "I feel
...", our feelings aren't who we really are. "I feel ..." is a fib,
really. What's true is "Feelings feel me.". I have
feelings - yet they're not who I really am. And herein lies the
access
to discovering freedom from the confusion around the role feelings play
in our lives: a far better use of my time is to examine who I really am
- like my word - and then
honor my word
regardless of whatever feelings I have going on.
Feeling not so good?
OK, got it:
honor your word
as who you really are ... and
be in action.
Feeling good?
OK, got it:
honor your word
as who you really are ... and
be in action.
And notice your word comes with this added maneuverability: unlike your
feelings, you have control over your word.