• The Capacity of Feeling

    August 22, 2015

    This school makes a distinction between emotion and feeling. Understanding this distinction is critical to our work.

    Humans are perceiving beings. Perception acts through three capacities or channels—thought, sensation and feeling. Each generates and displays information. Each is ‘read’ by perception.

    Emotion consists of sensation and associated thinking. Consider anger. Is it not a sensation? Does it not have a definite signature of muscular contractions and biomechanical reactions such as a shift in breathing and palpable changes in energy states for specific parts of the body? Is there not a perceivable and scientifically measurable set of chemical markers? The conclusion is clearly that anger is a body state which charges and discharges the human physical apparatus. Thinking is also involved. The physical dimension of anger has an associated set of habitual thought patterns that either have the effect of maintaining and amplifying the physical agitations of the state or attempting to suppress them.

    Feeling is not a body state. The perception of feeling is not a sensation and it does not charge and discharge the body as an emotion does. Feelings are frequencies that connect to qualities of being such as being steadfast, loyal, loving, courageous or generous. There are hundreds of these qualities (some of which are identified by Sufis as the wazaif), each of which has a very specific ‘vibration’ or frequency which can be perceived and experienced. The frequency is the quality itself. The sensations of touching a hard, smooth surface tell you that there is an object that has the characteristics which give rise to these sensations.  The feeling of love is love itself. Feelings appear to originate outside ourselves, certainly outside the body.

    Can you clearly distinguish between sensations and feelings? There is an emotion that we call love and there is a feeling that is love. One is a body state and one is not. This is not a judgement which prefers one to another. Both are highly informative and valuable channels of perception. But if you do not discern feeling separately, it may easily be overwhelmed by sensation, in the same way that the stars are not seen when the sun is in the sky. This analogy does not mean that feelings are weaker; in many ways they are not. But sensing tends to eclipse feeling because sensing uses a less refined and more available energy.

    What capacity discerns feeling? The Sufis call this the heart and they consider it an organ of perception. But this is not a physical organ. What is it? Perhaps we can say it is an organization of higher energies which seems to have a ‘home’ in the center of the chest. But as you have more experience of the multitude of feelings that exist, you may notice that some of them seemingly have a location corresponding to other places in the body which appear to correlate to the chakras of the yogic tradition.

    Conscious experience includes and blends the three forms of perception. A thought, fully sensed, perhaps including an inner or outer posture, suggests (invokes) a feeling which is the essence of the other two. A feeling generates the corresponding sensation, physical posture and mental state. A sensation, carefully attended to, is a doorway to feeling and thought. When feeling is active, sensation is purged of emotion; there is no thinking loop and no charge/discharge. The energy of sensation is drawn up and in. When the dimension of feeling is absent, we easily revert to emotion and the higher, more conscious energies are drawn down and out. The human physical apparatus is a transformer of energies up or down, always feeding ‘something-or-other” with its productions.

    Ancient traditions emphasize the importance of awakening the heart. For this purpose, we have sensation, thought and attention. Sensation provides energy. Thought invokes direction. Attention is the catalyst. It’s all in the human design.

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  • Mastery (2)

    June 3, 2015

    When we looked into mastery earlier, you talked about checking or withholding the mechanical impulses of the sleeping machine. What is the purpose of making such efforts?

    Humans are biological energy transformers. The one who pursues mastery must limit energy expenditures and transform energy of a lower quality into higher forms which are able to fund real work.

    The automatic functioning of body and mind uses automatic energy, an energy that can easily perform repetitive tasks by rote but does not notice or comprehend. You drive home and barely remember anything. Your foot automatically brakes based on your speed and the approaching intersection. Rudimentary passive awareness is all that’s required. Working with the same energy, your thinking consists of daydreams which roll over and over and have nothing to do with what’s actually happening around you.

    Withholding the impulse to eat or sit down or look at a moving object interrupts the automatic functioning of the body/mind. This begins by noticing the automatic impulse to do these things. At any given time, you are likely to have enough sensitive energy to notice that the machine is on automatic. Sensitive energy is able to notice, which can act as a reminder to summon voluntary attention. Attention separates from automaticity and introduces the possibility of choice.

    Now, let us suppose you choose to withhold an impulse of the machine. The impulse is energy. Withholding its expression saves that energy. Attention on that energy transforms some of it. Attention on mechanical movements increases sensitivity and noticing self and environment; sensitive energy in the presence of voluntary attention becomes conscious energy which has the property of enabling thinking, sensing and feeling to proceed together, harmoniously … the energy of multi-tasking. In fact, the heart does not operate as the organ of feeling unless it has access to conscious energy.

    How can I do all this if I am asleep?

    The only trick is to notice your machine is asleep in the present moment. Ordinary life gives us this opportunity very frequently, especially as we engage with other people. Noticing sleep behavior is a reminder to summon attention. You may find that engagement summons attention directly, triggering the energy exchanges that bring you into the present. That is the point. Mastery means being able to be present in the present. This in turn means seeing and responding to what is actually happening rather than reacting to subjective and false interpretations based on past experience. And having access to the energies required for all-centers functioning enables one to act according to the needs of the situation and in accordance with work aims.

    Ironically, sleep is the key to waking up. When you have observed your sleep and learned its tell-tale signs, sleep itself will wake you. This is not the only stratagem but it is a good one. Some of you may be easily shocked by the rough edges of life in the world or you may be unusually susceptible to beauty and order. The sudden impact of experiencing these factors can engage attention but you need to take care that the energy is not co-opted by clinging and averting or lost down the rabbit hole of self-indulgent emotions such as self-pity or sentimentality.

    Can we say therefore that we experience presence many times a day?

    Yes, but these moments are quickly overcome by the momentum of sleep in the machine. Can you learn to observe the exact process of falling asleep? If so, could presence then be able to remain present? Hahnemann called being present in the present our ‘natural state’. Our body/mind adopts an effective response to a challenge. The response is learned and it continues after the circumstances have changed. What was effective is now a block. Hahnemann considered this the root of illness. We call it sleep.

    Related Post:

    Mastery (1) – May 15, 2015

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  • Containing

    May 1, 2015

    In ordinary life, we express our impulses or suppress them. Those are the possible mechanical reactions available to us. Can they be contained, neither expressing nor suppressing?

    Is expression always wrong? Of course not, but it’s an expenditure and it may not be well received, leading to further perhaps unnecessary exchanges. And suppression? Is it not wasteful of energy? The impulse that is suppressed will emerge at another time, in another form, perhaps unrecognizable and less endearing.

    Can an impulse be held as energy, without justification or judgment? Automatic expression or suppression is then muted or may not occur at all. The key is no justification or judgment.

    Anger arises. Let us suppose there is no blame. Anger therefore does not become hatred, the desire to hurt. Hatred therefore does not become self-loathing. Anger is simply energy. The provocation to anger is simply data. It is the chain of energetic discharge leading to expression or suppression that sustains karmic consequences. Containing the impulse is clean and there is no discharge. Energy is not lost.

    Containing is a middle way similar to releasing; it goes between the pillars of opposites. Emotional reactions are physical expressions of the energy of sensation. This energy can be contained and digested rather than expressed or suppressed. Who or what digests? Attention. A higher form of energy is able to transform a lower form such as the energy of sensation. Sensation can be an offering on the table of attention, a repast for kings. The higher mixes with the lower to create the middle, in this case conscious energy.

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