Sensing is in the nervous system in response to a stimulus. Feeling is not.
Sensing is the basis for emotion. An emotion, whether we consider it positive or negative, is a body state usually with a thought pattern to go with it.
Anger is an excitation of the nervous system with thinking that identifies why I am angry. The sensations are localized, including adrenals, pulse, breath and so on, much of which we may not be conscious of but all of it within reach of our awareness.
Pleasure is also an excitation of the nervous system with quite different physical effects but also with associated thinking. Pleasant emotions have physical benefits, negative ones have negative effects.
Sensations not only affect us individually but also communicate beyond the body to other humans, plants and animals. So, curating sensations has value and real consequence.
What is feeling? Enquire. Is it not something received? Is there not a range of thousands of different feelings? Consider freedom, purity, beauty, elegance, truth, loyalty and so on. These are qualities known by their feelings. They each have a particular vibrational or tone. They require us to be open, receptive and attentive. They are gifts of the unseen.
As we enquire we may find that feelings have associated sensations such as sorrow and sadness, joy and happiness.
To make way for feelings to enter, whole body attention is most useful. Allowing attention to fall directly on all the sensations of the body clears the palate, removing the localized, locked in sensations of ordinary emotions. Submission encourages feeling to enter. Humility is the most beautiful inner gesture we can make towards the realm of feeling.
A whole human being has sensation, thought and feeling working together in body, mind and heart. Each domain has its organ of perception. How rarely do we use them to fully perceive.
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June 21, 2024
Tags: feeling, sensing, work notes
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November 14, 2019
Have you noticed how little we depend on sensing? The headbrain is the tireless translator of my experience. I have replacement thoughts for just about everything I experience in my senses.
I see the vastness of the sky filled with stars and I think about how far away the stars are, that the light I see was emitted billions of years ago by stars now long dead. The sensing lasts only a moment, if at all, and then it is replaced by thinking. Instant translation to the mental sphere. My ancestors had far less ‘knowledge’ of these things but they had a much greater possibility of being in relationship with the heavens.
Perhaps you think this is not important, that what matters are the facts? Perhaps you think that realism is based in knowing the facts? In my view, this is an enormously limited understanding of our capacity to know and the potential of knowing through sensing.
My observation is this: sensing engages me in a relationship with what is sensed and that relationship does not arise from thinking. In my sensing, I can relate to phenomena outside of my limited location in time and space. And the extraordinary added benefit to entering into sensation, penetrating it with attention and holding it without mental translation, is that it also opens up the realm of feeling…higher emotions as they are sometimes called. Thinking rarely provides this bridge to feeling unless it first engages sensation.
Try this at home. Watch an insect or small animal. Sense in yourself how it moves. Notice that it very often responds to your attention if you do not get caught in your thinking.
How does sensing engage feeling? In my view, sensations have parallel feelings. The sensation of lowering the head may invoke humility. The sensation of remorse may invoke compassion. The sensation of beauty may invoke ecstasy. Can I learn to fill my senses with these sensations? In my experience, learning means to not let thinking interfere. This is a skill that opens many doors.
Tags: feeling, knowing, relationship, sensation, sense, thinking
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May 27, 2019
I attended a concert in which two splendidly trained musicians played cello concerti by Beethoven and Grieg. It was enlightening to experience the difference in the compositions.
The Beethoven communicated extraordinary order. What do I mean by order? There was a delightful balance between the two instruments, a dialogue in which one unfolded and revealed the other, coherence in the melody lines, evolution of the theme and reprise where it was needed. The concerto unveiled the intimate connection between order and beauty. In classical Indian philosophy, this is sattva (goodness, constructiveness, harmony).
By order I do not mean the squared off, static nature of modern office buildings but rather the dynamic balancing and rebalancing of the elements which characterize living systems and real creative endeavour. Beauty requires order but not all order is beautiful.
The Grieg composition was emotional and incoherent. Ideas were begun and abandoned without development. The two instruments were at odds with each other. The pace was feverish and every line seemed to end in higher volume. In Sanskrit, it would be categorized as tamas (darkness, destructive, chaotic).
Perhaps this is a commentary on the possible range of the human condition?
Do I give too much importance to emotion, by which I tend to mean passion? This rarely amounts to feeling; more often it reflects an intensity of sensation. The ‘higher emotions’ of clarity, order and beauty are perhaps too subtle to attract and hold my attention yet these are the ones most open to possible discovery and transformation. To apprehend these qualities, I must have order in myself. For this, certain music may be helpful.
Tags: beauty, clarity, emotion, feeling, music, order, sensation
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December 28, 2018
Perhaps you think that to have a heart means to experience emotion and to sympathize with others…to be an emotional person. Can you consider another view?
In this work, heart is a faculty, not a metaphor and not a temporary emotional state. Heart is a mirror-like organ of perception able to reflect the finest qualities…of humility, honour, beauty, glorification and truth to name a few…which exist continuously in the realm that is proper to them. Heart makes these qualities directly available to us in their essential formlessness unlike thoughts which stand for and represent something or sensations which vibrate the nervous system in response to a stimulus. Feeling is the nature of the thing itself.
Sensation, thought and feeling…body, mind and heart…interacting together, make a real human being. Thought and sensation are freely given to each of us but feeling…what some call higher emotion…is not so easily accessed because the heart required for it must be uncovered.
What covers the heart? The counterfeit of feeling….sentiment. Sentiment, literally sensing-mind, is, like all ordinary emotion, a combination of thinking and sensing. Both are valuable but they cannot substitute for the perceptions of the heart. The thought of love is not love. The sensation of sadness is not deep sorrow. The sentiment of friendship is not the mutual reflection of two open hearts.
We have learned to indulge in the easy satisfactions of ordinary emotion, seduced by its habit-forming cycle of charging and discharging our biological organism. The undesirable must be relinquished before the desirable can be attained.
The heart is traditionally thought to be in the center of the chest and is often experienced as if it is located there. But higher emotions are not produced in the body. Feelings are frequencies outside body and mind, although they may be describable in words and gestures which can be used objectively to invoke them if the heart is open. Sometimes the heart reflects the cold clear light of truth, sometimes the exquisite fire of love. For the heart, there is no right or wrong.
Tags: feeling, heart, higher emotion, perception, qualities, reflection, sensations, sentiment
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April 8, 2016
Some spiritual schools emphasize the need to be thankful and that we should practice thankfulness. Does it not have the power to transform our experience?
By the time you feel thankful, your experience has already been transformed. Acknowledging what you have to be thankful for and saying the words may have some value—perhaps it shifts you temporarily out of your usual whining and complaining—but is this not purely mechanical in nature?
Thankfulness arises spontaneously as a state of being in conjunction with other states of being. You experience something beautiful—a perfect, luminous winter morning—and a feeling of thankfulness enters you. Then, you may, or may not, acknowledge your state, after the fact of its arising.
Thankfulness is the being-response to a transformative experience. It does not need our assistance.
But what about being thankful for a gift that is given to you by your friend or a family member?
Ah yes. As you know, I do not favour gifts and I will do almost anything to avoid receiving one. That said, of course there are exceptions, not many, such as gifts from small children. Gifts are a burden. Usually they carry with them certain expectations–of a relationship or some reciprocal gesture—which are rarely appropriate to that moment. It may be necessary on such unfortunate occasions to speak some socially-acceptable platitude while deciding where the gift can go that will cause least harm.
Again, there are exceptions, but most gifts carry too much freight in the form of impressions and expectations. If you are able to give a gift without these embellishments, you are certainly a prime candidate for this work.
Tags: feeling, impressions, state of being
