It is amazing how feelings and thoughts appear to be separate.
Feeling and Thinking are often spoken of as quite unique energies, coming from different places…one uses the mind, one uses the heart.
There are tests that identify whether you lead more with your feelings or with your thoughts.
But the lines aren’t really all that clear and divided, right?
We say “thinking” to refer to the mind churning, analyzing, flashing images, seeing words. We’ll point to our heads. Thinking seems to happen in our brains.
We say “feeling” to refer to sensations in the body. Feeling seems to happen in the heart area, or the stomach, or through the whole torso (have you ever noticed that your pinky toe doesn’t feel “sad”?)
Yet, when we look at feelings and thoughts and where they happen and what they are….they are entirely and completely linked and woven together. Like two peas in a pod.
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Thinking or Feeling?
These two energies are communicating with each other. They seem to be part of a great movement and motion, back and forth, in and out like the tides, part of a big cycle.
And they are much closer to each other than we often imagine.
Byron Katie and many current teachers of awareness and peace often speak about becoming friends with our minds, with our thinking….
…and by becoming friends with this mind….we get to become wonderfully friendly with feelings.
And vice versa. And so on and so on.
It doesn’t matter which one you find troubling first. Most people notice discomfort or unhappiness with both.
Here’s the interesting dilemma that a lot of people, including ME, have noticed sometimes, with all this talk about questioning what we’re thinking:
What if I FEEL really bad, but I don’t even know where to start? What if I don’t know WHAT I’m thinking? What if I almost don’t HAVE any thoughts? What if I just know I feel BAD BAD BAD.
What if my whole persona and my body and my day feels like waves of feeling come along that are painful: stress, fear, fury, disappointment, sadness, despair, nervousness, desperation, loneliness?
What if sometimes, I’m just overwhelmed with difficult or troubling feelings?
Here’s something you can do, if you notice that you are a person with this sort of experience at times:
Write down your thoughts about these feelings. They’ll be all swarming in there like a hive of bees.
- I shouldn’t feel this bad
- I hate this feeling
- I need to do something to get rid of this feeling
- I can’t think
- There must be something wrong with me
- I can’t handle this
- I can’t stand it
Now that you have words that are already in your mind coming out onto a piece of paper, you can question them.
Don’t worry….you can do The Work even while you are having big feelings. You can do The Work with tears streaming down your cheeks or a sick feeling in your stomach.
You may even find that when you have bigger feelings, your thoughts are bigger, and right under the surface if you dig only a little.
You can’t stand these feelings….is that true? They are too big, too much, you need to stifle them….you can’t figure out what the thoughts are that are associated with these feelings….Really?
I noticed in my past that when I resisted my uncomfortable feelings and felt CERTAIN that I couldn’t know what my thoughts actually were, or that they were resolvable….I felt like drinking, smoking, binge-eating, quitting my job and ditching whatever situation I was in. OUTTA HERE.
It worked, temporarily. But I had to put a LOT of effort into avoiding bad feelings and grabbing onto the good ones.
But without the belief that my feelings are bad, I’ve noticed that they are the best assistants in the world to help me see that I’m believing something off.
Turning all these thoughts around, about feelings, I find the following to be a great relief:
- I should feel this bad
- I love and appreciate this feeling
- I do NOT need to do something to get rid of this feeling (it will go away actually, if I leave it alone)
- I can think
- There is nothing wrong with me
- I can handle this
- I can stand it
How would you live your life if you made friends with your feelings?
If you knew they were there for some important reason, giving you a clue to awareness, to your thoughts….and then your thoughts giving you clues about your feelings.
What if you really didn’t care if you felt bad or good today?
You might find that you are more curious than ever about this world. You may find that rather than contemplating and questioning your thoughts because you feel pain and you don’t want to anymore (a perfectly reasonable way to enter inquiry)….
….that you ride the waves of feelings, like a surfer. And your thoughts become clear and you might see even more clearly what is or is not true for you.
“…if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one’s deepest integrity.” ~ Adyashanti
Whether you find you have more active thoughts or more active feelings, both are beautiful and both are messages to lead you to awareness.
My feelings, which I used to think of as the bain of my existence, are now the best pointers to my thinking that I could ever imagine.
Love, Grace
P.S. one of my absolute favorite ways to stay present and have feelings is with the power of a supportive group. Really…its made all the difference in the world for me personally in my own spirited journey. Teleclasses (8 weeks) or the Powerful Living May 4th or the half-day mini-retreat May 18th….or (drum roll) the whole one year program all start in the next couple of months. And Breitenbush at the end of June, too! Join one of these group experiences for contact with love, truth and you. Scroll down right here to click and read about any of these.