tba Early rough draft
The definition of a "feeling" is simply: A physical sensation, such as that of contact, pressure, temperature, and pain. Also, a complex of sensations, such as tight stomach, unsettled nerves are transmitted through the skin; sense of touch
It seems that feelings run my life. I spend my life trying to feel better (or sometimes I actually just get caught up in what I am doing).
I try to "feel good". I try to not have my "feelings hurt". The word takes on all sorts of attached meanings.
I feel that that is right. Yes, one can think or believe something is right, but "feel" it? Maybe we can feel good or bad, but we can't "feel" right. Somehow when we say I "feel" it, it seems to spring from a mysterious source of wisdom and implicitly must be honored and not questioned, for its rightness is beyond question. (However, it is very inaccurate, though a form of it can be useful if utilized in an intelligent manner: intuition.)
And a really big question: Who should be the boss? "How I feel" or my "thinking?
I "feel bad" when I am doing something I don't like to do. Why don't I just feel neutral about it or good about it because it is something I've chosen to do to meet some need? If I "have to do" something, then I feel pressured. So, now, pressure is added to the list of feelings.
But maybe alot of those things we call feelings or emotions are just complexities of thought for which there are just a very few feelings that result from them or seem somehow attached to them.
And it would appear we can have a "complex" feeling. Take the feeling of "being pressured". If we get really, really accurate about it and describe all that happens that is related to it, wouldn't it go something like this?:
Someone has put a deadline on my work. If I don't do it on time, there is a bunch of consequences:
I would "lose face".
I might be fired.
I might not be considered as good an employee and it would affect my pay.
Etc.
With all those thoughts going to the brain, it must respond in some way, evaluating it. And how it evaluates it is both from some built in primitive programs but also from the programming that we added - a thing we often call "meaning". "If x happens, this means that y will happen as a result." Or, more in the feeling area: "If x happens, this means that I will not be approved of and if I'm not approved of ..." (you should see what people implicitly think, the programs they have left in their brain from earlier days, what they "think" will happen to them if they are not approved of - read Approval).
While sensations are just sensation and not at all silly, just physical feedback into our awareness, the thoughts/beliefs/programs we have attached to them are in the downright silly territory. And if we let ourselves be run by our feeling, our lives are, to a significant degree, spent sillily.
Let's take when one "feels" scarcity. The groceries in the house keep running out, and there is a vague "feeling" of "I could starve to death" (or at least "suffer" and maybe be homeless). But, though there is no explicit guarantee, there is, I think, zero probability that our survival would be threatened by lack of sufficient food.
Oh, you protest, but I need to "feel" I am eating well, I need to "feel" that others would approve. (See "They" - The Big People.)
How can we let this continue, if it is so silly and such a waste?
But, golly, you protest, I need to have feelings - and they should be good!
Of course, you want to have good feelings. But removing all the unreasonable causes of bad feelings does not leave you with no feelings - instead, it leaves you with more good feelings - hugely more in terms of the ratio of good feelings to bad feelings. What I am simply saying here is "Stop The Insanity!" and start living a life that is fully thought out and fully chosen, not one that is a bunch of cobbled together erroneous rules and meaning.
Let's take "I feel hurt" or its cousin "that hurt my feelings". It did? Well, how. Tell me what occurred.
Oh, well. That person said I was stupid, for some reason. Perhaps she was threatened in some way and it was not "about" me. Well, anyway. I was hurt because that makes me think that I won't do well in life, that I might actually be stupid. And this means I'll suffer. Bad things will happen to me....
Wait a minute. What bad things?
I might look bad to someone and they'll think less of me and might not be my friend. And if they think badly of me, then...
So, if you thought you could "recover" from losing a friend and get enough friends, then it wouldn't matter that you were called "stupid", would it? You made it mean something that is silly, nonsensical.
