Feeling is one of the ways you get information

But unlike objects you perceive on the outside — or thoughts you verbalize in your mind — feelings are quite intangible

Of course we NAMED many feelings

But it’s like naming colours. It really lacks detail and precision

It’s blue but what shade of blue? It’s yellow but isn’t it a little orange?

 

Feelings are intangible, really intangible

You can’t separate them from the perceiving person,

You can’t create them in a laboratory (or again: not in sufficient depth)

You can’t define them with a scientific precision and rigour

You can’t measure them in absolute terms

When you speak to someone of certain feeling — how confident you are that someone should understand this exact feeling?

You are not

You use words but words are not feelings

The REAL feeling is what you experience, experience on the inside — and you can’t replicate it on the outside, you can’t precisely define it

 

And this EMOTIONAL ILLITERACY is aggravated in the modern society

The problems we solve today — we solve them with our BRAINS

And feelings? Feelings we use as an ENTERTAINMENT

We TOY with feelings. We seek pleasure, seek excitation, seek titillation, seek diversion from boredom

We toy with feelings and entertain ourselves with feelings but we DON’T LEARN from our feelings

 

We enjoy feelings but we don’t duly respect feelings

Problems we solve we solve with logical steps and methods. We don’t guide ourselves with FEELINGS in this modern world. It’s too vague and intangible and subjective

 

We criticise emotionality. We believe it’s a weakness. We believe it’s a distortion.

This is not wrong

Misunderstood emotions are source of confusion

But so are misunderstood informations

 

To have more information which you don’t understand is to only get more confused

But to have more information which you successfully understand and assimilate and use — that is INTELLIGENCE

Which is effectiveness, fitness, success

 

Feelings are no different

We toy with feelings or let ourselves be confused by them, overwhelmed by them, because we don’t know any better

Instead of either acting or repressing an emotion — we should study it, inquire into it, learn from it, learn all there is to it

This is how we would acquire more information. More knowledge. More wisdom, truly.

 

And feelings are not as vague as we believe

More vague then the objective objects in the outside world, or mathematical formulas, defined with utmost rigour of logic, absolutely unambiguous.

But feelings are NOT AS VAGUE as we believe

And there’s much sophistication that can be developed

Again, JUST like colours

At first all green is just green, but then you start noticing that this green is darker, and that green is lighter, and this one is more dulled, and that one is greener

You develop an understanding, a discernment, a palate

And now when you see green it’s not merely “green”. It can be PINE GREEN or MINT GREEN or SPRING GREEN…

Likewise your feelings

 

And as you develop sophistication and understanding of your own feelings, of this whole tapestry of different moods and emotions and degrees of intensity and colours…

…you become more intelligent

Because those feelings are there for a reason

And now you gain extra insight

You feel something being a certain way

MAYBE YOU’RE RIGHT MAYBE YOU’RE WRONG

But you have this extra information

And you yourself feel certain way about something,

This collection of feelings within you will ultimately determine how your LIFE will feel, in general

It will determine if you’re angry or sad or happy

And if you’re not sensitive, you won’t even understand why one day you just woke up angry and stayed this way ever since

You don’t even understand all the constituent emotions, all the colours, which you could feel in your body, which you could learn from

 

Don’t be unfeeling. This has nothing to do with being logical

You want to FEEL — LEARN from that feeling — then ACT INTELLIGENTLY, utilising every information available

You want to become an EXPERT in the domain of your own feelings

You also want to become an expert in the domain of all humane feelings. Because you will work with humans, emotional animals who have feelings.

You want to name feelings like you’d name colours. Map their properties and characteristics.

(Of course you don’t want to become too reliant on your artificial little system. It’s only a tool, to bring a little more rigour to the subject.)

You want to develop an intuition.

What is intuition? It’s all the information which is INDEED AVAILABLE TO YOU — but NOT conscious (therefore not explicable)

You want to develop a profound sensitivity to every feeling which occurs in your body. You want to know exactly what it feels like, feel EVERYTHING that is to be felt, learn everything that is to be learned from it

Sit quietly with it. Give it all full attention. No distraction. Profound focus on it. This is MEDITATION.

This is how you become more intelligent — by this extra depth, this extra dimension, this extra realm

 

And the more sensitive and conscious you become — the more sense everything will start to make

Because FEELINGS drive us, obviously

If you don’t understand your drives then your attempts to drive yourself will of course be futile, Sisyphean

It’s FEELINGS which must change. And they must first be understood

 

Therefore

FEEL

be serious about it

become as sensitive as you can be

laugh, cry, love

maybe it’s not the world which is real? maybe it’s FEELINGS?

Feel