Are feelings and emotions the same? …or why all techniques of increasing Emotional Intelligence are b.s. and not effecting the level of happiness, the level of well-being of people who practice it. Same is true about the Emotional Guidance System of Abraham Hicks… b.s. and ineffective. Why? Because they are trying to change the fruits instead of the roots… Putting makeup on syphilitic lesions. ((In 1969, I was 22 years old, I was hanging out with a new friend, who was gay.
One day I got a phone call from the hospital ordering me to show up… I did. I was named as a person in the circle of a male prostitute who was infected with syphilis. He had been covering up the lesions on his face… but I could see them
I never had a sexual touch or anything with anyone in that group, but I was mentioned, so I was put on a mandatory 30-day high dose penicillin regimen. Mandatory. You miss it: you get jailed.
Now, if your emotions run high… consider that it is all to protect your “I”. Your self-image.
Mine are running high too… Telling this story seriously threatens my “wholesome” public image… But my life has a lot of unwholesome periods… Living such a variety of experiences has prepared me to be so darn effective at coaching people, or at seeing reality accurately.
Run if you must.
Embracing ugly as part of reality is what raises your vibration.)) Or pimples, if you are squeamish…
Feelings are clean. They do four simple things. Make you go for it, make you stop, direct you towards pleasure and away from pain… They are the seed level. The foundation.
Emotions are a construct on the top of them, created by words, created by marker feelings, and are a veritable mess.
When you recognize an emotion, for example sadness, but you don’t know why the heck you should be sad, you are not helped by having recognized it.
The sadness is now taking over, and coloring everything you see, and the mind is doing its justifying bit… making sure you see reasons to be sad.
Like my mother used to say: “I’ll give you something to cry about…”
I am laughing nervously… it was never good news when my mother said that.
Unless we know where our emotions come from, they can jerk us around, and we are about as powerful as a puppet. Not.
But psychologists don’t know squat about feelings. Feelings do not express themselves directly on the behavior, or rarely.
They are translated, altered, colored by the marker feelings we have… morals, ethical considerations, behavioral restrictions, etc. that our family, our education, our society piled on the innocent, logical, and healthful feelings we have had to keep us alive. both as an individual and a species.
Your emotions, often, have nothing to do with anything at hand, anything relevant, anything useful.
In fact, your emotions are mostly not useful… And yet.
I am an empath. I always thought I felt feelings, and some feelings I do feel, maybe all.
But what get my attention, are emotions. They are so much stronger than feelings, that they suppress or overbear… lord over your body, while your feelings don’t.
Why? Because you live in your head, in the world of inaccurate, learned symbols, words, and you have lost touch with the wholesome, healthful, simple, explainable, and not so individual level of feelings.
But when you can “descend” to the levels of feelings, you can see that there are seven distinct categories, some, maybe five purposes, and of all those seemingly too many feelings, there are only two that really connect to the emotional level, and therefore need to be understood.
And once you understand them, life becomes incredibly more clear cut, your emotions, 80% of them obvious, and your emotional intelligence, as far as your own emotions go, shoots through the roof.
What about the 20%? We shall see, when I get to them, OK?
For now let’s deal with what we can deal with, and not worry about all the stuff we cannot deal with, because we have not enough data.
By the way, this is a good advice for all of life: start with what you can see… and let the rest unfold when you get to them.
I see too much paralysis-analysis people trying to deal with what they don’t know, can’t know, because it can only be seen down the line.
Don’t be stupid. You need about 50% of knowledge to start and start an experiment… Because everything is an experiment. Even if you saw what you deem 100%, even then it’s an experiment… Life is an experiment because 40% of knowledge is still only exists in the infolded, invisible paradigm. And for you, personally, it is more like 70%, given your vantage point, given your level of awareness, education, and intelligence.
So…. how do you start about conquering this world of feelings, that is the seed level of the confusing world of emotions?
You start by reading two books. Both are translated from Hungarian. Both are incredibly, painstakingly precise, because the person who wrote them is an engineer.
The first hurdle: He is a man.
In Hungarian he is funny as hell… embarrassingly funny… you laugh when you read it and blush at the same time. Much like a stand up comic, except you are by yourself… If it’s OK with you to be embarrassed… you’ll love the books.
If it isn’t… you’ll probably leave them: you have just failed the first test: your cultural indoctrination successfully robbed you of the freedom and happiness you would so much like to attain.
If your society pretends to be polite, like Canadians, or if your society pretends to be high-minded, like California, you have a definite handicap. But if you can overcome it and keep reading, then you just had your first big win: you won over your societal imposed limitation, and have taken your first step toward making your own decisions, becoming a person.
Really.
The second hurdle will be the problems you may have with seeing the world as a dynamic… in some way one can say that if you had problems at school with mathematics (algebra, geometry) you’ll need to overcome that self-imposed limitation. Or not. If you are feeble intellectually, then, of course, you won’t. You won’t even try. You can also be slothful intellectually… the results are the same.
Making the old brain start to fire in all cylinders is painful… It is as painful as making an old car go faster, cleaner, be more perky… It is slow going, but it is possible. If you don’t have the patience, if you don’t have the TLD score, you’ll always opt for a new car that you can drive to slowness yourself… and then trade it in for a new car.
You know who you are… You will not go far in this game of taking control of your own life, of your own success, of your own emotions.
We won’t learn to control the feelings. Feelings are valid indicators of what is going on, what you need to pay attention to. The issue is not the feelings, but the translators… the marker feelings, that make the feelings turn into topsy turvy, illogical, irrational emotions, and therefore a behavior that harms you. That hinders you. The takes the wind out of your sail, every time you want to do something to better your life.
Knowing what feeling was underneath the emotion makes it easier to understand, and quite easy to interpret, so it does not take over your life.
For example:
- The client I spoke with on Thursday: She was feeling really horrible when we started the conversation. Going back to find when it started, she found that her colleague said something.
What was the feeling? I asked… She has read the book… she said: “I felt ‘meeting my own expectation of myself’ was violated.” And then there was this silence, and then I could feel that the horrible feeling was gone, and she said… “Oh, OK. got it.”
Or me this morning: I went to the bathroom, and smelled my hand… It smelled bad. And suddenly I was filled with anxiety. It was horrible. I looked what feeling it was… and I saw that the smell triggered the feeling of disgust… and disgust was transferred to my “I”… My own expectation of myself to smell good, be clean, be healthful was violated and translated into extreme anxiety. I simply went back and re-washed my hands. Issue handled. No more anxiety.
As I said, 80% of emotions come from the feelings of our “I” being in danger of being violated, threatened to be devalued.
This is why I said, that 80% low hanging fruit can save you from nearly 100% of all the bad feelings you have. It is either your self-image, or your public image is in danger of being devalued.
Piece of cake…
Either your “I” is delusional, and you need to adjust it, or there is no real danger… f… them.
What am I talking about when I say that your “I” is delusional? ((
The One: The Reformer or Perfectionist is Principled and Orderly but Perfectionist and Self-righteous
The Two: The Helper is Caring and Generous but Possessive and Manipulative.
The Three: The Motivator is Self-assured and Ambitious but Narcissistic and Hostile
The Four: The Individualist is Intuitive and Creative but Self-absorbed, and Depressive
The Five: The Thinker is Perceptive and Original but Provocative and Eccentric
The Six: The Loyalist is Likable and Dutiful but Dependent and Masochistic.
The Seven: The Enthusiast is Spontaneous and Accomplished but Excessive and Manic.
The Eight: The Leader is Self-confident and Decisive but Aggressive, and Combative.
The Nine: The Peacemaker is Peaceful and Reassuring but Passive and Neglectful.))
If you think yourself educated, well rounded, capable, and all that… but you are none of that… then the “Know Thyself” command needs to be obeyed.
You are what you are. As educated, as well rounded, as capable as you are. Not more and not less.
Trying to maintain an illusory self-image is the stupidest thing to do: it will not allow you to do anything, because you can’t let go of trying to control the illusion.
I have a student who makes me proud. He has been, consistently and diligently adjusting his self-image to reality, and is feeling better, his vibration has risen, and his results in the world are better.
But, hold onto your seat belt: he also feels better about himself. Counter intuitive, isn’t it? But as he adjusts his self-image to what is real, the gap, the gap between what he can do and what he had pretended, to himself, that he could do, is getting smaller, and he now can enjoy the joy of being able to do what he is able to do…
Humility is a capacity to have your self-image match reality.
If I have told you, if you have noticed that you can’t grow, you need to learn from this student who is doing the work.
Come down from the dizzying height of your illusions, and tell yourself the truth about yourself. Your emotional world with clear up, and you’ll find yourself being able to do the things you haven’t been able, haven’t been willing to do.
Why? You didn’t want to be found out. You didn’t want, yourself, to find out that you are not that smart, not that together, not that funny, not that creative, not that different… or whatever you have been fancying yourself to be.
It’s painful and it’s freeing.
This is what the saying: “the truth will set you free” refers to.
You can only do it for yourself. How do I know? Because I have been telling you that, and you have not taken it to heart.
Another student has said it best: “I have been not paying attention to what you are saying about me.”
Tai said something in a step, which one I don’t remember: “tell your boss to demote you. tell him that you haven’t been doing good work for a while, so it’s time to put you in a position where you can… a position that matches your abilities.”
Most people listen to that with horror… but most people need to do that. Imagine if you were a cat and you’d try to be a dog… a dog that pulls a sled, a dog that catches the Frisbee, a dog that follows instructions. Are you laughing yet? It is ridiculous, isn’t it?
But this is what you are doing to yourself.
And while you are pretending to yourself that you are a dog, you don’t appreciate your cat-ness… you don’t use your cat-ness…
Know yourself. “Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.” ((Shawnee
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.” ))
You can only do that if and when your “I” matches the reality of who you are.
You can grow it, but only if you don’t pretend that it’s bigger or different than it really is.
Summary: your emotions are triggered by words. 80% of those words are triggered by a feeling: an actual feeling. The feeling in these 80% is a need-based feeling to meet other people expectations of you, or to meet your own expectation of yourself.
On one hand, realizing this, when the emotion is happening, is freeing.
On the other hand, realizing that your faulty self-image can be corrected will reduce the occurrence of these bad emotions.
You should start with studying the books, Feelings and Words…
They will act as education, and a filter… will filter out the feeble minded, and the weak willed.
Read the original article: Are feelings and emotions the same? Would being able to tell them apart make you a happier, more accomplished person?