Harness the Power of Feeling

Contents
                                                                        
Introduction                                                                      
Chapter 1: Why We Feel                                                          
Chapter 2: Reacting to Feelings                              
Chapter 3: Understanding                                       
Chapter 4: Feeling is an Effect                                         
Chapter 5: Feeling is Proof of Connection                   
Chapter 6: Sources of Feeling                                            
Chapter 7: Spiritual Connections                           
Chapter 8: Re-Dream                                               
Chapter 9: Disconnection                                     
Chapter 10: Expression                                               
Chapter 11: Reconnection                                     
Chapter 12: Conclusion                                                 







Introduction
According to Webster’s New World Thesaurus, feeling is the state of the body, or part of it. Depending on how you understand and handle them, feelings can either improve or destroy your life. This book will show you why you feel and how to use that knowledge to create harmony within you and with the world around you.



Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Why we feel – The purpose of feeling. See the relationship between problems and ignored feelings.
Chapter 2: Reacting to feelings – How you react to your feelings matters.  Find out when and how you are supposed to react.
Chapter 3: Understanding – The relation between understanding yourself and understanding feelings. Get better understanding of yourself and your feelings.
Chapter 4: Feeling is an effect – If a feeling is an effect, there has to be a cause. Find out why the relationship between feelings and their causes is important.
Chapter 5: Feeling is Proof of Connection & Chapter 6: Sources of Feeling – The world around you affects how you feel because you are physically and spiritually connected to it. See the proof of this connection.
Chapter 7: Spiritual Connections – Understand the nature of spiritual feelings.
Chapter 8: Re-Dream – Use feeling to get to the right people, places and things.
Chapter 9: Disconnection – Why thoughts and feelings clash.
Chapter 10: Expression - The importance of matching words and actions to feeling.
Chapter 11: Reconnection – Create harmony between thoughts and feelings.





Chapter 1          

Why We Feel

Since your body is made up of parts and those parts work for the benefit of the whole, it is a system.  So is your car engine. Feeling in your body serves the same purpose as the sound of the engine. The sound of the engine tells you the condition of the car. Feeling tells you the condition of your body. There’s feeling all over your body all the time. When your body is functioning properly, feeling is normal. You don’t notice normal feeling the same way you don’t notice the normal sound of your car’s engine. You’ll only notice if the engine starts sounding different or if you make a conscious effort to listen. When you have a good, bad, strange, or no feeling, something out of the ordinary is happening.

If you hear the engine rattling, something’s wrong. Negative or bad feelings, like the engine rattling are warning you of danger or alerting you of damage. Before damage, there’s always a warning. You may be able to ignore warning signs but you cannot ignore damage. It’s better to react to the warning signs than to fix damage in both your body and the car engine.

If the engine is quieter and runs smoother than usual, it must have been repaired, serviced or modified.  Positive feelings mean that your body is running smoother because you must have exposed it to something that it needed or something better than it is used to.

There are strange feelings that you have learned to ignore because they haven’t stopped your body from functioning. If the car engine starts sounding different and you ignore it, you will get used to it. Anything strange becomes normal when you stay around it for a while. This strange sound may be a sign of impending breakdown therefore every strange sound should be investigated. Every strange feeling should also be investigated. 

There are feelings you don’t know about because they are subtle and you are distracted by thoughts. Subtle feelings could be warning of small problems that could be slowly growing. For example, when you have had enough food, there’s always a feeling telling you to stop eating but it’s so mild that you can ignore it. The thoughts that distract you from feeling are like a loud radio that muffles the sound of your engine falling apart. This book will show you why these thoughts are unnecessary and how you can get rid of them.

Since feeling could be warning you about danger or a informing you of a chance for improvement, whatever’s missing and/or wrong in your life can most likely be traced to its origins in feelings that have been ignored or reacted to wrongly. By ignoring feelings you are consequently shutting the door on possibilities and solutions.


Inner and Outer Nature
As mentioned before, your body is a system. I will refer to it as “Inner Nature” in this book. Even though your body is a system on its own, you are also part of a larger system. This system is commonly referred to as “Nature” but for the sake of clarity, in this book it will be called “Outer Nature.”




Chapter 2

Reacting to Feelings

When something threatens the functioning of your body, you get a feeling that informs you of the trouble. It demands reaction to restore normal function. Some of these reactions happen without your knowledge and/or consent. For example, when you eat something harmful, your body will react by trying to expel it through vomiting. The negative feeling in such an event alerts you of the situation but gives you no choice about the reaction.

Sometimes your body is forced to react and you are given a choice on how to react. For example, when you have the feeling of hunger, you have a choice of where, when and what to eat but you don’t have a choice on whether or not to eat.

Some other threats and all stimuli for improvement don’t force you to react. Although you can ignore the feelings that accompany them, you may have a role in the reactions. Even when you can’t control the reactions, you may be able to control your exposure to their causes. To know whether or not you have a role, you have to do three things when you have fluctuation of feeling:

1. Observe
2. Understand
3. React

These three steps are tied together. You cannot react correctly if you do not understand. You cannot understand properly if you do not observe.

Observing is having a clear mind and allowing yourself to feel. When you observe feelings you will find out that they come when you’re around specific people and things, when you perform certain actions, and at specific parts of your body.  Your mind needs to be clear because thoughts could interfere with observation. Unclear observation will cause you to misinterpret feeling and react in the wrong way. Chapter Eleven: Reconnection will show you how you can clear your mind and keep it clear. 


Priority of Reaction
Negative feelings are about dealing with danger. Positive ones are about maintenance and improvement. You first have to get out of danger before you can maintain and then improve. That is why negative feelings should get top priority. Dealing with them first will give you freedom to properly react to the others.





Chapter 3

Understanding

Some feelings are easy to understand and react to. You know what to do about them as soon as you feel them. Others are easy to understand but hard to react to. Others are strange. These strange feelings are simply good or bad feelings that you cannot understand. If you can’t understand them you can’t know how to react.

To understand feeling, you need to understand yourself. Your level of self understanding determines your ability to understand and react to feelings.
The more you know yourself, the less strange feelings you will have.


Curiosity
We all get curious.  Anywhere your curiosity leads you is where you’ll get the knowledge you need about yourself.

Curiosity is Inner Nature searching for balance or improvement. Curiosity will exist as long as there’s an imbalance within your Inner Nature or between Inner and Outer Nature. It will also exist as long as there’s potential for improvement.

The saying "curiosity killed the cat" can mislead if interpreted superficially. You can't learn anything if you aren't curious. Curiosity killed that cat because whatever it was curious about was none of its business.  Purely mental curiosity is the only form of harmful curiosity. It happens when your thoughts are disconnected from Inner Nature. Chapter Nine will show you how and why thoughts get disconnected and how to prevent that disconnection.

Curiosity will sometimes lead you towards things that don’t necessarily fit conventional ideas of good, bad, right and wrong. Before you indulge your curiosity ask yourself two questions:
1. Will your actions harm you?
2. Will your actions harm others?

If the answer to both questions is “No,” you need to explore the curiosity.
By exploring it, you are taking steps towards maintaining internal and external natural order. If the answer to any or both of the questions is “Yes,” you have purely mental curiosity. In this case, your challenge is to reconnect your thoughts with Inner Nature. Chapter Eleven will show you how.




Outside Help
People like physicians, preachers, monks and anyone else with insight into the workings of the human body and spirit can help you make sense of some feelings sometimes – but they can’t help you all the time. There are some things you are meant to figure out on your own.

Do not trust these experts because of their title or because they are the ones everyone trusts. Only trust them if what they say works for you.

There is also a chance that you may develop an over-reliance on them. Only go to them for help after you have tried and cannot figure out your feelings on your own. 





Chapter 4

Feeling is an Effect

Sometimes you feel good or bad for apparently no reason. You may not see the reason but there is always a reason. Every feeling you get is caused by something. In other words, feeling is an effect. Every effect always follows a cause. The reaction to an effect should come from the relationship between the cause and the effect. The reaction to a feeling should come from the feeling’s relationship to its cause. When you observe feelings, you can see this relationship.

         People normally try to manipulate or eliminate bad feelings while ignoring their causes. When you feel bad, it’s only natural for you to want the feeling to go away. How you deal with the feeling determines whether it will go away, stay or increase.

If you feel bad, find out what is causing the feeling before trying to get rid of it. Look for solutions to the bad feeling from its relationship to its cause. Any solutions found outside that relationship will be temporary, not work at all or worsen the problem.

The only way to change an effect is to change its cause. You can eliminate the cause of a feeling but you can’t change the feeling while the cause is still there.
Escapism
If someone next to you starts playing loud music that you don’t like, it wouldn’t make much sense to start playing your own music louder, trying to drown out the other music. That is how some people try to deal with bad feelings. Their approach doesn’t even try to deal with the effects. They try to drown negative feelings by inducing different feelings. As long as you don’t get the solutions from understanding and observing the sources of feeling, the effects will remain. This is how addiction starts.

By relating the causes of both bad and good feelings to their effects, you’ll know how to react to them.





Chapter 5

Feeling is Proof of Connection

The things you feel are connected to you. That is why you know that all your body parts are there without looking and counting. Connection is how the parts of your body can communicate with your brain and function in harmony. If you lose feeling, you lose connection. Without connection, there can be no communication. Lack of feeling and communication is best seen when a body part gets paralyzed. 

Feeling serves the same purpose in Outer Nature as it does in Inner Nature. The world around us causes feeling which means that we are connected to it. These connections are of two types: Physical and Spiritual.





Chapter 6

Sources of feeling

The sources of feeling are spiritual and physical which means that we are physically and spiritually connected to the world around us.

Spiritual connections can be compared to the signals that come from a broadcast TV station to your TV. You can’t see this connection yet the TV station affects what you see on the TV. At all times you play both roles of transmitter and receiver, or the station and the TV. As long as you think and feel, you are sending and receiving transmissions.

Through spiritual connection you can communicate with Outer Nature and Outer Nature can communicate with you. Feelings are the transmissions. The quality of the transmissions you receive depends on the clarity of your mind. By observing feelings, you are tuning into this network of communication. 

  Spiritual communication is commonly referred to as instinct, telepathy, intuition, and so on. You do not have to be special or study the occult to communicate in this way. When you get a fluctuation in your “spirit,” it is one of these things. You do not have to get a mental image or be able to classify it. All you need to know is that when you get a fluctuation in feeling, Outer Nature is communicating with you. Knowing the general nature of the communication is sufficient.

Physical connection comes exclusively through physical contact. It can only happen when your body touches the source. The causes and effects of physical connection can be clearly seen and don’t need interpretation.

Although the causes of physical feelings can be clearly seen and measured while those of spiritual ones can’t, the effects of both can be seen in and on our bodies. For many physical feelings we have no choice but to react. When you put a finger on a hot surface, you immediately retract it to avoid getting burned.  Physical harm can be seen and measured. Spiritual harm can’t. We destroy our lives by staying next to sources of spiritual harm. These sources are in your environment. Some people, places and things are causing you harm without you knowing. Feeling warns you about this harm but because you don’t know the causes, you stay next to them. The following chapter will enable you to pinpoint and deal with these causes.

People tend to ignore spiritual feelings because the human body can continue to function even when there’s negative spiritual feeling. Our spiritual and physical parts are interconnected. Damage in one area can affect the other area. Spiritual damage can cause physical damage. This is why you find people with diseases that doctors can’t diagnose.


Chapter 7

Spiritual Connections

Attraction and Repulsion
The spiritual connections we have with the world around us depend on our thoughts.  If something or someone isn’t in physical contact with you, they can only affect you if you think about them. Everything and everyone you think about causes a corresponding feeling within you. You think about people and things because you are either attracted to or repulsed by them. The degree of attraction and repulsion varies from strong to weak. Attraction and repulsion don’t happen by choice therefore you cannot choose how you will feel about the things and people you come across.

The attraction or repulsion is either general or specific. You could have a general feeling for a group (e.g. I hate cats) or a specific feeling for an individual (e.g. I hate Mr. Fuddles the cat). 

Naturally, only a small percentage of people and things have the ability to command your attention without your intellectual consent. You can’t help but notice and think about such people and things. You are naturally indifferent towards everything and everyone else. If for some reason, you entertain something or someone you are indifferent towards, the corresponding feeling will be repulsion.

It doesn’t make logical sense to think about things you are repulsed by or indifferent towards but that is what people do. Find out why in chapter 9: Disconnection.

Because spiritual feeling relies on thought, distance and time don’t matter. You get the feeling associated with someone or something just by thinking about them. You don’t even have to actively think about them. You carry the people who influence your life around with you in your subconscious. As you perform the actions they have influenced you to perform, you get the feelings associated with them.

Attraction and repulsion are nature’s way of seeking balance. They should dictate the nature of your relationships. They will direct you about what to do or not do in relation to people, places or objects.






Complicated Humans
The previous topic dealt with the permanent feelings caused by everyone and everything. They are about the overall natural compatibility or chemistry between you and people, places or things. This level of compatibility cannot change. These are the constant feelings you have about other people regardless of their words or actions and about places despite what happens there. There are people, places and things you will always be attracted to, there are others you will always be indifferent to and there are others you will always be repulsed by. 

The feelings you have around people as opposed to places and objects are more complicated. In addition to the permanent feelings you have about them, there are fluctuating feelings exclusive to people and some animals. They are about their thoughts and feelings. Everyone’s thoughts and feelings keep changing. Through your spiritual connection to them, you can sense these changes. People normally don’t know or don’t say what they’re really thinking or feeling. That’s why it’s important to trust what you feel about them.

Together, fluctuating and permanent feelings determine the level of attraction between individuals. The level of attraction ultimately decides who will be your lover, friend, acquaintance, and so on. You can decide these roles with your mind but it is nature that will ultimately determine these connections.
The nature of a system dictates how its parts are connected to each other. Different parts are connected in different ways. There is a way the parts have to be connected to each other for them and the system to be effective. Change their position or nature of connection and the parts lose their effectiveness. Outer Nature is a system and you are part of this system. Level of attraction is nature’s way of showing you which parts you should connect to and how you should connect to them.  For example, your acquaintance cannot become a friend if that isn’t the connection nature dictates between you and that person. You can go through the rituals of friendship with that person but the relationship won’t feel like friendship. A system works best when parts are connected in the right way. The parts also work best when they are connected in the right way. The connection which the nature of the system dictates will be of the best benefit to them and to the whole.

You will always get negative feelings about the wrongly connected people and positive feelings about the correctly connected ones. When you can’t find compatible people, it’s tempting to settle for whoever’s around. Getting connected to the right people in the right way can be likened to solving a jigsaw puzzle. In a jigsaw puzzle, a close fit isn’t good enough. If you force a piece into a space, the one that belongs in that space will have nowhere to fit. If you can’t find the right pieces, leave space. The next chapter will show you how to find the right pieces and get them into place. 

You can read Chapter Eight to Twelve here: http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/harness-the-power-of-feeling/7321324
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