Learning to feel again

One of the distinguishing features of humans, as opposed to say a table, is that we can feel. We can feel happiness when something joyful happens to us, and feel sadness when something upsets us. From the highs of love to the lows of depression, comes a range of feelings differing in levels of subtlety.

The range of feelings are there, and yet often times we aren’t even aware of them until we act upon them unmindfully and unskillfully. Then we see the product of the feeling, the reaction we have to the feeling, but we still may not see the initial feeling. For example, we may see our possessiveness but not see the jealousy; we may hear our angry words being spoken but missed the frustration that had built up within us. In time, these feelings grow untended in our mental garden and one day they blossom to become a feeling that is even harder to tend to: anger over time produces the fruit of hate; seeds of desire flowers into discontentment.

Of course, this doesn’t only apply to unwholesome emotions. With every drop of kindness, the great ocean of love is formed. With every moment of peacefulness, the heart and mind naturally falls into contentment and wholeness.

Often feelings past us by unnoticed until our subconscious acts upon them. When we do notice them, we react to them by desperately grasping onto the positive feelings and disdainfully pushing away the negative feelings. In doing so, we are always reacting to feelings; we never really understand them. As drivers of our life, it is so important to be able to recognise, appreciate and utilise our feelings, as they are what makes our human existence so unique.

Sometimes I feel in life we spend too much time on the practical matters of life, intellectualising and theorising it. We look without, and forget to reside within. We spend little time getting to know our own self, our own mind, our very own heart. We numb ourselves with stimulants such as intoxicants or television. We entertain ourselves to escape from the boredom of life, and we chase one thing after another in the vain hope that we gain happiness once we attain that thing. But happiness never comes when we are chasing. It’s only when we take the time to stop, to reflect, and to truly appreciate the abundance that exists in this very moment right here…it is only then that we can experience a feeling of joy and peacefulness that is as unconditional as the sun’s rays and as purifying as the rain from the heavens above. It is only then that we realise that all the feelings we experience aren’t obstacles to our path of practice, but part and parcel to our human condition.

Advertisement