This is exquisite. What you’re naming here—the way feeling isn’t just a reaction but a force of becoming—lands deep. It reminds me that we’re always groping forward through the dark, not as a failure of knowing but as the very engine of aliveness. The task, as you said, is presence. To stay with the feeling without narrating it to death. To let the soul speak before the mind edits. No easy task… but maybe the most essential one we’ve got. Thank you for giving language to the interior fire so many of us feel but struggle to articulate.
Alisa, you have touched me in your reflection on this essay, the essence of which you capture so beautifully. Every word.
I often walk away from these meanderings, wondering if the inner essence is coming through on the page. "Have the words touched the heart of the matter?" You have shown a light in the dark unknown. Thank you. And thank you, as always, for being here.
Yes yes yes! Feeling as gateway for attention which is gateway to love. So feeling initiates the potential of love. “Feeling is the ground of becoming.” ❤️
As a psychotherapist, I often ask clients what they're feeling, as opposed to what they're thinking. It's because feelings don't lie, whereas the mind is a trickster not to be totally trusted. Feelings inhabit the body and inform the body, and they are the conduit to the heart and soul. They speak the truth. Here's a poem by Mark Nepo: "We keep looking for a home, though each of us is a home. No matter where we run, we land before each other thoroughly exposed. This is the purpose of gravity; to wear us down until we realize we are each other. And though we think we're alone, we all meet here. And though we start out trying to climb over each other, we end up asking to be held. Some of us just take longer to land here than others. Once worn of our pretense, it's hard to tolerate arrogance. Once humbled, it's hard to withstand a litany of me. Once burning off the atmosphere of self-interest, there's a tenderness that never goes away. This tenderness is like sonar by which we sense the interior of life. This tenderness is the impulse that frees us. FOR ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WHEN WE LET THE HEART BE OUR SKIN. THE POINT IS TO FEEL WHATEVER COMES OUR WAY AND NOT CONCLUDE IT OF ITS ALIVENESS..." In other words, let the feelings flow and keep the mind at bay.
Ed, thank you for sharing what you share with your clients, all so very true. This passage from Nepo is lovely, especially where he touches on what transpires inside the one who comes to relate with feeling, that it humbles us, tenderizes us, and paradoxically frees us if we manage to let feeling flow without identifying with narrative content that surfaces--as you say it: "keep the mind at bay."
"But we have conflated emotion and feeling. And while they may not be two distinct modes, rather a continuum, it may serve our wonder to distinguish them across the evolutionary birthing of the human soul."
Finally, dear Renée, you have presented reso(u)lution to a long-standing conundrum that pops up and quickly gets reburied. The power of "and".
"For we are at once not unlike our single-celled ancestors with the instinctual impulse to move toward and away: toward that which has the value pleasure (excitation); away from that which has the value pain (agitation)."
This lands as deep truth in all my cells.
"And if it is true what Thomas Berry says and Teilhard, too, and I believe it is, that the unique role of the human is the universe reflecting upon itself, we must suppose there is value to the great unfolding when we stay present with the purity of feeling, while at the same time letting it flow without attaching to narrative content."
Becky, l read your *experience* of letting feeling flow "as deep truth in all my cells": and what comes is this: praise be to this "landing" truth! In the communion of shared interiority, whereby we "stay" present with, we together become expressions through which the universe unfolds and reflects on its unfolding.
This is exquisite. What you’re naming here—the way feeling isn’t just a reaction but a force of becoming—lands deep. It reminds me that we’re always groping forward through the dark, not as a failure of knowing but as the very engine of aliveness. The task, as you said, is presence. To stay with the feeling without narrating it to death. To let the soul speak before the mind edits. No easy task… but maybe the most essential one we’ve got. Thank you for giving language to the interior fire so many of us feel but struggle to articulate.
Alisa, you have touched me in your reflection on this essay, the essence of which you capture so beautifully. Every word.
I often walk away from these meanderings, wondering if the inner essence is coming through on the page. "Have the words touched the heart of the matter?" You have shown a light in the dark unknown. Thank you. And thank you, as always, for being here.
Yes yes yes! Feeling as gateway for attention which is gateway to love. So feeling initiates the potential of love. “Feeling is the ground of becoming.” ❤️
Kimberly, you take us all the way to the beginning of all becoming: Love!
In reading you, it would be impossible not to *feel* that we are the heart of the Beloved longing to be felt as the expression of Love.
The Hadith saying comes to me immediately as I read you:
"I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known."
Another translation
"I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known."
As a psychotherapist, I often ask clients what they're feeling, as opposed to what they're thinking. It's because feelings don't lie, whereas the mind is a trickster not to be totally trusted. Feelings inhabit the body and inform the body, and they are the conduit to the heart and soul. They speak the truth. Here's a poem by Mark Nepo: "We keep looking for a home, though each of us is a home. No matter where we run, we land before each other thoroughly exposed. This is the purpose of gravity; to wear us down until we realize we are each other. And though we think we're alone, we all meet here. And though we start out trying to climb over each other, we end up asking to be held. Some of us just take longer to land here than others. Once worn of our pretense, it's hard to tolerate arrogance. Once humbled, it's hard to withstand a litany of me. Once burning off the atmosphere of self-interest, there's a tenderness that never goes away. This tenderness is like sonar by which we sense the interior of life. This tenderness is the impulse that frees us. FOR ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WHEN WE LET THE HEART BE OUR SKIN. THE POINT IS TO FEEL WHATEVER COMES OUR WAY AND NOT CONCLUDE IT OF ITS ALIVENESS..." In other words, let the feelings flow and keep the mind at bay.
Ed, thank you for sharing what you share with your clients, all so very true. This passage from Nepo is lovely, especially where he touches on what transpires inside the one who comes to relate with feeling, that it humbles us, tenderizes us, and paradoxically frees us if we manage to let feeling flow without identifying with narrative content that surfaces--as you say it: "keep the mind at bay."
"But we have conflated emotion and feeling. And while they may not be two distinct modes, rather a continuum, it may serve our wonder to distinguish them across the evolutionary birthing of the human soul."
Finally, dear Renée, you have presented reso(u)lution to a long-standing conundrum that pops up and quickly gets reburied. The power of "and".
"For we are at once not unlike our single-celled ancestors with the instinctual impulse to move toward and away: toward that which has the value pleasure (excitation); away from that which has the value pain (agitation)."
This lands as deep truth in all my cells.
"And if it is true what Thomas Berry says and Teilhard, too, and I believe it is, that the unique role of the human is the universe reflecting upon itself, we must suppose there is value to the great unfolding when we stay present with the purity of feeling, while at the same time letting it flow without attaching to narrative content."
And now I believe it, too. 💞💫💞
Becky, l read your *experience* of letting feeling flow "as deep truth in all my cells": and what comes is this: praise be to this "landing" truth! In the communion of shared interiority, whereby we "stay" present with, we together become expressions through which the universe unfolds and reflects on its unfolding.
Feelings mean something,
enliven experience,
call us to presence.
Marisol, you have created a Haiku. Exquisite.
Welcome, dear Friend, and thank you.
Beautiful
Brenda, thank you.
"that the unique role of the human is the universe reflecting upon itself":). Love this. Thank you.
Emily, thank *you*.