The Real Feel

There is no crying in emptiness. Except when there is.

I remember a chapter in ‘The Voice of Knowledge’ by Miguel Ruiz called Emotions are Real, in which he simply states: “Our emotions are real. Every emotion that we feel is real, it is truth, it is.” But he goes on to clarify that “the emotion is true, but what causes the emotion, which is judgment... is not true.” In other words our thoughts as beliefs influence our emotions, our integrity. In the end, “emotional pain is a symptom of being abused” by one’s “knowledge—your own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs.”

I come to this remembrance via a new blog post by Phil Burton entitled “Helen Keller, Consciousness, Bliss.” In this post, Phil (whom I really know through Twitter as qjohn) suggests “that Feeling is actually the core of sentience.” But I’d like to quote in length a telling section:

The final note concerns the Vedantic triad Being-Consciousness-Bliss, Sat-Chit-Ananda. Bliss is seriously distorted in favor of equating it to a particular experience of expansiveness or release. As if the ultimate is a permanent orgasm.

But bliss is essentially just Feeling. But Feeling as I have indicated which is the very nature of consciousness, which subsumes the other senses as well as brain activity.

It may seem shocking to say it but here it is. All feeling is bliss. All feeling.

I once heard Ruiz say that emotions are a spectrum of the white light of love filtered through the perception of thought. I remember being blown away by this simple metaphor when I first heard it. And Phil seems to be saying something similar, but equating it with the Bliss of Sat-Chit-Ananda. Beautiful.

Not only is there truth in all of this, but there is practice in the relative world as well. Emotions are telling. They tell us what untrue thoughts we still believe in at some level. Therefore, emotions are something to be truly felt and recognized, embraced. They certainly are not to be avoided or repressed, but they are not to be wallowed within either.

Because behind the painful emotions, the emotional suffering, lies the lie. There is the thought we believe in which is totally untrue and is causing this suffering. Feel the painful emotion and trace it back to that thought.

This is not to say that the truth doesn't simply lie in resting in awareness. It does. It is. But there comes a time sometimes when the veil of thought hides this truth, and this is merely a way, a practice, to unveil awareness from the darkness of suffering, and really feel real again.