The other day, Bastart wrote a really concise essay on tantra over at Key23, in which it was mentioned that it is important to sit with your emotions, to feel them and find their source so that they do not build up and become overwhelming. I found this to be really good and timely advice, for over the past few months I had been neglecting my emotions in favor of more intellectual pursuits such as this blog and the novel I'm almost finished writing (Granted, a rather strange and shortlived relationship had a large part to play in shutting out my emotions, but that's another story alltogether). But the issue of feeling emotions has always been a difficult one for me.
I am generally an intellectual person, and there was a point in time not so long ago when I thought that I didn't feel anything at all. I did, but I was numb to my emotions for the most part and tried to to analyze them away until I realized that that was a rather unfulfilling way to live. So I made a consciouss effort to put myself out into the world and feel it deeply, all the joy and all the pain, no holds barred. It's been difficult, and still is, but utterly worth it. The biggest problem I've found though is that I go through periods where I am so enrapt in the net of words and information that I forget to feel and be in the world and become in a sense a thinking machine. But these are balanced by periods when I shut off my brain almost completely and feel alive on a very visceral level, letting the world wash over me without any attempt at analyzing it.
Maybe its peculiar to my own situation, but this seems a very dichotomous way to live. Emotions and Intellect are two sides of the same coin (as represented in the juxtaposition of the left and right columns in the tree of life, or sides of the brain), but seem antithetical to each other. I can either rationalize something, or feel it, but not both at the same time. I can either break the world apart in my mind, or let it move through my body (which is what e-motion means). But not both. And that seems a bit ridiculous to me. As a magician and a yogi, I am concerned with integrating the dualities I find in my life, and this has been one of the longest standing and unquestioned dualities I've come across.
Is it possible to feel and think at the same time? Or is that state even desirable? For the most part, when I feel I experience the world as it is, but when I think I experience the world through the filter of my beliefs and preconceptions, which leads me to step away from and disregard the experience in itself. Thinking becomes a detachment form the world, and feeling, even the pains and angers, strikes so close to my heart that it is undeniably real, but does not allow for the reflections that enable us to act on the world in a critical and directed manner. Otherwise I would just give up on thinking all together, but I want to exert my will and intentions and not just react to external stimuli.
The question then is how to integrate these two poles of being, where is the middle path that feels full-heartedly, thinks criticaly, and acts from both these sources of input as one? There is a belief that there are three forces which make up our experiences of the world: thought, emotion, and action, situated in the mind, heart, and body respectively. And it is through the interplay of these forces that we live. The problem as I see it is one of definition. The heart and mind are not seperate from the body, nor are their functions. Emotions arise as physiological reactions, the tensions of stress and release in our muscular system and thus not seperate from the body. Thoughts likewise are physiological, being only electro-chemical interactions in the body, much like emotions, but on a different interpretive level. But on the grossest level it is all just body, acting and reacting as it sees fit.
So then, how to learn to interpret on both (and all) levels at the same time, or at least how to switch between them effectively? It seems endemic of the magical world view that world views (perspectives/ filters) can be juggled at will and as needed, and doing so is a necessary part of being able to act in the world in a willful and intentional manner. But what are the practical steps towards doing this, beyond taking each experience as it happens and filtering it through the different layers to gain clearer insight? If anyone has some opinions/ experiences of this, I'd love to hear them.
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1 comment:
Hello,
I've never responded to a blog before, but I've been reading some of your stuff, and found myself eager to reply. I don't even know if you check old posts for comments, but at least I will have gotten this off my mind.
I have faced this issue a lot, and came to a similar crossroads from a particular situation I have that has made me feel the need to explore my emotions without explaining them away. But the same problem arises, how to integrate the two?
I don't claim to have the answer, but have found a way to deal with it in my own particular context. I am a performer and come from a vaudeville tradition...and every new discovery I make is tied to that metaphor. (I feel that the way one chooses to interpret life is fairly arbitrary, as everything, in a sort of siddartha-ish way I suppose, is contained in one thing, depending on how deep you look at it). For the purposes of this blog response, let's compare a good performance to a deep metaphysical experience. In my experience when, I've been told a performance is good is when I finish and have no recollection of what happened. Everything that happened during the performance was not "thinking" in a left-brained logical sense. The minute you start to think, the audience sees it immediatley and is uninterested. But once a performance like this is accomplished, a person can take stock of what they did through feedback or (often) vague memories of what worked, think about them, practice thm and reapply them. But again, once the performance has begun, they must not be thought about. You just have to trust yourself...and if you didn't work hard enough...well, you're fucked.
I try to think of some of my metaphysical practices in the same way. While they are going on, there can be no thinking, and the mind-filter must not be applied. Only afterwards can (and should!) the experience be evaluated intellectually and readjusted according to what ever has been gleaned.
In this way, I have found that the two mental states can mutually inform each other instead of struggling against one another. Perhaps there is a way to seamlessley bind them together, but I haven't gotten there yet, and this seems to be working for me right now.
(I have more thoughts about mind/body/intellect filters and reference points, but I'm at work and I have to go.
Good blog. I'd love to have a discussion with you sometime, as I find some of my ideas to be similar to yours, and would love to hear your perspective on some things. That is, if you wouldn't mind talking to someone who as a Spanish meat product for a handle.
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