“It’s too far!” I heard myself think when I was invited to feel instead of intellectualize.
Being intrigued by my own thought, I enquired within to know what was too far. The clear answer came: “The distance between your head and your heart”.
Mulling over this experience for a few days afforded me the opportunity to use this information as a backdrop to Life, and my perspective on quite a few things changed dramatically.
I realized that people feared feeling. It might be that feeling is too powerful, and it might be that people don’t know what to do with feeling. It might also be that feeling leaves the ego vulnerable, or it could be that people struggle to identify their feelings, so they rather ignore them.
The thing is this: our feelings are very powerful communicators and the least we can do is honour them. The very first message they bring is one of right-mindedness or miscreation. Right-mindedness is the of being where trusting, allowing, connectedness is present, and miscreation is fear-based. We can imagine your feelings as an internal compass, whereas positive feelings guide you towards your True North, and negative feelings alert you to the fact that you are on the wrong path – and should one constantly remain on the wrong path, you will get lost.
Feelings also form pre-cognition, meaning that they come before perception. This is interesting because it means that our feelings have a very huge and direct effect on how we perceive things, people and conditions.
Of course we can also have some fun with feelings and purposefully induce them in ourselves and others. The feeling we call “startle” is fascinating and has a critically important function: when we startle, the content of our mind is cleared for a moment, allowing us start focusing all over again. Good teachers and communicators know this and use anything from a sudden loud sound to a surprise movement to regain or get someone’s attention. The startled person’s standard reply is “where was I? Oh yes….”
The world we live in now has forgotten about the heart. Feelings are not regarded as important in this modern time, because we are all about science, maths, business, money, etc. And look at the conditions we have created. By no means am I diminishing our technological wonders, I’m simply asking that we take a long, deep look at the life conditions as a container within which our technological wonders are held. Are you happy? Are you excited? Are you loving, forgiving, generous? Are you connected? Do you have faith?
Or are your conditions a bit different…..are you stressed? Are you afraid? Are your depressed or angry?
At this critical time, we as a human race have come to a crossroads where we have to make a collective choice. We can stay as we are, or we can evolve. I truly hope that we collectively choose to evolve and then do what it takes to move to the next level. This next level is one of balance, harmony, compassion, oneness and flourishing.
Considering that feelings come before thought/perception, our feelings inform our decisions and the way we experience our place in the world. If we choose to evolve we have to choose right-mindedness and allow more knowing and feeling. The current world is mostly about knowledge that we search for in books and laboratories, where knowing happens in the heart and requires one to trust life.
Can you imagine how wonderful our world will be when we can start combining knowledge and knowing, the head and the heart?
And this my dear friends, is what my soul meant with “It’s too far!” I was searching in knowledge and could never find what I was looking for. I was searching in the wrong place. The moment I surrendered to knowing my search was over.
May you also make the choice to listen to heart – the world needs yours more than ever.