How could feelings be just about survival and nothing else?

[Eskilon]

6 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

What is feeling? 

Is a thought sourcing feeling? 

What is thought?

What is anything? Can you ever find that out?

[UnbornTao]

Just now, Eskilon said:

What is thought?

What is anything? Can you ever find that out?

You can, and contemplation is needed. Hence the questioning.

[Eskilon]

Just now, UnbornTao said:

You can

How do you know? Can you trust yourself?

Isn't your 'knowing' just a perspective at best?

[Yimpa]

1 minute ago, Eskilon said:

How do you know? Can you trust yourself?

Isn't your 'knowing' just a perspective at best?

 

(just replace "solipsism" with "feelings")

[Eskilon]

2 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

 

(just replace "solipsism" with "feelings")

Shhh, don't ruin my eternal hide and seek

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

24 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

This is so cringe 💀 

You ARE the cringe

(Have I just outyimpad you?)

[UnbornTao]

13 hours ago, Eskilon said:

How do you know? Can you trust yourself?

Isn't your 'knowing' just a perspective at best?

Because you live as having thoughts and feelings. What are those?

An insight can be trusted.

Edited April 9 by UnbornTao

[Eskilon]

5 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

You can trust having an insight into what things are, which are self-validating -- like Archimedes and his "Eureka" moment.

Can an ant trust its insights into the nature of reality? What about a cockroach? And which insight is right, mine, yours, the ant or the cockroach?

Edited April 8 by Eskilon

[UnbornTao]

On 4/8/2025 at 9:39 PM, Eskilon said:

Can an ant trust its insights into the nature of reality? What about a cockroach? And which insight is right, mine, yours, the ants or the cockroach?

Why would you imagine what the experience of other animals is like as an attempt to invalidate the investigation in the first place without having even looked into yours? An insight is an apprehension of an objective, "true" fact or reality, as with the Archimedes example. You can speculate and be skeptic all you want -- you still likely experience something that you call "thought" and "feeling." What's required is looking into them. 

If you don't consider that it is possible to find out what things are, then there's no reason to investigate or contemplate, and we're stuck not knowing what anything is. But notice that you still experience having thoughts and feelings and live with them as realities, taking your experience of them at face value.

Edited April 10 by UnbornTao

[BlueOak]

Focus and we create feeling states.
Yet unconsciously we create feelings to focus.

[UnbornTao]

Survival is your life. Yet we tend to view it negatively -- something beneath us or external to us, perhaps an activity we choose to engage in when our "lower self" wins the battle. 

But the question is: How could your experience not be based on survival? It is designed for exactly that. Can it be transcended to a degree? Yes, and that requires comprehending what it is.

Edited April 10 by UnbornTao

[Lyubov]

5 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Survival is your life. Yet we tend to view it negatively -- something beneath us or external to us, perhaps an activity we choose to engage in when our "lower self" wins the battle. 

But the question is: How could your experience not be based on survival? It is designed for exactly that.

The wording here on this site for living as a human almost sounds like it’s nothing but a burden or a mistake. I think it’s nearsighted and childish way of looking at things. The human side is not separate from spirit. Living in balance is the key. Survival is a spiritual experience as much as anything else. 

Edited April 9 by Lyubov

[Natasha Tori Maru]

On 09/04/2025 at 5:52 AM, Eskilon said:

What is thought?

What is anything? Can you ever find that out?

For myself I think of thoughts as an electrical pattern of energy, a nerve pulse that has a frequency.

That frequency in the brain creates a field, which gives rise to the emotion.

I use the analogy of an electrical toroid wire with a current applied: we know a current passed through a wire induces a force called magnetism.

So in the above example - the thought 'electric current' arises, which induces an emotion 'magnetism' that has a polarity.

The magnetism or 'emotion' in the body has very real effects: blood pressure can rise or lower, heartrate, breathing etc.

This emotion will effect your state, and what you draw or push away from you.

As I cannot clearly define a thought or emotion, I find this analogy to work so far to understand the mechanism of feelings as a system.

By understanding these emotions are like magnets, they will attract me to what I require through their polarity.

God wants to experience itself through me, as I am the fabric of existence.

So love, as a feeling, a magnetic polarity, draws me to everything, connects.

I am in love with existence, so I draw the entirety of the universe through, and of me.

The feeling is the connection. To be so in love with the moment and existing as to feel all, have all emotions. Embody God.

I should add that lesser emotions that do not have the same power level of love, as they do not always unify, definitely have a role in survival, as our existence is a system

 

Edited April 10 by Natasha Tori Maru

[Eskilon]

2 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

On 08/04/2025 at 4:52 PM, Eskilon said:

What is thought?

What is anything? Can you ever find that out?

For myself I think of thoughts as an electrical pattern of energy, a nerve pulse that has a frequency.

That frequency in the brain creates a field, which gives rise to the emotion.

I use the analogy of an electrical toroid wire with a current applied: we know a current passed through a wire induces a force called magnetism.

So in the above example - the thought 'electric current' arises, which induces an emotion 'magnetism' that has a polarity.

The magnetism or 'emotion' in the body has very real effects: blood pressure can rise or lower, heartrate, breathing etc.

This emotion will effect your state, and what you draw or push away from you.

This is a brainy way of looking at it. I like it, thanks for the perspective

 

2 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

As I cannot clearly define a thought or emotion

Yeah the thing with thought is that it's very strange-loopy in it's nature; so you can't really grasp it by using it, not really I think. But the basic profound fact still remains: it exists.

Edited April 10 by Eskilon

[integral]

On 4/8/2025 at 1:36 AM, Leo Gura said:

All of experience is Truth, but then experience is co-opted and twisted to serve survival. Thoughts and emotions have Being in themselves as qualia, but notice how much thoughts and emotions become tools of the ego.

I'm talking about the feeling of recognizing Beauty in something, that type of feeling always exists constantly, just in various degrees. The spectrum of feeling.

What is actual in my direct experience always contains a Feeling, a fluid constant field of it, it appears to be first order. I don't mean feeling as a sensory thing like touch.

I have never not had this feeling its as constant as existence.

That feeling just changes in degrees depending on how conscious you are. It's like how you could see goodness in everything the more conscious you become. Your ability to see goodness/beauty is proportional to your level of consciousness. 

Quote

Survival is one lens to see things through. It's a powerful lens. But there's more to Consciousness than survival. So it depends on how you want to look at it, and what purposes you're looking at it for.

The feeling of an itch on your face is both a survival thing, but also an ontological, existenting, Being thing.

Of course that itch is God if looked at with sufficient consciousness.

What is the WILL of God? Of course it is a Feeling! Why was THIS life chosen? Because God felt like it.

Why did I create this life as God? Because I felt like it! A feeling came first. A feeling was Genesis.

And WILL is first order, it is always there. I have never not WILLED. And what drives it this "feeling" thing. It puts everything in motion.

What causes everything to change constantly, change is an absolute, well it's WILL of course!

WILL is still first order but it is heavily co-opted by survival so it's easy to dismiss as a survival mechanism.

Edited April 10 by integral

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, integral said:

I'm talking about the feeling of recognizing Beauty in something, that type of feeling always exists constantly, 

You have some weird definitions of feeling.

I would never say any feeling is constant. Feelings come and go. Not to say that constancy is required for them to be meaningful.

Edited April 10 by Leo Gura

[integral]

40 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

constancy is required for them to be meaningful

That's not true, you could be more or less conscious, yet consciousness is Meaningful and absolute. There are degrees to consciousness.

Feeling/Will are constantly changing but there is always a Feeling/Will that is absolute. There is no way not to feel and there's no way not to Will.

Intelligence is also constant, the content of what you're thinking is changing but theres always intelligence flowing through you. Which is absolute.

 

When you see the beauty in something -> you're experience is entangled with a specific feeling. You cannot separate the feeling from the experience. The feeling will change but there is always a feeling attached to your experience. It doesn't matter what the feeling is.

How is this not obvious? When you see the beauty in something you're feeling something, it could be good, bad or "Nothing".

But There is no "NOTHING" feeling. It doesn't exist. Nothing is just your default feeling, it's like the fish in water, doesn't know what water is.

Try to feel nothing right now. It's impossible. There's water everywhere.

Edited April 10 by integral

[Leo Gura]

26 minutes ago, integral said:

That's not true

I literally said the opposite of how you quoted me.

Jesus.

I explicitly avoided the mistake of conflating meaningfulness with constancy.

Edited April 10 by Leo Gura

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 hours ago, integral said:

I'm talking about the feeling of recognizing Beauty in something, that type of feeling always exists constantly, just in various degrees. The spectrum of feeling.

What is actual in my direct experience always contains a Feeling, a fluid constant field of it, it appears to be first order. I don't mean feeling as a sensory thing like touch.

I have never not had this feeling its as constant as existence.

 

Do you think maybe it would be better to define the act of observing beauty as not the feeling itself - but your response to it as the feeling?

IE observing the beauty is the action, and the feeling of joy and pleasure is the feeling 'reaction' ?

I think I am caught trying to understand you as beauty isn't a feeling to my knowledge 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

4 hours ago, Eskilon said:

This is a brainy way of looking at it. I like it, thanks for the perspective

 

Yeah the thing with thought is that it's very strange-loopy in it's nature; so you can't really grasp it by using it, not really I think. But the basic profound fact still remains: it exists.

Yes I agree, it's just a model I currently use to try to understand feelings as a process and system.

They exist, they have an energetic pattern to them, yes.

Are they useful for survival? Absolutely.

I feel there is some confluence & coherence between feelings, their purpose, and God. But I admit its just something I purely intuit.

I need to think on this more 

Edited April 10 by Natasha Tori Maru