(Disclaimer: As the following text is based on my personal experience, it will most likely be flawed in numerous ways. Also, please keep in mind the inherent limitations of language. If there seems to be contradiction or paradox, it may be precisely because of the very nature of language. Sometimes contradictions themselves are the most powerful pointers. )     "Infinite Love never fails." - Nahm     Pre-Feeling Phase In order for you to know, where I’m coming from, it makes sense to give you some context. How did I stumble upon the path of self-actualization? Well, the very core of it was constituted by fears, insecurities, and a lack of self-worth. But the interest of understanding anything about reality also emerged at that time – no matter what the topic was, I was interested in understanding it. I came up with the term of “not negating knowledge”. All of these lead me to better myself, to understand more about myself and reality, and ultimately, to live a life worth living. Eventually, I stumbled upon actualized.org; as I always had quite a good grasp on conceptual understanding, I soaked up Leos videos like a sponge. In the conceptual/ rational sense, I always considered myself to be quite sharp. With self-actualization came meditation. Awareness, mindfulness, and consciousness became the crux of my everyday life. I noticed that whenever a person did something really good, they always talked about how doing it consciously was a key component to their mastery. Awareness, mindfulness, consciousness – terms like these sounded to me as if they were ‘things’, which lie in the center of my head, right behind my eyes. At least, that’s what it felt like. This misunderstanding led to me being ‘in my head’ too much. In consequence, meditative practices had more of a concentration character, as well as an ‘analytical, non-labelling awareness’. For a long time, there was this feeling that there is ‘something off’. Something, which does not sit quite right. One ‘component’ was missing, but I never knew what it was. As I searched for the answer, I turned my psyche (and pretty much my whole life) upside down, constantly bettering myself to ‘find that thing’ – until 6 months ago. That was when I noticed very deep wounds within myself. I realized that I denied my emotions since a very long time, unknowingly suppressing them. I denied feeling my emotions because I was afraid of being vulnerable. I didn’t want to admit that I was broken inside. Self-actualization and spirituality only deepened the denial. Eventually, the denial of my emotions caused bigger suffering than biting the bullet and going through the emotional release. I was at a point, where I couldn’t stand it anymore. My self-image shattered; and I rebuild it in a ‘conscious way’. I swore to myself to never run away from feeling again. Half a year has passed, and some massive emotional healing has happened since then. As a thank you for everything I learned from this forum, I wanted to share some of my insights and findings along the way. I hope this post will be helpful to the one reading.   Feeling is Direct Experience Synonyms: Actuality, Now, The Present Moment
I want to start with direct experience, because everything what is being written here ultimately tries to point towards direct experience. By writing about feeling, I don't want to imply to think about feeling, but to rather just feel (In fact, I could even stop the post right here, but I won’t). As soon as you feel what is in your experience, you will recognize that feeling is direct. With feeling, we bypass our thoughts, and get in direct contact with what is actual. Thoughts veil direct experience and make us ‘lose contact’ with the present moment. Funny enough, feeling is prior to thoughts. So even though thoughts cause a disconnection from direct experience, we can also feel how the thoughts themselves feel, thus ‘anchor ourselves in the now’.   Feeling is Acceptance When we choose to feel, acceptance is inevitable. Without ‘thinking it out loud’ we say to ourselves: “Alright, just for this moment, I will allow myself to see what is currently going on in my experience.” (Thus, accepting everything as is). Oftentimes, we fight against emotions, which feel bad. We try to keep ‘em out of the house or lock them away. By doing this, the only effect we achieve is ingraining beliefs about ourselves even deeper, as we give them more meaning and treat them as more real, as they actually are, instead of just letting them go. Self-referential thoughts are conditioned and learned, even though they oftentimes seem ‘rock solid’. And because of that, we do have the ‘power’ to let them come and go. Welcoming self-referential thoughts (maybe with an inner smile) is just as important as letting them go. But in order to let them go, we must first accept them. Acceptance by thinking about accepting may be one way, but more often than not, it simply doesn’t work because it feels forced. Feeling, on the other hand, makes acceptance effortless. Feeling already implies that everything which is being felt, is accepted – because we ‘agree’ to feel what already is the case. By feeling, we give our body and mind the necessary space for emotional healing. Feeling is healing. It frees you by leading you to emotional release.   Feeling reveals Truth Rather than entangling ourselves further in thought stories (=beliefs), via feeling we can 'untangle' this mess and see the truth behind the thoughts, which veil direct experience. To be conscious of truth is to be conscious of direct experience – which, counterintuitively, means that there is nobody/no person/ no identity being conscious. When you think that ‘you become conscious of something’ you got it backwards, because a ‘you which becomes conscious of something’ implies an identity which realizes something, which is not the case. Language becomes really limiting and misleading here. You could say the exact opposite of what I said, and it would still be as true as what I wrote. So I’ll just stop here. Remember, all of this is not to be thought about. Thoughts don’t ‘solve’ this ‘riddle’ (there is no riddle to be solved). ‘You’ are nothing but a thought. ‘You being conscious’ is also a thought, as well as ‘you dropping the identification with thoughts’ or ‘you connecting to direct experience’. Untangle via feeling. Truth may ‘hurt you down the way’. It may even amplify suffering because the lies we tell to ourselves become illuminated with the discovery of what is true (the discovery that we were lying to ourselves the whole time can hurt but can also be the most hilarious thing). It is the only way out of suffering because once you ‘discover truth’, you discover that which is beyond (or prior to) thoughts and identity. Running away from truth (by resisting feeling) is not going to work very well for your wellbeing because truth (=existence) is inherent. You can’t fight it, as existence is already the case. That’s why you need to surrender to it (=not running away from feeling in order to resist what is true/what is the case). The upside is that truth feels absolutely amazing and is everything ‘you’ always were looking for. Once ‘found’, it feels like your back is being watched by an unlimited source. Truth is good. Everything aligned with truth feels good. Fighting against it does not. Feeling, and feeling what really feels good to you, guides you ‘towards truth’. To be able to see that fighting against truth does not feel good, you really need to be honest with yourself. I say that because you could also be lying to yourself that you’re feeling good, when really, you’re not (which was the case with me), hence honesty. Discovering what feels good can be a slippery slope, as the ego is the most brilliant liar. Truly a witty mastermind, constantly tricking you into believing stuff, which makes you think that you feel good, but it actually makes you feel bad. Gotta love that fool for his genius. Discernment is key. Feeling allows honest discernment. We also may see relative, partial truths behind thoughts. An example may be: “Ohh, now I realize why I felt like shit the whole time. Unconsciously, I was focusing on these self-referential thoughts with negative connotations. As every thought multiplies and manifests, they were the cause of my suffering. If that is so, I have the choice to direct my attention towards thoughts that feel good and serve my wellbeing. But how do I separate the wheat from the chaff? Feeling, of course!” A ‘more fundamental truth’ arises from these inspections (even though there really is no such thing as a ‘more real truth’ or a ‘less real truth’), which is that there is ‘something’ prior to thought stories and all the emotions that come with them: groundless being. This groundless being is not perceivable, because there is nothing prior to it, thus, there is nothing which could perceive ‘it’. It is crucial to realize that we are it. That’s why self-inquiry is so tricky. We try to ‘find it’ – but there is nothing to find, because it is already right here! Any search implies that there is something to be found. But how do you want to find something you’re already ‘looking’ at? Being is being. That's what all these spiritual pointers are trying to point to: that which is unspeakable, which is not possible to articulate, because the articulation itself is ‘it’. Nothing is outside of it. Yet, terms like nothing, emptiness, awareness, consciousness, love, now, and so on try to point to ‘that thing’. ‘It’ is not perceivable, yet we can feel into it. Meditation is something much more to be felt, rather than to be ‘focused’ about. I personally found it easier to feel into it (=feeling how existence feels), rather than trying to inspect it with awareness. Inspecting it with awareness mislead me, because I tried to ‘inspect truth’ like I would inspect the hand with awareness. It always lead me to try to inspect a form (regardless of which shape or not-shape this form [or not-form] may take). With feeling on the other hand, I can simply feel and relax into it, and melt with it, until there is no meditator left. Only existence. The realization that we already are that which we are trying to find resolves the paradox of 'perceiving groundless being'. We don’t ‘need anything’ per se to understand being because it is already understood because we already exist as being. Language really challenges me to articulate it, to ‘deliver it to you’. Ultimately, just forget everything which is being said here and ‘inspect’ your being, i.e. melt into being. Being trapped in the realm of language unfortunately will lead you nowhere with this inquiry. ‘Perceiving’ truth/nothing is the hardest thing to do, as it is beyond perception; yet it is absolutely the most natural and simplest thing to do, because it is our core existence and literally needs no effort; even wanting to understand what is being talked about here implies effort, but it really is effortless. Another helpful pointer towards effortlessness might be: Do you need to do anything in order for this moment to continue? Try to stop the moment. Try to choose what you will do next. Try to take absolute and full ownership of the movements of your body. Are you choosing to move your body the way you do or are you more like on autopilot? You see, ‘it all runs by itself’, without any effort from any person. Inspect. See that existence flows effortlessly. Feel, that you do not have to do anything in order for you to exist. Feel the relaxation that comes with that effortless flow. Allow yourself to feel the goodness that naturally ‘flows out of it’. Nothing more is needed.   Feeling opens the doors to Love For this part I want to share an experience, as I think that captures it best. Also, truth is love (see previous section). It was a night in which I felt absolutely terrible. Weeks before that night, I was already confronted with several emotional flushes, as well as an inner opening towards feeling. But in that night, I was at a very low point. So I decided to go for a walk. I put on some melancholic music and completely surrendered to feeling every emotion that was coming my way. Feeling certainly didn’t make it better, as the pain was intensified by feeling. It saturated every emotion. But I was sick of putting up barriers against what is true and how I really feel. I was sick of lying to myself. This erased all barriers against any resistance. Halfway through the walk I started to notice a very powerful, empathetic force that was permeating my whole body. It was distinct from me, yet it was a part of me. I felt a very deep acceptance coming from that force. It was loving me deeply, absolutely regardless of how I felt or who I was. It felt as though that love was smiling at me, was giving me warm hugs, from within. I felt at home. What I also noticed was that running away from bad feeling emotions robs them from their aesthetic. It turns them ugly. Really ugly. But feeling the deep, hurting wounds has a certain kind of beauty to it. I was really surprised to see that this is even a possibility. As that experience went on, every wound was washed away, which actually made me really confused. The impermanent nature of reality was revealed to me. I was thinking to myself “Hold on, I’m supposed to feel sad”. The thought told me, that I’m supposed to feel sad (trying to ‘freeze the moment’). But when I felt within, there was no sense of sadness anymore (impermanence). Granted, I wasn’t feeling really great either. But the heavy emotional waves from half an hour ago evaporated and I felt so much lighter. I was ready, to allow myself, to feel good again. Grinning, I walked back home and felt deeply healed and loved. Looking back, I understand now, that this was an experience of deeply healing Self-Love. On another occurrence, instead of being loved from a ‘distinct’ force, I was the one who was absolutely loving everything which was going on in my experience. I remember riding my bike. My hands were freezing, wind blew against my face, and it was really not that comfortable. Oddly, I was loving all of it. Every sensation was being felt deeply, thus accepted deeply, thus loved deeply. My energy levels shot through the roof and I felt utterly at peace and whole. Even though there were many ‘incomplete’ things in my life, I felt as complete and whole as you can feel. I understood that anything external can never ‘make you complete’. In order to feel complete, the only necessary thing is Self-Love. And when you realize that Truth is inherent, you understand that Self-Love is always the case and was never not the case. It is only our thinking minds that make us belief that there is incompletion. We already are complete. Realizing just how much you are being loved, and how you are that love which loves everything.. leaves you in deep awe for creation.   Feeling is a compass Feeling within shows you what you really want and how you really want to feel. By listening to the internal compass of feeling, it guides you towards the life you want to live (Dreamboard). By letting go thoughts which don’t feel good and choosing to focus on thoughts which do feel good, one starts to effortlessly navigate through the inner and outer world in harmony. Feeling also ‘monitors’ your alignment with truth. When you honestly feel good, ‘you are aligned with truth’. If you happen to feel bad, allow yourself to take a step back and inspect in your direct experience what causes dissonance with truth. Feel within and it will soon tell you, ‘what’s wrong’. It’s an intuitive process – the more you do it, the better you get. Yet, ‘answers’ are always available to you and do not need any further process besides feeling within. As feeling opens the doors to love, this also leads to a life full of love. Simply following and trusting your inner guidance via feeling generates love. It’s almost like a cheat code because the more you feel, the clearer you get about your life, and the more love comes your way.   How to feel? There’s nothing to learn about feeling. It’s natural and you always feel. And really, the full spectrum of feeling goes way beyond language. Words only point to other words and serve as a very rough approximation towards direct experience. Still, thoughts sometimes overcomplicate the simplest. If that’s the case, you can use these pointers: Where in your body and/or mind are sensations occurring? How do they feel? You don’t need to make this a mental exercise by saying “I feel some tingling in my belly”. Just notice the sensations and feel how they feel. When thought stories about the sensations come up, feel how the thought stories feel, and allow them to come and go. If you don’t feel anything, that’s also something to feel. You do not control which thoughts come your way, so you do not need to take ownership for them. Simply feel whether they feel good or bad to you. It’s up to you which thoughts you want to give your attention to or which thoughts you give more or less credit to. Choose whatever you want to focus on. When sensations are noticed, take your time, and stick with them at least for a bit. No need to rush through your body. How does the sensation change over time? How do thoughts about that sensation change over time? Feel into both of these questions. Also, you can either feel in a very specific way (e.g. focusing your feeling on your belly) or you can feel in a very expansive way (e.g. ‘feeling everything at once’ – the whole spectrum within and without of the body). The latter is actually a very fun exercise: First feel your whole body at once (maybe after having scanned your body from bottom to top). Then feel the boundaries of your body (e.g. skin, nose, eyes etc.). Really try to feel, what is outside and what is within the boundary. Where is the touching point of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’? Maybe you will notice that ‘boundary’ is nothing more than a thought. It’s really fun to let the lines blur! There are no walls between you and the external world. Thoughts make you believe that there are walls by creating illusory boundaries between ‘you’ and ‘not you’. But when you actually feel the ‘limits of boundaries’, there is no more separation. When we turn up that ‘feeling knob’ really high, soon, everything vanishes. I really don’t know how to describe it, but when that ‘occurs to me’, ‘I’ start to forget everything I have learned, and just melt into what is. The meditator falls away and everything that stays is just existence or groundless being or awareness or truth or all of these words which try to point to ‘that’. ‘It happens to me’ when I try to go to the core of feeling. Like trying to taste the tongue, I try to feel feeling, which leads to that moment of forgetting everything. I can’t even quite recall the ‘experience’ because I only recognize that ‘that’ happened, when ‘I’ (ego) snap back. All I assume is that I can’t recall the experience because there is no one to experience it. I’m still exploring what’s up with that because it’s really ‘new territory’ for me. Just wanted to put this info out here in order to let you know that feeling is not limited to the body/mind, and that this ‘going beyond’ is also a possibility.     So, that’s about it. Way too many words, but I still hope you could get something out of it. By now you must’ve heard the word feeling so often that you are absolutely sick of it, which is great! No need for words, really.   Thank you @Leo Gura for paving the way and providing such an immensely deep and broad catalogue of understanding. There is still so much to explore in life and I’m so grateful to have stumbled upon your teachings in this regard. The quality of my life has shot up drastically thanks to everything you teach. I’m super excited about what is yet to be seen, yet to be learned. You really are a pioneering genius in what you are doing. I literally can’t thank you enough. Honestly, thank you man.   Thank you @Nahm for always being so direct with every one of your teachings. Always cut to the chase, always full of love. If you wouldn’t have reinforced the importance of feeling so often, I probably would still be stuck in my head today. But you helped me open the doors to love in tremendous ways. Thanks to you I do feel enabled to create a life full of love, a life I want to live, a dream life. I feel like the foundation for everything which is yet to come has been set. Words cannot describe how grateful I am to have learned from you. Thank you.   ❤️