राम
Awareness & Attention

Feeling Is Just a Feeling, It Does Not Construct a Person

2019-11-01|1:07:05-1:09:00|Watch on YouTube

Feelings don't construct a person—only the mixture of feeling and thought does, which clears when we simply describe rather than explain our experience.

Seeker

Namaste Father, I feel like a person since a couple of days, feels like mind is trying to survive. Can we check it? Thank you very much, Father.’

Ananta

Actually the ‘feel like a person’ is never true because there is no feeling like a person. A feeling is just a feeling, it does not construct a person. What we usually say (colloquially like that) is that, there is a feeling there which can seem a bit constricted and I have an interpretation or thought about it. Now the combination of that thought and feeling sometimes we call that mixture, that soup, a person. But there is no feeling like a person. There is no feeling like anything but suppose that we say ‘Okay, there is anger, there is lust, there is hunger, all of these feelings are there.’ But there is no feeling like ‘person.’ It’s just a term we use like ‘I just feel so much like a person’ where we are saying that there is a sort of constricted feeling usually and something which is saying ‘this should not be here’ or ‘I should not have said that’ or ‘this one should not have said this to me’ or some sort of interpretation mixed with that feeling; that is what we call the person. That’s why it’s very nice to just to see sometimes. Because of our mental interpretation of ‘what is happening to us’ hardly ever matches even the phenomenal play. That’s why many times I say, you don’t explain, describe. By the time I hear your explanation, you are already far away from what, what even the phenomenal description of something is. Isn’t it? You can say ‘I have… all my life all this has happened to me, I wonder when this will stop… when do I… when will these feelings will go away?’ Already so mixed up in the explanation in the story. Then we say ‘Okay, but what is actually happening?’ You are like ‘Ahh, I feel this constricted feeling in my chest.’ tiow big is it? Ahh, it’s very strong, it’s very strong! Okay, how strong? No, but all my life I have had this and when my this used to happen and that used to happen, it’s just doesn’t go… I have dealt with this. No, no but how strong? Stay with me. Then ‘Ahh, yeah, it’s here no, it’s here since this morning. No, no, not this morning.’ Now! What’s happening now? It’s here. tiow big is this space in which it’s happening? I find no boundary. It’s immense. Then how can this feeling… as strong as the mind may be saying it is, how is it actually hurting that Being? It isn’t actually. So at the level of description, it’s very simple to pluck but if I have to deal with it at the story level it’s so much more complicated because then we are dealing with a full, full history, with full set of conditions and all of that. [Smile] That’s why I say ‘You don’t explain, you just describe.’ Because in our explanation we have inserted our false ‘I’ into it. We have inserted the full baggage of the full story into it. And then… in India, that story could be mulH-life time, not just this life time. [Smiles]

Key Teachings

  • A feeling is just a feeling—it does not construct a person. The 'person' is only a mixture of feeling plus mental interpretation or thought.
  • When we stay with direct description of experience rather than explanation (the story), we see the feeling isn't actually hurting Being—it's vast and spacious.
  • Our explanations insert a false 'I' and full story baggage into simple experiences, making them seem complicated when they're actually simple.
feelingsmindawarenessself-inquirydescription vs explanation

From: Be That Open That Nobody Is Left to Be Open - 1st November 2019