On this blog, I use Emotions and Feelings to mean different things, although English is a little limiting. For example, we “feel emotions,” we don’t emote them (although some sure do (laughs)). I use this classification because of how I subjectively experience them. Your experience may vary.
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The first thing to understand about emotions is they’re not concepts. Trying to figure them out with the mind is an exercise in futility. This also means we’re not actually feeling, we’re thinking. We may have learned to avoid emotions by staying in the head. And that means we’re repressing how we feel.
This reminds me of a sign in a local restaurant. “Men have feelings too. We feel hungry.”
The first thing on the table is to learn to notice our emotions. Simply ask yourself every so often what you’re feeling. Not sensations or concepts, but actual emotions. Once they’re more conscious, we can learn to allow them to arise, move on through, and complete. Then we can resolve our backlog.
If we don’t allow them or try to control them, emotions cause us problems. Think of it like trying to repress energy. It will leak out through health issues, anxiety, psychological issues, and more.
Until we lighten up that arena, finer feelings are unlikely to be very available to us.
Where emotions are felt as passing waves of energy in response to our experiences, finer feelings are associated with the flows of consciousness.
Emotions
– fear, anger, grief, sorrow, and depression. Also satisfaction, pleasure, and attached love.
– a subjective way of experiencing the energy of our response mechanism. They have a sense of mine and can feel reactive.
– are associated with this person and how we’re responding to experiences.
– function at a more dense level than the mind.
– can make us feel contracted or entangled and like they can take us over.
– based mainly in the 2nd chakra (the hips) but can be experienced anywhere.
Fine Feelings
– love, bliss, happiness for no reason, compassion.
– experienced as an effect of the flow of consciousness and the Divine through us.
– a quality of being more universal and not constrained to us personally.
– are more subtle than the mind.
– are expansive and can fill us up to overflowing.
– based mainly in the heart but can be experienced anywhere.
– in the field of intuition and intellect so they can have a quality of truth to them.
Both add richness to life when allowed to move.
As we progress spiritually, finer values become much more conscious. We also progressively become more aware of the collective and the universal. Through the stages in consciousness, everything becomes a part of ourselves. We come to experience not just a local body and emotions but collective stages and the cosmic body of all bodies.
Davidya
I’m off to a retreat tomorrow so am pausing the schedule until the 20th when the next article will show up. đŸ™‚
What retreat?
I help with Lorne & Lucia retreats, running the video and recording gear. Usually, I handle comments while on retreats but it can be fussier on a tablet. Thought I’d try it without new articles for a few days so my poor readers get a break. đŸ™‚
We “poor readers” don’t mind your posts at all, at least this one doesn’t. đŸ™‚
đŸ™‚ Thanks Greg.
At Kiwi Cove now. It’s quite different when it’s mostly empty. Came early to visit with early arrivals.
Hi David, fine distinctions, thanks. To me these days, emotions, feellings and thoughts seems to be just on the surface of the ocean. Great picture, says it all. The Kiwi Cove days, have seen pictures of the place, looks very nice, hope I can experience it one day.
Hi Kjetil
Feelings are different from emotions. As I describe in the article, they are flows in consciousness, in the ocean itself. So less on the surface like thoughts and emotions.
Kiwi Cove was a wonderful spot, but size limited it to just over 20 people. During the pandemic, the ownership changed, and the new owner wasn’t interested in retreats. There was talk of gathering there as a group during a virtual retreat, but the facility wasn’t supportive. Others have done this in other places on occasional retreats.
Those of us who’ve been around a while also remember retreats in Saskatchewan. And on Salt Spring Island. The prairies are quite different from the coast, but thats where a lot of people woke up.
I got more out of in-person retreats personally but changes come…
Thanks, David. There has been up to four people together in some places on the online retreats since I joined in January 2025. This weekend there was a DSI flow retreat, with 61 attending, all time high attendance, and a great flow and power the whole weekend. Such a support and pull in the group. Saturday meetings in the DSI-group are great too, very concentrated for about 1,5 hours. There is talk about maybe getting together an in-person meeting/retreat this year, with 25 years of Lorn and Lucias work, and they are also reaching 80. Hope to be there, if it happens and fortune allows.
Impressive, Kjetil
There didn’t used to be enough awake to do that. At one time, the cove was the right size for flow retreats. Nice to hear such progress.
25 years! At first, they were just local and not access from other areas. They became accessible with weekly conference calls at the end of 2006. Then Skype in 2007. The first retreat was soon after. I attended the 2nd.