I Feel, Therefore I Am (Part 3)

This also helps to explain why our search for happiness always proves elusive. Happiness after all is a feeling that comes and goes like any other emotion. Being not something that we can achieve as an end state, its arrival is ultimately contingent upon us creating the conditions for it to visit our heart. This comes back to aligning with the spiritual consciousness of life from which we enact virtue, and receive back the fruits of this offering, of which deep joy is one. How we don’t find happiness is by focusing on finding happiness (a paradox I know!), and being too concerned with our emotional life in this way is counterproductive. Many a self-help book about happiness makes this mistake in advocating for its readers to chase the emotion as if this will paper over all of the sources of dissatisfaction that have lead them to pick up the book in the first place.

As alluring as a lasting form of happiness is as a prospect, ultimately it will lead to disillusionment. Being only a promise of a short term fix, it can’t or won’t sustain us for long because we haven’t done the fundamental work of connecting to our spirit as the source of flourishing in our lives. You may have noticed before that I referenced deep joy as one of the fruits of this integral aligning. In contrast to the fleetingness of happiness, this joy is more permanent in its presence because it originates in being. Transcending our capacity to identify with in this respect, it is not something that we need to search for in order to attain, or do, in order to achieve. If this joy does come to infuse our heart, it will be as a by-product of action that is properly oriented towards a spiritually actualised life.

Rightly understood, what I have communicated above is liberating, and in bringing about this higher form of life for ourselves and the world, we have much leverage at our fingertips. In any moment, we can pick the fruit of temporary satisfaction, or commit ourselves to becoming one with the source of life that takes the form of a tree from which enduring fruit is borne. When we desire positive thoughts, experiences or feelings (like happiness), we can pick a piece of fruit from the tree of life and this will serve a transitory purpose. It may nourish us and make us feel good for a moment, or season, as we consume it. But not long after eating it, we will feel deficient and yearn for more, not least because of the dependence that we have placed on it as a means of fulfilment that it can never deliver. This metaphorical fruit can be anything we desire for satisfaction, and in its most tempting forms can resemble the substances that we become addicted to. Regardless of whether we choose to indulge those titillating substances, we now have a routine for our life as the habituated consumer. While we may long to feel sustained in this consumption, all we end up feeling as we repeatedly search and reach, pick and eat, is drained and defeated.

But just as our other emotions don’t ultimately define us, neither does this languishing feeling of fatigue. Within that broken down state, we are perhaps more capable of recognising how distorted our way of relating to the world has been. As we remain receptive in openness, we are taught of a better way to be, like the tree itself, rooted in its naturalness and inherent purpose. By becoming that tree, we find ourselves capable of offering to the world an abundance of fruit that isn’t limited to promises of happiness alone. When we are aligned with the presence of spirit within, joy is but one feature that comes to characterise our existence.

Again paradoxically, in this space, the swelling of joy in our hearts is the extended outcome of moving to offer those fruits to others. As we embody love, compassion, partake in service and provide hope to others, among many other manifestations of the virtues that I write so much about in my entries, our being expands to encompass the positive impacts that we are having on others. Being what fertilises the soil where our tree is nested, this is the inverse of lecherously looking to the world for what we believe (in tenuous thought) will make us happy and whole. Here, we need to untether ourselves from our materialist view of the world and the hedonistic escapism that it leads to, which favours the sense making of the external above the spiritual nurturing of the internal dimensions of being. Regardless of how you may think or feel about this proposition, it is inevitably true, as anyone who has ever searched their soul for what is of genuine substance and meaning can attest.  

I Feel, Therefore I Am (Part 2)

We should therefore not take our emotions too seriously and base our identity on what they tell us we are. By their transient nature, we compromise our sanity when we eschew this rooted consciousness for the comings and goings of the mind. In a cyclone, there is no safe place to stand, so why venture outside of what provides us with the centeredness on which a stable and clear identity rests. In every moment of our lives, consciousness is present acting as a guide to who we are and how we should orient ourselves in the world. Feelings and thoughts alone don’t provide us with that insight, so we would be wise to keep them in their proper instrumental perspective, acknowledging that by themselves they have clear limitations.   

In making the preceding statement, I still give recognition to the useful role that thoughts and feelings can have in helping us make sense of the world, and providing us with feedback on how well we are navigating it. If we are feeling dissatisfied at work for example, those feelings can be a valuable prompt to assessing whether we are operating in the right domain for our talents or interests. When we find ourselves becoming racked with guilt for how we have treated someone badly, this is a form of lesson in respecting the dignity of others in relationship. After all, it’s not just our thoughts and feelings about that broader union which matters in defining it, and how that other person thinks and feels about how we have acted should be given credence also.  

But then the question becomes, what is that dissatisfaction or guilt pointing us to? In our first example, is it not a deeper level recognition of the purpose we have been given life to serve? This vocation or calling that is fundamental to our being, and mode of action/doing, is a central feature of this core spiritual identity. Without it being innately present, there would be no feeling arising on which to judge our dissatisfaction with our line of work, or fulfilment, if we happen to be giving expression to it. With the guilt that weighs on our being as we contemplate our behaviour towards that other person, the spiritual reality of our interwoven existence and the accompanying principle of reciprocity, more commonly called the golden rule, is animating our feeling of having done unto others as we would not have wanted them to do unto us. Were that tie which binds us in our shared humanity not being present, we would act without remorse, thinking that we ourselves have derived an ultimate benefit at that other person’s expense. But we are not so deluded or sociopathic to think that such behaviour comes without consequences. Sure, we might explain it away simply as karma that we want to downplay lest we are mistreated by others in the future, but this notion is itself reflective of the spiritual interconnectedness that underpins a cause and effect relationship beyond the corporeal separateness that we perceive the physical world as representing.

Further evidence of the presence of this animating force within ourselves can be observed when we explore our thoughts and feelings through an objective semi-detached lens. When we think a thought such as ‘I embarrassed myself at that party by drinking too much alcohol’ that judgement is clearly being made through an interpretive lens, but whether it is true or not is another thing entirely, and there is a part of ourselves that can stand apart from that thought form and assess whether it has a basis in reality. Perhaps we weren’t that drunk, or nobody at the party cared to notice how we were acting at the party, and this is consequential because our thought form is erroneous. Without being able to perceive that, we may automatically internalise the feelings generated by that thought form (shame, guilt, humiliation) that will negatively affect our self-concept (I’m an embarrassing person to be around). But we will never even entertain the possibility of our misconstrual of thought if we allow that to become the final arbiter of what occurred on that night.

In terms of the feelings that we may experience, these are open to similar challenge. We may say that we feel angry, sad, disappointed etc., but at the deepest level are these emotions reflective of who we actually are? If we use the example of disappointment, we can objectively observe that we are feeling that emotion at a particular point in time, but that observing entity is not itself overcome by that disappointment. Maybe in the particular situation which has precipitated that feeling, our ego had set up expectations of other people that were unrealistic, and our spirit, with its capacity for truthful insight, can discern this for our benefit. This higher and wiser part of ourselves can then speak compassionately to our disappointed ego about the barrier to peace it has erected by having these expectations. To the extent that we allow our ego to internalise this message and learn a valuable lesson, our disappointment will be obviated.      

I Feel, Therefore I Am (Part 1)

The title of this entry, which is a play on the famous dictum posited by French philosopher René Descartes, highlights the modern predilection that we have for over identifying with our subjective selves and the feelings that arise as we interact with the world. Believing in the primacy of this individualistic construct, we find ourselves being quick to react to forces that challenge how we want to be seen by the world, even if they point towards an objective and immutable reality that is grounded in truth. Not wanting to face this truth and what it will reveal about the deficiencies in our perceptual framework, we give our emotions free reign to overcome us and use them as a defensive shield against those who we are ideologically opposed to, or to deflect attention away from legitimate criticisms by those who have no qualms about calling us out on the delusional aspects of our worldview. ‘How dare you make me angry, scared, vulnerable…violate my safe space…or dishonour my lived experience’ these people decry, with a disproportionality that is indicative of the tenuous reality that they have constructed for themselves. Were they grounded in a solid reality, they wouldn’t need to act so offended or fragile in response to mere words that don’t amount to violence as they like to claim.

Another popular tactic that is often deployed is smearing the opposed other with labels that carry a social stigma. Accusations of racism, sexism, and transphobia, for example, are too easily thrown out by proponents of the woke left in response to valid criticism of the ideology that underpins their extreme positions. Cancel culture, especially as it is expressed on social media, thrives on this prioritisation of feelings above facts, where online mobs will turn against those who state scientific or moral truths which diverge from the reality that they are ideologically aligned with. Platforms such as Twitter have algorithms that are fine tuned to inflame the emotional centres of the brain because this is how engagement is driven on the site. Larger followings also accrue to those who stimulate these strong emotions through hot takes and biting commentary which rewards those who indulge their emotionality over the nuanced rationality that has greater explanatory power in deciphering complex issues.

Our broader victimhood culture also doesn’t provide the incentive to heal and transcend the negative emotions that are associated with trauma. Many an influencer has made their name on an origin story that revolves around real or imagined harm that was perpetrated against them, but rather than doing the inspiring work of reconciling this trauma to show others a prosperous path of moving through it, what is too often settled for is the indulgence of pain and grievance to demonise entire groups of people for the personal harm suffered. Having an inflammatory and divisive effect on the world, this vision of vengefulness also doesn’t provide an accurate picture of how human beings are naturally inclined to act in furtherance of the good.

If we care to look, unobscured by our subjective feelings, we will see the fundamental role that the embodiment of virtue plays in advancing the human condition. This is one of the objective truths that can be observed across time. Regardless of the more subjective elements of our personhood, we have the innate propensity to demonstrate love, caring, evenhandedness, courage and service. In the most fundamental sense, this is who we are, beyond even the capacity to think that Descartes placed prime value in. These virtues that I am bringing your attention to here emerge from the consciousness of life itself, and as they are demonstrated so do they perpetuate life through the mutual thriving that is created in the world. While thought is no doubt important and one of the key functions that distinguishes humans from the more instinctually driven wiring of our animal cousins, it is secondary to consciousness itself. Without the animating force of consciousness, thought is impossible for there will be no spark of life in the brain to allow it to serve this function. The feelings that flow from thought, and that also serve to shape the substance of our thoughts, are similarly secondary to this animating consciousness.