Awakening to Feeling—Acceptance of the Felt-Sense
Awakening to Sober, Anchored Authenticity
Here, I invite you to become aware of an important distinction which can make the psychological part of your musical journey much easier; the distinction between FEELING and feelings. Learning how to navigate these two currents is vital to singing, practicing and performing—and your peace of mind!
(In strictly spiritual terms, what I mean here by FEELING has more to do with HOW we feel, and not merely WHAT we feel; the subjective aliveness rather than the objects of feelings. How do we feel at all? What miracle enables and sustains sentience? How do we even know about FEELING? Isn't by the Light of Awareness that we know anything?)
FEELING is always clear and total; feelings are often confused and fractured. Feeling is the wide-open sky; feelings are the sky mistaking itself for clouds. Feeling is immersive; feelings are fracturing, notional, vague and amorphous.
Coming to terms with FEELING is perhaps the second most important of activating yourself as a musician—the first, IMHO, is Rhythm! What I mean here by FEELING is not like “He hurt my feelings." These feelings—hurt, disappointment etc.— may be real and valid in the moment but they are almost always loaded up with stories of past hurts bordering on neurosis. To the contrary, FEELING is more a NOW thing, a body-oriented focus, stable in non-judgmental acceptance and very different than feelings, which are often unreliable, infused with ambiguous, memory based unstable emotions.
Of course we need to be in touch with feelings as singers and musicians, but if we don't want to ruled by the storms of emotional turmoil, we need to fall back into the witnessing energy of FEELING which is more grounded in WHAT IT IS THAT FEELS—the Light of Awareness itself.
Pure FEELING can be more like self-inquiry; “To whom is this emotional turmoil occurring?” The witnessing light of awareness in the Gaze can regulate the instability of feelings and take us into pure FEELING without story.
Feeling is more vital and viscerally alert to itself. Feelings are entirely tempered by thoughts of what we feel, while Feeling is not tempered at all and more to do with how we Feel. Feeling is a stable sine wave which coheres the jagged crests and troughs of speculative feelings.
We might say feelings, when they are tapestried psychologically with memories, hurt or joy, are “cooked,” whereas pure Feeling, felt as sensation without emotionality, is “raw.”
In Feltness, without story, we can safely accept the pain of “cooked” feelings and paradoxically we may be surprised to realize we can be truly free from memory-based thought and its associated misery—without denying feelings. Even though painful emotional feelings can be scattering, closing them down won't give us what we want.
“The bad feeling is the body knowing and pushing toward what good would be… What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away… People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.” Eugene T. Gendlin
To me, in the above quote, Eugene Gendlin is saying that a bad feeling is not something to bury or ignore. I feel it is almost certainly the very best response the body can have to the disorder/disease already present, already stealing our wellness. We seem to be wired to run from disquiet in the body/mind and maybe that was a necessary survival mechanism in our distant past. But now, as an intentional act, to totally, non-resistively own all Feeling, good or bad, to absolutely align with it, is to accelerate into equilibrium and harmony. The “bad” feeling is screaming at you, This is possible to heal. Don’t ignore me!
“Your indifference to your own suffering is the cause of all misery.”
Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Again, the Gaze is profoundly important when awakening to FEELING: The light of awareness in Seeing can remind the body, and every cell, that even the feeling of “stuckness” is made up of Pure Awareness. Seeing and Feeling unite in the Gaze to free the body to it’s Original Light Essence already present. Science, especially Interoception, calls this conversion of one form of energy into another, Transduction.
There is unimaginable energy tied up in denial. From my own years of experimenting I can tell you that owning the body’s truth in Feeling can enable us to integrate our past, our patterns, our dark memories and jagged feelings into the startling totality of who we really are as vital, flowing wholeness! What at first feels like the most awful, quickly transmutes itself into the most beautiful, as the energy in denial is released and Felt as aliveness.