Spirituality for Living

Failure is one of the biggest demons anyone faces, and poorly understood in part because people feel it has to be understood as they conceive of it. Natures wisdom gives us what are very natural negative feedback mechanisms, but in our thinking we tend to push them aside. In doing so we are controlled by them rather than controlling them. Like pain itself, the biggest aspect of pain management that they teach in hospitals is not being afraid of the pain response. Yet we take our feelings, the ones we don’t like, and decide because it’s supposedly wisdom, to not have them.

The idea of failure is actually pretty crippling. It is a self fulfilling prophecy, and the biggest reason for that is we villainize the feelings that lead to failure. We don’t allow ourselves to feel them, and learn from them. They lead to failure not on their own, but because of how we manage them. Those feelings are much like pain. Would it be good to not be able to feel pain? Pain can be useful, and exists naturally, and it isn’t just nature being sadistic is it?

Now I must distinguish between feeling and emotion. They are not the same. Emotions are conditioned action.  Feeling is innate sensitivity. We are conditioned to have emotions. I even had someone earlier say they felt powerless to avoid negative emotion, yet this is because in a sense they are. They mistake emotion for feelings. Feelings are innate, and part of our nature. Our reactions, a.k.a. emotions, are not natural. They are learned, and there is a reason people reject emotions so commonly. But they mistakenly reject feeling also, which sets people against themselves.

Now we act on our emotions. Some claim they act on their thoughts, but in fact no. Even sociological and psychological studies show that thought sets up emotion. Thought creates habits and learned behaviours, and can be seen very obviously in the stock market and is part of why we are in a recession. That wasn’t brought about by any knowing. It’s emotional.

Emotion is how we tend to identify those energies in ourselves, and it’s like ego. It is often a false identification like mistaking aggression for anger, excitement for fear, or desire for addiction. They are different things. One natural, and one given a characterization. Feelings are natural things. Like frustration is a feeling, but we have emotions about frustration. Ideas about what we are supposed to do when frustrated. Emotional people often will say they don’t feel anything.

So, on the subject of failure, it’s composed of a set of destructive emotions. f=frustration, a=aggression, i=insecurity, l=loneliness, u= uncertainty, r=resentment, e=emptiness.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

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