Centering is one of those so simple it seems impossible sort of things, but in fact centering is as simple as forgetting to breath. People tend to have breathing trouble not because they forget to breath, but because they are over concerned with it or their emotions (which differs from feelings).

Everyone can tell you what their clothes feel like right now, yes? Internal feeling is a perception of the energy moving through us. It isn’t the off centered neurosis that most people associate with ‘drama’. In the face of sadness, people can behave very differently and do.  E-motion is energy in motion. People act differently in the face of feeling sadness because the behaviour isn’t dictated. We are taught to act out when we feel sadness.

Is the acting out wrong? Not the expression of sadness, but a lot of what we are taught sadness is, what we are taught it means, and how we are taught a sad person behaves, doesn’t serve the truth of expressing sadness.

Is it wrong to express your feeling? No, it’s not wrong to express what you’re feeling. It’s really rather right. I daresay necessary. The body of knowledge we call emotion is where things get complicated. The feeling is never unbalanced. It goes off balance only when seen through ones thinking. You might be sad and want to cry but think crying is weak.  So instead you don’t cry because your emotion is that crying is weak. So that spawns resentment which makes you act hatefully when you should have just had a good cry. It can be seen by others as weak, but others don’t make your feelings.  They are self arising, but others did make your emotions and they shared what they had.

I have always sensed that emotion is a barometer of where I am compared to where I could be? In a sense that’s true, because your sense of where you are changes and then your emotion will change. It changes most quickly in centered awareness.

And emotion can be a choice? It is always a choice, though not often deliberate. Sometimes I go to a movie, oh like let’s say the more recent Dark Knight. Everyone is reacting according to formula, the scripts are edited like that, but it had a substance to it that moved me. I could look around and worry, “What if people see me crying?” Would that be right, or should I let my feeling move me despite it being counter to formula? They don’t know me, but they do see me, and they do react without awareness to what they see. Seeing the grown man crying as he leaves what others see as an exciting action flick is seen as strange.

How do you choose not to show something deep in you, to center it to change it? Center it and you may realize it doesn’t need to be changed at all, and that it’s just your view of it that is creating the stress.

Or others views of it? Oh indeed, and your view of their views. People have emotions about feelings all the time. They have the feeling of lust and the emotion of guilt, the feeling of aggression and the emotion of shame.

It seems that emotions have little purpose. They may seem “real” at the time, and one may even quite clearly see images within them, yet they seem to dissipate and change form from one moment to the next. What purpose would such have in defining our “reality” if it’s so disconnected from permanence? Would we be better to acknowledge them as a whole, as formations, rather than identify any particular state as having substance? These states just seem so temporary. What can be obtained by recognizing them, and is there a method for doing such? Well said, and a good question. Recognizing the difference between feeling and emotion, instinct and thought, changes how you relate to it all. And yes, to identify with one emotion, even to identify with a single feeling, is mistaken. I can feel lust, it doesn’t mean I am lust.

Emotion is thought. When people talk of sadness they are exploring the emotion of sadness. How they will behave or how they have seen others behave when sad. Sadness is a natural and a balanced energy by itself, and sadness doesn’t cling but the emotions around sadness do. They are persistent thoughts, “I’m so sad because …”

If it doesn’t cling, why does it feel as if it does? The feeling doesn’t, but the emotion is a thought that looks for evidence. Be careful what you look for, you will find it.  When you center, your view of the emotional conditioning, and the dog who got excited when it heard the dinner bell, was quite emotional.

Seen from the center, a pattern that doesn’t reflect feeling will deny who you are. Emotion as it’s currently conditioned is inherently limiting. I say I feel sad, and you will automatically have a picture of what state I’m in.  Yet it may differ very greatly from mine and neither serve the inner spirit.  So you are not any one emotion. In fact, you are not any emotion. You are capable of feeling, but you aren’t your capacity to feel. It’s part of you, but much like your foot you’re still you if you lose it are you not? Your center is your unconditioned self, the you who is you outside of any circumstances and that doesn’t require conditions to be what it is.

Don’t you think emotions represent your current state, and do not define you as a whole? I think feeling represents your current state, and emotion is how you think about what you feel. I read a good explanation of ego recently, e.g.o = everything good is outside. Feeling doesn’t require anything outside of us to occur. It is rather instinctive and is never mistaken, but when we get emotional we start reacting to the feeling and not just expressing the feeling, elaborating on it rather than just experiencing it.

Do you mean judging the feeling? Yes, this is exactly what I mean. If you experience it without your judgement it can teach. If you reach to hug me and I shove you, that is action and we can learn from actions.

Suspending judgement is the hardest thing to do? It is actually the easiest. It’s seen as hard because of the idea that you have to do something to suspend judgement, that it’s something to achieve, a state of being that you have to get to. In center you don’t judge. When you are at rest are you worried about what anything is, or what you should do? Can you judge anything and remain at rest? When you allow yourself to just be, to just see, to feel, what can you judge?

You can judge this is peaceful and rest? Then you aren’t at rest. You’re thinking about being restful, and likely you will get an idea about something else you should do. If you are thinking about what you are feeling you aren’t paying attention and that is the secret to understanding. To find center; Where are you? How are you? Knowing this is not only ok, I would say it’s vital.

Then you have to think about not thinking and get caught? No, you don’t have to think. You have to listen and see.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~