Feelings, Emotions and Thoughts are three important factors that govern the thing that we wrongly or rightly think we are and are responsible for giving the thing a hellish, an earthly or a heavenly living. Some live in hell, others in earthly plane and a few in heaven, no way to know who is living where, though. All the three places are just the state or plane of existence of a being only he or she is in the know, albeit not being quite certain about it. May be every one of us are in heaven but we have no way to know it (can’t go outside the superficial knowledge) and, hence, not prepared to take it because the images we live in our head of heaven as against hell plus a heap of information or knowledge or understanding of things that our five senses pile up somewhere in our head and the way we make use of them all fly in the face of spontaneous act of acceptance.

The other intriguing fact about it is that there is no device on hand to fathom out who is living where – heaven, earthly plane or hell! A guessing game at the most! How a particular person react, respond and behave in a given situation is what we take as clue of what state or plane of existence one is in. No other way! And if someone is play-acting which is what many of us do, then it is beyond.

A question that recurs in my head is if the things or experiences (I am skeptical about the word ‘experience’ cause it is something that needs a crutch of knowledge to stand on) we take as Feelings, Emotions and Thoughts are something in-built in the thing that we think we are, or have they been altogether a no-go area we accidently landed up in and don’t know how to bail ourselves out of it!

Take, for example, feelings. Let’s look at the dynamics of feeling and analyze what it is all about. For feelings to take place an agent is required outside the thing that we think we are to trigger it off in us which what we call our ‘consciousness’ detect.  The agent inducing feelings in us could be an event, a situation, a surrounding, a circumstances, weather, environment or even a physical state of solitude and loneliness that one accidently or unwittingly find oneself in. The interesting thing about it is that the thing that we think we are is not by itself the originator of the feelings, but rather the physical condition that one finds himself in.

And hence to me, feelings are spontaneous as well as natural interaction between the thing that we are and things around us without us not necessarily being aware of it. We may put a stop to thoughts by going mindless, as a few have done that, but we can’t do the same with what we are made to understand as feelings!

And thus, feelings are something of a natural phenomenon, or rather natural reaction or response issuing from the thing that we are to the physical condition we find ourselves in since every natural actors in the cosmic game are part of the whole. So, there is a constant interaction at some level going on between and among them. Nothing but our thoughts separate us from the rest of the things of which we are inalienable and inseparable part. Thus, how we are affected or experience occurrence of change creeping into us and how things around us are affected and experience change when either group of actors come into some form of contact with each other is beyond intellection to know.

To me, feelings are akin to wave that rises and falls. If we can put ourselves in the role of a silent spectator observing the phenomenon from a distance and staying out of it and refusing to get sucked into it while feelings stage its play in us, like we sit out a storm, there’s nothing to it. The problem sets in the moment we put into it what we call consciousness armed with the whole ammunitions of thoughts ransacking the arsenal of our memory and get down to hairsplitting.

We land up in the deep shit after we give thoughts free rein to arrest the feelings, prolong them, live them, and not to let them go away. One spark of thought is potent enough to set the feelings in flame followed by train of thoughts fueling it.  Feelings are colorless. It is the thought that paints them in a myriad of colors.

To illustrate my point, let me bring up the issue of sex. The feeling of what we understand as pleasure that we experience during the penetrative sex is triggered off by biological interaction between two things. The thing that we think we are is not the originator of the feeling although it depends on what one thinks he/she is. The sudden spurt of feeling during sex is simply unblemished, pure and sacred. It is free of spice – violence, beastly and aberrant behaviors. It is thoughts (ideas, images, pictures etc.) that spice it up to prolong it, sustain it and to make it larger than what it is.  Although it is purely and exclusively biological activity, we can’t help turning it into mental and psychological issue by bringing mind into play. The role that mind plays in it is that it churns out thoughts, which, in turn, transports sex from the realm of biology into the realm of mind and psychology. In this way, the mind highjacks the whole biological phenomenon of sex reducing the body to an insignificant actor in the activity while mind being in control. Consequently, without brining mind into play and running thoughts through it we can hardly enjoy a sex the way we want it. We have almost forgotten the inherent nature of sex and therefore cannot accept the way it is. We want it to be the way we wish it to be.

Let’s now take a look at the other instrument we call ‘Emotion’. I begin by asking a question, ‘Is there a thing called ‘Emotion’ independent of Feelings?’ Or is it the feelings that are channeled into emotions by instrument of thoughts with or without ourselves being aware of it!

Let us suppose, for example, if someone known or unknown to me out of nowhere walk up to me and let loose a stream of invectives like; you are loads of shit, a dickhead, a stupid cunt, scum of earth, a mother fucker and spew other filths.

The first thing I honestly get is feeling, pure and unblemished feeling. There’s no way I can have any emotions like anger, resentment, hatred, disgust, and so on until I put the thing that I think I am (Consciousness) into reading things like expression on his face, level of threat he poses, reason for his sudden outburst, motives behind it, so on and so forth. Now, I cannot do the reading unless I take aid of background knowledge/information stored in my head by using the instrument of thoughts. The moment thoughts come into play the feelings degenerate into what we call emotions which put a strain on us to the point of blinding us. This channeling of feelings into emotions is responsible for all mental health problems.

Finally, no weapon in arsenal of humans is as lethal as a thought. We need to understand what a feeling is and how it is abused by thought while channeling it into emotions.