Feeling emotion, feeling the spirit, and belief.
What does it mean to feel emotion? This is something that I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple of years. When someone asks me, "how do you feel about..." usually my answer is, "I don't know." How are you feeling right now? I don't know. Some emotions I find much easier to identify than others. Anxiety is one that I can identify fairly easily. When I am feeling anxiety my chest tightens up, and my heart races. These are very physical symptoms of anxiety. What if there are physical symptoms of other emotions too?
In a podcast called "Better than Happy" by Jody Moore, she says that emotions are just vibrations in our body. All emotions are caused by thoughts that you have about any circumstance. You perceive the circumstance, you think a thought to give meaning to the circumstance, you feel an emotion, and then your brain releases certain chemicals which create a vibration, which creates actual physical symptoms for every emotion. They're subtle, and we don't usually notice them unless we know what to pay attention to.
I haven't really been able to identify any other physical symptom of emotion beyond anxiety, and that's not one that I feel very often. When I do sit quietly and just try to notice every sensation that my body is feeling, usually I notice things like my back is aching, or my eyes are tired, or my feet are cold. Are these because I am feeling emotions, or are these because I have a mattress that isn't working for me, I don't wear my glasses as often as I should, and my house is just plain cold all the time? Are there other things that I'm just not noticing because they're so subtle?
I have noticed that when I have a lot going on and am stressed, I usually want to eat. I don't feel hungry though, so what is it that makes me want to eat? Maybe if I can identify it more easily, it'll be easier to just acknowledge the emotion and know that I don't really need to eat.
In that same podcast, Jody describes things such as emotional eating as "buffering." She says that when people feel an emotion, they don't know how to deal with it, so they do other things to drown it out. Some people eat, some people scroll through facebook for hours on end, some people play video games or phone games. Some people drink alcohol, take drugs or watch porn. According to Jody, most of our bad habits can be traced back to buffering. We don't want to feel whatever feeling it is that we are feeling, so we escape it, often without even acknowledging or noticing the emotion first. It's not even necessarily just negative emotions. Positive emotions can make people uncomfortable too, especially if they're unfamiliar.
I've been trying to draw a connection lately between feeling the spirit and feeling emotion. I'm not very good at identifying emotion, and I fear I'm not very good at identifying the spirit either. Is there some tangible physical reaction to feeling the spirit as well? I know some people describe it as a burning in the bosom, which makes it sound pretty physical. The few times that I have been able to identify it, It has just been knowledge, like everything suddenly makes sense. There are other times that I just start crying when I'm listening to a song or a talk or something that I know is spiritual. I cry when I watch flashmobs, and military homecomings too, so crying can't always mean I'm feeling the spirit, although I don't doubt that it often does.
I try to really analyze how I'm feeling when I'm in the temple. There is no buffers there. There are no snacks, I don't have my phone. I can't get distracted by the internet or my kids. What do I feel then? It's hard to describe. Not bored, despite there being nothing to do. I am calm, and thoughtful. Are those emotions? Every once in a while some problem that I have been pondering suddenly makes sense. I may or may not have a solution to the problem, but in that moment I am able to just trust that everything is going to work out. I always attribute that to the spirit, but what does it feel like? I don't know.
Another thing that I've learned from that podcast is that I can think whatever I want. It doesn't really matter if it's true or not. That doesn't mean that I don't care about the truth, because I do, but to some extent I am coming to believe that whatever I think is true for me, so it really doesn't matter what other people think and other people say. As long as my thoughts are serving me and making my life better in some way, then that is truth. Thoughts have power. Our brains are always looking to prove ourselves right. So when we decide that something is true, we will start noticing an avalanche of evidence to support that thought. That is why I choose to believe in God. If I decided not to believe in God, I'm sure I could find a mountain of evidence to support that. But I choose to believe in God, and I find overwhelming evidence that it is true! That belief gives me hope and gives me peace, so I will continue to believe it.
I know some people probably wouldn't like the idea that we can choose our own truth, and that's okay, they don't have to choose to believe that. I really like that thought though because it helps me to be more loving and compassionate towards people that don't believe exactly the same things that I do. They can believe what they believe, and it doesn't have to affect what I believe. I actually really like to hear about what other people believe. I find it fascinating! Sometimes I like a belief because I think it will make my life better in some way, so I choose to adopt it. Other times I think, 'oh, that's really interesting,' and I choose not to take that thought. It always helps me to understand that person better though, and whether or not I choose to believe what they believe, It helps me to love them more. ...Or at least that's the goal. This way of thinking is still relatively new to me, and I'm still working out the kinks, but I really really like it!
I need to figure out how to organize these blog posts better. One idea always leads to another and another, and they get long and somewhat rambly. I'll keep working on that. In the meantime, I am working on being still. The scriptures stay to "Be still and know that I am God." I need to get rid of all my buffers, and just feel. Feel emotions. Feel the spirit. Learn to identify both. I choose to believe that I will be successful in this. Hopefully my brain will now give me evidence that it is true! ... sounds a lot like faith. Nice how these things seem to overlap. There's no reason why they can't both be true.
In a podcast called "Better than Happy" by Jody Moore, she says that emotions are just vibrations in our body. All emotions are caused by thoughts that you have about any circumstance. You perceive the circumstance, you think a thought to give meaning to the circumstance, you feel an emotion, and then your brain releases certain chemicals which create a vibration, which creates actual physical symptoms for every emotion. They're subtle, and we don't usually notice them unless we know what to pay attention to.
I haven't really been able to identify any other physical symptom of emotion beyond anxiety, and that's not one that I feel very often. When I do sit quietly and just try to notice every sensation that my body is feeling, usually I notice things like my back is aching, or my eyes are tired, or my feet are cold. Are these because I am feeling emotions, or are these because I have a mattress that isn't working for me, I don't wear my glasses as often as I should, and my house is just plain cold all the time? Are there other things that I'm just not noticing because they're so subtle?
I have noticed that when I have a lot going on and am stressed, I usually want to eat. I don't feel hungry though, so what is it that makes me want to eat? Maybe if I can identify it more easily, it'll be easier to just acknowledge the emotion and know that I don't really need to eat.
In that same podcast, Jody describes things such as emotional eating as "buffering." She says that when people feel an emotion, they don't know how to deal with it, so they do other things to drown it out. Some people eat, some people scroll through facebook for hours on end, some people play video games or phone games. Some people drink alcohol, take drugs or watch porn. According to Jody, most of our bad habits can be traced back to buffering. We don't want to feel whatever feeling it is that we are feeling, so we escape it, often without even acknowledging or noticing the emotion first. It's not even necessarily just negative emotions. Positive emotions can make people uncomfortable too, especially if they're unfamiliar.
I've been trying to draw a connection lately between feeling the spirit and feeling emotion. I'm not very good at identifying emotion, and I fear I'm not very good at identifying the spirit either. Is there some tangible physical reaction to feeling the spirit as well? I know some people describe it as a burning in the bosom, which makes it sound pretty physical. The few times that I have been able to identify it, It has just been knowledge, like everything suddenly makes sense. There are other times that I just start crying when I'm listening to a song or a talk or something that I know is spiritual. I cry when I watch flashmobs, and military homecomings too, so crying can't always mean I'm feeling the spirit, although I don't doubt that it often does.
I try to really analyze how I'm feeling when I'm in the temple. There is no buffers there. There are no snacks, I don't have my phone. I can't get distracted by the internet or my kids. What do I feel then? It's hard to describe. Not bored, despite there being nothing to do. I am calm, and thoughtful. Are those emotions? Every once in a while some problem that I have been pondering suddenly makes sense. I may or may not have a solution to the problem, but in that moment I am able to just trust that everything is going to work out. I always attribute that to the spirit, but what does it feel like? I don't know.
Another thing that I've learned from that podcast is that I can think whatever I want. It doesn't really matter if it's true or not. That doesn't mean that I don't care about the truth, because I do, but to some extent I am coming to believe that whatever I think is true for me, so it really doesn't matter what other people think and other people say. As long as my thoughts are serving me and making my life better in some way, then that is truth. Thoughts have power. Our brains are always looking to prove ourselves right. So when we decide that something is true, we will start noticing an avalanche of evidence to support that thought. That is why I choose to believe in God. If I decided not to believe in God, I'm sure I could find a mountain of evidence to support that. But I choose to believe in God, and I find overwhelming evidence that it is true! That belief gives me hope and gives me peace, so I will continue to believe it.
I know some people probably wouldn't like the idea that we can choose our own truth, and that's okay, they don't have to choose to believe that. I really like that thought though because it helps me to be more loving and compassionate towards people that don't believe exactly the same things that I do. They can believe what they believe, and it doesn't have to affect what I believe. I actually really like to hear about what other people believe. I find it fascinating! Sometimes I like a belief because I think it will make my life better in some way, so I choose to adopt it. Other times I think, 'oh, that's really interesting,' and I choose not to take that thought. It always helps me to understand that person better though, and whether or not I choose to believe what they believe, It helps me to love them more. ...Or at least that's the goal. This way of thinking is still relatively new to me, and I'm still working out the kinks, but I really really like it!
I need to figure out how to organize these blog posts better. One idea always leads to another and another, and they get long and somewhat rambly. I'll keep working on that. In the meantime, I am working on being still. The scriptures stay to "Be still and know that I am God." I need to get rid of all my buffers, and just feel. Feel emotions. Feel the spirit. Learn to identify both. I choose to believe that I will be successful in this. Hopefully my brain will now give me evidence that it is true! ... sounds a lot like faith. Nice how these things seem to overlap. There's no reason why they can't both be true.
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