Lesson #15: Your feelings are messengers

For a long time I didn’t seem to have feelings. I learned at an early age to disconnect from my feelings. I saw this as a great achievement. After all, feelings were difficult, feelings were a sign of weakness, feelings were a distraction. Without the nuisance of troublesome feelings, life could be much simpler. This approach worked for me. Until it didn’t. And when it didn’t I started to see what I had missed. And I started to see the havoc this decision (as a strong minded child) had caused.

For one, my lifetime of being tossed by the stream of life because I had no particular preferences which meant everything was interesting to me but nothing in particular .. which meant I consumed myself with constant studying and spiritual seeking, searching for something I couldn’t pin down. I couldn’t make decisions because, it turns out, true decisions need to come from feelings and not from the mind. I became so disconnected from life, that life became unbearably meaningless and unfulfilling. I learned that feelings weren’t an annoyance of life .. feelings were life.

I learned that feelings are our guide and our connection to being alive.

Having strayed so far into the no man’s land of the mind, returning to the body and the heart has been a years-long journey .. but it is a journey I’m happy to be on for the rest of my life.

In the past I felt a need to make the most of my life by learning and experiencing as much about life as possible. That hasn’t really changed — except that now I embrace my experience of life in a much richer and deeper way by accepting all the feelings that arise, and exploring what it means to be fully human. Mind, body, heart and soul.

And that feels good.

How are you feeling?