Unfortunately
most of us are brought up to believe it is acceptable to be in certain
feeling states and not in others. This, I believe is a problem caused
by people not understanding the grace and humanity of real feeling.
Without feelings there can be no warmth and no empathy. Without feeling
there can be no intuition.
Thankfully
most of us will have retained some degree of our ability to feel. The
psychopath is the most obvious example of the person who at some time
has been so harmed they have completely lost their ability to feel. It
is because of this very fact that they are able to harm their victims,
so cruelly, either psychologically or physically. Psychopaths
themselves can be healed. A psychiatrist successfully healed
psychopaths in a British prison. By treating them with respect and
humanity, he was able to take them back to the situation which had been
so painful for them that their ability to feel was lost. A psychopath
can be defined as a person incapable of empathy. These men became warm
and began to feel empathy for others. If a psychopath can be healed,
each and every one of us can regain our natural right to feel. (Please
note, this psychiatrist was clearly a gifted man and he himself said it
was a scary experience and he had guards outside the door. I would not
advise anyone to believe they can heal a psychopath simply with respect
and humanity! But I am saying that it would appear that under the right
conditions, even the most cold psychopath can be healed)
There are
two things which I have noticed about a feeling person. Firstly a
feeling person does not try to control another. This is because coming
from the feeling place they recognise their own right to be who they
are and far from wanting to control and manipulate others, wish instead
to meet others also coming from their own genuiness.
The second
thing I have noticed about the person who feels is that it is
impossible for them to deliberately harm another. They will express
their feelings, including anger, but they will not act in a malicious
way.
Emotions as I understand them differ from feelings in that every one
can have them, even psychopaths. An emotion appears to be a re-action
to something. In this way emotions can be of two varieties and do
themselves sometimes, but not always, contain intelligence. The reason
for this is quite simple. We react in the present moment in an
emotional way if the situation demands it according to our instincts, understanding and past experiences.
The problem is that until we become more aware of ourselves, we carry
around all kinds of memories and past hurts within us. This can result
in our being over aggressive or indeed over passive in the present
situation. The person who "blows their top" at the slightest cause or
who allows themselves to be a rug for people to trample on definitely
has some issues which they need to resolve in order to be more fully in
touch with their own inner resources and able to act appropriately and
effectively in any given situation.
When we use
our emotions appropriately, for instance raising our voice to defend
ourselves when someone is stepping over our boundaries, this is
intelligent use of our our emotions.
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