We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is too limited. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even if they look from behind and if all sensory clues are eliminated. And people’s intentions can be detected by animals from miles away. The commonest kind of non-local interaction mental influence occurs in connection with telephone calls, where most people have had the experience of thinking of someone shortly before they ring. Controlled, randomized tests on telephone telepathy have given highly significant positive results. Research techniques have now been automated and experiments on telepathy are now being conducted through the internet and cell phones, enabling widespread participation.

Speaker: Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 75 technical papers and ten books, the most recent being The Sense of Being Stared At. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, funded from Trinity College Cambridge.

Being with my feeling - or as Michael Brown whom you'll hear from in this interview with Jordan Shafer, that I discovered after receiving an email from Gilles Asselin who spoke with high regard about his book The Presence Process - without condition everything I require in life comes... this is a most amazing inspiration at this moment in time as I'm going through a rough situation in my private life, where it is as if a can of ugly worms of feelings has been opened. Feelings I know very well, feelings that have been part of my life's story for a long time already; actually a melody of feelings that I liked NOT to listen to :-)

So here they are. Hope they'll help you as well.

If you don't want to make view all of them, here is the gist: "If I can feel my discomfort and allow myself to be with it without condition consistently I'll receive what I require to bring resolution."

And here is a jewel:
"Once someone enters the experience being without condition upon their uncomfortable (emotional) signatures that very experience becomes the teacher."

(addendum: I've started up my own experiment after I had seen these video's letting my experience be my teacher:

After having looked at the videos I posted about yesterday I decided to do an experiment testing in practice what Michael Brown speaks about in those videos. I will blog about this experiment and practice here because it will help me keep it up and reflect upon it daily, and it might help some of the people who read these blogs.

Let me give you a bit of background:
In the recent very challenging time in my relationship I discovered - or better, uncovered - a constant pattern of behavior: Deeply opening up to - trusting - someone will lead to abuse sooner or later. This pattern comes from my very young years when my mother gave me away to my grandparents who then put me in a boarding school that then kicked me out... don't want to relate the long sad story of what f****d me up emotionally in my young years, only want to indicate an important influence to the present experiment.

Another important one is that I actually have a very fine-grained ability to feel my emotions; 30 years of therapy and a spiritual path that has been very adventurous has 'helped' me discern many shades of, for instance, grief, fear and anger.
And also: Looking at my feelings has almost exclusively happened with the intention of either healing, overcoming or transcending, and even if I did embrace my feelings - as in the meditations I used to do some years ago in which I did "Satsang with my demons" - it was always with the intention of finally healing them.

And finally one more piece of background to my experiment:
In this recent crisis I've discovered - or actually uncovered - the indisputable fact that my emotions, the dynamics of my feelings, are out of control; I cannot determine what I feel in almost every situation. For many people, especially women, this is certainly no surprise, and maybe it shouldn't be one for me, but it is. This is absolutely clear to me now because as part of the crisis - how it came about - was me expressibly allowing, out of my conviction, something that, when it became a reality, deeply hurt, unexpectedly so.

The premises of the experiment

Being unconditionally with what is right now - flowing with life - is of supreme value (it feeds the soul, not only mine but of everybody I'm with, it is joyful and beautiful, it is needed for true love to unfold, and the foundation for understanding any kind of meaningful truth).

Being unconditionally with what/how I feel is an integral, and necessary, part of flowing with life as an actual experience here and now.

What matters experientally has (at least) 3 facets/components: physical, mental and emotional. By physical I mean the person(s) I'm with or the situation I'm in as a physical presence that 'cause' or 'trigger' (partly) what I experience; the mental is the story I tell myself and/or others about this, my interpretation; and finally what I feel actually - feelings being the prime movers and motivators for my actions and behaviors and words in any given situation.

Feelings/emotions are neither good nor bad in an ethical sense, yet there are feelings I greatly value and seek and those I shun, flee and or want to get rid of. Some of them are 'good' in one circumstance and 'bad' in another.

The premise to be tested in this experiment is that all feelings, especially the uncomfortable ones, are potentially soul-food and enliven or quicken my present being-alive; they inspire in a most profound way by re-connecting me with the flow of life by intentional/willing/conscious participation. This is so as long as I am with these feelings unconditionally (not to heal, change, or in any way influence them).
An important aspect of feelings, maybe their raison d'etre, is to enliven my present state of being.

What this experiment has led to so far

Considering all this in one way or another I've identified a number of uncomfortable feelings that are an important part of the 'melody of feelings' that in some depth keep repeating themselves (at least when now I remember what goes on in general). I've identified 7 that seem to be basic and given them a label for easier identification. They are all situated in the lower breast and stomach area, 2 of them in the gut area.

Much of my behavior seems to be directed at influencing the situations I find myself in in such a way as to not 'give reason' for these feelings to come up, and if they come up to immediately avoid feeling them or if that's unavoidable to diffuse them, throw some nebulae around them etc. If all of that doesn't work I (like to) blame the other or situation for me having them, suggesting that if I could only change them/it everything would be alright again.

It also led me to, in my conversations - and at moments in other situations - keep an eye on the emotional melody playing. Since there were no overwhelming emotions it was easy to just be with them, 'unconditionally', dipping into their flow.

A very interesting effect: I haven't been 'reacting' to what was communicated and could then much more easily respond to the content of what was said...

Design for next few days

In the morning after getting up spend 20 - 30 minutes with both contemplating my 'feeling life' and see if there are more primary uncomfortable feelings that need to be part of the Top Ten, and exploring the ones on the list already, that means:
* Remember situations that trigger  those feelings
* Unconditionally embrace the feeling
* Notice what comes up doing that (not pursuing it)

During the day keep an eye on the feelings, also scan for yet 'unlisted primary feelings'.

Write about this in the evening.

Once there is the resolve to move in a certain direction out of a basic understanding that this is "the call of my destiny", things are more easy, even if from another point of view they might be hard.

Last night I was reading about suffering from a Buddhist point of view - suffering's nature, origin, cessation and the path leading to the cessation - and it occurred to me that the thinking behind this both in the East and the West. and certainly the search to free oneself from the suffering that is thought to be caused by desire and attachment, is maybe a bit mistaken - or at least I used to be.
Suffering seems at first sight to be a feeling, and it is uncomfortable - sometimes it is somehow uncomfortable and at other times almost unbearable; almost because if indeed it is unbearable I'd loose all consciousness or drop dead aor I'd stop bearing it immediately. But what I keep finding as I put some light on my uncomfortable feelings is that they are not at all what suffering is; it's the stories I tell myself, and eventually others, about the causes or "reasons for being" of these feelings - suffering is a story, the feeling is... well, (most) uncomfortable.
The same goes for desire and attachment (both basically have the same 'signature', only the one seems to be more agentive than the other); when now I inspect my desires as they make their appearance in the field of my awareness - it is the story that I tell myself about the feeling: "This is a desire for that," that turns the feeling into 'desire'. Embracing what is called desire, and somewhat stripping away the need to do something about it, actually experiencing it like I would a piece of art that I do not necessarily understand, it turns out to be quite ok to have, it's actually interesting to be with.
Now I don't know if I would say the same thing if much stronger desires arise... if it happens within the next days that I conduct this experiment, I'll report it here. Promise.

Another thing I've noticed yesterday night and today so far (when writing this) is the amazing amount of small irritations that dance their (mostly little) dance in many situations. And being irritated seems to not only be triggered by not getting what I want in those moments but by remarks, small gestures, almost 'nothings'. And, it's an interesting feeling, really. It seems to manifest bodily somewhere in the lower throat area and consist of little needly bubbles (hmm, I just made those words up to indicate something I've never tried to paint in words before).
An interesting aspect of this I've noticed in a team meeting around noon is that simply noticing and 'yessing' the basic irritation feeling it doesn't play out in the conversation or discussion anymore. Patience, something I've cherished over the years being an impatient person - or so I thought -, patience isn't needed at all because the irritation doesn't cause anything, it doesn't flow into behavior or words or even concepts. One could say it's there as the waves on a lake, just rippling away...
In my morning's contemplation my awareness drifted into close inspection and then embrace of one of my Top Seven (or so) uncomfortable feelings that has a major novel as accompanying story. :-) It's name not being important enough to mention in this context here... (which is an amazing discovery in itself, as this experiemnt is about shedding light on the feelings in their very essence, not in how they play out as story in life; a story that is malleable whereas the feeling itself seems not to be so malleable, but simply very present.)
I circled it and found that when the feeling and I really touch I almost don't breathe anymore. This feeling takes my breath away / I stop to breathe "spontaneously" when this feeling appears on the horizon. In the safe bounds of my morning's contemplation I can embrace it, trace it's signature in my body and mind, and can quite easily be with it. This is when I invoke a feeling...

... but when during dinner this evening I was confronted with enough trigger for my anger to appear and at the same time being basically powerless - I got angry, legitimately so my mind tells me, and at the same time knowing that I couldn't do anything to change the situation (damn if I shout, damn if I don't, damned if I run away etc.), powerless anger ("ohnmächte Wut", in German) - confronted with this... I had to leave the room, "and now embrace this!" I thought to myself.
Actually I didn't - I was just about to say I couldn't, but that's not correct; the feeling became so powerful  very, very fast. So all I could do was leave the room and breathe very deeply a couple of times until it subsided enough so I could be with it - and still can be with the residues of the feeling.

Looking forward to continue this experiment, actually. A deep value seems to unfold in real time experience...

Today was challenging - yes indeed.
Maybe because I took another close look at "powerless anger" (ohnmächtige Wut), and maybe also because a major triggering event recurred today in my relationship. Maybe also because I experienced strong waves of (unfulfilled) desire, and maybe because all of this came on strong together.
What's clear is that the stories around these challenging waves are basically legitimate, and that this very legitimacy in turn fuels the feelings. When I feel that, for instance, my anger is righteous or just (that it is right to want to do away with the cause), than that is not very helpful in supporting me to embrace the feeling but rather it pushes me to do something about the cause and thereby 'resolve' the feeling. The conviction that my feeling is "right" or appropriate or justified exaggerates and escalates me "doing something about it" rather than "being with it". There is nothing wrong with that, it's just not in keeping with what I've decided to find out: "Are feelings soul-food; do they enliven my being-flow with life if embraced unconditionally?"

Obviously there's a a distinction to be made here. As much as it is legitimate to want to change the situation that triggers the feeling, attempting to change the situation being fueled by the very feeling that was ignited by the situation - for instance anger - is most probably counter-productive. And if, sticking to the example of anger here, if I'm doing something out of or with anger than I will most likely awaken or fuel the anger of the person(s) within this situation, and thereby I will indeed change it, but it will be a change to the worse.
Reaction breeds counter-reaction in an escalating cycle in which all participants tend to loose; and even if one wins in the short run, one will loose in the long run, because the looser will want to somehow 'even the score'.
So if we take the anger kindled by a socially unjust situation to propel us into action, this will be a reaction and most likely cause nothing but trouble and no lasting or sutainable, positive change. However, this is not an article of faith but a hypothesis that seems to be true on the more individual social level, within my personal relationships, for instance.

It was utterly clear a couple of times today, that reaction - which for human beings seems to be always fueled by 'unenlightened feelings' - has recognizable consequences: loss of consciousness, loss of happiness or satisfaction, loss of a sense of roundness with oneself and the environment.
This is obvious, and I guess I've known it all along - and to know this is almost a commonplace in the culture I live in - but it is one thing to know this, another thing to reflect on it, and still much of another thing actually experiencing it within the flow of ones sense of aliveness (which feels spacious, dynamic, 'full of air', deep, bubbling, beautiful etc.). To react is to loose clarity, energy, aliveness - to respond keeps me connected with the life-flow of the situation. And real responses seem to be called forth from this mysterious what-shall-we-call-it...

So in my mornings contemplation, guess what?, my mind and heart and belly meandered around powerless anger; I saw that this feeling is like a partial paralysis that stops me as soon as anger lashes out; the anger is paralyzed the moment it appears. I could also say it's an automatic and immediate attempt to smother and suffocate it.
In these meanderings some scenes from my youth appeared - suggesting that in certain situations where I had to stop my anger this proved to be the most adequate manner. But I didn't dwell on this as my experiment is not about finding out the stories that go with or even justify my feelings (and very plausibly so, psychotherapy is full of this); rather my experiment is about embracing feelings, it is about being with the feelings that are part of my melody unconditionally.

Exploring powerless anger this way I noticed that, like with the feeling I explored yesterday, it also is taking my breath away. The suffocation is to be taken as much more than a figure of speech.
Then the question appeared, "Do my feelings stay if I breathe deeper when being with them?" So I breathed with it, allowing, inviting the feeling to flourish, to dance its dance inside me and sigh and breathe deeply. And far from disappearing the powerless anger felt "rich", more rounded, as if it started flowing... for a while it was even beautiful. As if the breathing with it enabled me to feel it more compassionately; it gives a more encompassing meaning to the statement, "I embrace my powerless anger."

And during the day, especially around midday wave upon wave of desire washed over me. This seems to suggest that I wasn't involved in it; actually the desire and my thoughts formed, at times, a escalating system in which "I" participated by not allowing it to simply be. Desire was burning inside me wanting to move me into action strongly, almost irresistibly - again, almost. There is my resolution to keep within the confines of the experiment, and there is the wish to just give in; a flip-flop back and forth, a most tiresome experience.
So I wanted, and also escaped into all kinds of alleviating entertainments - looking up my friends blogs, playing around with new plugins, reading news, cleaning my desktop, etc. - I wanted, and at times managed to drift away into some daydreaming; I wanted, and even got quite some work done of what I needed to do. And then some 2, 3 hours later the desiring disappeared and I went into ordinary mode again; feeling slightly wounded, sighing, delving into my work again more lightly, feeling fine, enjoying it - the ordinary wavicles of emotion that are in the background of everything that goes on...

And now I'm a bit tired, and I want to - and will - watch Dr. House do his nasty healing work...

Powerlessness, limitations, the powers of those and that beyond me... this day was filled with intimate encounters with that very feeling.

But first I need to touch on some considerations that have come up in me regarding this exploration as a whole.
It's next to impossible to separate feelings, the essential emotions that I'm exploring in this experiment, from basic story lines or concepts. Anger in and as itself really is "just an energy", to quote a teacher I used to be with for a long, long time, that one cannot say anything about, for instance, if it has purpose, direction or whatever, without the use of concepts. Actually outside of symbols, ideas, language, concepts there is no such feeling as anger; there is actually no feelings and thoughts and bodies and things and energies - there is really not anything and not nothing; and most of all there is no difference, no differentiation and thus no communication except maybe a very general, boundless flowingness - and even saying that is already using concepts.
Anybody wanting to disagree with this can only do so by using the medium of communication and its accompanying concepts (or kiss or smack me, of course) - and she can only disagree because she can follow what I write here using her own concepts and sentences with subjects and objects (and all the other stuff)...

I mention this here because of its role that I saw very clearly saw this morning as I was starting my day (after a good cuddle and sweetness) with opening myself up to my awareness meandering and focusing in on one of the top 7 - 10 feelings. And as you can see from the first lines of this post, I landed with what looks presently to be a very likely candidate for the number 1 on my list of uncomfortable feelings: Powerlessness.
Once this was clear - and it took a few moments before I got an uncanny sense of certainty that, when it appears, clarifies the way for me - I needed to keep invoking it because the tendency to drift away, to dream off, to land in an internal mist that diffuses everything was very strong. So like I have been doing in my morning meanderings in the days before with the other feelings that then I explored, I invoked powerlessness again and again by remembering situations and (self)images from situations in which I felt utterly powerless, moving from the present into the past to uncover the many aspects of this.

The powerless anger I was mentioning yesterday is a most prominent member of this family of feelings, but this feeling has a very important brother (or is it a sister?) in powerless fear and sister (or is it brother?) in powerless grief.
"Today is the day of a family reunion of family Powerlessness," I thought. And since it was hard to focus, or hard to stay in this company, I used a focusing question, repeating it again and again when I found I had drifted off, "How do I feel when I have no power at all?"  When I am at the mercy of whoever happens to be in power, whoever has the upper hand. O, and I know how I feel! By God! Put anger, fear and grief in a pot, stir it well and spice with a sense of guilt and suffocation...

As I was exploring the traces of this feeling, it's signature - what makes it so strong that I try in so many ways to avoid it - I saw that it is in a way the 'flip side' of surrender. To be powerless means "to be forced to surrender" - other than 'being surrendered' which just happens and is beyond one's control to begin with, and happens 'out of the blue'; being forced to surrender, historically and evolutionary is a man's nightmare, and in my life something that happened when I was very young and many times after. Not only did I have to surrender what I wanted, but I also had to give up what I sorely needed, loving attention and whatever else a child needs from his parents or the grown ups that are to take care of him, and really don't.

So what I learnt was suffocating powerlessness, burning powerlessness, sad-sad powerlessness, unreasonable powerlessness, and many other shades of forced surrender - and how to shield myself against actually feeling this, how to create imaginations and imagi-notions that made me feel powerful and influential again, how to manipulate at least my perception in such a way that I did not need to feel powerless. And, you might imagine, there is not much breathing in there!

So then allowing and breathing with powerlessness I felt limits solve, I felt flow happen in deep regions out of sight, I felt a sense of relief touch me deeply. And I think, "Yes, sometimes surrender is forced, or maybe even often, but do I therefor need to struggle, fight and cause a terribly time for me and/or my surround? Do I need an escape? Do I need in some way to do away with this feeling? What for? Does it change thereby? (No, it doesn't.)"

And all day long little - and in the evening a bigger - matters appeared that kindled that feeling and, as much as was in me, I abided by the family Powerlessness that was called to be with me that moment.
And I wasn't really amazed at all taht, as the day was almost done, I was confronted with a situation that showed my powerlessness in full bloom, and it was not too hard anymore to just be with it and have no blame for anyone, including me. And for moments I could even embrace it...

This morning I created a list of all the feelings that have come up in my explorations these last 5 days. I created it because I was utterly tired of it - being with my feelings. It's maybe somewhat like training some muscles that you know you have, that you are using occasionally and now you use them on a daily basis; or it's like when I shifted the computer-mouse from my right to my left hand, after 5 days I was about to change back because it was 'such a pain in the... hand'; but I didn't and now I'm almost as good with my left hand as with my right.

What keeps me at it is to simply focus on the "being tired of it", in itself also a persistent theme or melody in my life, one that I know very well.
But back to my list. I think I can reveal it without thereby getting in the way of anybody wanting to also do this experiment, precluding it. So here it is:

• The fears
  • to be left alone / behind
  • being at the mercy of people / groups / circumstance
  • not being good enough
  • to not deserve good things / to deserve the bad things
  • to be caught by higher authority
  • of the unknown
• The powerlessnesses
  • helplessness
  • suffocation
  • feeling paralyzed
• The aggressions
  • irritation
  • anger
  • sudden freak-out
• Shame
• Grief
• Self-pity

This is not a comprehensive list; this is rather a list of the feelings that I have found to be an important part of the characteristic melody of my person; they are part of my character, or if you want to put it like that, these are the shades of my shadow, the feelings that I used to disown (thinking that they don't belong with me!), and that now I dialog with in an  "I-Thou" fashion (like indicated in this comment to my post on day 2).

So today I was asking myself countless times, "How do I feel right now?"
And I was taken again and again by the connective qualities of the feelings - never mind if they are positive or negative or even neutral. Feelings connect, or maybe are born out of connection, or indicate the quality of connection. If I don't take them to be a comment on the situation but welcome them as I would another person that I'm open to, than they make the connection or relating deeper and more encompassing.

Buddhists I met, and Buddhist literature often speaks about seeing oneself in the other; but how about embracing the other as utterly unique, different and, well, other? This caught me a couple of times today whenever I met people, and then also when I met my feelings - opening up, really feeling them, hosting them as I would a dear friend.

"Ego's appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relationship with other persons." This quote is by Martin Buber, I think. Relating to what are supposed to be negative feelings they become ways that deeply reconnect me to the present flow between me and whatever and whoever you are. It actually might be that similar to conciousness that is much more akin to a non-local field feeling might be like the ocean that embodies sentient beings swim in.

With this in mind and heart I finish the 5th day of my experiment, happy that I allowed the tiredness to just be there and be the feeling it is in the morning...

As I was sitting this morning, scanning the list of the ingredients in the alchemical mix that is cooking in the cauldron of my heart (yes, my heart is also a cauldron; actually it's the whole region between my lower throat and my pelvis) I finally was ready to face one that isn't even on there, and it surely needs to be: Jealousy and it's close cousin Envy.

Some background:
I never thought I was jealous; or that it posed a real problem. When in the past my girlfriends had a lover I hardly felt jealous about it, maybe a little pang in my heart now and then but nothing serious. A possible reason for that might have been that more often than not I was having an affair myself. And at other times, when I was not having one and was 'on my own' when my girlfriend was in somebody else's arms, then still it didn't bother me too much. Maybe I never really got very close to them, maybe I wasn't that open, at least not in the way that I'm open now. So I really wasn't really jealous like I always heard other people to be...
My guess is that this was so also because in some way when my girlfriends had a lover it alleviated some of my fear of not being good enough, I didn't need to cover all bases and provide all their love-needs (which, I thought then and until quite recently, are much more than a man's needs). That's how I would've explained it. Now, I really don't know; whatever I did or didn't do, it was very effective in saving me from feeling 'real jealous'.

So when this morning I decided to have a go at it it wasn't too easy to invoke at first. It took some time to really get into, maybe because jealousy really isn't one feeling, it rather is a conglomerate of feelings, a mixture of thwarted longing/desire, the fear of being left, the sense of being victimized - which is different from feeling abused as the action is not actively against me; there also is a sense of being suffocated, and very deep down a feeling of forlornness.
So it's a mixture of all these feelings, and depending what part of a story comes up in my imagination/mind the appropriate mixture of feelings is activated... or is it the other way around, or even a synchrony? Whichever way it might be, when being jealous there is an automatically triggered behavior: 'closing down'.
It's truly hard to remain open with your partner when you're feeling jealous, whatever form the 'pain' takes. It seems inescapable to want to protect yourself against what you feel is your partners 'fault' - after all, it is what she is doing that triggers the feeling of jealousy, and if only she would stop the feeling would not be triggered and everything would be alright; at least that's the story that justifies and almost automatically causes closure of the heart. The irony, of course, is that the very 'thing' you want, being/feeling close, feeling really connected, is not really possible when you're closing down.
But staying open is "just too painful".
Here is the stark splendor of what this experiment is also about: Staying with the ebb and flow, the 'just too painful' and whatever else the feelings morph into; staying in touch with the 'naked feeling'. And, what shall I say, it is indeed possible. It is possible to not escape into the multitude of tactics that insulate me against feeling all that, that 'disown' (as a psychologist might say) those parts of the melody of my character.

Jealousy is a "Blow against the Empire" of myself; from a developmental point of view it is mortifying the "I am the center of the universe" sense of self where one believes, "It's all about me." Just being with it, with it's eddies of thwarted longing, it's ripples of fear-of-loss, it's waves of suffocated sadness, it's deep currents of forlornness, is good enough. Yes, there is the desire to do something about it, to change the situation, to dive away, to put on an armor and take a sword and cut the knot... and those are feelings that are also part of the tangled knot of feelings called jealousy.

When one really enters the 'field of feeling' from any point regardless of its signature or name then it always connects - there is a flow that, if I were to use a big word, could be called the "flow of being", but then "being" is a word that suggests something being static where there is really nothing static there; it designates something that is 'really real', it's substantial, so the best I can do is call it 'connecting flow'. One discovery, or 'uncovering' of these first 6 days is the connecting quality of the "feeling field" and it's "substantial reality".

Now, as I said before, an important part of jealousy is that you don't want to connect, you don't want to feel the flow between yourself and the person that triggers the jealousy because it is painful; by that I mean, the 'jealous imagination' (like in the Munch paintings above) is getting refreshed again and again as long as the jealousy is there.
This puts one in the midst of a paradox; the nature of feeling being to flow in an open field - even so called negative feelings - and it is the nature of the jealous imagination to want to distance and/or protect you. So I'm happy to have decided almost a week ago to explore being with whatever I'm feeling unconditionally, so that in this paradoxical situation I simply be with the flow. Never mind the paradox...

I thought today was going to be about guilt... it was one of the first feelings I was confronted with in the morning.
One of the unforeseeable consequences of this experiment is that I've gotten a very thin skin. I pick up on a feeling that previously would have led me to an automatic reaction immediately (denial, reframing of the story to my benefit, fight/flight) when it is quite weak in comparison to the 'harder feeling' like anger, fear, jealousy for instance. So I picked up this sense of guilt triggered by a minor remark this morning and took it as a cue to look at that.

So I sat down and invoked feeling guilt. I needed to remember some stories before I could really get in there. So I remembered what I tell myself when I feel guilty to turn up the volume, so to speak, "It's my own fault," is a good one, and then I stumbled upon an old time favorite, "When I am truly myself I inevitably hurt the people I'm close to with my words and deeds."
Having turned up the volume I noticed how my shoulders rose and I bent over; I don't know if this is an English saying but in Germany we say sometimes of a person, "He walks bowed under guilt's weight." Guilt, indeed, feels like a heavy burden.
And I also experienced this morning that when guilt is there the question "Why?" and "Why me?" are rampant, and down that road also the feeling of self-pity is pretty close.

Guilt is, like many other 'negative' feelings very ego-oriented. If something goes wrong in my relationship there is often, at least when I look closer, the feeling that it's all my fault. This is most likely in deep resonance with a child's feeling when their parents separate; I've heard a teenager say that her parents divorce was her fault recently, and I remember my young years and that I was convinced that my father left us because of something I did wrong, and that was only proven by my mom then sending me to my grandparents... and on and on the sad story goes.
The feeling that everything that goes wrong in my relationship is wrong because of my inability or even unwillingness to do the right thing, say the right word, or do or say nothing in the right moments, is a well known acquaintance of mine. Triggered by a situation guilt comes, and leads me into automatic reaction... and this is not only so for guilt but for almost all (or is it all?) feelings. Evolutionary this makes sense: You don't want your consciousness to get in the way when  there's a tiger approaching, you want your body to go into overdrive and survive (and it was those humans that actually did survive and were our ancestors). But in these extremely complex times we live in, and the type of relationships, however intimate they are, that we live in, we don't want to react automatically to people and situations, to the things friends and partners say or do - we want to respond from our soul, our heart, our very being.

Before I couldn't explore my sense of guilt anymore because this feeling was overwhelmed by another one, I found that guilt is closely related to being depressed (another feeling not yet on my list) and the fear of being cast out; maybe because guilt is a social feeling indicating just this danger: people feel guilty when they disobey the rules of their clan, community and maybe even society.
But I have to revisit this at another point because jealousy rode strong and intensively right into my heart at the breakfast table. And now I know the difference between feeling jealousy because of what I fear might happen and feeling jealousy because of hearing that indeed it did happen.

Within the "fearing of what might happen" jealousy there is still the hope that it doesn't happen. But the other one is without that hope, hopelessness gets mixed into the brew in which there is feeling forlorn, helpless, paralyzed, "How can you do this to me?"-selfpity, turning away, wanting to close down forever, and more.
So not only is it a more intense version of this feeling conglomerate it is also one that has "Let go of all hope, ye who enter here" written over its gate. At least that's how it is for me as I've discovered in the waves that have been washing over me today. Yet, it's not just one awful day long drawn out feeling at all. Probably because I'm not telling myself long, winding stories about how I got here, what it is she did, etc. (I can't stop images appearing in my mind, like I said yesterday, but that's different from telling myself all kinds of things about why I suffer this). For hours the jealousy is gone, and there is this beautiful sense of connectedness with her, all and everything that is also there. This I've found to be true for all the 'negative' feelings. It's the feeling-field that I mentioned yesterday that is very much there when I'm out on the streets (at home also, of course, but out there it's noticed in a different way). But when I'm in the jealousy-conglomerate there is a disconnect that beckons...

Jealousy comes in waves, as all feelings do. You could could say that since they are not permanent you shouldn't attach to them, or whatever you tell yourself about your feelings. I prefer, having gone down the road of this experiment so far, to openly experience my feelings, to get to know those I've avoided and disowned so far by invoking them and welcoming them. Even if it looks as if jealousy is here to stay, (really this is a story) I prefer to be with the feeling and explore it closely.

I'm happy I have had the good fortune to do this experiment 'out in the open' because it keeps me at it, also helping me to reflect on it in a wholesome way, and have the encouragement I get from lovely people here and in private.

Even though this morning I sat with "a sense of insecurity" it was next to impossible to get to the core of it.
Insecurity's cousin, Shyness, is well known to me and I've long ago come to know it's presencing qualities and its connective character, so I meandered a bit around shyness, giving myself an easy time.
I also was wondering if after 7 days I shouldn't go back over all the things I've written so far to see from the traces of the posts of this blog if a pattern that I haven't been aware of is emerging. But somehow doing that didn't appeal to me much. And I fear that my bright mind would spin a story that doesn't come from the material itself but is much more made-up than I would want it to be. And also I fear that it would make me more prone again to go with the stories instead of with the feelings. And that is what is really required, because being unconditionally present with my feeling is at the core of this experiment, not the stories I come up with or even the blog posts I write. So instead of going over the last 7 days I took a look at what wants to emerge, and also kept an eye on my sense of insecurity as a kind of focus for my awareness that has the tendency to wander far and wide...

And there is also the consideration that now I have been sensitize to my feeling-sensing so very much that my 20 minutes in the morning dedicated for some day to bring up "the feeling of the day" can now be general to just be with raw feeling in itself and let me be taken by that.
Which is, of course the ideal, and it's not really true. It seems to be true for all feelings except for jealousy: It is an immense challenge at times to just be with it; the stories connected with it, the imaginings which I now find are so deeply ingrained in the partner-relationship are now in doubt very much, in particular the feeling of having a real future together that is light and free and unencumbered by "hard feelings." I guess I simply have to decide if I want to keep to what this experiment is about, even under the present circumstances that cause so much havoc in my throat-heart-solar plexus area so often.

Well, when I wasn't caught up in the kinds of thoughts that accompany my greatest challenge at the moment, and when I felt calm and open and free I saw that overall the first 7 days were really very much dedicated to myself and my feelings, and that now maybe I can also focus a bit more on the feelings of those I live with. And strangely enough today more than ever I heard comments on the way I looked at them and what my expression told them about my feeling-state.
So far you've read - if you've read through all of these "reports" so far - quite a few times that some person triggered this or that feeling. And this is very true indeed. I think my experience this first week has taught me with quite some force and clarity that I can and do own all these 'negative' feelings. This also means that I can more easily "catch" a reaction before it jumps out into the "wilds" (out of everybody's control, really, and self-determined by everybody involved and all they are and are connected with; I mean it's really in nobody's hands: wild) of ordinary life and becomes the trigger of more and more reactions. But it's also quite clear that whatever I do, if I blindly react, if I respond with my eyes half open, or if in clarity I am with what goes on, it always also influences the people close to me. So going through all the feelings I'm going through, and going through them in the way I do - openly, owning them, feeling the connectedness, "yessing" them - doing this experiment with all that it means most likely is not only a blessing but also a stressor to those around me.

In general feeling the other is, for me, outside actually giving these feelings a name - it is most definitely different from being triggered by what they say or don't say but implicate or do. The feeling-field has a different quality to it that seems to be beyond that. Looking closely I notice that it is as if people's movement happen as if inside my body, I experience their moving as if the visual impression gets translated into... if my body would consist of entirely water it would be as if I would feel the water inside me move in synchrony with people's movements outside. And these very movements are at the same time feelings in a language that has, right now, just a very few syllables.

I guess in this second week of my experiment I want to look more into this aspect of "presencing with feeling". Now that I have somewhat honed my instrument of feeling a bit, this might be a next step in this education that happens upon me and that I co-create; trusting my senses, feelings and experiences to reveal what needs revelation, be with what needs good company, and learn what needs to be learnt - making the mistakes I need to make in this unknown process emerging as I enter into it.

One remark that touched me today was hearing, "There is so much love in your eyes." From my perspective I was merely being with that person unconditionally, feeling the field, somewhat (but not invasively) curious about her feeling and being.

This morning, as I was looking out of the kitchen window, feeling the hot fires of jealousy flaming up in my breast, I was thinking, how nice it would be to return to Advaita Vedanta - my old friend - and deconstruct all of this feeling and emotivity and return to the pure "I-am-ness" that I've experienced sometimes when still going down that non-dualistic path. But seeing what that path has done to it's realizers from a sociological or we-fullness perspective (it's pure feudalism or top-down thinking and practice) I guess, I can't really return there. And also, what I said to my heart-sister Helen in a heroic mood still holds true, "I'm not going to transcend... a truly new way needs to come out of all this." Something, I would add, at right angles to the usual spiritual approach to the challenge I'm facing.

And surely honesty is at the root of that, being radically true about what goes on in my heart and mind in the more immediate sense. By that I mean, not drifting off with the wings of my fantasy or drowning with the lead of my imaginings wrapped around my throat. A psychological way to say it would be, "Stop compensating."
It's all about taking a deep look at reality as it unfolds on the feeling level, not with the morbid sense of how horrible it all is or how heavy - even though one could say that and stay within the realm of truth - but because it is clear that "this is the weather inside."

One of the things becoming clear about jealousy today - sorry if this topic bores you a bit by now - is that it really thrives in the absence of knowing what the other is up to. The clearer that becomes, and can be trusted, the less space there is for all kinds of fears and conjectures. Participating in what the other thinks and feels, a shot of reality, can help. In my case, anyway, one of the things that adds to the pain is the "fog of unknowing".
And this fits with my sense of where I might be going a bit more this second week of the experiment, into listening closer what is going on in the feeling-field and what about the people around me.
One of the things that happen in deep sharings of feelings, when we speak about and with what it is we feel now and about its naked resonances with our life and past (not in an epic way but more of a brief reporter's stance), is what today was pointed out to be something that "influences past, presence and future" all at once in the flow between us.
For me it was at times like the burning inside became a kind of liquid burning, a slow flow of deep, deep presence... "not of the mystic kind" as the person said I was with. And at the same time it also was mystic as later we laughingly concluded, as it was having many of the qualities described in the traditional texts of people who describe their mystical experiences.
Who would have thought that to be possible?

And for some time it raised it's head, one of the most dreadful feelings of all: Shame. It is a social feeling, like guilt, only worse, because when you're guilty you can confess and chances are that you will be forgiven - but shame is a dark secret, something that you feel so bad about that you will under almost any circumstance deny it and do everything in your power to let nobody in on. Yes, there are things in my life that I have done that I'm ashamed of, and that I will not tell to anybody. I deal with it in the deep shadows of my soul.

The sense of shame is like a dark fire, and, feeling into it I think, "No wonder that in some cultures the only way to clear your family of the shame you brought upon them (shame is a collective thing) is suicide." Feeling into shame some images come up, and "O my god, how can I do that?" Feeling shame is dreadful, a cold and dark fire, slowly gnawing at your insides - no wonder Christians believed and some still believe that Hell is full of shameful people.
Shame is a cold hell because it goes with the knowledge that what you're ashamed about should never ever come to light. Even writing about it like this makes me feel a sense of dread; as if it was dangerous to admit to having felt this. Ashamed of feeling shame, because, you might think, where there is smoke there is fire, so that I must be guilty because I admit to feeling shame.

I still remember vividly how it was being caught lying, even as a grown-up. That was dreadful, and if I could I would have buried myself to disappear. It is hard, when I now think of it and reconnect deeply with that feeling, to sit straight, and to hold this for more then a couple of minutes.
Yes, shame is very social; it absolutely humiliates you - or better, under the influence of shame you humiliate yourself so that the others might allow you back in to the fold after a while. Yes, feeling shame comes when you do something that even you yourself feel you shouldn't do, and in a sense it is unforgivable, which makes it worse than guilt because it lies outside the range of hope.

I can only maintain feeling shame if I hardly breathe at all; as soon as I take some deeper breaths it gives way to a deep, tearless sadness. There is a sense of remorse and a strong need for salvation - no wonder that the Catholic Church has been abusing this feeling for such a long time to recruit people for it's own purposes. I can feel shame for not too long a time.
And then I think of sexual shame; this might be the worst because somehow the very activity that ignites the reward centers of the brain and the body, that simply "feels good" is thought of badly, very badly indeed. So you're prone to do things that bring shame on you. No wonder that in our society we have been 'deadening' ourselves so much. Shame is such an ugly feeling that I'd rather feel jealousy than shame any day. Shame is the only feeling that makes me immediately feel disconnected, and feel that I deserve it.
Once it's there it's slow to go unlike most of the other feelings that simply and easily peter out if you don't focus on them anymore. It seems the only thing that makes it bearable is a shot of self-pity. Shame also doesn't have many ways out; you cannot easily create a story in your imagination that turns it into blame, for instance or into other feelings like anger - which is, by the way, a good way out of sadness. Shame calls for repentance, a repentance that is as secret as what led to one's sense of shame.

I might revisit shame when I feel a little less weak than I do these days, for now I'm happy that it slowly fades because there is nothing I need to be ashamed of anymore for real, I think. "But," a voice in the back of my head - or was it my heart? - says, "is this really true?" This I'll know when I lay down my head for ever...

A calm day starting out beautifully. And the interesting fact that, if a day starts like this it's hard to focus on the more challenging feelings. So I took that as an invitation to explore - with my imagination, a major tool if used with care and not to avoid this, that or the other - my family feelings which I hardly have. That's not a surprise, I guess, for people who have been following this experiment from the start, and it's natural to me. I hardly remember my father's birthday or my mother's. I need to make a mental note of the birthday of my girlfriend and her daughter, and I actually don't know the one of my grandchild.
This is shocking!
Not to me.

I've tried a couple of times in my life to at least get a semblance of family-feelings going, but it never worked. My guess is that in an important period in my young years something didn't develop that later simply doesn't develop anymore. So I have to make do with a sense of loyalty. And I do have a keen sense of that.
A couple of days before I started this experiment one evening I was asking myself, "What would I like to leave as a legacy?" And it was very surprising for me to realize that one of the 3 'things' I would love to leave for those that come after me was "a happy family". And by family I mean the person closest to me, my son and my girldfriend's daughter, my grand-son, my next of kin, my soul-brothers and soul-sisters, which are not part of the same bloodline but in some sense are much closer to me than most of my kin. So actually I mean a "happy extended family". And I really don't know what I can do to help this come true - my guess these days is, if I can consistently be a true human, and by that I mean someone who is feelingly, intelligently and spiritually present with the whole field of life and living, than this will possibly take care of itself; it will be a consequence of the way I live...

Actually one of the fascinating discoveries in between the high waves of strong feelings that are so common these days is what I've come to call feeling-field. It seems to me that with/through this field we are much more connected to life than through our intelligence and even our consciousness.
Oddly enough, in writing this I show that I still believe there to be a clear demarcation line between consciousness and feeling. Yet, feelingly observing those nearest to me it seems like there is no such line. We meander in between consciousness and feeling most of the time.

Con-science means 'knowing with', and one of the things that are very, very clear is that we live in a society that has been over-emphasizing consciousness for some hundreds of years . This resulted in an education that is all about knowledge; feeling is a weakness that we still suffer from but we'll conquer that in the long run.
Well, we can't really leave it behind, can we? We can put the volume down so much so that it seems like it disappeared - dispassionate science, objective knowledge, processes and situations as 'things' behaving according to 'natural laws', and so on. All of this has led us into a world where we cannot feel with (com-passion: with feeling) others except in a very abstract or hollywoodesk-romantic kind of way. Just look at the way that around these days the professional helpers dance around our wallet hoping to profit from the Christmas-sentimentality by showing pictures of children with huge eyes and thin, extremely thin limbs.

Descartes' saying, that we have to torture nature so that it will reveal its secrets, might be regarded as extreme in our day and age but we're still acting accordingly. In physics the Holy Grail (the myth of the Unified Theory which, supposedly would explain everything physical by reducing it to extremely tiny billiard balls governed by unbreakable rules that are thought to explain everything) is now closer, the conviction goes, because we have just finished for 10 billion or so the biggest machine of all times that smashes particles into each other. Dissect, smash, separate, analyze, torture, freeze, kill, these activities are supposed to reveal reality. Yes, indeed, we live in a civilized world! Feeling is a subjective luxury that governs economy by herd mentality on Wall Street and all the other stock exchanges all over the world - who, by the way through the mechanisms of extreme greed brought us to the brink of systemic change where everybody can now see that "the emperor wears no clothes", as Andersen's fairy tale goes.
Truth is gained by torture of nature and greed is the feeling governing the capitalist economy - and culture, of course, and religion to bless the large masses of us who buy our bliss at the prize of ignoring what we feel stirring in the depth of our souls.

This is a depressing perspective, one that might depressurize you enough to stop for a moment and maybe decide to reclaim the primacy of your own experience, the nobility of your own soul's judgment, the deep breath of your openness - for we are super-social animals that, through ages of suffering and hard learning and a century of wide spread richness (at least in the West, and in many other parts of this world as well) and individualism have the unique chance to truly develop further.
I'm learning to see, by passing through the furnace of facing myself just the way I am on the feeling level, the level that is still largely uncivilized and uncontrollable - the only control being 'desensitizing', making dead, denial, active ignorance and skillfully channeled romanticism - I'm feeling-seeing the wonder of our interconnectedness, the beauty that in spite of thousands of years of civilization we still have everything it takes to be here, and through the alchemical fire of what is called civilizedness, we now finally have the means to realize, for a change, the healthy consequence of what we are: super-social, so social that we could move to the next stage of evolution: the one planet, Earth, opening up to the rest of the multiverse.

I'm done glossing it over: In the presence of feeling-seeing, in the actual flow of being human with other beings, humans and otherwise, in the soulfulness of every meeting - and the dullness of the superficial that also lives here - in the experiment of passion-intelligence-spirit this world is a truly awesome place.

And I am interested...

"I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." - Mark Twain

Opening up to what needs attention in my emotional field today I noticed a slight sense of pressure, "I need to find something..." And then, focusing on just that, turning up the volume, I see how in my life when I feel people put pressure on me to behave this or that way, I get my resistance up... or duck.
But it's as always a bit more complex than that - but I don't want to go into the story. The headline is enough, I think.

People putting pressure on me make me feel small, I feel used, not exactly abused but somehow manipulated, it takes away the space I believe I need to unfold. So I get irritated and resist. And I always seem to have my antenna out so that I immediately feel/know if someone wants something from me. That is step one of pressure: wanting something.
Zooming in on this mixed brew of feelings - because it is somewhat entangled and messy  it seems - I uncover an aspect of what I perceive at first as "someone putting me under pressure", it is that I want to please: I want people to think that I'm there for them. There is a sense of duty in there as well; I must be there for others, to help and protect and support even if that cost me something (for some time I was in the role of the oldest brother of 3; before we were scattered all over; and then again for 3-4 years with step-brother, half brother and step sister, this time 5, before I left home for ever age 15). Yep, I have to take care. It's not right to want something for myself. That would not be good. That will make the people I love turn their backs on me, or hurt me, or abguse me or worse. Wanting soimething for myself is no good. But in secret I do. Therefor I'm not good enough. And I feel like a bad man. "I know I'm not good enough." And therefor I need to prove my worth, and that can never be enough...
When people put pressure on me, and that happens easily because I put so much pressure on myself to do my utmost, when they just add a gram of weight, the load gets very heavy. So I resist. And feel bad, because I resist.

I don't think all this when I feel the awful pressure; I just feel constricted. I can't breathe. Under siege. Because whatever I will now do will not be enough. Powerlessness comes, and then anger, "Why can't they leave me alone?!"
Letting it wash over me, just feeling it, breathing deeply and feeling it... I feel so much alive.

Revelation hits me, "These feelings make me feel alive, connect me with a tingling that rushes through my body... that makes me sit up and breathe deeply." Becoming a host to these feelings they turn out to ruffle my feathers enough to let in some air.
I guess I'm getting some practice now with 'dark feelings'. This makes me feel pretty good about myself. It is empowering: Following the trail of my very own experience change happens.

Some thought comes, "Remember the rose cloud." The rose cloud is that sense that once we've hit the ground and accepted things just the way they are, we get a lift, a high that can last a little while. If we make the mistake of actually believing that now we've got it made we're in for an ever deeper down... (This comes from reading Christina Grofs' book "In Search of Wholeness" where sometimes she refers to her experience of recovery from an addiction). But my guess would be, as long as I keep the practice of "yessing my dark feelings" up, and expand that to the great feelings as well (don't wanna turn up the volume there until I feel that welcoming the shadows has become second nature)... I'll be able to handle the rose clouds that invade my reality now more often.

"Thanks to the human heart by which we live; thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears." - William Wordsworth

Last night, brushing my teeth I looked in the mirror, and what I saw made my inner critic come out. The feeling that goes with that is very  similar to distrust which is the negative of curiosity; curiosity being in this case "taking a look at myself, trusting that there will be something here that can cause delight, new understanding, an interesting game... etc."
So I was looking at myself distrusting, and then noticed the feeling. Upping the volume a bit it then became possible to switch back and forth between distrust and curiosity. (If you look at the picture, what do you see?)

And then I realized that actually every evening, when I see myself there, there is also feeling... "I've never really noticed before," I thought, "that the heart is always at work - it's never silent." Well, that's a conclusion, of course, because my heart could well be silent when I'm not listening. But as soon as I take notice I can hear it feel...

What does the heart sound like? I don't think I can ever hear it's pure song, at least I don't think I ever did. Being conscious will always color it with aspects of consciousness which are in turn resonating with the particular circumstances the heart is noisy about. If, as I did in front of the mirror, I intentionally change the headline of the melody from a skeptic to a curious one, from "He doesn't look too good" to "I wonder what a change in the lighting would do to the looks of this face", then the the tune my heart sings doesn't necessarily change, but it feels different.

Hmmm, maybe not too clear.
Listening a while to my heart during my morning experimental focusing time, during my "meandering in the feeling space" time, I saw that consciousness always has intention; I'm always focusing / defocusing in some way (I'm dubious if the Buddhist 'empty mirror' consciousness, the pure witness, exists as a reality - I know it does exist as metaphor for making sense of a particular kind of experience; I have used it myself to understand certain states I've visited).
Consciousness is always alighting on something, some content, some concept, some intuition, some revelation. It's like the light - there is no light in empty space; at least you cannot know if there is or isn't; so you need to hold something in light's path that it can bounce off from to know if it is there.
So whatever I'm feeling in it's purity, consciousness will also color it one way or another. And what is happening within me since I started this experiment is a kind of meshing up, a disentanglement and purification - alchemy comes to mind again.

What is important about this? When I look at you or anybody my heart sounds with that, and my consciousness (in which there are streams from the past, present and even the future) colors it - and in turn is conditioned by the hearts melody in a, most likely highly complex, kind of free jazz, to use a musical metaphor. So again, what are all these thoughts good for when exploring being with feelings unconditionally?
Well, for one I discover that there actually doesn't seem to be an "unconditionally." That's an imagination that seems to come from overrating the power of consciousness.  But more importantly it helps me when I look at you, when I enter the feeling-field with an other person.
I might see you as looking skeptically at me, whereas you just feel curious.
Being super-social animals we do have an amazing capacity to accurately feel the persons we are with. But even if - and I actually believe we do - we feel exactly as our friend, even if our mutual hearts are in unison, we still can and do sound often quite different. It takes time to tune in to each other to get wonderfully polyphonic... (and I'm not talking about the make-believe symphoney here that so often is the suffering that we sell to each other as "I'm feeling fine.")

So today was dedicated to entering into the feeling-field with these considerations in the background (I only formulated them now, though). And I feel that my body is very much relaxing when I listen to my heart in a more consistent way...

One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

One of the truly aspects of this study turns out to be the malleability of feelings - or maybe it isn't the feelings themselves but the way the are perceived. But I guess, I don't have to decide what is what here, and simply be with what I experience, and how I experience it.

Take for instance jealousy. I've now had quite some experience with that feeling as you know. I've known the feeling when it's very low key, nothing more than a tiny "pang!" in the art, nothing more than a mere irritation than can be easily hosted to a violently destructive flare that robs me of almost all my capacities to move, think or do anything.

Yesterday I was telling about the possibility that one and the same feeling can have a distrustful or curious face. And without going too much into why I think this is so again I've had the experience today of feeling the same feeling that in one circumstance I called jealousy and that, as I found out, can also be called intense sensuous joy. I say that because feeling intense sensuous joy there was this amazing flare inside of me that, and this only showed so in my reflections on it, was almost the same as in jealousy.

It reminds me of a very revelatory experience I had more than 2 decades ago.
I had fallen in love with a wonderful character, someone who wiped me off my feet, as they say. And I was sitting on a bench near an Amsterdam canal, still reveling in the feeling - that was mutual to my good fortune - when suddenly it dawned on me that the feeling of "falling in love", or  this wonderful romantic feeling in my body actually felt exactly like advanced nervousness or stage-fright. Only as romantic feeling it was very desirable, and as stag-fright it was quite the opposite.
When I was with this girl it was also hard to be and express myself, just as when standing on stage or being afraid of what's next. Only "in love" with someone who was under the same spell it was just beautiful...

So most of today, especially the morning hours - but it's still there with me - there is this wonderful intensity of being, where your whole body tingles with delight in just feeling alive, there is this spaciousness in and around the head, there is this clear space everywhere and this moving with everything heart...
Having decided to be with my feelings today was utterly easy and pleasurable. It's like breathing this intoxicating stuff called air!

I don't want to make too much out of this (remember what I said about the rose cloud a few days ago?) but it seems to underline the basic idea that whatever feelings are in truth they seem to have deep similarities between their positive and negative expressions. I don't know, really, if curiosity and scepticism or sensuous intensity and jealousy are actually the same feeling, but it seems to make sense to me to see them as deeply interpenetrating phenomena.
The idea might help in times when the so called negative expression comes knocking on the door of my guesthouse, helping me to open the door wide and not only welcome them but be a good host to them as well.

But whatever might come out of this, it's wonderful and I wish you could be here with me :-)