How Life Really Feels.

After I decided to just do whatever I (damned-well) felt like doing, it kept coming back to me that perhaps I wasn't being as organized as I could, that I should be dealing more with goals and what-not in order to be more efficient and such.

In short, I simply found that I was as or more productive than when I was busy analyzing and planning every week, plus following daily "to-do" lists which accomplished my "strategic" and "tactical" planning.

The main point which improved is that I was inspired more often and so actually worked on more stuff which was interesting to me.

This made me happier, much happier.

And even while I've worked this all out, my studies continue. For that Route to Infinite Freedom, is just a guide. I still have to walk it out myself.

In doing these studies, of course there are some interesting crossovers I keep running into.

I first ran into this with the Release Technique.  There, Larry Crane said that you "felt" the effects of emotions in the body. He and older traditions held that this was the cause of various illnesses - as the feelings in the body areas caused stress, which caused dis-ease to show up.

Simply releasing those feelings alleviated or "cured" the illness. (Even though the FDA says no one can actually claim to "cure" anything...) What you were really doing was simply letting go of the stress you had put there. The result was that the lack of ease (dis-ease) you felt disappeared.

I was not so surprised that Chris Vogler ("Writer's Journey") mentioned that a well-written story would then show up in influencing the body. A person "gets into" a well-paced narrative, which then invigorates the adrenal and other glandular secretions, so causing "feelings" in that area.

But what was interesting was to find Jim Britt in a collection of T. Harv Eker's lecture-series who echoed the same concepts. Now you have to know that Britt uses Release Technique (as does Eker) in his seminars. It's just that useful. Shows up all over the place.

Britt found that when he consults his feelings about what he is doing, he can tell rapidly whether he's on or off track. And keeping on track keeps him successful. It brings him more opportunities.

The key point is that Britt goes a bit further than Levenson, Crane, or others do in their discussion of what are feelings. He differentiates between body feelings and emotions. There's native states and emotions.

Emotions really go back to the original root, which means something that "moves out." They are things you emit, communications. If they are affecting your body, you are holding onto them. Emotions aren't supposed to be held in, suppressed. They are things which are originally supposed to just leave.

Now native states are just that. Calmness, Peace, even Love. These are states. They don't flow, they just are. They aren't emotions. But you can't really experience them until you can release all your pent-up or expressed emotions. Joy and happiness are also states.

Emotions are things you throw out at other people (or at yourself.) States are just  condition of being. You are "angry at" or "critical of" others. You can't just be them. You always have a target in mind. You can be calm, or peaceful, or joyous - and not have anything in mind except the current moment. That's a state.

Subtle difference.

But you'll be able to tell with their affects on your body. Feelings affect the body and are generally caused by emotions.  But our language blurs this thin line - that you can "feel" happy - but states cause good reactions in the body, healthful ones. Emotions cause stress in the body, not healthful (except in small doses, like spice.) You can live without emotions. What's left over are your native states.

When you let go of all the programs which cause you to react with emotions - you are left with native states. And these (peace, joy, calmness, love) simply are. Even love - you can love someone, which is a form of sending loving thoughts over their way. And these can be felt.

But feelings don't mean something is an emotion. You can feel a certain way, but it doesn't mean that someone else's emotions caused it. No one else can emote to or at you and create anything in you at all. You create all your own feelings. You create all your own emotions. A person who is calm, at peace, can stay completely unruffled by someone else "going off" on them.

This isn't widely known. But Zen masters and martial art experts know it to be a fact. If you get or stay relaxed, for instance, you can't remain or become angry.

Now, most of the stories Vegler was talking about are not enlightened pieces. They are enabling you to mirror the situations and cause those emotional feelings in your body. If you read books such as The Tao, by Lao Tze, it will help you assume native states of calm and peace. If you read Art of War by Lao Tzu, it can cause you to become angry or excited. If you read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, or Gone with the Wind (another book about war), you can experience the vast repertoire of possible feelings. Or view movies such as the Lion King (which Vogler worked on) and you'll be right there in the mix of emotional responses.

It's far more interesting that the most successful self help programs (Release Technique, Silva Technique, even Eker's programs about the Millionaire Mindset) - all these have been tested in part or in whole and found to be very effective. In every single case, they instruct and facilitate the person to reach a high native state (some call it Zen, or "The Zone") and to let go of the emotions which are clouding the mind.

For our use, once you can utilize native states as a permanent operating condition, you're ready for spiritual training, which is what these articles are about.

Not that you can't entertain yourself with emotions and well-written stories. But the point is that you can achieve more understanding and higher personal ability when you are operating from native states of beingness, not emotions.

It's also true that your inspiration and intuition almost only come in when you are in calm, peaceful states of contemplation. While you can have emergency insights which will save your life, this isn't common. And many people report that these insights were operative where the person was somehow "distant" or "detached" from the emergency they were facing - that time seemed to "slow down."

Again, we are talking operating at native states, completely removed from emotional patterns, programs, and feelings which were usually common place. (It could be said that the bulk of the victims out there from emergency-type situations are somehow blocked from reaching into any native state to access their intuition for solutions.

Takes some experimenting and practice with. But this will help you tons.