Have We lost Our Way to Our Feelings?

Even though it seems that we most of us have lost contact with the Feeling Dimension in our lives, actually we have not lost our way completely, we have simply starved it. We have to feed the Feeling Mind to develop it. Only then can you have the experience of experiencing. If you do not feed and grow the Feeling Mind, you will intellectualize it into oblivion; you will waste your life thinking that you are feeling and thinking your feelings, and nothing will happen in your life. The truth is you are not experiencing your life; you are thinking it away.

That is why people say, "Nothing is happening in my life; I do not feel what you are speaking  about, I do feel different after all the inner work." That is because they do not know how to experience their feelings. They are thinking their feelings.

They may have emotional reactions but no feelings. They always go into emotion thought instead of experiencing their feelings. They have tried but are missing a dimension – the Feeling Dimension as Osho referred to it. (Osho was an Indian mystic, and his work was viewed as a controversial new spiritual movement  leader during his life. He rejected institutional religion, insisting that spiritual experience could not be organized into any one system of religious doctrine.

Osho declared that one must cultivate and develop the Feeling Mind dimension in order to pass into being. To do this, you will have to develop a fuller understanding of feeling and experiencing. Many spiritual leaders have said that it is essential for the Feeling Mind within you to start functioning; only then will other growth techniques help you. Otherwise, you will go on thinking that energy is rising in your body, but there will be no feeling. And if there is no feeling, no connection to the Feeling Mind, imagination is impotent and futile. Only a 'feeling imagination' will give you a result.

Do You Know The Feeling Mind? The first difficulty in connecting to the Feeling Mind will be that you don't know what feeling is. Try to develop sensitivity to it. When you touch something, close your eyes; don't think; feel, feel, feel.

For example, if I take your hand in my hand and say to you, "Close your eyes and feel what is happening." Immediately most of you will say, "Your hand is in my hand." But this is not a feeling; this is thinking from the Thinking Mind.

Then I again say to you, "Feel, don't think." If I say again, "Just feel, don't use your head. Then observe what you are feeling (not thinking) right now?" When you do then you be able to feel and say, "The warmth." "Your hand is in my hand" – this is head-oriented.

The actual feeling is that certain warmth flows from my hand to your hand or my hand. Our life energies are meeting, and the point of meeting has become hot; it has become warm. This meeting, this connection, is the feeling, the sensation, the real. But we go on with the head continuously. That has become a habit; we are trained for it. So you will have to commit yourself to reopening your Feeling Mind.

You must learn to grow in Sensitivity. When you touch, hear, eat, and take a bath, allow your senses to be open and feel. And don't think – feel. You can do many other things, and there is no need to make a specific effort. When you go to sleep, feel your bed and the pillow – the coldness. Just turn on it, play with the pillow, and experience it.

This idea is best illustrated by a story that Osho told his audience. One day I was standing on the beach, and the sun was setting. It was tremendously beautiful, and I said to my companion. "Look at that sunset!" She was busy talking about something else, so I said again, "Look! Such a beautiful sunset." She reluctantly stopped talking and said: "Yes, but don't you think there should be a little more purple just on the left?"

I was shocked; this was not a painting but an actual sunset! She could not feel the beauty; she was not experiencing it. It was reality, and she was engaging it with the Thinking Mind.

We go on saying things, unaware of what we are saying. You must stop verbalizing; stop thinking - only then can you deepen your Feeling Mind. If the Feeling Mind is developed and deepened, all areas of your life will be enriched.