Gita's Q/A Forum: Questions From Readers

Question: I have been pondering on the difference between the understanding of feelings versus emotions. Is there a difference and how would you explain it? I'm asking this, since this is what I have been observing lately about myself. That's where a lot of my chaos is trapped within. I am not able to differentiate between what is real and unreal in feelings and emotions.

As always thank you for your help and support.

Answer: Emotions arise from the emotional body and are based on desires, needs, patterns inculcated in us through our growing years, as well as fears, various self-deceptions, or expected actions. They are from our own emotional body and our own perceived needs from life. The emotional body has seven layers. From the lowest layers emerge feelings that deal with self-preservation. When these natural, self-preserving emotions are mixed with distortions or pollutions, then they become hurtful and hateful. For example, it is natural to love, but when love is distorted, it becomes jealous, angry, and can cause harm when the person feels that their love is being rejected or somehow violated. In the higher levels of the emotional body, the self-preserving emotions change into inclusiveness, and love becomes more selfless and freeing.

Emotions are also built over lifetimes and get recorded into our emotional permanent atom. This is part of our subtle DNA structure. When we incarnate, our emotional body is built on the patterns we recorded in previous lifetimes.

Feelings are related to our physical body, etheric (subtle) body, emotions, and even mind. They may also arise based on our interpretations of life around us. For example, we feel pain or pleasure in our physical body. We feel happy or sad in our emotions. Energetically, we feel the negativity or healing energy of people around us. We may also feel the expansion of our consciousness, the power of great ideas, the exhilaration of discovery of a meaning, or solving a problem and so on. Or, feelings can be had as an immense sense of joy and unification as we become one with an idea or have an expanded sense of universality.

We express feelings in any form of expression, based on our training, level of focus or consciousness, or need. For example, our feelings can be expressed in war or aggression; they can be expressed as forgiveness and letting go; they can be expressed in creative arts of all kinds; or in an inner silence and deepening maturity when we see the immensity and beauty of life. Feelings are complex and there is a bigger picture attached to them. As we grow and mature, just as emotions grow more complex and universal, so do feelings.

When you have a feeling or an emotion, measure its effect on your life according to these seven higher principles:

• Beauty
• Goodness
• Righteousness
• Joy
• Freedom
• Striving Toward Perfection
• Sacrificial Service

Ask yourself, “To what degree do these emotions/feelings involve these principles and to what degree are they antithetical to these principles?” The closer your feelings and emotions are to these principles, the more real they are in the everlasting-soul sense. Then you can observe that emotion or feeling carefully, rationally, to see where it came from and what it causes in your life. When you determine that these feelings or emotions are good, you can expand them. When you decide they no longer serve your growing and expanding True Self, then you can take actions to change them. The key is to lift yourself to a higher level and remove impediments, slowly, slowly, without hurry and undue stress. Always know, you can change given enough time and effort and no emotion or feeling is permanent, but can be changed, purified, matured, and expanded to a new level.

That should give you a clear understanding and a deeper appreciation of the power of the human soul.

You are welcome!

Gita