Selected Writings on affective Feelings

Richard’s Journal

Peter’s Journal

Vineeto’s Writings

How to Investigate Feelings

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Discussions about affective Feelings

Audio-taped Dialogues  | 2 | 3 |

Richard | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Peter | 2 | 3 |

Vineeto | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Others | 2 | 3 |

Affective Feelings
(Emotions, Passions and Calentures)

1 The action of FEEL  2 Physical sensibility other than sight, hearing, taste, or smell; the sense of touch  b (A) physical sensation; a perception due to this  3 The condition of being emotionally affected or committed; an emotion (of fear, hope, etc.) b In pl. Emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies  4 Consciousness; an emotional appreciation or sense (of a condition etc.) 5 A belief not based solely on reason; an attitude, a sentiment  6 Capacity or readiness to feel (esp. sympathy or empathy); sensibility  7 Knowledge of something through experience of its effects. Oxford Dictionary

The three ways a person can experience the world are:

1. cerebral (thoughts); 2. sensate (senses); 3. affective (feelings).

The arising of instinctually-sourced feelings produces a hormonal chemical response in the body, which can lead to the false assumption that they are actual. Given that the base feelings are malice and sorrow (sadness, resentment, hate, depression, melancholy, loneliness, etc.) we desperately seek relief in the ‘good’ feelings (love, trust, compassion, togetherness, friendship, etc.). To live life as a ‘feeling being’ is to be forever tossed on a raging sea, hoping for an abatement to the storm. Finally, after a particularly fierce storm, one ‘ties up in port’ to sit life out in safety or putters around in the shallows, so as not to face another storm again. We are but victims of our impassioned feelings – but they can be eliminated. Feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts and, as such, we can free ourselves of their grip upon us.

Usually we divide emotions into groupings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and try either to repress or deny the bad ones – fear and aggression – while giving full vent and validity to the good ones – nurture and desire. Unfortunately this attempt to curb fear and aggression has had no success as is evidenced by the all the wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, corruption, suicide, despair and loneliness that is still endemic on the planet. Love and hate, compassion and selfishness, etc. come inseparably in pairs as is testified by the continual failure of humans to live together in anything remotely resembling peace and harmony.

The root core of human emotion is the instinctual program of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, instilled by blind nature to ensure the survival of the species.

  • Fear hobbles us with a desperate need to belong to a group, to cling to the past, to hang on to whatever we hold dear to ourselves, to resist change and desperately seek immortality.

  • Aggression causes us to fight for our territory, our possessions, our ‘rights’, our family and our treasured beliefs – seeking power over others.

  • Nurture causes us to care, comfort and protect but also leads to dependency, empathy, sacrifice and needless heroism.

  • Desire drives us to sexual reproduction, avarice and greed.

While absolutely essential in the days of roaming man-eating animals, rampant disease, high infant mortality, these very same instincts now threaten the survival of the species. The instinctual passions only ‘care’ for the survival of the species – the strongest, most aggressive, the crudest. Further, blind nature gives not a fig for your happiness or well-being.

We are relentlessly driven, despite our good intentions and moral codes, to act instinctually in each and every situation in our lives and this is the cause of all our angst and confusion. Up until now, no one has dared to attempt the elimination of not only the instinctual emotions of fear and aggression, but nurture and desire as well – the whole instinctual programming. Each and every human is capable, given sufficient will and intent, of weakening the stranglehold that feelings, emotions and instincts have on their thoughts and behaviour to such an extent that they can become virtually free of their influence.

Then, and only then, is it possible that their elimination will occur through a mutation causing a total and complete disconnection from their source in our primitive animal brain. Once one gets rid of the whole lot for something extraordinarily magical lies in the direct sensate , sensible experience of the purity and perfection of the physical universe.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

© The Actual Freedom Trust