I have this t-shirt that says, “I Think I’ll Just Be Happy Today.” When I bought it many years ago, it sure seemed like a nice enough sentiment. Quite empowering, actually! If I want to feel happy, –which of course, is always the goal feeling, right?– I can just decide that I’m going to be. For like, the whole day! It’s something I have the power to choose. It’s something I get to control. Hooray! If I just work hard enough, I’ll be able to change my thoughts into positive ones, and then I’ll feel happy. Great formula! Neat and tidy! Job done! This makes sense, doesn’t it?
When we are completely identified with the mind, absolutely!
But in your experience, does changing your thinking actually lead to changing your feelings in a meaningful way?
Does manipulating your thinking to make it more positive really shift your felt experience?
I mean, maybe for a little while, it can. For example, if you’re feeling like crap and it occurs to you to focus on the things in your life that you’re grateful for, that can redirect the mind for a bit. It can feel like a relief. But, much like any of the other things we do to distract ourselves from uncomfortable sensations, it is not a lasting solution…
Look, we are feeling creatures who think. That is how humans evolved. That is still how our brains, nervous systems, and bodies work. In the Feeling-Thought Cycle, there are physical sensations happening in the body (many of which we are not consciously aware of), then the thinking mind comes in to interpret those sensations. The left-brain narrator overlays the sensations with a story about YOU and your experience. In most cases, thought is simply coming in after the fact to try to make sense of what it perceives is happening in the body. And it’s highly biased and not particularly accurate. Like… at all.
So if we go messing around with changing our story to a nicer one and ignore the physical sensations arising in the body, there’s going to be an inherent mismatch in our body-mind experience! It seems to me that you can’t think your way out of a feeling problem.
And while we’re on the subject of feelings being problematic, what if that’s not really a thing?
What if there is no such thing as any feeling being a problem?
Regardless of our conditioned preferences, as human beings, we were designed to feel a range of physical and emotional feelings. It seems to be part of the deal! Inherently, there is no feeling that is better or worse than another. It is all just formless energy constantly moving through us that takes shape as some sort of sensation and/or perception. Liking or not liking it is simply another experience.
And if we dig down just a little bit more, what is it that underlies all of that impermanent, transient experience?
What is the space in which all experience is held?
What is here that is before, between, and beyond happiness, or wanting, or resistance, or stories, or beliefs, or behaviors, or perceptions, or anything else we experience?
These are not questions that can be answered by the conceptual mind. Nor are they questions that can be answered by feeling sensations or doing or not doing anything. They are not actually questions at all. They’re a vain attempt at pointing to something that is so obvious that it has no location, and thus cannot be pointed to. It is not separate. It is not an It.
This is all so very simple. And you already know. You’re already there.
Right now.
In This.