In the previous post, labeled THE PROCESS, we understood what exactly the natural pathway of expression was, “feeling – thought – verbalization – expression”. Equipped with the insight of “what should be” we are now in a better position to understand “what actually is happening” in our own lives.
To begin with, we have been totally cut off from our root that is our own innate intelligence. This has lead to a major blockade in our ability to relate to feelings with clarity. Hence we are living most if not all our lives with thoughts and very little if any with feelings. So the very start or the root of the “feeling – thought – verbalization – expression” process is disrupted since instead of beginning with feelings we begin with thoughts. Before we go any further let us also understand clearly that MOODS are different from FEELINGS.
Moods are nothing but PERSISTENT THOUGHTS, thoughts with a capability of prolonged stay in our system, they have the capacity to become the background upon which further new thoughts of a similar pattern emerge and hence linger on in our system. For example a thought comes to mind that “I should go to the market and buy some grocery”. This thought will fulfill itself and disappear once we visit the market and get the grocery. On the other hand, if we visit the market and find it closed for some reason then a sense of disappointment takes over our system. Now just like any other thought this sense of disappointment should also leave us as soon as we leave the closed market and head for home. But it does not; this sense of disappointment becomes a mood and sets off an entire pattern of thoughts based on it. Now thoughts start coming in “oh all the grocery is about to get over what will I do tomorrow?”, “what if the market remains closed tomorrow also?”, “what if the banks are also closed today and don’t receive my cheque payment, today was the last day of payment?”, “what if this and what if that......” a pattern of negativity and failure grips our system due an isolated and unrelated incidence triggering off a PERSISTENT THOUGHT. This is what we call a mood.
Feelings on the other hand are an INSTANTANEOUS AWARENESS generated within our system either in response to an outer world stimulus or situation or instantaneous awareness of our inner self WITHOUT the involvement of words or language. For example, when we see magnificent scenery, such as a beautiful sunrise or snow clad mountains etc..., we instantaneously feel a sense of joy within ourselves a sense of happiness pervades throughout our system. But please be very clear that this sense of pleasure or joy is independent of words or language, we just feel it. Only when asked “how was it?” or later just for the sake of expression and categorization of the event in our life for our own selves we reply using words such as joyful, pleasant etc... But at that instant of experiencing the moment the pleasure or joy did not come to us in the form of repetition of words such as joy, joy, joy or pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. It was just an instantaneous awareness generated within our system which was given a name, such as joy or pain etc..., at a later moment in time in order to classify and categorize the moment. This categorization and classification is the LABELING function of social intelligence which we have previously discussed.
