Feeling Senses
A key point here to understand is the difference between feelings and emotions. Emotions are the resultant energies and/or the various components of matter created and experienced through our emotional nature. One part of our emotional nature is our feelings. These senses emotionally correspond to our physical senses. Our feelings are how we receive stimulus from the entire external emotional plane in all of its subplanes. Our five feeling senses include empathy, pleasure/pain, desire, passion and appreciation. Each of these senses in one way or another helps us define and put value, beauty and meaning in life. Upcoming, I will define both empathy and appreciation as both senses and resultant emotions. It seems fairly clear that our faculty, ability or power (sense) to experience pleasure and pain helps us put value to our experiences at many levels. Desire can be defined as a volitional mode or “active outgoing tendency” to act. At one level, desire is the faculty that draws us to that which we long for and do not have. Upon further development, desire becomes the faculty which actively draws meaning and/or beauty into our emotional life and physical life.Although passion has had a somewhat negative connotation in the past, in a positive view it is the "outgoing active tendency" of our desire nature to express a higher good or aesthetic pleasure in some part of our life. It is the mechanism or faculty (sense) by which we bring something meaningful into full expression.Take a Journey through our
Spirit/Matter Universe
Our Closest Source of
Beauty & Meaning
by Jef Bartow
As we move up in outer Objectivity beyond our physical plane, we first encounter what has been called the astral plane in metaphysics. More simply, it is the world of our emotions. Just as the overall physical plane is a higher reflection of our dense physical mountains and minerals, the emotional plane is a higher reflection of our physical waters. The physical waters flow and mold to their receptacle or container. Similarly, our emotions flow unless bottled up by some container (i.e. complex). So what is the purpose and function of our emotional world?Would life be worth living if we had no beauty or meaning for our existence? Meaning and beauty bring value to our life. Another term for this is aesthetics. Frankly, with the goodness, beauty and truth that exist in the spiritual planes, there is little motivation to want to incarnate in the purgatory of the material planes to help God's creativity. Our emotional and desire natures provide an excellent catalyst to whether the strife and struggles of physical existence.This is not to say that our emotional world does not have some pretty vile components. I conclude that much of this vileness comes from humanity and not the other kingdoms of nature including animals, plants and minerals. Our affect on all of life on earth has been enormous, both positive and negative. Let's investigate the results of humanity's life emotionally.Our articles are available for reproduction for all members. Please give credit to the author.
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Our Energy Structure
Before diving into the various emotional components of the emotional plane, let's introduce the structure by which we can simultaneously live throughout our personality in the material planes. I call it our Energy Structure. This structure is described in the Kabbalah as our "Tree of Life." Kabbalistically, it is a symbolic structure which organizes our universe and us in it. It includes various sephiroth (nodes), each of which develops a different aspect of our makeup. The three channels of our Energy Structure are also the three channels of the kundalini taught in Eastern mysticism. Emotional Energies/Matter
Each plane is organized similarly. The denser energies congregate as denser matter, while the more refined or spiritualized energies become the higher subplanes. In trying to categorize the different types of emotional states, I concur with experts that they generally fall into three modes of expression or existence. First, certain emotions are related to each of us individually. Second, some derive from our relation to others. The third mode is an exaggerated emotional state derived from overindulgence.I think we would agree that some of the most putrid emotional energies that we experience are greed, gluttony and lust. Each of these I consider an exaggerated emotional state. I also include avarice (excessive desire for money and riches) in the same category. Finally, sloth being excessive laziness or lack of motivation becomes a heavy emotional inhibitor in life. So our lowest subplane is comprised of exaggerated overindulgences.
Not too far removed from these is our next subplane composed of envy, jealousy, covetousness and possessiveness. I would put all of these in the category of relating to others as each includes some form of resentful focus. Moving up, we find the emotional energies we all have experienced at one time or another. Each one of these shown in the Figure is not very desirable, but results from both relating to others or some level of selfish orientation.
Central to our human emotionality is devotion, loyalty and eros. From a human point of view, devotion and loyalty are considered positive. From a spiritual perspective, they continue a major form of attachment to matter and humans which ultimately inhibits spiritual growth. As to eros, we are bombarded by the benefits and positive desire for being in-love. Unfortunately, this is an attached form of love of self or others based on personal gratification.
As a higher form of sympathy, empathy is a more positive way of relating to others. As sympathy is the attached suffering we experience when dependently connected to our own emotions and those of others, I define empathy as the ability to feel and understanding the suffering of others based on our own experiences of suffering. This is why I conclude that empathy is both an emotional state and one of our feeling senses. As to joy, it is a natural response to our processing of external stimulus from our feeling sense of pleasure and pain. Of course, it is normally related to the positive feeling of pleasure.
As we move to the higher subplanes of our emotional world, we come to another emotional energy which is also a feeling sense. Our emotion of appreciation is created when our feeling of appreciation is linked with other levels of experience. I consider appreciation equal to Eastern mysticism's "reverence for life." We’re able to see and experience the aesthetic beauty in all of nature.
Our feeling sense of aesthetic perceiving is the "attitude of savoring, enjoying, appreciating, caring, in a noninterfering, nonintruding, noncontrolling way." By doing so, we recognize and objectify the meaning and beauty inherent in all of life.
For me, a natural byproduct of appreciation is generosity. Abundant giving is a characteristic of love. The energy of generosity becomes a result of our focus to abundantly share our reverence for life in all its forms. From another perspective, appreciation and generosity become the more spiritualized counterparts of loneliness and sadness.
Finally, we come to the highest forms of emotionality. I consider them elation and zeal. Elation, as an exultant emotion which raises our spirits and lifts us up is simply a more spiritual form of joy. Zeal, on the other hand, is an intense state of excited enthusiasm as in our praise for some cause or ardent endeavor. To me, this becomes a more spiritualized state of devotion. Together, these intense emotional energies catapult us out of the murky waters of our lower emotions and connect us with some of the highest energies in the spiritual planes.
Within our personality, each energy node is how we experience, develop consciousness and grow within each of the objective planes. All three parts of our outer personality makeup (physical, emotional, mental) have a central channel energy node and a consciousness channel energy node. The Figure below outlines this Energy Structure as it relates to the emotional plane. To see our entire Energy structure, just click on this link:A simplistic model of an energy node is that of a computer. Our senses at each level are like the points of input into the computer (i.e. keyboard, disk drive, USB port, etc.). We input raw data into our computer to be processed by various programs. The internal memory in the computer where these inputs are processed correlates to the energy node itself. It contains various processes, like computer programs. The storage space (internal disk drive) in our computer is analogous to our body of experience (knowledge). Our body stores the results of our processing perceptions at every level, just as the computer storage drive holds the results of the programs that are run such as documents, charts, images, etc. Finally, the Energy Structure channels are the same as the output devices in the computer (i.e. computer screen, Internet communications, etc.).
