Feelings
in A Course in Miracles
by Robert Perry
In my opinion, the perspective of A Course in Miracles on feelings is quite different from popular psychological views in our culture. In what follows, I'll try to clarify the differences.
Popular "truth": Feeling is superior to thought, heart is superior to mind.
In spiritual circles, it is virtually a truism that feeling is more spiritual than thought. If, at a spiritual gathering, someone acknowledges the superiority of feeling over thought, everyone nods and murmurs in approval. Would everyone nod if someone said the reverse: "Hey, you are too into your feelings. You really need to get out of your heart and into your head!"
Course teaching: "Mind" and "heart" are interchangeable.
There are eight places in the Course where the words "mind" and "heart" appear in the same sentence ( W-pI.62.5:5; W-pI.185.14:1; W-pI.200.10:6>; W-pII.221.1:3; W-pII.286.1:8; W-pII.334.2:3; W-pII.336.2:2; M-23.4:6). Interestingly, in these eight passages, heart is never elevated above mind; it is never even contrasted with mind. In every passage, the two words are actually interchangeable, as you can see in this example: "My heart is quiet, and my mind at rest" (W-pII.286.1:8).
Popular "truth": To get to the real story, we have to go beneath our thoughts to find the feelings.
If you want to know what is really happening with someone, you might say, "Don't tell me what you are thinking. Tell me what you are feeling." Feelings seem to be the heart of the matter. Thoughts are like a swarm of gnats that just get in the way.
Course teaching: Feelings are caused by thoughts.
We may think there is some true place in us where we can contact pure feelings, stripped clean of those polluting thoughts. According to the Course, there is no such thing as a feeling that is free of thought. In fact, the Course teaches that all feelings are the effect of thoughts. Having a feeling without a thought would like having an echo without the original sound. You can see the cause-and-effect connection in these passages:
It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions. (M-17.4:2)
It is but your thoughts that bring you fear. (W-pI.196.7:3)
Isn't this our experience? When we change our overall interpretation of a situation—our thought about it—our feelings about it change automatically.
Popular "truth": Feelings and thoughts are different things, different animals.
At the very least, we know that thoughts and feelings are very different kinds of things that come from different parts of us.
Course teaching: Feelings are thoughts; a feeling is just the "flavor" of a thought
The Course speaks of "thoughts of anger" (W-pI.21.3:1), "fear thoughts" (three references), "fearful thoughts" (four references), "guilty thoughts" (T-31.VII.7:5), a "thought of love" (three references), and "a thought of pure joy" (M-16.6:2). In all cases, the feeling (anger, fear, guilt, love, joy) is actually a thought. In light of these references, we might say that a feeling is simply the experience of the thought that we have chosen. It is how it feels to think that thought. It is the "taste" of that thought. You stick a piece of cinnamon candy in your mouth and you experience the taste of cinnamon. You stick a guilty thought in your mind and you experience the feeling of guilt. What we call the feeling of guilt is just the "flavor" of that guilty thought.
Popular "truth": Validating your feelings is an important part of accepting yourself and realizing that you are not crazy.
A perspective I have heard from people in therapy is, "My feelings are valid (meaning, they have some sound basis; they are justified). After they are validated, then I can go through a process of letting them go." That, unfortunately, is an exact parallel to what The Song of Prayer calls "forgiveness-to-destroy," in which we say, "My resentment is justified, but now I'm going to let it go." If the feeling is valid, justified, how can you really let it go?
Course teaching: You are crazy.
The following passage illustrates the Course's total lack of respect for the sacred importance of our feelings:
You who are sometimes sad and sometimes angry; who sometimes feel your just due is not given you, and your best efforts meet with lack of appreciation and even contempt; give up these foolish thoughts! (M-15.3:1)
Jesus is not exactly validating our feelings here. He is taking one of the most universal sets of human feelings and telling us that, rather than valid and justified, it is just a bunch of "foolish thoughts." He is telling us that our feelings are crazy.
Popular "truth": Feelings are natural impulses, like hunger and sexual desire, that arise in us of their own accord.
While the idea that our feelings arise in us of their own accord may relieve (or maybe just obscure) guilt over our unpleasant feelings, there is a definite downside to it. In this perspective, we are at the mercy of our feelings. We are their victims.
Course teaching: We choose what we feel. It does not arise in us naturally.
The Course has the opposite approach: everything we feel, everything we have ever felt, we have chosen, on purpose. It says quite simply, "I choose the feelings I experience" (T-21.II.2:4). And we choose those feelings by choosing what to think.
Popular "truth": Feelings are inherently healthy, innocent, and good. The ability to feel them without impediment or judgment is an important spiritual virtue. If you can take your judgments off your feelings, any feeling becomes the sacred and beautiful thing it really is.
Course teaching: Your feelings are the telltale signs of the thoughts you have chosen. You can use them to judge how well you have stepped away from the ego.
In the Course, feelings are not inherently good. Ego-based feelings such as anger, fear, guilt, hate, worry, grief, etc., are both inherently painful and inherently attacking. Rather than letting them flow without judgment, the Course actually tells us to look at them and use them as a gauge for how well we have managed to relinquish our ego. After telling us to step away from the ego's beliefs, the Course says, "Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment" (T-4.IV.8:6).
Let's face it, we don't always know when we have chosen the ego, but our feelings can tell us. Ego-based feelings are like that noise you hear from your car engine, telling you something is wrong. You don't just let the noise flow as the beautiful thing it is. You see it as the sign that it's time to take the car into the shop.
Popular "truth": Fully feeling and expressing your negative feelings is an important part of releasing them.
If there are pillars of conventional spiritual/psychological wisdom, one of them has to be that you need to fully feel and express them before they can be healed. And whatever you do, do not rush yourself through this. Not feeling your feelings and not letting them run their course is seen as perhaps the biggest violation of the healing process.
Course teaching: Do not deny your negative feelings. Instead, look upon them calmly. They are no big deal. And then quickly choose a different thought.
The Course's repeated counsel about how to treat any of the ego's manifestations within us is to look upon them calmly and dispassionately. It tells us to "watch them come and go as dispassionately as possible" (W-pI.31.3:3), "with as little investment as possible" (W-pI.8.4:3), as if "you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you" (W-pI.10.4:6).
Then, once you calmly and dispassionately observe your feelings, the Workbook emphasizes that you should respond with a corrective thought immediately (Lessons 32, 33, 37, 73), instantly (Lessons 33, 136, 161), and quickly (Lessons 68, 77, 79, 80, 133), rather than sitting there and stewing on your upset. If feelings truly are the effect of thought, then they are not their own force and they don't need to be allowed to run their course. They are like a lamp plugged into the wall. Imagine if the heat of a lamp was making the room too warm. Wouldn't it be silly to say, "Well, I guess we can turn the air-conditioner on, or turn a fan on, or drink cold drinks. We'll just have to make do until the bulb burns out"? Wouldn't you just unplug the lamp?
That is what the Course trains us to do. In Lesson 34, it instructs us to respond to feelings of "depression, anxiety or worry" (W-pI.34.6:1) by taking several minutes and repeating, "I could see peace instead of this" (W-pI.34.Heading). It then suggests we add, "I can replace my feelings of depression, anxiety or worry...with peace" (W-pI.34.6:4). That encapsulates the Course's whole attitude toward negative feelings. We don't have to take them seriously and endure them for as long as they dictate. We can just replace them—by choosing a different thought.
Reader Feedback
Dear Robert,
I truly appreciate this article on feelings in the Course. Experientially, however, I find myself disagreeing with the last point of moving immediately, instantly and quickly to a corrective thought.
So often, in my experience, these feeling/thoughts/body sensations are ancient history; I get triggered into them and they can be intense. Trying to pivot out of them in this fashion only seems to makes them worse. They appear to have a life of their own which states "I will be heard!" Yes, I can distract myself from them, but they return over and over again as if they are persisting in calling for love. I have found that only if I feel the feelings can I discover the thought behind them, and then I can bring that thought to the Holy Spirit and ask for it's undoing.
If I don't take time to feel and acknowledge the feeling and simply push it away I can get into a state of resistence to it, a denial of it, that serves only to strengthen it. I have seen this many times with "new agers" who push away negativity and focus only on the positive. Eventually that negativity comes through and when it does, it's often explosive.
On the other hand, by simply being with the feeling without an agenda, listening to the thoughts behind it, bringing the light that I am to it, healing and a great relief seems to occur. Often, doing this, these feelings have become a gateway into a state of incredible peace.
I realize that this is experiential and not based on what the Course actually says. I wish I knew the Course better because I suspect that there may be places there that back up my approach. Right now the only course based statement I can find that relates would be the following: "it is almost impossible to deny its (the body) existence in this world. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. The term "unworthy" here implies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind's power, one is also denying the power itself." [T-2.IV.3:10-13]
Is it not the case that feelings are body sensations and because they come from thoughts, result from the mind's power? If so, wouldn't denying them be, in essence, denying the mind's power?
I would be most interested in your thoughts on this.
-Sincerely, Cassandra
Robert responds:
Dear Cassandra,
Good to hear from you. I totally understand what you are saying, but I can't think of anywhere where the Course instructs us to do something like what you are saying. Its idea, I believe, is something like this. Feelings, as you say, are the result of thoughts. Therefore, we shouldn't deny them (in the usual sense of "deny"). We should acknowledge them, see them as a sign that we are having a destructive thought, and then quickly choose a different thought. Choosing a different thought is not a repression of the feeling, it is an unplugging of the feeling. Let's say, for instance, that a lamp in your house is malfunctioning and shooting flames and sparks into the house. At that point, you don't sit with the flames without agenda. You calmly but quickly unplug the lamp. That, I think, mirrors the Course's attitude. It often tells us two things. First, look at the feeling calmly. Second, "quickly," "instantly," "immediately" (these are all words it uses frequently in this context) choose a new thought, one that will replace the thought that is causing the feeling and instead cause a new feeling.
In my experience, this is what has worked best. If I am having particularly strong feelings, it can be hard to choose a new thought. In that case, I have found two things to be helpful. One is to repeat thoughts from the Course that don't so much contain the new thought but instead merely cancel out the old. For instance, "I do not know what anything, including this, means" (from Chapter 14, Section XI). Second, I will sit down for 30-45 minutes and go through a long list of Course practices, trying to get at least a tiny shift out of each one. In my experience, these methods are more effective than just allowing the feeling to be. Maybe you are different, but when I just sit with the feeling without agenda, it tends to just sit there, too. It may calm down a bit, but it doesn't seem to actually go away.
Anyway, I hope this helps. I do think that the Course's methods work better than our own, and that if they aren't working, then it's probably because we aren't understanding them correctly or doing them correctly. My experience is that when we really understand them, they work incredibly well.
In peace,
Robert
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