Miss You Guys and Complicated Drival

Everybody suffers with love, or the fear of it, or the lack of it. Why? Why is love so universally and inevitably heart-breaking, whether it be through the end of a love affair, the death of a pet, loved one, or being locked in with the habitual casualness or indifference of a partner? I think the answer is because we've been taught and conditioned by the world to believe that love is a feeling.

Love is not a feeling; it's a sensation. Drinking water when you're thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when you're tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don't need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.

But in our oblivion we emotionalize romantic joy, beauty and love. We make feelings of them, personal interpretations based on our old emotions. We put our personal past on the present with the result that joy, beauty and love don't seem to last. But it's our emotional substitutes that don't last and we become bored and discontented again. I'll leave defining emotional substitutes open for you, after all, you chose them. I have my own. Surprisingly, I know several couples that have it all together, and I really admire that!


 The sensation or knowledge of joy, beauty and love is of course still there but it's overwhelmed by the coarser feelings of emotional substitutions. Aging is another element that can cause internal confliction. Watching ourselves as we age, I think, causes us to beat ourselves up because we're not young anymore. I know I'm guilty. I do miss being young, and I was bullet proof until I was fifty-one. .. Not so much now, but I'm a terrific shot. Too old to roll around on the ground with hoodlums now.


Feelings are constantly changing. None are dependable for long. You can love someone intensely today,  tomorrow, and next month not feel a thing. Except perhaps for the feeling of doubt or depression that what was so beautiful could change so quickly and completely. Isn't that amazing?? I just really think so! I guess it's just a component of the Human Condition.

Feelings, even the best of them, seem to turn to negativity given enough time - disappointment, anger, discontent, resentment, jealousy, guilt...  A good feeling starts off being elevating, exciting, like doing something exhilarating or having sex. But what goes up must come down and feelings are no exception, I guess. So in a couple of weeks or months the down side starts and you perhaps wonder why you feel moody, depressed, or just plain unhappy. Instead, people are paying the piper for yesterday's music. 

Okay, say there's no exhilarating experience or sex but you love someone, as a feeling. Then it won't be long before experiencing one or more of the painful feelings I've mentioned above - and thinking it's natural! Even in every day living you're continually interpreting experience via your emotions instead of being the experience direct. "This is good, that's bad," my feelings swing subtly to and fro all day long obscuring the reality, the sensational knowledge that it's not bad at all; it's simply life as it is. Hi-lited for emphasis.

Feelings can be false and deceptive. And in the spiritual process, the area of any person's life where they still have feelings, is where their level of unenlightenment can be considered. But the spiritual process is so little understood that people don't realize their feelings are personal and false, and have been misleading them all their life. If that's not true, why is humanity still so generally unenlightened and basically unhappy after all this time - when enlightenment is the completely natural, sensational state of being every moment? I know you see people like this every day, too.


Something I see more clearly now than maybe ever before is that we all have support systems that allow us to be who and what and the way we are. Family, friends, co-workers - the people who care about us. Sometimes when I see certain people I wonder how in the world they could leave the house looking like THAT?? What kind of people are the support system for someone like her?? I'm so grateful to my family and friends, and you all for being people that care enough to "Follow," "comment" and write me. My friends and family are the very best a man, a father, could have and for that I will be eternally grateful. Thank you for being the kind of people that make the others I meet on the road wonder what kind of support system I have! If they only knew.




Can ya tell I have a lot of time on my hands?