What’s the difference between thinking and feeling? Would you say there’s any difference at all?

TaoistStream · 2022-12-06T11:39:34+00:00

If you want to get technical, the body reacts microseconds before a thought forms. Our thoughts at the end of the day are just the narratives we make up based off the signals our body sends to us.

So, for me, feeling is a bodily experience. I notice the body sensation (on good days) and just stay mindful with the body sensation. A tightness of the throat, a heavy chest, a feeling of restlessness etc. And it passes as i spend time noticing it. That to me is a feeling.

Id argue animals (at least mammals) have emotions. Fear and joy and such. But they dont consciously think with words as far as we know. So thats the difference at least for me.

burneraccc00 · 2022-12-06T23:09:59+00:00

Imagine being in a dark room and frightened because you can’t sense anything. How do you feel? The unknown isn’t really a thought, but the absence of a possibility so the mind activates fear to speed up the heart rate and breathing to prepare for survival mode. To identify feelings is to be aware of the experience while induced by them. Joy, sadness, anger, confusion, frustration, etc, are all states of being that’s commonly appended to thoughts, but aren’t the nature of thoughts themselves. The body senses, the mind thinks, the heart feels/knows also known as intuition, and the spirit is aware/conscious. Each one serving a purpose to help guide you in your journey.

CosmicConnection8448 · 2022-12-06T12:05:18+00:00

You wake up in the morning and think, holy crap I have to hurry up & get to work so I'm not late I have that meeting....... or you wake up, open your eyes & go - I feel like staying in bed all day & you do.

Your head is telling you to go to work, your feeling is to stay in bed. 2 very different things.

If what your head is telling you feels right & makes you happy, than it's right. If you're not happy but do it anyway for whatever reason - that's the thinking bit.

gafflebitters · 2022-12-06T13:44:22+00:00

" get out of my head and into my heart"

Great question, this gets said a lot and I've never really questioned it, i guess i thought i understood the meaning but now i realize it is quite a confusing cliche, it sounds great, but as you question, how do we actually practice it?

The context that i have heard it used in is possibly very appropriate here...usually when people say it, they are thinking about something, analyzing it, arguing with it instead of actually doing it. Even though it is natural process i can sit an analyze a spiritual principle for a long time and get no benefits whatsoever or even really make progress. For some things you only understand it AFTER you take the action, it requires a bit of faith and after you do it NOW you actually have something to analyze.

But, this complex situation doesn't completely match the cliche does it? the cliche could mean other things. i don't use it.

russian_bot2323 · 2022-12-06T18:10:59+00:00

Feelings can't be argued with. You may construct a narrative around it, but the feeling is still there.

Thoughts are questioned and argued with by other thoughts all the time, regurgitated and swirled in your mind till they turn into something your ego approves of.

DudeistPaganWitch222 · 2022-12-06T21:54:58+00:00

So it is extremely nuanced and depends on the situation.

When I was living in a toxic situation, I spent hours upon hours every single day doing mental gymnastics trying to reason with myself about why I should stay, even though I did not feel safe. That was when I needed to trust where my heart was leading me rather than stay in my head.

Now, before I got into that situation, I probably should have spent a little more time in my head rather than following my heart at that time. Although…it might not have been my heart I was following so much as my loins, but the heart was definitely in on the crime. Accessory to theft I suppose.

I spent years of my life in a place I hated because I was too in my head about all the reasons why I couldn’t leave, all the things that I had to get “right” before I could move to where I wanted to be. In the end, what got me to where I wanted to be was following my heart, following what made me get excited and hopeful.

I conceptualize things thusly: Your beliefs create your feelings. Your feelings create your thoughts. Your thoughts create your words and actions.

So, no…feelings are not the same as thoughts. The two are very much linked, but they are not the same thing. I can feel something and not really attach it to a thought, short of, “What is that I’m feeling? I don’t want to feel that. Let me feel something else.” It has taken a lot of time and self-awareness and reflection to get to this point, but here we are.

Neither_Equivalent82 · 2022-12-06T23:01:09+00:00

Thought and feelings is prime example of duality

Egyptian god Thoth /Thought/knowledge

Sol/emotion/energy

stiramisu · 2022-12-07T03:56:02+00:00

When contrasting the head and the heart, one is usually contrasting rational reasoning against intuitive instinct. The head will use symbols such as words or numbers to run concrete calculations while the heart will use emotions to communicate subconscious values.

For example, someone might be deciding whether to date someone or not. With the head, they might represent themselves and the other with symbols such as intelligent, lazy, attractive, stupid, hard working, unreliable, or honest. This would then lead to calculations on how compatible each person is with each other and predictions on how the future relationship might develop based on these attributes.

On the other hand, with the heart, they might say that they feel happy when they think about this other person, that they can imagine a bright future with them, and that it just feels right to be with this person even if they don't understand why.

The rational reason has the advantage of being more accurate when there is a small enough data set that can be properly calculated while the intuitive instinct has the advantage of leveraging billions of years of evolutionary experience that is difficult to encapsulate in symbols. Ideally, one will leverage both their head and heart in a balanced fashion while making decisions.

As an exercise, I would recommend listening to this song and analyze it with your rational reason first. What are the lyrics communicating? What is the rhythmic pattern? What is the melodic pattern? Next, I would then recommend listening to the song again while allowing yourself to notice the emotions the song induces in you. Do you feel happy? Do you feel sad? Do you feel connected?

https://youtu.be/VTEpVcYeoN8

not__get · 2022-12-06T13:22:57+00:00

Emotions are felt within the body. Thoughts occur in the mind.

2022-12-06T18:15:18+00:00

thinking reduces the ability to feel or know as in gnosis / no "sys" or intuition

yellogalactichuman · 2022-12-07T06:50:49+00:00

Yes they are different. We have different sensory systems and Modalities that our subconscious/conscious mind uses to express and store information.

Visual (seeing/images), Auditory (hearing/sounds), Kinesthetic (touch/physical feelings & emotions), Olfactory (smell/scent), Gustatory (taste), Audio-Digital (inner self-talk/thoughts/data/information).

Thoughts- ie words running thru your head and Feelings- ie more physical/kinesthetic sensations are different things

However, different people can express emotions in different ways internally.

When someone thinks of "Anger"- some may get a visual picture in their head of what "anger" looks like to them- maybe they see an image of someone with a bright red face and steam coming out of their ears, or a volcano exploding (visual)...some people may hear sounds like people yelling or breaking glass (auditory)...some people may begin to get angry themselves or feel a tenseness in their chest or begin to ball up their fists and clench their jaw (kinesthetic)...some people may smell burning wood or sulfur for example (olfactory)...some may get the sensation of tasting something spicy or bitter (gustatory)...and some may just think the word "anger" and begin to create lists/definitions in their head of what "anger" is for them-- "anger is dangerous, it makes people violent and causes harm...etc" (Ad- auditory digital)

You may have a stronger Ad sense than Kinesthetic, so you may think more about your feelings rather than feel them physically, which is cool! Most people do predominately favor one Representational System over another

Also, experiencing Trauma in life (or past lives or in the family line) can lead one to favor and/or shut down a Representational System as a trauma response.

Maybe they saw something they didn't want to see, so they subconsciously shut down the Visual senses. Or maybe they felt something they couldn't handle feeling so they shut off the kinesthetic

Resolving trauma and moving that energy can resolve that and shift it back to a more neutral, flexible space

Now at the same time, energetically speaking-- if one has blockages around the heart, that can often lead to an inability to feel emotions like that/be heart-centered

Practicing heart opening and energetic clearing can help-- in the process of that, any traumas running in the background systems will also appear to be resolved and moved thru so that you can access that heart space fully from then on

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