The Feeling Nature

Goal: A calm and peaceful emotional, feeling nature that can allow the Love of the Soul to be perfectly expressed to the whole world in all circumstances. This is the state of Being described as “the Peace that passes understanding”.

For the sake of clarity and directness, let us express this goal from a simple perspective:

The Discipline of Harmony is designed to cultivate and maintain that inner calm, peace and poise that automatically, and in all circumstances, eliminates within us the emotional reactions of stress, worry, irritation, impatience, and expectation.

Inner calm, peace and poise are achieved by intentionally desiring and cultivating “Love for all beings” in all kinds of circumstances and by establishing a rhythm in our lives which includes times of quietness and silence everyday — during these periods of outer quietness we can seek to cultivate inner peace and harmony with ourselves, with all beings and with the circumstances of our lives.

The fundamentals for a feeling life that seeks to reflect the Love of the Soul include, among others:

1. PRACTICING SILENCE — Set aside in your daily rhythm at least 15 to 30 minutes of complete quietness for yourself. During this time of outer quietness look at yourself, love yourself, accept yourself for who you are, learn about yourself, discover the beauties and strengths that the Divine Source has given you. Use also this quiet time to consciously and intentionally visualize and feel yourself as a perfect, beautiful human being radiating love, understanding and harmony to all. In other words, use the Silence to choose who you want to be and what you want to express in your life.
2. PRACTICING LOVE — Take some time everyday to exercise your Power to Love consciously and intentionally. That is, acquire the daily habit of visualizing someone or some situation that is not close to your heart and mind and of sending to them the energy of Love which is in you. This intentional and conscious flow of Love from your heart to others first passes through your feeling body, quieting, harmonizing and stabilizing it from all kinds of emotional reactions — the more you practice the conscious flow of Love, the more you will discover “the Peace that passes understanding”.
3. PRACTICING SUBSTITUTION — Replace those tendencies in your emotional nature that no longer define what you want to BE with those feelings that are their counterpart. This eliminates in your feeling body the unbalances that are created when you repress emotions and feelings. Substitution is thus a true energy event in the feeling body that leads to the calm and poise necessary for Soul Living.
   There are many emotions upon which we can apply the art of substitution. The daily periods of silence and quietness are the greatest opportunity for us to start the process of substitution and choosing what we want to feel and express in our life. Here are some relevant substitutions:
   Substitute preoccupation, STRESS, worry and self-pity with JOY and acceptance of life.

   Substitute LOW SELF-ESTEEM and any sense of guilt with SELF LOVE.

   Substitute any sense of LACK and want with an attitude of GRATITUDE.

   Substitute IRRITATION and anger by focusing on CONTENTMENT; that is, develop a right sense of proportion as to what is important and necessary for Soul Living.

   Substitute IMPATIENCE with a proper sense of time and with an UNDERSTANDING that all things in life follow a sequence of CAUSE-PROCESS-EFFECT. Also, replace impatience by cultivating compassion and tolerance.

   Feelings of depression usually indicate a low level of vitality in your physical body. Place attention to this area of your being by taking care to practice those things that will increase the vitality of your physical body.

   Here is an example of the Technique of Substitution:

   • Sit down and recall a situation in which you felt a negative emotional reaction, such as impatience.
   • Then, observe and study the circumstances of the situation and try to discover why that particular reaction occurred in you.
   • After this, think about that feeling which is the counterpart to your emotional reaction; in the case of impatience, see how a proper sense of time and how the natural flow of life undermine the reasons for this emotional reaction.
   • Finally, imagine yourself again in the same situation but, this time, substituting impatience with the feelings of tolerance and compassion — in other words, consciously feel patience while imagining yourself in the same situation (try to imagine it and feel it as real as you can).

   The next time that a situation occurs in which you are feeling impatient, it will be easier for you to remember that what you are feeling is just an emotional reaction which you can substitute — choose then feelings of patience, compassion and tolerance.
4. PRACTICING THE NOW — Focus on living in the present moment at every moment. Be completely attentive to whatever you are doing. During those occasional times for dreaming or planning about the future, focus fully on dreaming and planning about the future. As for the rest of the time (which is most of the time), focus only on the task at hand. Remember that stress, impatience and irritation are the result of having expectations and desires that cannot be fulfilled in the present. In other words, we feel stressed, impatient and irritated when we want to be “there” without even being “here”, let alone without being in the “in-betweens”.
5. PRACTICING DETACHMENT — Act, but do not be attached to results. Allow life to flow in the way that it does without forcing circumstances to turn out the way you think they should. Eliminate all expectations of every kind. Allow all others to act according to their own sense of values. Do not react if others fail to act the way that you want them to (even if they said they would). If you harbor no expectations of others, then you can be free from the expectations that others may have of you. Be free, spontaneous and sensitive to the opportunities, both great and small, that life presents to you each moment.
6. PRACTICING COMPASSION — Cultivate compassion for all beings, in all kinds of circumstances. See others as eternal Souls in incarnation seeking to discover more of themselves in many kinds of situations, as you are also doing. Persistently, appreciate life from your highest spiritual perspective. This is an essential way to eliminate emotional reactions and to achieve peace and harmony within. Remember that compassion is not a sentimental reaction, nor is it pity. Compassion is the realization that we are part of a Greater Whole and that we are ONE with all others, including those who suffer, those with whom we do not agree, and those who actively oppose us.
7. PRACTICING DISPASSION — Consciously choose which desires to act upon. Remember that desire is an inherent force in your being, neither good nor bad. Instead of impulsively acting upon your desires without thinking, cultivate the habit of examining each desire to determine what the effects of satisfying that desire will be upon yourself and those around you. Seek to direct your desires for the benefit of others and not for self-centered purposes. Also, periodically examine the general trend of your desires and, then, consciously decide exactly what it is you truly desire to BE and experience. Let all other desires simply fade away through lack of attention and energy.

Commentary:

The Discipline of Harmony seeks to transmute the reactivity of emotions into the stability and harmony of Feelings.

Once free from the turbulence of emotions, we are able to express our true feelings without repressing or distorting them.

With the emergence of Harmony within us, we are then ready to sense and be aware of the Desire of our Soul. This Desire of our Soul is our life purpose. It is indicated by that which we find most fulfilling and which creates and increases harmony and peace in our lives.

The force of Desire is inherent in our being. It is Divine Desire which motivates us to incarnate upon the physical plane. We cannot eliminate this force of Desire in us. But we do have the power to govern its direction and quality.

The path to Soul Living is not so much a process of eliminating desires, but a process of giving attention to those desires born from the inner promptings of our heart and Soul.

To give this kind of attention to our inner promptings requires a proper sense of what is essential and what is not essential in our lives. This is most easily done when we slow down the pace of our living. Only then can we give ourselves the time and space to choose how we want to react to the events in our lives and which desires are truly meaningful to us and worthy of our endeavors.

A right sense of proportion in all things and a rhythm of living that includes times of outer and inner quietness are, therefore, the keys for cultivating a Discipline of Harmony. The most valuable injunction for the one who is seeking to practice Soul Living will be: simplify life. The world has so many attractions (physical, emotional and mental) that many times our lives have little room for the Light and Love of the Soul to flow to us and through us into the world.