The Personalization of Feeling

The Personalization of Feeling W ithout a doubt, the most difficult arena of human experience, the place where almost all get perilously lost, is in the experience of feeling. The reason for this is a tendency to personalize almost every experience of feeling that arises. This tendency is a blind and conditioned habit that has become so automatic that most are unable to see beyond it. It is this tendency to personalize almost every feeling that arises that makes it so difficult for human beings to realize a perspective upon their experience of feeling that is truly objective. One of the greatest challenges for any human being who wants to be free is faced when they dare to step beyond the experience of feeling. Stepping beyond the experience of feeling means allowing oneself to perceive directly the ultimately impersonal nature of all feeling experience. To do this, every single idea and belief one has ever had about what feelings mean in relationship to the personality has to be suspended. If this can be done successfully, one will be amazed at what one will find. One will be able to see maybe for the very first time how conditioned, how empty of personal significance, how truly impersonal so much of our experience of feeling actually is. For most of us this fact is hard to bear. Because in light of it, the illusion of so much of what we believe to be ­ personal becomes apparent very quickly. Indeed, what is revealed is a picture that is very stark. What we find is that on the level of feeling, so much of human experience is utterly identical in nature and under close scrutiny proves itself to be empty of any unique attributes that could indicate anything special about the experiencer. What most human beings seem to be unaware of is the fact that they seek to locate a sense of personal identity in a domain of human experience that is, in and of itself, devoid of any quality that could be called personal. One has to be ready to see this, and one will only be ready if one has no doubt that one wants to be free. Other­wise one will always be afraid of real depth, afraid of going too deeply into spiritual experience, of going so deep that even the personal significance of the experience of feeling falls away. The difference between bondage and Liberation is always black and white and the challenge of profound Liberation from unending confusion is unconditional. As long as we are invested in a relationship to our feeling experience that is anything other than fully liberated, a ­ perspective upon that experience that has the power to free us from the unending confusion that feeling experience creates will always be too challenging to accept.