UnbornTao

Not sure, probably. I wouldn't eat raw broccoli or similar. But for example raw carrots and red bell peppers are quite good in my opinion -- as a snack or in a salad. Definitely better than cookies health-wise.

What if feeling itself is sourced by concept, as is thinking? Try to stop thinking for a couple minutes, then do the same with feeling. I think we tend to think of survival as something bad or negative; let's just call it "life."

What is being asked by such questions? I just meant they could be made more specific.

"Creativity meditation."

Playing devil's advocate: You don't have an epistemology or metaphysics -- you "live them" as your taken-for-granted reality. In this contemplation work, we may think that "figuring out" reality -- by making it into something knowable -- is necessary, or even beneficial. A thought, or thoughts, can't capture the nature of things. In this context, being abstract can be used to avoid confronting one's experience as it is. But I'm being dense here. The question still stands, though: What is really being asked by such questions?

How would you guys approach such questions, to start with?

To tell you the truth, I haven't read the whole thread. But it sounds like what you are saying relates to beliefs regarding how a person should show up or behave -- or, in other words, "what clothes they should wear." The assertion here is that we don't know who we are as an entity, and everything else is secondary, up to the individual, and often flexible in various ways.

What do you mean by who you are, unique qualities and role, and God's plan?

That sounds like painting with broad strokes. Identifying the plant as a "chrysanthemum" isn't a feeling; it may be a thought, or something else. Perceiving an object isn't feeling the object. Maybe we should drop the analogy and focus not on what feeling something in particular is but on what the activity of feeling is.

I don't mean that as the way you show up or behave, but the one that you are, which is really up for grabs. What unique role would that be? Don't people adopt various roles as they see fit, like the clothes that you wear? If you are indeed meant to play a unique role, what is that determined by? Who determines that? Trying to make a deeper point.

One's own epistemic scoundrelness is the ultimate example.

What is not feeling when encountering the plant?

I meant to post this here: Maybe your role is not who you are, and so it isn't something fixed or set.

OK, you might not have liked that, but I see it as realistic -- being sensitive and paying attention to what's going on. I can appreciate when someone is skillful and/or profoundly conscious; it just turns out that such a thing is rare or uncommon, especially in so-called "spiritual" communities. Also, the issue for us is discerning what's what. For example, Franklin Jones -- he was deeply conscious and seemed to have initially a nice community around him (although not without its problems). And now it is a full-blown cult. This seems to be a function of calling things by their name, and of the purpose a communication serves. No.

Isn't that stretching 'feeling' into something it is not? Seemingly "miraculous" abilities in feeling are indeed possible. As you said, being sensitive goes a long way -- like how an athlete can "sense" their surroundings and intuitively know what to do on the field at any given time. But that possibility is grounded on real principles and embodied skill. It seems you brought up concepts that would come to you by virtue of feeling the object. Wouldn't those be more conceptual activities? For instance, how would you know whether a plant is high in certain minerals or not just by feeling it?

Feeling the presence of the plant, you say that you know about it: What is it that you know? What is feeling giving you access to relative to what's there?

Sounds good. How are you holding knowing, in this case about the plant?

Anyone had an insight into feeling?

There's really no facilitation in her videos but a series of assertions and opinions made to be believed. It seems like she's running a cult. But people get lost in the assertiveness and such.

That seems to be the case (or do you sense a feeling?), though the difference may not be as straightforward as we make it out to be intellectually, hence the compound term. The experience of sitting comfortably on a cushion and, say, feeling at rest, tends to be a single muddy, vague experience for us, where the sensations of the body sitting and our feeling-state are one and the same. Sensation seems to be more primal and physical, consisting of a more "raw" perceptual encounter, and coming prior to feeling, while the latter may be a more conceptually-loaded effect, although it isn't an emotion -- yet?

@Salvijus @Eskilon Take a feeling you have right now -- if you pay attention, there's some sort of feeling-sensation present right now -- and investigate it for what it is.

It's perfectly fine; I was just pointing it out.

Go back to the drawing board. When we are feeling something, and it seems to be a pretty constant activity, although incredibly subtle at times, what is that about?