Everything we need to know about self can be found in how we feel right now. When we choose to allow feeling into our awareness, we instantly know if we are thriving or struggling, if our personal radiance is expanding or diminishing, if we are nurturing our own development or holding ourselves back, and if the outer world is supportive, hostile, or empty. We know if we feel love or fear, happy or sad, safe or threatened, accepted or rejected, supported or abandoned. We know if we are in need of assistance, or if we are able to provide assistance.

This basic ability to feel, and to understand what these feelings mean, is something we all have. No amount of esoteric knowledge, intellectual ability, or guidance from someone in a position of spiritual authority is necessary to help us do this. If any one of us doubts our ability to understand who we are, by connecting with how we feel in the present moment, then we have simply become overwhelmed by conditions of the outer world, and have lost our center. In reality, nothing is more trustworthy than our own feelings, and nothing is more important than connecting with how we feel as we choose how to live.

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While some of us already know how to connect with feeling, many of us struggle with this basic task, for a variety of reasons. Because spiritual development focuses on both our individual nature and our social nature, so that everyone may be fully supported, let's begin by focusing our support on those of us who currently struggle to connect with feeling.

As I said earlier, the basic ability to feel is something we all have, so there is nothing to learn. The challenge is in choosing to connect with feeling, and allow it into our awareness. For those of us who struggle to connect with how we feel, connecting with the struggle right now, in the present moment, is the first step.

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Life energy produces feelings on the physical, mental, and emotional levels simultaneously as it flows through our being. Because of this, when we do choose to connect with how we feel, we could just as easily find ourselves experiencing a physical sensation, a thought, a memory, or an emotion. And, because these physical, mental, and emotional qualities of self are all interconnected, a physical sensation could lead to a thought, that triggers a memory, that releases an emotion, that produces a new physical sensation. In this way, any feeling, on any level, no matter what it is, has the potential to illuminate our entire inner state of being.

And here we arrive at free will. For us to receive the full benefit of feeling, we must be willing to connect fully with whatever we are feeling in the present moment, no matter what this feeling is, no matter how it feels. Otherwise, we are creating blind spots in our field of self awareness, and it is precisely in these blind spots where our individual struggles take root.

Here I feel the need to clarify one important point. When I say that we must be willing to connect fully with whatever we are feeling in the present moment, I do not mean that we need to submit to abusive behavior in order to fully feel the pain. Quite the opposite, what I mean is that feeling allows us to become more aware of both our inner state of being and our surroundings. This heightened state of awareness then provides us with an opportunity to take action in support of ourselves, before any harm comes to us at all.

Remember that life energy responds to our thoughts, words, and actions. It does so by flowing into whatever we choose to focus on. When we choose to focus on feeling, life energy responds by flowing into the space where the feeling is.

If we are already wounded, and are willing to focus on the pain, life energy flows into the wound and heals it. If we are afraid, and are willing to focus on the fear, life energy fills us with the courage to live our truth. If we feel safe and nurtured, and are willing to share our uniqueness with everyone around us, life energy floods our being and pour into everything we do.

This is our goal, to live in a way that allows life energy to flood our being and pour into everything we do. This is who we truly are, and who we always have been. All we need now is to find within ourselves both the courage and the will to live our truth fully.

When we do successfully enter this state of being, many higher aspects of self become fully activated, such as our inner senses of empathy, telepathy, intuition, inspiration, conscience, compassion, courage, imagination, and truth. These inner senses are so powerful, and so accurate, they allow us to find and heal all of our inner wounds, help us maintain a safe distance from all potentially harmful situations, and guide us into fully supportive and nurturing spaces so that we may safely release all of our shields and express our uniqueness fully. This is how feeling helps us find the Gentle Path, and how we transform the Human Condition into a truly nurturing environment for us all.