Are you having the feeling or is the feeling having you?

It’s kind of trendy to dismiss the language we use around our states of mind as being just “semantics,” but I think there is something deeper going on. When we experience a sensation, it’s just that, a fleeting sensation. It’s a tightness, a heaviness, a tingle, a tickle, a clench, a release or some felt sensation. In meditation we might allow our attention to be aware of it, welcome it, and then let it go. But, in less mindful moments, our ever vigilant Ego (the owner and defender of the sense of “I”) takes on the sensation as a challenge. If it’s a pleasant sensation, Ego says, “How can we get more of that?” or “Let’s hold onto that,” or “How do I replicate that?” If it’s an unpleasant sensation, Ego says, “Who made me feel that way?” Whose fault is it?” What does that feeling mean?” or “How do we avoid that feeling?” In both cases Ego looks at the sensations as being foreign to the Ego body—things that need to be defended against or sought out. Also, in both cases, we are either demanding that things change on our time table (in the case of unpleasant sensations that we want to have end now) or asking them not to change (in the case of pleasant situations that we want to persist indefinitely). Hoping for either thing reflects a significant misperception around the nature of reality.

You can hear the Ego at work in how we language these states. In the feeling state of the emotional body, we describe rather than label. “I feel a stiffening of my neck,” or “I feel a tensing of my shoulders.” This is simply mindful attention to the sensations that arise and subside like waves in the body. We can describe and acknowledge without claiming or owning. At the frontier that runs between the emotional body and the mental body we might have labeled that stiffening or tensing based on some recollection of a similar state in the past and now our language moves to “I’m feeling fear,” or “I’m feeling anger.” Now we’ve labeled a sensation which makes it much more serious sounding and much less fluid or likely to dissipate on it’s own. On the positive side, we are still simply feeling it, rather than owning it. It is now an Emotion with a capital E (meaning one of a set of specific and identified emotional states).

But watch what happens when this sensation is fully taken on by the Ego in the mental body. Now I’m not “feeling anger,” rather “I am angry.” Now I’m not “feeling fear, I am scared.” This may seem like a small thing, but it is huge in terms of our suffering. Every time I feel anger is an opportunity not to be angry. Every time I am angry it becomes part of the story of who I am. When I feel anger, I have the opportunity to let it go. When I am angry, I either cannot admit it or I cannot let it go. When my “story” is that I am not an angry person (anger has become a shadow that we push away from ourselves), any anger I feel must belong to someone else. “I’m not angry. Everyone else is angry.” If anger is part of my story (I am angry for a good reason), then the ego is not going to want to let that go. It’s part of who we are, and the Ego does not give up anything that is part of who it is, part of it’s story. To the Ego that feels like death and our ego selves are fierce, determined, and resourceful when it comes to resisting ego death.

Try this: Next time you find yourself in an “I am…” moment, take a couple long, deep breaths to break the physiological fight or flight response and try re-languaging what your feeling from “I am…” to “I’m feeling…” If that helps, see if you can work your way backward and simply describe the sensations you are feeling with no labels and no judgement. See if that doesn’t make what you are feeling seem more transient and less fixed.