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The Realm of Feeling
16 years ago
General
When I refer to feeling I'm referring to physical sensations. The sensations we're most comfortable talking about are those of heat, cold, pleasure, pain and texture. However those are but the very crudest and simplest of the sensations and feelings we can experience. Our body expresses its state through all manner of sensations, constantly in flux and providing feedback on our physical state. However I've found that what language I know fails utterly in describing the more subtle sensations.
Something doesn't have to hurt for us to think that something is wrong. Often we'll refer to it as being "off" or somehow bad, but we can't share what we're feeling.
When I went through acupuncture I would describe to my acupuncturist in vivid detail the bizarre sensations that I would experience. Sometimes I would describe them in colors or shapes. Sometimes they were complex amalgamations of contradictory sensations (ex. burning lightning water).
I feel we are naive to dismiss the realm of feeling if it does not fit into our simple categorizations. These feelings can tell us if we're healthy or sick or even if we're doing something correctly or incorrectly. The important thing to consider when dealing with the realm of feeling is that our minds have near total control of it and that we must be careful not to induce feelings when we are trying to pay attention to them.
Current State: Feeling grainy and kinda orange.
Something doesn't have to hurt for us to think that something is wrong. Often we'll refer to it as being "off" or somehow bad, but we can't share what we're feeling.
When I went through acupuncture I would describe to my acupuncturist in vivid detail the bizarre sensations that I would experience. Sometimes I would describe them in colors or shapes. Sometimes they were complex amalgamations of contradictory sensations (ex. burning lightning water).
I feel we are naive to dismiss the realm of feeling if it does not fit into our simple categorizations. These feelings can tell us if we're healthy or sick or even if we're doing something correctly or incorrectly. The important thing to consider when dealing with the realm of feeling is that our minds have near total control of it and that we must be careful not to induce feelings when we are trying to pay attention to them.
Current State: Feeling grainy and kinda orange.
And "burning lightning water" is a believable feeling, I mean I've felt something like hot and cold in the same area at the same time...
It's always frustrating when the limits of language interfere with expressions.
At that point in time, it's often boiled down to the realm of experience ("You know when someone rolls your knuckles?" "Yeah?" "It felt sorta like that").
I suppose one of the main limitations is that feeling is an extremely personal and subjective thing. What, other than general societal acknowledgment of an act being painful or experiencing this pain yourself, is able to convince you that an act or object is painful. That's why children put their hands on the stoves. They lack the experience of burning themselves, and parents are unable to properly make them understand the sensation through words alone.
When its applicable, it probably isn't a bad idea to describe the qualities of feeling in their abstract. In that manner, the societal recognition of what certain words imply (ie: black being death, horribleness, disease, etc) is used to convey the NOTION of the, and not the EXACT, feeling.
It's actually very similar to the spectrum of symbolism... With experienced feeling being like allegory and unexperienced feeling being more like abstract symbolism.
In order to learn, you must have the experience to relate it.
I don't think it's often considered how heavily we rely upon comparison in learning and communicating.
Say you try to describe an atom to a human who has a blank slate of a mind. By its most basic descriptor, it's a tiny sphere. "What's a sphere?" It's like circle in three dimensions. "What's a circle?"
In that way, we build upon past experience in order to find how it relates to us.
Hmmm... Interesting what your mind comes up with when you put it in auto-pilot.
i don't know why thats the first thing that comes to mind but its like that
Current state: Clicked shut band full of electric blue, spiraling in the outside crash sphere's glassy skin coalesced to cool condensated cobalt.
The best way to describe an unknown feeling, that it's beyond you, is to use a sense not usually attributed with that medium Examples: "I can taste the music with my soul." "I could touch the evil intention just by looking in his eyes." Hope that helps. ^^
And just some related? rambling...
Is it me or do we have a larger vocabulary for negative things/ feelings/ sensations than we do positive?
Do we need to experience pain to know what pleasure is?
What would you call the sensation of being messaged my hot-tub water jets?