Fueled By Feeling
Special Paper = JC paper 2000-05-22 scan
Condensed Transcript
Jan Cox Talk 2528 – May 22, 2000
Notes by DC
Suggested Title : Fueled By Feeling
00:02 [Here’s] one for you. The kind of thing that when I say it, your mind is very tempted to say, “Well, that could not happen.”
00:23 What if there’s no such thing as a fatal illness?
00:56 It’s the doing of medicine, and it’s for good reason.
02:30 Maybe each doctor got to tell one person once a year…that they had a ‘fatal illness’ and that they were going to have to do major surgery…
04:45 The metaphorical side…think about trying to awaken and you’re performing exploratory surgery on yourself…let’s see what this’ll do….
05:25 [Reads] When he was asked about his place of residency one man replied, “I presently live just a little north of my thalamus…”
05:42 This being a Monday, start of a new week…I have a new model…having to do with feeling…
06:18 …it is extremely tricky to try to talk about [feeling]…
06:28 I did write out a few pages..it may not appear to go in any particular order…none of you still believe that there’s a particular order to anything; do you?
07:43 [Reads] It’s labelled “Special 5/22/2000, Page One. Heading: New Model.
What men call thoughts do not exist as actual things, as do, for instance, hunger pangs…but they are rather measurements of, and reflections of feelings….
08:20 Consciousness could be compared to a tachometer and thoughts be the RPM’s, of an engine…the RPM’s, that is, thoughts are simply invented methods to measure the activity of the engine, feelings.
09:35 If I say ’emotions’, ‘passion’ or ‘feelings’, I mean the same thing. Instead of…referring to certain types — so-called intellectuals, usually — as being thought oriented, you could, according to this method, better describe them as less feeling driven.
09:58 [Reads] Upon hearing someone say something that they find totally unacceptable, it is common for man to say regarding the speaker, “What was he thinking?” when the better-put question would be, “What was he feeling?” For whatever it was the speaker said that was capable of triggering passion in the listener was also something that was passionate to the speaker, although it may not have been so at the moment he said it.
12:18 Whatever thought is, it is a reflection of feeling.
13:18 [Reads] From this view, prejudicial, aggressive thoughts, that is, words directed at others when there appears to be no “rational basis” therefor can be an unrecognized exercise of feelings staying in shape and preparing for potential defensive actions in the future.
14:28 Preemptive attack…
14:55 [Some examples] negative daydreams…critical, negative thinking about other people…will keep you absolutely distracted…thoughts are measurements…gauges of feelings….direct or indirect measurements….feelings can stay in shape without…action.
16:25 [Another example] Men’s love of gossip and bad news can be seen as a teaching tool: men’s emotions trying to learn from the missteps and tragedies of others.
16:55 Why is bad news, which includes history…[though cautioned against in mystical systems]…serves as learning tool…
18:58 You can see every manifestation of sleep…all of the negative manifestations of what being asleep…they can be seen as a positive. It is you, it is consciousness being driven by a feeling, which is what we must have to stay alive….It can be seen as feeling’s attempt at learning.
19:53 Does that sound like “That can’t be true?” Stay tuned.
20:15 [Reads] Page Two. Further note from perspective of this model: Daydreaming, the totally uncontrolled flow of apparently random & meaningless thoughts through your mind, in fact, the very thing against which the great struggle to awaken is waged, daydreaming is constant, common to and enjoyed by all men.
21:42 Men only daydream about matters and events about which they have feelings.
21:53 Thus, in truth, daydreams are not actually random or meaningless, but rather they come to mind, then connect to other dreams via associations of feelings.
22:34 Authors [refers to James Joyce?] have tried to follow [the stream of consciousness].
22:39 The mind can make sense of anything, find a pattern…
23:10 If I ask you where it [some train of thought] started…red DeSoto…
23:40 All you can do is isolate one little section and you can find a pattern. You can impose a pattern and say one thing led to another, but truly…
24:05 I say they’re not random if you look beyond thought and use the model that thoughts are nothing but, nothing but — with one exception I’ll get to —
25:18 They’re not random because of this…anything you think of any note…you had some feeling about them…you do not have a memory of things that you had no emotion about.
27:18 You can be apparently affected, your feelings, by what’s going on outside of you..a change in circumstance, or you’re affected internally by your own physiology. Which is humorous, to say they’re different, but I’ll get into that.
27:49 [A response to an event which happened outside of you].
29:13 It’s going on all the time, things that you never recall because you had no feeling about it.
29:38 The thoughts that run through all the time are there, were put in memory because originally… you had some feeling about it.
29:48 To discount daydreams as being absolutely useless, I could say from this model, is not true.
30:07 The daydreaming is consciousness and feelings pumping iron, staying in shape, ready to go in case this comes back again.
31:00 [Origins of ‘whistling in the dark]
31:33 I don’t know how anyone can say that anything that’s going on in the universe is useless.
32:10 It must be useful. Why else would Life do it?
32:33 [Life does discard things though…re dinosaurs: Life kept playing around, changed them…]
Finally decided, “The hell with it.”
36:34 You could look at daydreams as being a trying out, a re-trying out of something that at one time affected you, that you had some feeling about. And that you keep daydreaming about it, and now the feeling’s no longer there. Therefore it has no taste…ordinary people…seem to have no complaint with the whole matter… it’s only when you notice it, and you’re wired up…
33:24 The repetition is serving a purpose, based on this model. It is you staying prepared. You’re your own National Guard…
34:20 [Spiritual warrior fighting the forces of sleep, ever vigilant….what if peace breaks out?]
34:45 [Reads] What a man daydreams about pleases him emotionally, either by their making him feel angry or by their causing him to feel joy…why do I have thoughts that depress me?…
36:54 From the point of view of those who do not, those who display their feelings appear to be silly…[but] their expression of feeling may be physiologically healthy.
39:05 [Reads] Feelings reflected in consciousness as thoughts can also be seen as aids to survival. Consider, for instance, that we hate to catch ourselves in some small, stupid behavior…
40:05 I don’t know anything that I’d mind [dying, loss of fame and fortune, etc.]…EXCEPT — Do you believe this shit?! I walked right out and left my fucking keys on the counter!
42:26 The very things that we call being asleep, the very things against which real mystics believe that they’re struggling…dogs bump into things…mistakes happen…it’s like an aid: “Don’t do that; be more attentive.”
46:30 Figure out: How could this be practical? Because it is, or I wouldn’t bring it up.
46:40 I have a wrap-up method that goes along with this.
48:19 No one’s stomach gives a rat’s ass whether somewhere someone’s starving…
49:29 [Used to make a distinction between bodily feelings and human emotion, with the latter as connected to thought]…
50:00 Abandon the study of the mind…never mind all that…to be enlightened is to understand the fuel, the reality behind any thought you have — behind what thinking is, which is just feeling.
50:53 I’m saying that all thought is fueled entirely by feeling…[the historical approach is to free oneself of the preferentiality of thought] but those are all the thoughts you have…you’re looking at a tachometer, a gauge…
52:42 The only exception is when [the mind] is willfully directed to a specific problem.
57:00 Consider the lack of interest or even hostility to [fields such as] mathematics, compared to the interest in fiction…mathematics requires the willful application of the mind…unlike fiction writing…
58:55 How did a fairy tale get so popular?….there it is: there’s feeling behind it. Look at the difference in the popularity of mathematics and religion….
01:00:10 There is no such thing as an abstract interest in history….to call this [distraction] sleep is not usefull.
01:01:30 There is a profitable stalk of investigation to move down from thought to feeling…you don’t have thoughts that distract you….UNLESS they came from some feeling…
01:03:15 [As in opening comment] Thoughts are not actual things. They’re not things in the same way that a pain in your foot is a thing….thoughts come from [having a foot pain]…measurements of how you feel.
So tell me how you feel about that.