Tweet

[Gareth]

I recently wrote a Tweet that got a very mixed reception. This was it:

Your feelings tell you the truth about what's important.
#mindfulness

It got loads of retweets, but there were also some negative comments, including from a couple of mindfulness/meditation accounts. I'm wondering what your thoughts are (I'm considering deleting the Tweet).

[Peter]

Great idea to discuss the tweet then, Gareth.

Feelings might be too ambiguous a term. What is meant here, emotions, or bodily sensations?

[Gareth]

Emotions, although bodily sensations are important too and the two are often closely linked.

[Peter]

If it is about emotions, then I don't think the tweet is right. I think one often has 'false' emotions, which of course also have a deeper cause, which might also be important to recognize, but I don't think they necessarily are a direct indicator of something important.

[MiM]

I don't know what kind of person could put that kind of trust in their feelings. Probably that person would be very whole. For a person with any kind of trauma (even small childhood trauma) feelings often miss shoot miserably.

See my recent answer to Palla as an example.

[Gareth]

I'm very cautious about labeling any emotion as 'false'; I fear that this might lead to emotions being suppressed.

That said, I don't have any experience of working with trauma, so I don't know what I'm talking about in that regard. The Tweet has attracted enough criticism for me to delete it.

[Peter]

I'm very cautious about labeling any emotion as 'false'; I fear that this might lead to emotions being suppressed.

That said, I don't have any experience of working with trauma, so I don't know what I'm talking about in that regard. The Tweet has attracted enough criticism for me to delete it.

I didn't mean to say one should suppress emotions, on the contrary, explore them. In my experience, just like with thoughts, emotions aren't really true or false, they just are. I don't think they necessarily indicate a truth directly. For example, one can feel jealous, mad, insecure etc. from misinterpretation, self delusion, trauma, hunger even. Of course there's a deeper truth there (the real reason), that one could explore.