I think I have read every message on this board, but I am still not getting it this course. I have really tried but there is so much I do not understand.I just cannot get to grips with the feelings/energy/power. O.K. I feel sad/happy yes I know how I feel but I can't give it a size, shape and certainly don't feel an energy vibration. If I feel depressed I feel nothing which is a contradiction in words but that is the best way to describe it a nothing. Surely every thought can be a lie or the truth. You guys all seem to be getting it and doing so well, but try as hard as I can it just does not seem to make any sense to me, it is as if a really big and impotant piece of the puzzle is missing. What is meant by the trance and how do the feeling excercises wake us? I have tried them but don't see what Paul is trying to get at. Sorry for being long winded but this is important to me.

Seems like your having a problem and it appears that you are focused on the problem and not focused on the solution. Have you received any benefits from the course so far? What has been working about the course so far? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 being the goal reached and 1 being just the opposite. Where would you rate yourself in? In addition, why so high?

Good use of the Solution Focus NeoZon. That is a very powerful tool too.

Loverofcat1948, I have several comments. I think that the feeling exercise are done too quickly in the AFL course. You sound like you've got the basic structure correct.

Feel - don't label / judge the feeling
Feel more aspects about the feeling.
Feel even more ... the energry
Feel the power in the feeling (This one, is a sometimes for me. Separately power and energy sometimes happens sometimes doesn't)
Feel love for the feeling.
Feel love for the energy.
Feel love for the power.
Feel love for feeling the feeling.
Feel love for feeling love for the feeling.

I sometimes use information for the word energy; not always and not for the whole exercise. Sometimes just as a transition. My logical mind can understand how the feeling is information, but my other than conscious mind can feel the energy. Sometimes this word transition helps to make the mental transition from analyst to observer / experiencer.

Don't do the exercise and say "I am I getting it, yet?". It has the same effect and saying out loud "It's quiet now". You are breaking what you are trying to create.

You have to release your expectations (judgement) of the exercise. Just do it and experience what happens.

As for feeling the shape size and colour, I have a couple of approaches. They are revolve around being aware of your body's state, not your mental state.

The first suggestion is not to feel an emotion, but to feel a physical sensation. The pressure on your butt or legs or feel. Feel the breeze or the stillness of the air. Become aware of the sense of touch on the back of your hand, or the side of your hand, or the palm of your hand. Be aware of your breathing. Pick something that you can say "Yes, I feel that.", then really explore that feeling. Where does it start? Where does it end. How intense is it?

The second in regards to emotions. You know you are in an emotional state because of a physical state. You have learned to label certain types and combinations of physical sensations as specific emotions. You have the labels and your logical mind recognizes them. Now, your being asked to drop the label and just experience the physical aspects.

Your mind and body have a two way form of communications. Your body experiences the world and sends messages to the mind to interpret and analyse. There is a strong connection between sensation and thought. It is so strong that your thoughts will create sensations in your body.

I recommend that you work on the physical sensations. Find one sensation and progress with the Feeling Exercise as far as you can. Experience whatever you experience. Don't label the experience. Your experience is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT for you. It is the experience you need at the moment you are doing the exercise. It may be different from mind. It may be different that what you will experience next year, next week or even in the next second. Don't judge the experience, just do the exercise and be fully in the experience. Don't step out to analyze it, to compare it, to direct it, to judge it.

Now I just said don't direct it. Well, now I'm going to say once you've gone through the exercise on one specific sensation. Find another and do it again. Don't worry if you don't do all the steps of the exercise. You'll get there when it right for you to get there. You'll be surprised when it happens. You won't see it coming. Partly because you're not looking down the road, you're right here right now.

After you've tried the exercise with a few sensations, see if you can be fully aware of two sensations, at the same time. Try being aware of all of them, at the same time.

You might try lying down. Definitely don't listen to the recording while doing it. You know the exercise you can hear Paul's words without a machine. Take your time and take what comes, whatever it is.

The more you do it, the easier it will be to do. The more you do it the more complete / deeper your experience will be. Don't get me wrong, you are always experiencing this. It is always happening. It just that you've learned to let your logical mind run your life and it has greatly reduced your conscious awareness of the experience. It is collecting the information / energy / experiences and labelling them and processing the labels. You can become more aware of the sensation by doing the Feeling Exercise. With some regular use of the exercise you will find that you are always aware of your physical state. You will be hooked into the information that your other-than-conscious mind is generating. That's what those emotions, or mentally generated physical sensations, are. They are information from your other-than-conscious mind.

You can use this information to decide if you want to use this information to do something different from what your conscious mind would normally do. You can use your insights from this awareness, and the information in the AFL course to direct your life in directions you choose. You can choose to break the programming of the conscious mind. You can break the well know, well rehearse sets of actions and reactions. You can choose to recognize and set of beliefs and associated responses and choose to do something different with your new awareness. You can choose to recognize your trances and choose to do something different with your new awareness.

Well I hope there are not too many typos and missing words in that. I also hope this will help you.

You ARE perfection.
Iam2

IAM2,
Thanks for that thorough sharing of your knowledge, experience and insight on this. This will help greatly as I make my way through the course.

I have to agree with loverofcats1948, I'm not really getting this either.

I have listend very carefully to Paul's explanations and the best I can infer is that the feeling exercise is an attempt to encourage you to meditate and think about nothing.

I find it best to scan my body and simply observe feelings without thinking about yesterday, or tomorrow. From what Paul says, this seems to be the aim of the exercise. I've found that if you really get absorbed in this then you will find that your mind becomes calm and stops chattering. I believe this is the state that you want to be in for manifesting! ;-)

There is a bit of a paradox about the feeling exercise. If you let go of the labels what is it you feel. A distant buzz in your finger tips, a tightness in your stomach... without labeling it... what shape do you imagine the tighness of skin has?

Here you need to notce. I feel depressed....

How do you know that you feel depressed? It's just an abstract word that describes the feeling. So forget the word. What does depressed feel like? If can't be nothing because you labelled it!

If you're feeling frustrated, check it out how do you know that feeling is frustration and not gladness? What is it that makes that feeling depression? That my dear friends is a paradox. The label means exactly the same as imagining what colour it is what shape it is... then will notice some about the feeling, there is a vibration, (all vibration really is is movment).

If you're really lost feel the air moving through your nose as you breath. Have you ever felt an itch? Follow it... how do you know it is an itch? really feel that.

Be there in the now with whatever physical or emotional feeling that you are aware of.

One word of advice, take it lightly. It's really just training of bringing yourself to the here and now. If you itch... notice that you're feeling it before you scratch it.

Alex

The paradox is that Labelswe apply to feelingsmean nothing until we can recognise what the feeling is... what if we got it wrong and that which we label fear, is really the feeling of breakthrough?

Alex

o.k. so how do we know a strawberry from an apple, by its colour, shape, size, taste feeling in the mouth. Before we called it a strawberry it was. I think that is what you/Paul mean before the label it is. But how does that relate to power/energy? How is having a feeling locking this power away? Are you saying tht before labels of me/you we are and that that is the power, what are we before we are the label? Are you trying to get us to realise we are all power and it is just us that compartmentalise it and then give these compartments labels?

How can I put this?

You're asking us to tell you what you should be experiencing. That's difficult because you're asking for labels.

Have you ever really felt the force of anger? So much power that you could smash something? If you feel it, recognise that "energy". That's power!

Let go and just feel. If you don't feel vibration,(yet), let it go. Stay with noticing the feeling.

Get out of the head, let go. One can notice the energy/power in eating a strawberry. But let it be okay to notice what you notice.

My grandfather had a saying. If I don't get there today, I'll get there tomorrow. If I don't get there tomorrow I'll get there the day after for sure. It was what he told relatives about coming to visit, his nature was not to be rushed about things. In his view if it was important and he intended to do it he will do it. It's how he lived Paul's expression "go easy on yourself". There is no right or wrong way to feel feelings. You're not getting it wrong. So just feel, don't analyse everything that Paul says. Next time around it will be a different experience again anyway. Just like no 2 days are ever really exactly the same.

Alex

Loverofcats, I can empathize with you frustration. I used to grumble about people who gave advice like "Do it and you'll understand". That's not my normal way of acquiring knowledge. I have a strong analytical side. I'm a great visual learner. Just explain it and I'll understand. Which is really wierd because one of my favourite quote is a chinese proverb.

I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

Well doing some of these exercises and meditations and just doing and doing and doing it has change how I understand the last line. I can know how to program (or any other skill), but until I actually do it I don't really understand it.

Alex seems to keep bring up the Zen idea of being in the now. Well are real zen method is experiencing everything now as if for the first time. Meaning you don't have labels for them yet. You don't know what the experience is you just explore it, discouver it.

If I gave you something in a paper bag and told you it was something you had never experienced before, you might throw the bag away. However, you might open the bag up and see a green sphere with purplish markings on it. You would feel it's weight. You would feel the surface texture. You would feel the surface elasticity. You would experience it's temperature and thermal conductivity.

Okay I'm rambling again. I just saying set aside an hour. Lie down in a comfortable place. Give yourself permission to use the hour for the feeling exercise. Choose to use this hour for the feeling exercise. Decide you will experience whatever happens, and it is perfect for you. Then do the feeling exercise. Don't use a tape to guide your. You can have mood music on if you want (waves, forest breeze, meditation rambling music) if you like, or just in silence. If you use only a half hour before you get up find. Bonus time for you.

I was near the end of my third 1/2 hour session before I had a wow experience. Every time I've done it later on I've had a different experience. Sometimes I get a big wow, sometimes now. They are all perfect for me. You may never experience what I do. However, you will become more in touch with yourself and less quick to accept your automatic labelling.

-------

I'm not Paul, but here is my take on the power. The power isn't locked in the feelings. Feelings are filled with power. However, the locking comes from you choosing. Before you can choose you must be aware. The feeling exercise helps you become aware. To become aware of yourself, your mental processes, your self-messages, your labels, your behaviour patterns. The unlocking of power comes from taking that awareness and choosing to direct your energy, however you are experiencing it now, in a manner that supports your desires / goal / purpose.

Enough rambling, or is that preaching, for now.

You are perfection.
Iam2

Loverofcats1948 In the version of your AfL course if you have Paul's interview with Arnold Patent (author of The Journey)have a listen and you will hear that "getting it" is not better than "not getting it"

Your just being very clever at this time :^)

What you're describing, lover, contains many of the things I had trouble with.

The way I dealt with it is simply to feel. That's it. Just feel and be with whatever you are feeling. You label it this, you label it that. Whatever.

I didn't feel a compulsion to do exactly what Paul said to do in a way I figured he wanted me to do it. I find him, often, to be coming from a belief system that is inherently contradictory upon examination.

I figured there was some value to the exercise, so I simply did it. If I had trouble noticing the energy or shape or whatever of a feeling or appreciating the feeling as a manifestation of my being without labels (which, if I were to, would be labeling the feeling as something I had manifested, see the contradiction?) ... I'd just go, "to hell with it" and simply feel what I was feeling, simply be with it.

Basically, I think here you are activating your feeling intelligence to bring yourself into the moment and get yourself out of verbal loops and traditional, compulsive approaches to problem solving (trances).

You find yourself, after a while, no longer involved in running around like a rat in a maze, no longer trying to solve feelings as if they were problems, and begin living in the moment. Your body begins to realize that, hey, this is ok. You eventually begin to learn more on a level deeper than linguistic thinking.

So, yeah, the course content IS self-contradictory. A lot of LSC stuff is. But, beyond explanations and points of view that I do not agree with, there are things of value in the course.

If you do the exercises, you are bound to learn something. Don't let yourself be swayed too much by the activity of your mind in terms of trying to explain things and to be logical. That isn't, I think, what the exercise is about. And you don't have to buy Paul's explanation for it. You can find out for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

I guess the best way to do it is to shift your attention from labeling to feeling. You are going to label. That's what the conscious mind does. You're always going to have a conscious mind. So let it label. Put your attention on feeling and being with the feeling, appreciating the feeling.

I, personally, do believe that feelings can be experienced as having shapes, colors, vibrations, etc. Do they *really* have these attributes? I don't know. Who cares? I think it can be helpful to know them in such a way. If you aren't getting a sense of it, just do what you're best at for now, and maybe something will pop up later?

And there is always acting as if you could (which is what I've done on many occasions) and just going with whatever happens.

Good luck.

[This message has been edited by babayada (edited July 17, 2004).]

What exactly is the "power" we are getting from doing the feelings exercise? I may have missed something, when Paul mentions we are reclaiming the power what exactly is this power and what does it do for us? Thanks

The power is knowing the truth ourside of the trances we live in.

In other words the power is breaking the trances we impose upon ourselves.

Alex

I took it to mean the power of knowing that we are manifesting what we experience and, ultimately, the power to get more directly involved in that process in a conscious fashion.

Loverofcats;when I took guitar lessons I couldn't get the chords or the notes or the mundane task of learning it that way. A musician friend of mine told me to pick a song that I liked and learn that, then I would learn a song and several chords, then I found another song with differnet chords and learned that. It was very enjoyable to learn this way. I was playing and learning. In life now I look for a song I can play and begin to learn that way.You are a Lover of Cats, start with being aware of Loving Cats and take it at your own pace, soon you will being playing your emotions.

Hi there loverofcats! I think the best reply to your questions was the one from jeffdenger, just begin where you feel good. Take things at your own pace and don't try too hard to "get it". I am going through a lot of emotional stuff with this course and one of the biggest was that I was afraid I wouldn't get it! I found that just listening to my own thoughts and leting go of any expectations was the best route for me. And by the way...I am also a lover of cats, I have 15 of them! Be like them, lay around loving yourself and doing whatever is good for you at the moment!