Preamble: This one’s a little all over the place, and perhaps a little circular in many ways, but I’ll post it out anyway since I’m pretty happy with the rough conclusion I was able to somehow reach. A little low on the word count on this but I’m sure the previous one makes up for it.
Today I want to take some time out to babble on about feelings and perception. I’ve been thinking how it’s funny (or interesting?) that one of the key concepts of therapy and psychology is “naming” your feelings to become more aware of them. And how one of the key concepts of Buddhism and mindfulness is to perceive the external world (and maybe even our internal world?) without naming it, without judging it. Both of these ideas however, as far as I’m aware, have the same goals, i.e. increased and expanded awareness.
So how does this work? How is it okay and even beneficial to name our feelings, but why is it beneficial to perceive external sights, sounds and smells without trying to label them?
Of course one of the key points is that there’s a difference between naming something and judging something. Let’s maybe break these two things down.
feelings + mindfulness
A situation occurs. We feel things. We make stories out of our feelings. More often than not, the stories are wrong. So here, if we interrupt the storytelling with just trying to name the feelings instead, we can become “aware” of them. Once we’re aware of them, we can remove the stories we were adding on to them.
Let’s look at this with an example:
A situation occurs (my roommate left dirty dishes in the sink). We feel things (anger, annoyance, frustration). We make stories out of our feelings (my roommate is irresponsible, my roommate doesn’t respect rules, my roommate doesn’t care about cleanliness). More often than not, the stories are wrong. So here, if we interrupt the storytelling with just trying to name the feelings instead, we can become “aware” of them. Once we’re aware of them, we can remove the stories we were adding on to them.
Of course, there’s still some societal judgement that might persist (i.e. “anger” and “sadness” could be viewed as bad, or negative), but at least, we’ve removed the judgement about them from this particular situation.
perception + mindfulness
Most meditation practices have some of these common directives: observe the world, focus on anything in your sights, look at objects, but try not to name them. Since naming them will create additional stories about them. For example, if you’re outside and you’re looking at some mud – try not to think of it as mud – since that might create a negative response in you. Or even flowers – perceive them, but don’t judge them. Don’t add thoughts onto them.
reframe
Okay, I just realized that the goal of naming our feelings or getting in touch with our feelings is not awareness for the sake of it, the primary goal is to get distance from our feelings, or to enable unattachment from them, i.e. enable us to stop identifying with them.
Whereas the goal of perception, is also to create distance from ourselves, but the directive to avoid naming or judging things is probably only so that we don’t create unnecessary feelings, if they didn’t have to come about.
Naming our feelings, can help us get closer to our bodies, and away from our thoughts.
some sort of a conclusion
I suppose it’s because perceiving the external world comes naturally to us. We’re taught how to do this, most of us do this ever since we’re born. But we’re only clouded by whatever we’ve learned about these things. So in this case, we can directly start off by removing the “names and judgement” layer from these objects. It’s easier for a kid to “notice” an apple if they’ve seen it before. (I think) So, all we need to work on while practicing mindfulness is to remove the judgement of how an apple makes us feel (hungry, or nice) or what it looks like (ripe, or rotten, etc.)
But, not all of us are taught how to perceive our internal worlds or our bodies. So we’ve to first understand how to perceive it, and then work on the judgement part of it. Once I know what an emotion feels like, I can notice it, recognize it again. Once I get good at perceiving it, I can work on perception without judgement.
I suppose, naming our feelings simply allows for increased perception. Increased perception, when done right, can then allow for increased awareness.
So, it’s not that these concepts are meeting each other from opposite ends, but that they’re probably step 1 and step 2 of the same eventual goal – that of increased and expanded awareness.
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