"But feeling is scary!"
There's a story of a woman who was studying to become more intuitive, she was taking a class. She was also in school, and she went to take an exam. During the exam, she found something she didn't know the answer to, so she decided to try this new intuitive skill she'd been practicing, and she started hearing a song in her head. So she thought, I have to shut up this stupid song, it's getting in the way of the intuitive stuff I'm trying. The more she tried, the louder the song got. She got the answer wrong. When she got the test back and saw what the answer should have been - it was exactly the line from the song she'd been hearing. She was so busy trying to shut the intuitive stuff up, that she failed to notice that what she was hearing WAS the intuitive stuff.
Some of the young Sensers do something similar. You point out to them that there is an annoyed, and they try really hard to find this feeling deep in their guts. You poke them in the ear, and they get all annoyed and tell you that you're distracting them from finding the annoyed.
Sensers don't go looking for things to feel. They feel what's there. There are always feelings. A Senser feels whatever feelings. Whatever it is you're pushing away, is the thing that wants to be felt. "I have to find the feeling!" Sensers don't find feelings, they feel feelings. If there are no feelings there to feel, you've either died and become a zombie, or you're not paying attention. At any moment in your life when there are no feelings to be felt, there's a big strong feeling that wants to be felt and you're really busy pushing it away, all your energy is going there. If there's something under the thing that needs found, the feeling will lead you to it. Just feel whatever comes up, and it will lead you back to the place that's causing problems, and then you feel that. It's so simple that it often gets overlooked.
You are buried in a tidal wave of feelings. Don't struggle, don't fight, just feel. If you can't find anything, it's because you're trying hard not to feel. Being a Senser is the least complicated of all of the Clans. Sources have to pay attention to what they source. Shapers have to actually build something if they want it to last. Sensers just have to feel what's there. It's not an exam, there are no wrong or right answers. Feel whatever is there. Eventually, you become like a martial artist, you feel it as it's coming towards you, you feel it as it moves past and you feel it as it's moving away. If you're taking more than three seconds, you're probably doing something wrong.
They don't have to be big and hairy and scary to be a feeling. People have a tendency to go looking until they find something messy enough, "good enough" to be "The Feeling". It doesn't work like that, anything you can feel is a feeling.
When you approach feelings like this, feelings are no longer scary. With every in breath and out breath, you're processing several feelings. With these two things (it doesn't have to be big and messy, and you don't find feelings), Sensing becomes easy. The only reason it's difficult, is because it's a marathon, it never stops. Once you learn how to handle it, it gets easy. Feeling doesn't have to be scary anymore.
Angel, 2014-08-23
