CONCOMITANTS OF THE CONSOLING DEEP FEELINGS

Here, I have arranged the consoling deep emotions in alphabetical order so that they are self-indexing. Except for aloneness and joy, the consoling deep emotions seem fleeting, much like the difficult deep emotions of bewilderment, lost and relief.

ALONENESS emerges from our lack of connection with other people.

AWE comes from the bigness of something or from our inability to grasp something all at once. With awe, a person's ability to organize experience is left intact. It simply needs more time to "take everything in." Awe may arise after a person balances two other deep feelings: wonder and terror.

BOREDOM arises from a lack of deep-feeling connection with other people. There is nothing unpleasant about the deep feeling of boredom. However, there is a surface feeling of boredom which is unpleasant because it is a form of anger.

CAREFREENESS comes into play when a person eliminates boring interactions from his or her life. In other words, carefreeness arises from allowing deep emotion into one's interactions with others. Many people avoid deep-emotion interactions at all times; they have trouble experiencing carefreeness.

CONTENTMENT shows up when we release our awareness from its former constraints, which are usually self-constraints. Contentment is the same as inner peace.

CURIOSITY is the response to unknown things in oneself, others or the world. Curiosity is the inclination and movement toward the unknown.

HAPPINESS appears when a person contemplates his or her heart's desire. If your heart's desire fails to evoke happiness, you may need to examine your heart of hearts in order to learn its true desire.

JOY emerges when people can be free and fluid with all their deep feelings.

When a person can change himself or herself, change others or change the world, then he or she experiences MASTERY.

SEX is a special response to the body of another person. Deep sexual feelings often go unnoticed because they are obscured by the more intense surface sexual feelings.

SURPRISE is the response to unexpected events. These events must never threaten a person's ability to organize experience. If events threaten that ability, then terror ensues.

TOUCH-HUNGER (or PLAY-HUNGER) arises from the lack of simple interpersonal experiences. These include braiding, combing, dancing, dressing, feeding, holding, hugging, kissing, rocking, rubbing, stroking, swinging, tickling, touching, tussling, undressing, washing and playing simple games like peek-a-boo and paddy-cake.

When a person experiences something new and fresh in himself or herself, in other people or in the world, then the feeling of WONDER occurs.

Consoling Deep Feelings during Deep-Feeling Acknowledgment

Two consoling deep emotions sometimes show up during deep-feeling acknowledgment: contentment and aloneness. The helper with deep feelings should identify contentment because many people are astonished that they can feel contentment, which is the same as inner peace. Aloneness should be identified in order to contrast it with loneliness.

Aloneness differs from loneliness. If you look at the descriptions of loneliness and emotional pain in Appendix 1, you will see that they are similar. So loneliness always has a painful aspect. Aloneness never has a painful aspect. Curiously, aloneness and joy are the very same feeling; which one you feel depends on which way you're facing.

Going from Aloneness to Joy

Because aloneness and joy are the same feeling, here is how you turn aloneness into joy. First, your aloneness must be free of contamination by difficult deep feelings like horror, loneliness or pain. Removing these contaminants is easier than it seems because aloneness is closer to your vital core than the difficult deep feelings are. So acknowledge your aloneness. Recall that you, like all of us, are alone in the world. Next, acknowledge your wonder. There is no need to gaze at the Grand Canyon in order to experience wonder. Wonder is all around us: in the texture of our clothes, in the sounds that envelop us, in the light on the wall, in our ability to draw a breath.

Wonder changes aloneness into joy because wonder cancels some of the terror that surrounds us. For example, the nightly news offers us little else besides terror: war, famine, pestilence and death threaten us on every side. Acknowledging wonder, in the presence of aloneness, cancels out some of that terror and turns the aloneness into joy. Conversely, acknowledging terror will turn joy into aloneness.

	Social Concomitants of the Difficult Deep Feelings
	Surface Feelings

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