Finding a Deeper Feeling

Suffering comes from not knowing spiritual facts.

When I was depressed I did not know the truth about my well-being. I believed that when I experienced negative thinking, it meant something true about me or the outside world. I thought I needed to either change my circumstances or fix my brain. 

Now I see that all ego trips end in unhappiness. When I feel tension of any kind, it means my ego is engaged.

At first I tried to beat my ego at its own game. But using the intellect to figure out the ego is using the ego to beat the ego. Ego still wins every time. 

The gift of consciousness is a spiritual fact.

Consciousness makes us feel our thinking as sensations in the body. “You can’t sneak a thought past the body.” -Mavis Karn

You can’t beat the ego. I have tried EVERY way I could find to beat the ego and fix tension.

I realized tension is personal thinking at the level of the ego, felt as sensation in the body. The ego is not bad, but we rely on it far beyond what it evolved to do. The ego has one job: keep the body safe. The problem is that 99.99% of the ways my ego creates tension on a daily basis have nothing to do with keeping my body safe. 

So if I couldn’t fix my ego with more intellect and ego, how was I supposed to be happy?

I gave up on happiness for a while. I figured it was too illusive, maybe even imaginary. I did not trust or believe happy people. It was not until I touched that place deep inside that felt pure happiness as a child that I started to seek happiness again. 

I did not feel happiness at first. I felt a deep space that felt like peace. It was a deep feeling of okayness beyond anything that happened in the outside world or in my brain. Like an empty playground, the space reminded me joy and play existed. They existed for me. I HAD felt them. They WERE real. And maybe I could feel them again one day.

For 2 years that feeling of peace and okayness was enough. It was so much better than the misery I lived in for years. I felt I could trust it in a way I never could trust that “up” manic sort of feeling I had in other peak experiences. I was relieved and grateful to hang out there for a while.

Having my daughter changed that. I was not satisfied with pockets of peace. I wanted to be present and engaged with joy in her life. I wanted her to grow up seeing love and joy in me, lived in a real and sustaining way.

I decided to try something new. Something I was afraid to do. I detached from content. I deleted my podcast app. I also stopped listening to audiobooks and engaging with almost all coaching related content. I spent very little time online.  Instead, when I wanted to fill the empty space to distract myself from my own thinking, I listened to these lectures by Sydney Banks. 

Something opened up inside of me. I listened to every recording I could find of Syd, and read or listened to all of his books.

The past four months have been an exploration of what lies beyond the ego: my soul. That immaterial space of consciousness all my own. 

I don’t have the words yet to describe what happened to me. It is similar in quality to a profound spiritual experience I had at 18, but instead of being obsessed with living in that feeling and convincing other people of its power, I move from insight and a beautiful elevated feeling to mundane daily life stuff and back again throughout the day. This experience feels much deeper and truer than what I had at 18, perhaps because it has a very ordinary and simple explanation.

When I was 18, I was very superstitious about the feeling. I thought I needed to guard it and protect it. I needed to get up at 5am and pray every morning. I needed to walk in obedience to God, even when it was uncomfortable, or I would lose the feeling. 

Now I understand how ordinary and simple the feeling is. If I do not feel it, it is simply because I am on an ego trip. I cannot tell you what it is, because no one can. All I can say is look within, and you will find it.

Consciousness is spiritual. It is beyond the brain, even though it looks like the brain makes it possible for us humans to experience it. 

Consciousness brings thought to life as a full-body experience.

I’ve had teachers with an eastern bent say all thought is the same. In one sense that is true. Thought is like Play-Doh–it’s all the same stuff and energy. 

But Sydney Banks points to levels of consciousness. At higher levels of consciousness, the sorts of shapes thought gets squished into changes. He also says we can misuse thought, which is what creates feelings like anger, resentment, jealousy, and self-pity. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just an ego trip. 

Syd would say that when we use thought correctly, we create love, understanding, kindness, and compassion. The deeper the feeling, the less the ego is involved. 

I can tell my level of consciousness by the feeling I’m in. I can tell I’m in my ego by my feeling. The deeper the feeling, the less ego involved. Thought makes play, compassion, joy, delight, awe, and humility. It creates sacrifice and unconditional love. We know we are using thought correctly by the feeling. 

Deep listening is listening beyond the words for a feeling. 

The more I listen and look for my soul, with my soul, the less I trip on my ego. I trust now that all ego trips end in unhappiness. I still trip throughout the day. But the gig is up. And the only way I’ve found to get off an ego trip is through a deeper feeling. 

I do not seek to relieve the tension by thinking about it. I still do common sense things like take Advil for a headache or take a brisk walk in the sun when I feel stagnant. More and more I see ways to look beyond my ego for my soul. In the soul is wisdom. Wisdom gives the practical stuff when I need it.

I do this by looking for a good feeling–a deep feeling. The deepest are compassion, love, gratitude, and humility. The best way I know to find it is by sharing a deep feeling with others. That might be expressing heartfelt gratitude to a server, trying to make my 1 year old giggle uncontrollably, or writing this to share with you. 

A helpful direction for me was this: have gratitude when you can see the truth clearly, and gracefulness when you can’t. For example:

• What would it look like for me to be graceful towards myself and others when I wake up in a bad mood?
• When someone else is rude or selfish, do I have the capacity to offer kindness? 

The key for me is to be honest about what I’m feeling. If I’m feeling tense or morally superior or angry, I know that is the signal for gracefulness not a sign I need to go into my intellect. With deeper understanding, my wisdom directs how I should engage. Sometimes that means walking away from an argument, sometimes that means cracking a joke to ease the tension. Every moment is different, and there is limitless wisdom for each moment. 

When I am honest about what I am feeling, the feeling is an effective signal for where my level of consciousness is. As I trust this, I find new and surprising ways to move forward towards a deeper feeling. 

I was on IG a few months ago scrolling while in a bad mood. I saw a well-meaning post from a coach on setting boundaries in relationships and taking time for your needs. It made sense, and  it is something I’ve said to other people. But in that moment I realized I needed a deeper message. I needed to tap deeper reserves inside of me. 

December was rough. I really experienced that squeeze a lot of women experience. My husband was very sick for 5 days in bed. I took care of him, and then the baby who got sick. When my husband went back to working 12-14 hour days, I got sick. Then I got a bladder infection on top of that. It was the squeeze of taking care of everyone else, and then still taking care of other people while attempting to take care of myself, and feeling a bunch of self-pity that there was no one to take care of me.

My husband is not unfeeling, he just had to go back to work. Because that’s what had to be done. But we both were pushed to our limit. We got into a stupid fight, and ugly things were said on both sides. 

I realized this was not the hardest week I would have as a wife and mother, and I need a message a little more robust than the boiler plate boundaries/self-care/communication spiel if I was going to handle this with resilience and grace. 

This is how I came to see Syd’s wisdom on deep feelings. Problems cannot be solved at the level of consciousness that created them. I needed a higher level of consciousness, and that comes through a deeper feeling. 

As I’ve learned to listen to my own soul for a deeper feeling, I’ve learned to recognize it in others. And by faith, built on what I SEE and KNOW to be true for myself, I walk in the direction of a deeper feeling. As my level of consciousness rises, I feel more gratitude and love and compassion. I have deeper reserves of kindness for myself when I ego trip and when other people ego trip. 

I see more clearly I do not need to rely on my ego 99.99% of the time. The feeling is helpful because it tells me I’m misusing thought to create ego. If I move away from ego into a deep feeling like humility and compassion, my level of consciousness naturally rises all on its own. 

Gratitude when you see the truth, gracefulness when you do not. 

*A natural question at this point goes something like “Well, how do you know when to set boundaries or stand up for yourself?” All I can say is that the deeper my feeling, the more access I have to wisdom, and the more effective I am when it comes to interpersonal conflict. Because I see the truth about myself and the other person more clearly, the natural intelligence of life takes over and I make better decisions. 

~

This experience has been powerful. I feel like I’ve been let in on a cosmic joke. Everyone is running around playing an ego game. And it is really funny as soon as you realize it is a game!

The best way I can describe it is to say that I feel connected to God and have a deeper feeling of faith. It is similar to feelings I had when I was religious, which feels like a huge, unexpected gift. I never expected to feel this again, and I am humbled by it.

But it is very different now. Even in my most devout days, I thought I experienced this feeling from the outside-in: a worship service, good deeds, theology and correct beliefs, prayer, an image of God created by sermons and Bible studies, etc. All along I was experiencing the real deal, I just misunderstood where the experience came from. 

I had this thought: People experience God, and then make up theology. And I laughed! It’s a great cosmic joke! People experience Divine Mind, God, the very essence of the energy of the universe, and they make up theology. It’s hilarious and innocent and funny!

The only thing is to look within for a deeper feeling. Connection to God and to myself is what consciousness is made of. Everything I look for lies within. Everything else is a great cosmic joke. And truth is everywhere. 

It’s funny the way peek-a-boo is funny to my toddler. Funny beyond reason. It is consciousness hiding behind thought, and then jumping out for a laugh. Now you see me, now you don’t!

I have more gracefulness when I am down when I am honest about the level of consciousness I am at. When I am honest that I am tripping on my ego, I am a little less attached to the experience. I can roll my eyes at myself a little easier, and embrace the feeling of humility that signals it’s time to get off the trip a little faster. 

I had a little too much coffee the other day and I was frustrated at the LA driver who would not let me merge into traffic. But I just knew she was tripping and I was tripping, and I am grateful I had enough grace not to let my anger ratchet up the way it’s done in the past. Being honest with myself that I was tripping helped me settle faster than I’m used to. 

It also helped me recover from being the crazy LA driver in a different situation. Instead of hiding from my embarrassment or justifying myself by giving all the reasons why I should be angry, I was able to have a really good laugh over it with my husband. I’m crazy! It’s funny! It’s all one big joke anyways. 

I want to emphasize that I had this experience because of the unique way Sydney Banks shares. I’ve also been taught by those who knew Syd personally (he passed away in 2009). There is no replacement for listening to him yourself or to people like Elsie Spittle, Dicken Bettinger, and Jan and Chip Chipman. Their understanding is so deep, and they share from that place instead of from their intellect.

The important thing for anyone who reads this is to not pay attention to my words. Look past my philosophizing and theorizing, and listen for a feeling of truth. 

You can listen to Sydney Banks for yourself here. Many of his books are available as audiobooks as well.