Q: I’ve had the experience of having a thought which awoke feelings of distress, or fear, or anger. As per your approach, I’ve treated these thoughts as “messengers” and just sat and focused on the felt resonance underlying these thoughts. After working with TPP for a long time, I’ve been able to experience that my emotional lens does color my thoughts, as well as generate them. However, I used to read, and believe, that our feelings were a response to our thinking, as well as to our unconscious value judgments. This would seem to imply that though the experience was in the feeling, the causal point of the feeling was in the thinking. I’ve also had experiences like this. Are there times thoughts or external situations are the causal point of what we are feeling, as opposed to more primal emotional imprinting?
A: According to my experience, no. According to your experience, yes. So now, a big dilemma: Is my experience your teacher, or is yours your teacher? Do we have the courage to accept our experience as valid even when it apparently contradicts what another implicitly states as being true?
