This seems to be at the core of your approach, though I confess that I still don’t really understand it.
You seem to have made ‘technical thought’ some kind of bedrock or foundation for pure perception (or something that comes into existence with pure perception)
and that a diet of this “technical thinking” (alongside a plant-based food and clean water - to which I have no objections!) is all that is required for sensitivity.
The implications of what you have written here (and previously) are that you are already living a daily life of pure perception, that you no longer have any sense of self, and so you no longer have any ‘feelings’.
But are you absolutely sure of this? Are you certain that you have no more traces of self, and that you live, day by day, in a state of pure perception?
This is important to ascertain in the context of how certain you seem to be about about love, about beauty, about the nature of the mind, what it means to live in a state of pure awareness, etc.
The issue of ‘feelings’ seems rather peripheral in relation to the central question above, but I will make one final attempt to understand it.
As far as I can see, it may simply be a matter of semantics. First of all (if you don’t mind) can we distinguish ‘feeling’ from emotion? Feeling has a more diffuse meaning for me, and what you are describing can (for me at least) more clearly be navigated by using more concrete language - such as ‘emotion’ - so I’ll be using this word here (where you use the word ‘feeling’).
Now, what you seem to be describing is the way that emotions are generated by the interplay of psychological thought with our biology. You write:
You then go on to suggest that by simply calling these resultant states (of fear, sadness, envy, jealousy, etc) “emotions” (with clearly ascertainable properties of their own), we are obliquely sustaining them, lending them a vitality that they needn’t have.
By refraining from calling an emotion an ‘emotion’ (i.e. of ‘fear’, ‘sadness’, ‘envy’, ‘grief’, etc), you argue, and by calling them instead “psychological images” or
you believe we stand a better chance of breaking the “virtual reality” of the central ‘self-image’ (created by our thinking) - and thereby be liberated of self.
Because you equate ‘emotion’ with this virtual reality of self, you feel that the word (‘emotion’) must be “negated” - as emotions are merely
Therefore you say that the use of the word (‘emotion’) is
because all there is is the ‘psychological movement of thought’ (acting on the body).
My criticism of this is that you are probably doing nothing more than adjusting conventional semantics to suite your own psychological temperament, and then dressing this up as some kind of spiritual achievement.
What you call “psychological movement of thought acting on the body” is just your way of naming what most people call emotion. Furthermore, you seem to miss the danger that this alternative ‘flavour’ of naming is just as susceptible to reification (of its object) - of nourishing and sustaining the self - as indulging in emotions.
Perhaps a meaningful analogy to help show what I mean is that of a rainbow: the artist looks at the rainbow and sees its colour, its atmosphere of quiet, the triumph of its arching splendour over the earth, straddling the worlds of tempest and sunshine. But the scientist (as a scientist) describes a rainbow in more reductionist terms, as
an optical illusion caused by any water droplets viewed from a certain angle relative to a light source. (Wikipedia)
Which description of the rainbow is the truer account? Surely they are both true in their own way. To prioritise one over the other is a matter of temperament - depending on whether you are more arts oriented or sciences oriented.
So similarly, what one person calls an ‘emotion’ (of fear, envy, sadness, anger, etc) you call a ‘specific movement of psychological images related to the body’ - only you believe that your semantic reframing of emotion is spiritually more refined, more detached, and reflective of a purer perception.
But is this language you are using the product of pure perception? - or is it merely the result of your own particular conditioning; which - by dismissing ‘emotion’ - is in fact maintaining your own ‘specific movement of psychological images’ (aka self-centre) from which you claim to be liberated?
