Feelings: A Bane or a Blessing?

Imagine living in a world without feelings ? As someone noted in Reader's Digest some years ago, "Life without feelings would be like playing a trombone with a stuck slide"—incredibly dull and boring.

Feelings are feelings—and not actions. Feelings are an indication of what is going on in one's inner self—often from the unconscious mind. They are an "emotional thermometer" as it were indicating the state of one's inner self. The important thing is to learn how to discern what our feelings are telling us and then act appropriately.

For instance, if I have continuing feelings of anger, this is an indication that I probably have an unresolved relational conflict that I need to resolve. Or if I have ongoing feelings of guilt, this is an indication that I need to put something right and seek forgiveness. Think too of temptation. It starts in the mind. The thoughts and feelings associated with the temptation are neither right nor wrong. It's what we do about them—or in response to them—that makes them either right or wrong.

What we do about our anger that becomes either right or wrong—creative, or destructive and sinful. Remember, too, that what negative feelings we don't talk out creatively, we will inevitably act out destructively.