Teal Swan: Feel (page 3)

“Admitting to where you are feels simultaneously like pain and like relief. The energy required to resist where you are is exhausting. Admitting to where you are feels like letting yourself float downstream after swimming upstream against river rapids for years.”

“When you lose someone or something that you care about and as a result you feel sad or anxious or powerless, it isn't dysfunctional or pathological, it's normal.”

“What if true enlightenment is the peace we feel when we are no longer resisting any thought or feeling that may come to touch us regardless of whether it is positive or negative?”

“Resistance comes in the form of any thought, belief, word, desire or action that pulls AGAINST the thing you want. Select what you want and then watch every thought you think and with each one, decide whether that thought pulls towards or against the thing you want. If it pulls in the direction of what you want, it will feel like relief internally. If it pulls against what you want, it will feel like tension or pressure internally.”

“It's not the uncomfortable feelings themselves that hurt, it's our resistance to the uncomfortable feelings that causes us pain.”

“The greatest sense of freedom comes when our actions flow directly from feelings.”

“When something is real or true, it will feel stable and solid, even if you don’t feel “good” about it.”

“We have a conditional relationship with the truth. We only want truth if it makes us feel more stable. We only want truth if it makes us feel more in control. We only want truth if it makes us feel good. And this conditional relationship that we have with the truth will be our downfall.”

“We value things like stability, control and feeling good. We often see truth as an oppositional force to these things, when in reality, truth is our only way of actually achieving these things.”

“When we live in a society where people genuinely feel that what matters most is the romantic partnership, we have learned that other people will value and prioritize a romantic partner above all other relationships. Therefore, you are only genuinely secure and only have leverage for getting your needs met in a relationship, if you are that person’s romantic partner.”

“If we see a romantic partnership as the only relationship that promises to meet our needs, the only one that will make us happy, the only one in which we can feel secure and establish a sense of guarantee, we will fail to recognize and we will devalue all of the other forms of relationships around us; as well as the plentitude of resources that each one offers us.”

“There is a big difference between feeling shame and being shamed… The feeling we call shame is a natural biological affective reaction that is occurring when we fear social consequence. To shame someone is to use the natural biological affective reaction of shame as a tool for manipulating and controlling someone to suit your own interests.”

“Feeling is your compass. If you can feel, you have no cause to seek an outside opinion about your direction in life.”

“Every opportunity, person, event, circumstance and thing which supports happiness in your life will show up for you when you have the courage to follow how you feel as your only compass directing you through your life.”

“When you follow your emotional guidance system with the awareness that your inner compass can be ‘faulty’ you will be able to question yourself in the spirit of curiosity and the desire to be totally aware… You will ask yourself WHY something feels good to do.”

“Hell on Earth is a world where there are over 7 billion people and most of them feel completely alone.”

“To build a secure relationship, caretake the insecurity and unsafety of the other person in the relationship. And recognize when you feel insecure or unsafe in your relationship so that you can very quickly initiate re-establishing security and safety with the other person.”

“The worst thing you could ever do to someone from a position of authority is to turn them against themselves. The worst thing you could do is to make them believe that it is wrong to feel how they feel and so something must be wrong with them. It is not malice that makes 'therapists' do this. It is ignorance. But it is ignorance that must end. And I will dedicate myself to ending that ignorance for as long as I draw breath.”

“When you negate the negative that someone thinks or feels with the positive, you are denying them the authentic support they need to deal with what they are facing.”