What is the difference between Emotions and Feelings?

I want to clarify the difference between the two as it seems to cause some confusion when people read my work.  Let's start this post with an edited image from Chapter Ten of my book Graduating Life with Honours.

In my book I explain that we are made up of two bodies, one physical (left) and the other spiritual (right).  When they are joined together they create 'Man'.  If we look at the physical body, with a heart and mind but no spirit, it is called 'human'.  If we look at the physical body without a heart or mind or spirit, it is called a 'person'.  We need to be really clear about this as it is also the foundation others use to hoodwink us in their fictional constructs.

We have two minds, a human mind rooted in the physical realm, and the spiritual mind rooted in the spiritual realm.  The human has senses; touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell.  It's capacity to interact with it's environment comes from these five senses which is processed in the physical processing centers within the human body.  The brain takes these inputs, interprets them the best it can and then responds to the stimulus, with the highest priority given to self preservation.  This process is limited to the biological functions of the human vessel and as such is limited in what information it can receive and how to process that information.  As a result, it reacts in ways that end up being selfish and harmful.  I've seen these described using the term 'Emotional Plague Reactions' and it results in armour and other protective behaviours being developed in order to cope with the violent experiences.  Given the high level of violence in our relationships, we all have armour and other levels of protection.  These manifest as a result of emotional plague reactions and not having the full awareness and knowledge on how to heal or deal with them in a healthy way.

We use words like; envy, hate, greed, lust, rage, murder, theft, competition, etc to describe just some of these Emotional Plague Reactions.  These manifest from the physical bodies single focus responsibility to survive and reproduce.  But we are spiritual beings and our spirit brings something very important to this relationship with our physical vessel; spiritual feelings rooted in the love of the universal spiritual mind.  This is not to be confused with the sense of touch, but rather is that 6th sense or gut feelings that we all have and that capacity to feel love, peace, joy, compassion, gentleness, sharing, cooperation and empathy.  These spirit centric feelings are critically important to express in our lives but they are often blocked by the armour and false ego of the physical bodies intellect / mind. 

The emotional plague reactions are the key protection protocols used to avoid having to deal with things that the human body it is not familiar with.  These spiritual feelings are foreign to the physical vessel and are seen as a threat.  The intellect will do everything it can to avoid the unknown as the risks are too high and are seen as a threat.  

These irrational fears are a manifestation of an unhealthy physical mind and can escalate the emotional plague reactions experienced by the individual. It does not seem to matter if the physical mind experiences physical pain via it's five senses or spiritual pain (hurt spiritual feelings), it will resort to building armour and engage in emotional plague reactions for protection.  The physical vessel needs guidance and in order for Spirit to guide it's development, the physical vessel needs to surrender to spirit so that a partnership can be formed.  Spirit can 'see', 'hear', 'taste', 'touch' and 'feel' way more than the physical vessel can.  These spiritual feelings can significantly enhance the capacity of Man and change the course of our relationships in the process.  

When I write, I use the word 'emotions' to describe the physical aspects of this relationship and 'feelings' to describe the spiritual aspects.  Unhealthy reactions to either of these are called 'emotional plague reactions' and usually result in anger, frustration and lots of covert violence.  A healthy union and processing of physical inputs with spiritual guidance is the ultimate goal of this relationship and requires a lot of work to break free of the violence in order to find freedom.  

When we obtained the knowledge to be able to differentiate between good and evil, we were given an opportunity to grow as spiritual beings.  The physical vessel has the capacity to engage in the most evil and vial behaviors and this situation absolutely demands that Spirit step in to govern its behaviours, thoughts, speech and actions.  The physical vessel must surrender control to spirit in order to accomplish this goal.  An unhealthy ego overcome with emotional plague reactions will have the most difficult time taking this leap of faith.  But if Spirit can assert itself, healing, peace, balance and a whole new level of consciousness can be obtained.  I call that 'Christ Level Consciousness' and it demands that we are consciously aware of the difference between the physical and spiritual aspects of our experience in order for us to heal and work through our shit.  

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