Does a Felt Sense Have an Opposite?
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Jennifer asks: "I'm wondering if every felt sense always has a corresponding opposite, separate from Presence. So, for example, if I'm sensing sadness, does that mean there must be a part of me that is not sensing sadness? And is that opposite part, by definition, sensing joy (albeit in a quiet way)?"
Dear Jennifer,
What an interesting question!
I'm going to answer "No," and for a very intriguing reason: Because a felt sense cannot have an opposite!
So in your example — "joy" opposed to "sadness" — those are not felt senses. A felt sense might contain sadness or joy. Those experiences of sadness or joy might be some of the strands in the intricacy of a felt sense. But the felt sense as a whole is an absolutely unique object that has never existed before and will never exist again. So how could it have an opposite?
Does your best friend have an opposite? Does your favorite jacket that you should throw out but you won't because you love it so much have an opposite?
The concept of having an "opposite" occurs only at a conceptual level. A living being, as unique in one's self, has no opposite. But man is opposite woman, old is opposite young, healthy is opposite sick. Only when we abstract characteristics away from living beings can we talk about opposites.
Felt senses have no opposites because they are complex, intricate, more-than-words-can-capture, and because they are unique, in the same way that a single living being is unique.
"I'm sensing sadness…"
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The next time you're sensing sadness, Jennifer, try locating that experience somewhere in your body. Where do you feel it? Now let go of the word "sadness" and just stay with the wordless felt experience in that place. Call it "something." "Something is here."
Now invite words back and use them to describe the feel of this place freshly, as if you had never felt it before. Even if the word "sadness" turns out to be exactly right after all, you'll have a sense of how there's more than that, there's this kind of sadness, not quite like any other.
That's the experience that can open into next steps as you sit with it with no expectations. It doesn't have an opposite — but it does have an aliveness all its own.