Emotional Intelligence is not the same as Feeling Literacy
We’ve possibly all heard of the concept of Emotional Intelligence, which refers to how aware and considerate we are of our own and other’s emotions, and sometimes includes our degree of emotional control. However, our emotions are but one of seven different and distinct levels or states of energy we register as feelings.
A lot of people navigate by how and what they feel. However, if we wish to use “what we feel,” as our compass in life, it is essential that we are able to discern and differentiate between all feelings we are registering. And not just what we feel, but more importantly, the level or state of the Feeling.
The Five Feeling States
Our five mostly known and somewhat understood feeling states, ordered from lowest to highest in vibration are:
- Physical Sensations, our nerve or sensory data, primarily registered as touch, but secondarily, a degree of the soundwaves we hear are registered by feeling.
- Instincts, like survival, procreation, eating and drinking – the primal drives that perpetuate our bodies and species.
- Emotions, the feeling manifestations of our thoughts. Desires of every kind, affection, attraction, and any of the pairs of emotional opposites. Feelings of Craving or Aversion.
- Intuition, which can be a feeling or knowing sensation, and is guidance coming into the personality vehicle from our Higher Self.
- Love, the vast universal inclusivity, and impulse to return to the Divine, carried out through the transmutation of the lower into the higher, which humans register as conscious evolution, higher aspiration, and selflessness. Love manifests within us as an orientation to lovingkindness, dispassionate compassion, balance, wisdom, and nonviolence or harmlessness. While Love is vast, still, and oceanic, it is simultaneously transmutative, dynamic, and powerful – a sacred energy of a far higher order than all emotions.
The Sixth Feeling State
The Sixth Feeling State is our sense of Harmonic Resonance or Alignment. We “feel” smooth resonance and abrasive dissonance, or harmony and disharmony. “That resonates with me,” is the usual expression to describe the sensation.
In simplest definition, this perception is the sense that what we are experiencing in that moment is either in or out of harmony or alignment with what already exists within us. But we must remember that the qualities in our constitution are varied. We have traumas and unhelpful beliefs, low-vibrational limiting patterns or vices, separative individualism, primal instincts, and any dark karma embodied in the present at one end. At the other end, we have the results of any inner healing and positive beliefs, any high-vibrational expansive patterns or virtues we have cultivated, joyous connective universality, intuitive evolutionary insights, and any light karma and future possibilities encoded into us from our Souls. Between these we have a huge grey zone.
All alignment, no matter what with, will always register as a type of harmonic resonance. Evil resonates with Evil, just as Love resonates with Love. But also, two ends of a dipole, like the north and south ends of a magnet, resonate, as they are “like kinds.” So, a victim resonates in alignment with a perpetrator and vice versa. Like kinds or things which are alike, attract and reinforce each other, and both create potent types of resonance!
Which part of us a thing resonates with, depends upon the predominant state of consciousness or the part of our nature we regularly feed. We may believe in love, joy, and nonviolence, but if we spend the majority of our time judging, hating, and causing harm, when things resonate with us, they will be in alignment with these action-empowered behaviours, and not the values we believe, but practice not!
If we consciously engage our Harmonic Resonance faculty, we can check which part of us or what inner pattern the new experience, information, object, or person is resonating with. Ideally it is in alignment with our Heart and Soul, but it could just as easily be any low-vibrational aspect of our past embodied in the present.
For most, we feel resonance with, and are open to, what justifies the beliefs we act upon and how we currently live; and we feel abrasive dissonance towards, and are closed to, anything that challenges our self-created paradigm! This pattern is what underlies Confirmation Bias. Unless we work to change this default human behaviour, we will “resonate with and embrace” anything aligned to what we already live, and we will feel “dissonance towards and reject” anything that challenges our lived beliefs. Even our spiritual awakening and evolution in this life can be thwarted by such dissonance!
Therefore, if we want to reach our full potential, we must open to experiences that resonate with our potential (held within our Hearts), despite any fear or discomfort this triggers; while simultaneously cultivating detachment from our identity entity – that conglomerate of lived experiences we call our incarnate personality – our manifest past!
In the end, our ability to accurately Navigate by Resonance, is directly dependant on how purified our personality vehicle is – how cleansed our body, how still our emotions, how quiet our mind, and especially, the degree of balance and wise detachment we embody. Without this Personality Self-Control, all feelings are distorted before clear registration, and therefore, none of them will serve us well!
The Seventh Feeling State
While each of the six feeling states all vibrate at different frequencies or rates, the seventh state is specifically a matter of vibration. It is our ability to feel, observe, and assess Vibrational Rates – how high or low something vibrates in relation to other things. This is an extremely subtle and highly sensitive type and degree of awareness. Its mastery requires even more of us then does Resonance – to be accurate. I would draw attention to the word “accurate,” for in my observation, vast in number are those who use this state of awareness most poorly and lacking in accuracy – their perceptions distorted by their desires and uncontrolled thought life – not to mention all the energies and cultural thought-streams of the nation they dwell in, or groups they belong to and identify with!
If we build on the previously described Personality Self-Control and then consciously cultivate and engage this seventh feeling state, we profoundly refine our life navigation skills and open the way to the Higher Path.
Once fully developed, requiring a conscious connection with our Soul, we can then clearly perceive the difference between our Lower Self or Personality and our Higher Self or Soul, and therefore, whether something is in resonance or dissonance with our lower or higher nature.
At this stage, with clear knowledge and embodied experience of all Seven Feeling States, we can pause and accurately check through all our levels of feeling and self to determine the true nature of any resonating alignment, thus enabling us to consciously use our Feeling Compass for our positive growth and advantage.
Feeling States and the Chakras
If you have an interest in your Chakras (or Centres) and the Seven Rays, and you noted there are Seven Feeling States, you may wish to know how they interrelate, for certainly they do. We could simply put them in the order as I addressed them in the article, but this ordering is based on commonly known to commonly unknown or unregistered, and so, it will cause the chakras, vibrational rates, and the rays to be out of order.
In addition to the ordering flaws, there are three points worthy of note, which will make the Tabulation far more accurate:
♦ Despite New Age thinking, our chakras are not lined up within our bodies from lowest to highest in vibration. We are not linear beings, and Intelligence does not vibrate higher than Love. Love is only secondary in vibration to our Spiritual Will – embodied within the Crown – and yet our Heart is at the centre of us, rather than directly beneath the Crown. The Heart vibrates higher than the Throat and Third Eye because we are Love-Centred Beings. Therefore, Love is a higher feeling state than Harmonic Resonance or Intuition, which are associated with the Throat and Third Eye respectively.
♦ There is much error and (usually unconscious) confusion about the differences between Love and the Emotions, as well as the Chakras or Centres they relate to.
To assist, here is some much-needed clarity:
- Love is Not an Emotion.
- Desires are not seated within nor emanate from the Heart.
- Desire is the cause of all suffering – and suffering does not come from a Sacred Centre such as the Heart but ripples out from Non-Sacred Centres beneath the diaphragm. Specifically referenced here is “uncontrolled desire.”
- When our emotions are triggered, we experience a trembling gut or butterflies in the tummy – the region that is the home of our emotions.
- Emotions are eventually transmuted into Love as they are drawn up into the Heart. The lighter emotions do this with greater ease than the heavier or darker emotions. Lighter emotions rise to the Heart almost unaided, yet the darker or heavier emotions only arrive and are transmuted within the Heart by conscious effort. This requires the use of Clear Mind – a reason emotionally-polarised people often struggle to get free from their emotions. And this is why people feel and associate Heart Activity with certain positive emotional states. The Heart is the emotion’s destination – not their source!
If you achieve a good measure of Personality Self-Control and then directly investigate each of these statements with genuine objectivity and close attention to the details of your energies within, you can verify their veracity for yourself. But know, this will require exceptionally finely tuned inner awareness.
♦ For the Tabulation to be more correct and useful, we would need to superimpose the Base and Sacral Centres and see them functioning as a singular centre (as is often depicted in ancient chakra diagrams) under the 7th Ray. We would also need to include the Splenic Centre (The 8th Sphere) – a veiled double-chakra, on par in terms of size and function as the seven “major centres” – which is the true repository of many of the emotions within us. Thus, allowing the Solar Plexus Centre to assume its correct association as “The Abdominal Brain,” and repository of the lower fires fused with the astral human nature – its lower manifestations being mental emotions, emotional thinking, and uncontrolled reactiveness. We must note that the Sacral Centre also carries a small degree of emotional energy, sometimes called “The Waters of Life” – one type of prana that this centre receives and distributes.
If we put these updated details in human chakra order, this would give us the following Table:
| CHAKRA | RAY | FEELING STATE |
| Crown | 1st | Vibrational Rates |
| Third Eye | 4th | Intuition |
| Throat | 3rd | Harmonic Resonance |
| Heart | 2nd | Love |
| Solar Plexus | 5th | Fiery Emotions |
| Spleen | 6th | Watery Emotions |
| Base and Sacral | 7th | Physical Sensations and Instincts |
However, for clarity and ease of use of our Feeling Compass, the Table is better arranged with the Feeling States in order of vibration from highest down to lowest, which, of course, coincides with the ordering of the Seven Rays, as follows:
| FEELING STATE | RAY | CHAKRA |
| Vibrational Rates | 1st | Crown |
| Love | 2nd | Heart |
| Harmonic Resonance | 3rd | Throat |
| Intuition | 4th | Third Eye |
| Fiery Emotions | 5th | Solar Plexus |
| Watery Emotions | 6th | Spleen |
| Physical Sensations and Instincts | 7th | Base and Sacral |
Hopefully this Table and the co-measurement it contains, opens the door to a deeper understanding of your Chakras, the Seven Rays, and especially the Seven Feeling States.
Tools for Transformation
In truth, becoming fully Feeling Literate is another lens through which we can view the entire path of self-mastery, enlightenment, and liberation – and this mirrors the vastness that is life itself. Therefore, I will dedicate quite some words to help guide our spiritual paths within this lens. It is my hope that the following Azure Seer-styled enumerations of such foundational principles capture the simple purity of the spiritual path in daily life.
Having clear knowledge of the Seven Levels of Energy we register as Feelings is useful, as it creates a framework within which to deepen our exploration and self-awareness, but our true power lies in embodiment.
To become fully Feeling literate, as touched upon in the Sixth and Seventh States, we must strive to achieve greater purity and balance within, greater control over the Personality Self, and then to focus on cultivating clear perception of each distinct level of feeling.
The Following Seven Intentions or Tasks may prove useful:
Note: Each point is indicative and not comprehensive of all that is required or useful. We must realise that all incarnate humans are at differing levels of spiritual or soul age, and therefore, some variations may be required or deemed acceptable at different times in the spiritual path of growth and evolution. A child will never be held to the same standards as an adult, by one who is truly loving and wise.
- Clean up your Body – Stop polluting it with smokes, alcohol, drugs, coffee, white sugar and flour, and heavily processed food products. It is also essential to avoid all animal flesh and animal byproducts, as we seek to empower our human nature and set our compass towards our Higher Divine Nature, not back down into our animal nature. Hence, to allow your form to function at its best you want to get as close as you can to a wholefoods plant-based diet with high raw content – weighted towards healthy unrefined carbohydrates – what we are anatomically best suited to digest. Also include some moderately impactful regular exercise and gentle sunshine. We want to stop all lifestyle habits that lower our vibration and cause acidity and contraction in the body. Instead, embracing lifestyle habits that cultivate higher-vibrational alkaline expansiveness.
- Clean up your Emotions – Cultivate balance at all times, while accepting there will be times of greater fluctuations. Use your mind to discern with clarity and find the midpoint between all pairs of emotional opposites – to slow the pendulum of reactions. While all emotions need to eventually become ripples rather than waves, it is far easier to achieve stillness from the so-called positive emotions. So, work to transmute coarse low-vibrational emotions into their positive higher-vibrational opposites. Strive for emotional tranquillity by cultivating openness to your Soul rather than being perpetually in reaction to the inherent nature or substance of the emotional body itself.Within the scope of this task is mastering craving and aversion and the entire desire nature. We seek to stop perceiving life through the “glass darkly,” which is the astral fog that surrounds those who indulge their emotions rather than master them.
Note: I am not speaking about suppression of the emotions or the ceasing of all astral vibratory activity, as this is as dangerous and damaging as uncontrolled overexpression. We aim for acknowledgement and “controlled wise expression” of the emotions at all times.
- Clean up your Mind – You are what you think, and what you think will be directly reflected by what you fill your mind with! Therefore, stop filling your mind with gossip, judgment, cruelty, violence, horror, and gore – anything that is not about universal love, inclusivity, lovingkindness, goodwill, etc. All that separates must be replaced with vast inclusive universality. We must see and acknowledge the evil, as we cannot address what we do not see, but we must not fixate upon it! The mind is a powerful tool; however, it needs training from the Heart, to be fully enveloped in Love, before it will become your ally.When we foster nonviolence, nonjudgment, and inclusiveness – i.e. Heartfulness – we create space within to hear the still quiet voice of the Soul within the Heart. Without a cleaned up and beautifully controlled Personality (body, emotions, mind), clear perception of all feelings (and of Truth) will forever remain out of reach.
- Cultivate Mindfulness – To assist in achieving this control and lived cleanliness, it is most useful to cultivate presence in the moment through developing mindfulness – to be able to hold our awareness in the detached observer state. Without a clean and relaxed body, still emotions, and quiet mind, we will struggle to perceive what is here now, especially what feelings are present and their level or state. And certainly, if we experience Resonance, we will not know what exactly is in alignment. Mindfulness is an essential skill.
- Aspire Upwards-Within – The incarnate human stage is but one stop on the path of evolution, we are not the endpoint! Therefore, to be aligned to the vast evolutionary direction of the Divine, we must set our compass towards our Higher Nature, specifically our Soul – which is at one with all Souls in that great oceanic vastness called the Kingdom of Souls. Concurrently, we must release identification with our animal body and all of its attributes, for this is not who we are. This process of releasing layers of lower identity is to make space within, for our higher consciousness to have somewhere to land. One cannot receive into a cup that is full of itself.
- Directly Investigate Each Level of Feeling – Once we have made good efforts to cleanse our vessel, we can hold our awareness mindfully present, and we are correctly aligned in evolution, next is to discern and explore each level of feeling, to gain working knowledge of, and the ability to differentiate between them. This will take time and practice, but the rewards are profound.
- Strive to Embody all Mastery in Daily Life – As stated earlier, knowledge alone does not equate to enlightenment and liberation, we must embody and live the knowledge we acquire – only this way do we truly “Know.”
Note: It is likely that we will cycle through all seven steps many times, deepening into each achievement with each successive effort – each step will not be achieved in a single attempt. Therefore, come back and read the steps every month or two – to stay consciously in tune with where you are in your journey and what requires attention. Put a reminder in your calendar to make it easy to achieve this.
In Conclusion…
♦ To be master of all of our feelings, we must remember, “We can only consciously navigate where we have clear awareness. That which we cannot perceive we are victims of.”
♦ To know is to see, to see is to know.
♦ We cannot address that which remains in darkness, it must be brought into the full light of consciousness – our inner and outer darkness must be illuminated, if we are to be free of it.
♦ The pristine Spiritual Will illuminates, reveals, and unites everything beneath and contained within it, and so, we must aim towards this, via the oceanic stillness of the Heart. Will and Love must ever work as one.
If we put in the work, we will eventually be capable of accurately and wisely navigating with our Feeling Compass, as consciously lived knowledge becomes embodied knowledge, and embodiment is essential for wisdom.
To Clear Feeling Awareness and Enlightenment
Azure Seer
For a slightly different perspective on this topic, linked with the comfort-discomfort dipole, see my short Article: Emotional Resonance Verses Mental Alignment