What’s the difference between and thought and feeling?

In meditation last week, I pondered it more and it became clear. Feeling is just what it implies – physical sensation. Everything else is thought.

Back home, of course, I consulted Dictionary.com which defines thought as “the product of mental activity” while feeling as “ the function or the power of perceiving by touch” or “physical sensation not connected with sight, hearing, taste, or smell or a particular sensation of this kind.”

“Physical sensation not connected with sight, hearing, taste, or smell.” What physical sensation is that?

If I’m angry, I sometimes feel the blood rushing to my head. But when I feel loyalty, what is the physical sensation? Loyalty must be a thought then, not a feeling. I feel a sensation with anger, but the thought generates the feeling. The feeling doesn’t come all by itself, like the wind blowing in my face.

In meditation one thinks a lot about thoughts. Thoughts seem involuntary. Just try to get them to stop and you realize thoughts have a force of their own. We have a thought then react to our thoughts having either more thoughts or actual physical reactions – feelings.

This constant thought-reaction-feeling-thought-reaction-feeling is like a machine and takes constant energy to run. The energy it takes to run is our life force.

The five senses generate feeling and the thoughts generate feeling response.

Carl Jung had the four ego functions as feeling, thinking, sensation and intuition. Feeling and thinking are opposite and sensation and intuition are opposite.

In my astrology Meetup group there is a guy who thinks feeling is actually opposite sensation, thinking opposite intuition. I see his point.

You feel or sense, think or intuit. Sensation comes from the five senses while feeling arises from our thoughts. Generating feelings removes us from sensations.

Now I see that is why when my thoughts calm in meditation, my body begins to bother me. When you sleep, you have no awareness of your body. When you first wake, say after a night of drinking, you awake to sensation – your head throbbing, your mouth dry. Then you realize you’re late for work.

Thinking is cognitive while intuition returns a result without cognition. That’s when you “know” or “realize” something. If you are strong on intuition, thought seems an Amtrak that takes way too long to reach its destination. Thinking is silly string sticking all over in a confused mess. Intuition is like a laser beam focused and illuminating.

In Western astrology, fire and air are compatible as are water and earth. However, your opposite sign is a compatible element but the same mode.

For example, fire Sagittarius gets along with air Libra and air Aquarius but is opposite air Gemini. That’s because Sagittarius and Gemini are both mutable. Sagittarius is intuitive and “knows.” Gemini is thinking, constantly seeking stimulation and data.

In astrology, the sun is the conscious self, the active self. The moon is the emotional self or the reactive self. The sun is like the thoughts we have about ourselves, the moon the reaction to those thoughts.

The more I engage in meditation, the more I understand that it is not about changing your thoughts, reaction or external world. It is about acknowledging and understanding these thoughts and reactions so that you are not ruled by them.

My Chinese qi gong teacher wrote an article saying when you practice meditation and qi gong, you “jump out of the three dimensional world” and are not in the “five elements” (Chinese astrology has five elements).

I believe that to mean you can transcend your horoscope. But you must first be aware of your actions and reactions to do this. Until you do, you are both the horse leading the cart and the cart being led by the horse.