Understanding and Feeling


Understanding and Feeling are somehow related to the two entry points to ethics, which are information and action.

While information can be good and the action taken on it bad, so can action of a good nature be taken on bad information. The 'good and bad' involved are naturally completely relative; in the constraints of the ordinary world, they involve purposes which are not destructive along the majority of the dynamic paths of human effort including aesthetics, finance, self-hood, family, teams, groups, nations, and so on.

One can seek an alignment of information and achieve degrees of understanding ranging from the mystified and symbolical to the keenly analytical. From this one can examine right and wrong action. But to Know above those levels of understanding one must allow feeling to enter in to the picture. When one withdraws from direct perception (knowing by permeation) the need to understand sets in.

An ethical action can be based on understanding, certainly; but at the core, the being will be operating in the final analysis on a feel for the scene. The feel is simply knowledge at a rate of perception transcending symbols, language, and data -- a purely conceptual and instantaneous appreciation painted by the free soul on the canvas of time itself.

Action precipitated in this flux from a light, instantaneous certainty stands above the bogs of weight and measure, of evaluation; it will never be stored in those mildewed trunks in memory's dank cellar, labelled Blame, Regret, and Shame. From this, the entire sense and definition of ethics can be grasped in an instant. It is action from unflawed integrity. The energy burst of action from a Whole You toward a Realized It is EEthics. When it is present, no rationalization, no justification, no denial would dare to enter.

# # #




Previous Essay / Next Essay / Table of Contents