Watch Your Tone: Awareness of Feeling Tones

With any experience, there is a felt sense that arises within us before the onslaught of stories and emotions. It often happens so quickly that we are unaware of it. These feeling tones set in motion the habitual reactions of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that we get caught up in. 

 

The Buddha taught us the cause of our suffering in the Second Noble Truth, mainly craving for things to be different than they are. Bringing awareness, our mindfulness, to the subtleties in feeling tones of experiences allows the space for us to see clearly how this plays out, and we then can expand our capacity to respond to experience as it is, rather than react.