For instance, the person who feels “sinful,” may in addition feel “unacceptable,” or “unclean,” or “headed for a personal disaster” – like “going to Hell.” That feeling of “going to Hell” is that primary feeling of an impending disaster that’s “tailored” for this person. It could be a secondary feeling as well from a primary feeling of being sinful. This person, who feels sinful, may have done something, or didn’t do something in the past, that for this religious person does create those same feelings. But what could arise from this person’s reality can be greatly surpassed by what might be unrecognizably produced from this person’s increased unconscious entity, that then gets added to the experienced feeling of being sinful arising from reality. As a result, a person feeling sinful could feel immensely more sinful from what might be unrecognizably added from that person’s increased unconscious entity. People feeling sinful, with enough of this added component from their unconscious entity, might feel they are the very worst sinner in the world. With more of this added component from their unconscious entity, they might tell you that they don’t just “feel” they are the world’s worst sinner, they “know” they are. That’s much worse than “feeling” so. This would be like that starved-looking college woman, that with more unconscious entity doesn’t just “feel” she’s fat and has to eat less, she “knows” she’s fat, and secondarily “knows” she has to eat less. This contrasts with an obese woman whose unconscious entity isn’t focused on her appearance, but what’s met of her basic emotional need is. She can look in the mirror and feel she looks “very nice” and therefore feels she doesn’t need to eat less, or to exercise more, when she does.
Another synonym for a primary feeling might be that of feeling “poor,” where the primary feeling might be a feeling of being “inadequate,” and is being focused upon the person’s finances. This too could be a feeling that is arising from the reality of a person who has insufficient funds. But the feeling of being poor could also be arising from that person’s unconscious entity. If the person has more unconscious entity that is being specifically focused in this person’s reality this way, he or she will feel more intensely poor. With still more of this unconscious entity, this person might not just “feel” poor, but may now “know” he or she is poor. This person could feel this way, or perceive his or her reality as “factual” this way, when the person has a lot more money than a lot of other people who don’t feel poor. These other people might be people who don’t have a high level of their unconscious entity and who are meeting more of their basic emotional need. Meeting more of their basic emotional need would tend to give them a feeling of satisfaction about their financial worth just the way it is. It could make them feel this way even if, in fact, they really were poor! Or, if these people do have a high level of their unconscious entity, they could have a different predominating primary feeling than the feeling of being poor that would then find a different focus about themselves, which would then produce a different secondary feeling and a different emotional problem. How uncomfortable they then would feel, would depend on how problematic the feeling is to them.
Another primary feeling similar to being “unacceptable” might be the feeling of being “not good enough” about one’s self which then may find a focus, and where the person will attribute that unwanted feeling as arising solely from wherever it’s focused in the reality of that person. The person then feels his or her emotional problem is only that specific reality focus, when it may not be. Or it may be only minimally so. The unrecognized increased unconscious entity may be what is producing most of the experienced feeling of being “not good enough,” and not the reality of its focus. For instance, I knew of a person who felt “not good enough” about her violin playing. She always felt she could have played better at a concert. That feeling of being “not good enough” was coming from her unconscious and not at all from her reality because she became a widely acclaimed violin player. People felt she played the violin “perfectly,” but she didn’t. She always felt her violin playing was “less than perfect,” and that she could improve it with a lot more practice. The amount of practicing she did at any one time always reflected the level of her unconscious entity at that time with its secondary feeling of needing to practice more. With more unconscious entity, she practiced more. With less unconscious entity, she practiced less. But her unconscious entity always was characteristically increased enough, that it would never let her feel her violin playing had reached perfection.
How a primary feeling is chosen, and then becomes focused in our reality, is often determined much more by our unconscious, and much less by our reality. Perhaps this is borne out by the fact that the people who feel the most guilt in this world are not the people doing time in prison, after having been judged guilty in a court of law. Where they ought to, many of these people don’t feel guilty at all. The feelings of their unconscious entity are apparently focused elsewhere and don’t include a feeling of guilt about what they did to end up in prison. Since the primary feelings possible that can arise from our unconscious entity are all unwanted feelings, they are “not okay” feelings about ourselves, or something closely identified with us. Whatever we might feel is unacceptable about ourselves, we might secondarily feel has to be somehow made acceptable. These experienced secondary feelings that something about us needs to be made “acceptable,” could be arising from both our reality as well as from our unconscious.
Our secondary feelings often do indicate what we have to do to correct the focus of our primary feelings. For instance, the college woman who feels “fat,” when she actually isn’t, and has the secondary feeling, “I feel I have to eat less,” eating less, or avoiding food, is her corrective action for her primary feeling of, “I feel I’m fat.” If I feel sinful, even though you may feel I have no reason to feel that way, I may, as a secondary feeling, tell you, “I feel I have to atone for my sins.” If I feel poor, my secondary feeling might be, “I feel I need to have two jobs.” If I feel “unlucky” when I’m sitting in prison, I might secondarily feel I have to get more adept at not getting apprehended when I get out. If I feel there is something terribly “wrong” with my health, which could be arising from a primary feeling of having something physically “wrong” with me, and you, as a medical doctor, tell me, after carefully examining me, that there’s “nothing wrong,” I might feel, as a secondary feeling, that I need to see another doctor for more testing. With more of my unconscious entity focused this way, I won’t just “feel” I need to see another doctor, I’ll “know” I will. If I just felt there was something “wrong” with my health before, I’ll now “know” there is, regardless of any doctor telling me otherwise. The more we have of our unconscious entity focused on us, or something closely associated with us in our reality, the more we’ll feel an urgency to have it corrected, and the more we’ll worry about it. If I feel there is something wrong with my health, I might urgently go to one doctor after another, until I find one that will treat me for what I “know” is something wrong, and who won’t be telling me my worries about my health are “all in my head.” I’ll still feel there is something physically wrong with me, and no one will be able to convince me otherwise, until I can decrease my unconscious entity, or unconsciously shift it to some other focus about me, with some other primary and secondary feeling.
That same level of increased unconscious entity that was finding a focus on my health that made me hypochondriacal, could have been focused instead on my new car that I might have just purchased that I might feel “isn’t running right” and that there is something “wrong” with it. With more unconscious entity focused on my car, I might not just “feel” there is something wrong with it, I’ll “know” it’s not running right. I might be taking it back and forth to the dealer multiple times, complaining of something being “wrong” and when the dealer tells me “there’s nothing wrong with the car,” I might, with more worry from still more unconscious entity, urgently take it to another dealer who hopefully won’t tell me my feeling, or belief, “there’s something wrong with my car” is “all in my head” and that there’s nothing wrong with it, when I “know” there is. I’ll continue to feel this way about my new car, until my unconscious entity decreases, or it finds a focus on something else associated with me, which would then produce some other emotional problem. My basic problem is an uncomfortably increased unconscious entity, and an uncomfortable level of an unmet basic emotional need. My feeling of urgency and worry, from an increased level of both