My new religion: New Age Hedonism

[Edwardo Piet]

Okay now rather than throwing definitions that I already know at me... how about telling me how to actually be aware of when I'm experiencing those things and how I can tell the difference between positive and negative.

Physical pain and physical pleasure are easy. As is being terrified or laughing my ass off at something hilarious. Everything else is extremely unclear.

Also... emotions and feelings are not interchangable. Feelings are necessarily conscious and physical whereas can be unconscious and psychological too.

Still, 99% of the time I have no idea what I'm feeling... or if I'm feeling anything real at all.

Our emotions are positive or negative just like how a charge is positive or negative.  So, when you have a negative emotion such as anger and you judge it as something positive, that does not change the fact that this emotion is negative.  It would be no different than judging a negative charge as being positive.  The charge would still be negative.

If I am completely unaware of when I am having those emotions and I have no idea how to then I don't see how I can possibly apply your philosophy.

And if they're all entirely placebos they might as well not be real. I wonder if I even have real emotions. They come and go so quickly. I have fear and desire, I'll give you that. But that's about it. The rest of any so-called 'emotions' I've felt is kind of social conditioning and doesn't feel any more real than a placebo.

And I wouldn't say fear and desire are like other emotions. Fear is just negative desire... a strong desire to get away from something you're afraid of. And it comes with its own psychological sensations, as does positive desire. So to be more specific I have desires and aversions and physical sensations and that's it. The rest is just social crap.

Urges are real... I don't think emotions are. You may be temped to react "Wtf of course they're real"... but then you are going to fail to describe to me any difference between an unreal emotion that has a real impact due to the placebo effect and a 'real emotion'. Do they NEED to be real?

Buddhism talks of 'one taste'... and either I have reached it or it's always been that way for me and I merely believed otherwise. I would say it was definitely the latter but actually I think it's more accurate to say there isn't any difference.

Or i.e. My realization that I never felt them in the first place is identical to the experience of no longer having them. Because they were just placebos all along.