Our emotional landscape is far more complex than we know.  If we take some time to see what lies in the valleys and on the mountain tops of all we feel, we find a breath-taking array of different kinds of feelings.

There are different kinds of thoughts and different kinds of memories but I shall focus on feelings.  There is a four-fold grid, that I want to use for a while; it does not really exist in our emotional landscapes but it helps our perspective at certain stages.

There are four groups of feelings in this perspective.  They make more sense if I put some examples with them:. 

“Simple and known” would be any straightforward feeling such as sudden anger  if someone carelessly bumps into you without saying sorry. 

“Complex and known” might be where someone bumps into you carelessly without saying sorry but you know them, though not very well and really like them.  The simple anger is made more complex by the addition of other feelings.

“Complex and unknown”, is similar to complex and known with one variation, you do not know whether you like them or not but you feel something that affects the first feeling.

“Simple and unknown” is defined by the other three.  If you have a feeling and you don’t know what it is, chances are, it’s to do with the complexity of your ordinary everyday life.  But some feelings come from the Edge of who you are, they are not about who you want to be, or who you ought to be.   They are simple because they are not secret, yet at first we do not know what they are.  When you look at them, they connect to other feelings that are even more mysterious.  This the real clue to explore Edge feelings, “Complex and unknown” feelings originate from your own psychological structures and no matter how painful or entrenched or stuck, they will always reflect that origin.   “Complex unknown” feelings, once they become known, will explain and relieve and unburden you.  Edge feelings will open and excite you but open onto more mysteries and explain very little.

The feeling grid can help target your looking.

“Symphonies” in the middle represents groups of feelings working in parallel, or together or both.  Same principles apply; within a group of feelings, can you identify a “Simple Unknown”, an Edge feeling?  That is the one to focus on, not to the exclusion of whatever else is happening, (looking at all feelings, thoughts and memories that are present) but that is the one that can lead you on.   Sometimes, multiple Edge feelings may present, so it may then be appropriate to treat them all equally.