posted November 13, 2008 08:04 AM         

I was reading Sun Signs one day, the section on Geminis (not sure which bit) in which Linda said "Geminis are quite good at talking about their feelings but not very good at feeling them".

What does this mean? How do you know if you're feeling something or just thinking it?

I was pondering this for a few weeks and wondering whether to ask on here what does it mean? And I just read Acoustic God's string on the empathy of water signs and Flyin Free raised the theme in her post. She (I think you're a female FF, sorry if not) said she was having this discussion with her partner, and she was trying to explain to him how she just "feels" the mood of someone and doesn't "think" it.

Now I'm not sure whether I think more or feel more. How do you know? I feel things sometimes but then the thinking part denies it.

Does anyone have anything to offer on this quite nebulous subject? It confuses me. I guess it's about acceptance of intuition and confidence that you just "know". I get confused with the terminology sometimes. Is it best to have a balance of rational thought and intuitive, knowing, feeling thought?

Can a person train themselves to think in a different way to their normal mode? How do you know what your normal mode is? I've got lots of Mercury and also lots of Neptune. But this isn't about my chart, it's a more general astro question.

Is this all rambling nonsense? Does anybody know what it is I'm struggling to explain?

posted November 13, 2008 08:09 AM         

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Pisces Does feel things...everything.
I remember trying to explain this to my current partner, I was telling him how I didn't "think" about things, I felt them. He didn't really understand and took it as I was telling him I was emotional. I am emotional but not in the way that I have outbursts about things or that I cry over everthing, just that I FEEL everything.

I don't "think" somebody's sad or that something's wrong, I Feel it with everything in me...hard to explain unless you're like that I guess. I also think I can judge people pretty accurately just by the feelings I get when I'm around them.

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posted November 13, 2008 08:11 AM         

Anything anybody wants to add will be illuminating!

posted November 13, 2008 08:17 AM         

I couldn't answer. I don't know. Even when someone turns out to be an a-hole I never think "Oh I knew that, should have listened to myself". I think everybody's got the capacity to be an a-hole and I do think "You might be one" when I first meet people. If they turn out to be one that's just statistics for me.

And I was reading a book about the North Node (is it Jan Spiller?) and mine's in Capricorn (making the South Node Cancer) and it said one of the things I should do is not rely on my intuition because it's often wrong.

So is intuition a good thing or not? Should it be cultivated in everybody or left alone if your chart doesn't support it?

posted November 13, 2008 10:14 AM         

I believe that feeling and knowing are two types of getting information from outside us. As a Scorpio with lots of air placements, I know that I'm feeling when "it" is localized in my chest area, and thinking when "it" (sensation or whatever) is localized in my head area. I don't know how to describe it, but definitely the two are connected. The information that I get thru "feeling" is instantly relayed to my head, which processes the "thing" and labels it. The information I get thru "knowing" is also instantly relayed to my chest/heart area, and my heart (for lack of a better word) acknowledges the "thing" and feels it.

Another difference is that with "feeling" you don't need a reason or proof or evidence to support the information, you just accept it. But with "knowing" you need a logical basis before you can accept the information as true or valid.

Now, I have a lot of Libra (plus some Gemini and Sagittarius) in my chart and it could be really frustrating when sometimes the information is relayed back and forth continuously and it sort of paralyzes me!

posted November 13, 2008 10:49 AM         

And oh, that's such CRAP about the NN stuff...sorry to sound all blunt on this.
I mean, how can it be wrong to rely on your own intuition?! That's your gut...your core, my goodness.
I read Jan Spiller's piece on this subject and I kind of disagree with her. So many people scrap the South Node as if it's some kind of gawdawful purgatorial point to stay away from, and I think that's totally paranoid.
Making the south node into some kind of freaky ewww place to get away from feels kind of wrong because how else can we move forward? My North Node is in Cappy too...I do sense the whole Cancer pull in this, but I don't feel that's a bad thing.
I read somewhere that the point of the NN is NOT to alienate the South Node, but to integrate it into where we're headed...hence intuition being integrated into purpose.
That makes sense.
Really, truly? I think it's like this:
Emotions keep changing, and logic only goes so far - the only thing we really have is intuition because it's neither/nor/either/or.
It's reliant on neither feeling or cold logic entirely to function, and is a point of reference. I think it's about refining and integrating intuition in a very practical, tangible way which can be used on a day-to-day level...that is my sense on the Cappy NN.

posted November 13, 2008 11:15 AM         

even though i have a ton of water in my chart, i listen to my intuition but i don't take what it tells me as a universal truth. intuition is our spiritual insight into subjects that need understanding beyond conscious reasoning. but that's all that it is: insight. insight is a perception, and perception is subjective, personal. the same goes for your thoughts, knowledge - the impersonal and hard facts, but the other direction.

knowledge lacks intimacy while intuition lacks logic. but you can't learn universal truth without both. life compromises of both spheres.

so, to answer your question, intuition isn't necessarily a good or bad thing but a necessary thing in the search for meaning in the human condition. i'm sure many existentialists would love to backhand me for saying that, but they can go be emo with the nihilists for all i care.

posted November 13, 2008 12:16 PM         

It might help "thinkers" to think of left and right brain functions. Right side brain functions I'd associate more with the emotional core.

I also think of it this way:
That which is instinctive, intuitive, inborn without having been created is the product of the emotional side.

That which is born of thought and speculation; that which is obviously constructed in the mind is from the thinking side.

Does that help at all?

posted November 13, 2008 02:40 PM         

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I believe that feeling and knowing are two types of getting information from outside us. As a Scorpio with lots of air placements, I know that I'm feeling when "it" is localized in my chest area, and thinking when "it" (sensation or whatever) is localized in my head area. I don't know how to describe it, but definitely the two are connected. The information that I get thru "feeling" is instantly relayed to my head, which processes the "thing" and labels it. The information I get thru "knowing" is also instantly relayed to my chest/heart area, and my heart (for lack of a better word) acknowledges the "thing" and feels it.

Another difference is that with "feeling" you don't need a reason or proof or evidence to support the information, you just accept it. But with "knowing" you need a logical basis before you can accept the information as true or valid.

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I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am that you said this Deux! That's exactly how my intuition is, it's in the gut. Most of the time, as you would know, I'm a head person but when I meet or deal with people or have to do things relating to people, it's in the gut. So I guess what I am saying is that my intuition = my feelings. I hope all those people who say that air people have no feelings reads what I have said

I was like what amowls discussed when I was younger. I would get gut feelings and ignore them, I would think I was crazy. Getting myself into trouble a few times with these gut feelings has taught me a valuable lesson never to ignore them, question or rationalise them. That's the feelings or intuition in me.

posted November 13, 2008 02:44 PM         

Being aware of your own feelings is part of intrapersonal intelligence, and a foundation stone of self-control.

As for the quote, I'll pass over that in silence.

My best friend is also a water void person, we both have Moon/Pluto around the same degree. We understand each other's emotions instinctively. Air heavy people are often very instinctive, intuitive.

Interpersonal intelligence, where we are sensitive to other people, doesn't have to be empathetic. Sympathy generally works fine. If you have suffered tragedy in your life you will know what I mean. Either when it isn't genuine interest in the other person rings hollow.

posted November 16, 2008 08:58 PM         

1. About the difference between talking/thinking about a feeling versus just feeling it...In the first, you're not as directly experiencing the feeling. You're filtering it through your thoughts. That filter dulls your experience of the emotion because it distances you from it, preventing you from being completely absorbed in it. Sometimes that distance is a huge benefit, b/c it keeps us reasonable and prevents us from being overcome by damaging emotions.

Thinking is a commentary on what you're feeling, so it distances you from it. Just imagine the difference between doing something--talking a walk, for example--and you doing that same thing but narrating to yourself the whole time what you're doing. "Now I'm stepping with my left foot, now I'm breathing in the fresh air, now I'm seeing the sky.." If you do that the whole time, you never really get lost in the walk. You don't experience it as you being the step, the air, the view, etc. Instead, you're constantly aware of yourself as a being processing what you're doing, and less focused on feeling and identifying with what it is that you're processing. Someone who always filters their emotions through their thoughts is similarly distanced from their emotions. The emotions aren't experienced as intensely or as intimately. If you just feel, for a moment you are love, sorrow, rage, etc.

So I think that's what Linda meant about some signs being better at talking about feelings than they are at feeling them. Maybe that's true about Gemini as an archetype. But no person is an archetype. Even if it were possible for someone to have every planet in Gemini, they still have every sign in their chart. Some of their houses would be experienced in a watery/feeling way. Plus, planets are colored by the planets aspecting them. Pluto will make other planets more raw, so diminish filters in that way. Neptune will sensitize planets by stripping away boundaries.

2. Thinking/logic v. Intuition. This is the difference between how we know things. With thinking, we take in knowledge through our senses and then apply logic to it to make sense of what we're perceiving. With intuition, the knowledge isn't coming through our (5) senses; it's something we just know.

I wonder if much of what we think of as intuition is really just very perceptive senses coupled with very speedy thinking. We may not be conscious of what we're taking in and our analysis of that information, so the conclusion we reach seems like intuition to us, but the knowledge had actually reached us in the regular sensing + thinking way. For example, you meet someone and sense he's an @sshole. That may seem like an intuition, because the conscious you didn't notice anything that indicated that, but a part of you that you're not as aware of picked up on certain traits that you've learned to associate with @ssholeishness. So what seems like intuition may just be sensing and thinking that's happening under our consciousness radar.

I do think that genuine intuition is possible too. Have a little more to say about this but being called away. Will edit in a few (just few, I promise) more sentences later.

posted November 17, 2008 01:45 PM         

I do this ALL the time O Wise Jane. It is the only way I survive sometimes.

posted November 18, 2008 07:04 AM         

he explained me his attitude to feelings. how he welcome them, live them, without thinking too much about it. which made me FEEL reassured because i THOUGHT that i could do it too.

however thinking can be useful sometimes too.

can u feel my desire to answer your question? i think u should and i feel good now to have connected with u in this way.

posted November 18, 2008 07:06 AM         

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can u feel my desire to answer your question? i think u should and i feel good now to have connected with u in this way.

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Aww, thanks!

posted November 23, 2008 11:33 PM         

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I do this ALL the time O Wise Jane.

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Ah yes, child. Prostrate yourself before me. Look away or risk being blinded by my bright eyes.

*farts*

Absorb my enlightening cloud. Feel the clarity it brings as it transports you to nirvana. (It smells like teen spirit.)

Actually, um, please don't ever mistake my authoritative tone with me thinking I know what I'm talking about. That's just the way I explore questions, but implicit before anything I say is, "Maybe it works like this?" and implicit at the end is a fart, that concludes by going up in pitch, indicating its unsure, questioning nature.

Knowing your humor, I'm figuring you meant the wise comment tongue in check. And I'm praying you did, b/c reverence makes me break out into hives. And fart wildly. Such an embarrassing condition!

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It is the only way I survive sometimes.

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I think it has other benefits too, like making someone artistic. Art is communicating a feeling. Many of my favorite artists have prominent air.

posted November 23, 2008 11:38 PM         

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She (I think you're a female FF, sorry if not) said she was having this discussion with her partner, and she was trying to explain to him how she just "feels" the mood of someone and doesn't "think" it.

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