This is very on point with a conversation I just had with a great and under-read writer, W.A. Law. Check out his profile and see what may grab you. In any event, today I read his https://medium.com/@walaw717/right-relationship-listening-as-a-contemplative-practice-a-meditation-february-20-2024-5003ce5ab551 . To one of my comments he replied with this Thomas Merton quote:
“The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative nobody guides. He trusts his visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his infallibility.”
I replied:
"Great and insightful quote (of course, given its author). Much of the quote reminds me of what I have written about the danger of people believing they are following their hearts when their emotions may be fooling them. My https://marcus17043.medium.com/are-you-well-advised-to-follow-your-heart-dea0cbeb214b subtitled 'Yes but not until you can discern the difference between feelings (follow) and emotions (process),' includes my conversations with another writer, including my saying:
'I have learned that excitement can lead me to make not the best decisions if I act too quickly. I have been appropriately cautioned to practice discernment over resonance. If the excitement lasts while I sit with the decision long enough to make sure it’s not just an emotional reaction as opposed to an unadulterated feeling, then that is a good direction for me to take....If I am seeking love, and I meet someone and feel an immediate soul connection, I can get excited. Yet, that excitement could be because I was in seeking mode and impulsively decide that the excitement is because she is the one. Furthermore, the soul connection can be real, she could be from my soul group and maybe we are supposed to meet for some karmic reason other than that we are supposed to be a couple here. All I am trying to say is don’t leap too fast based on excitement. Don’t let that initial excitement cement a decision. Leave open the possibility that the excitement was a human emotional reaction as opposed to a feeling from our higher self that this is the way to go. Sit with it long enough to distinguish emotion from intuition.'"
