Question

In the talk about "Letting go" you talk about turning worldly feelings into spiritual feelings.

Answer

Actually I talk about that in the Satipattana talk, and what I talk about is how pleasant worldly feeling is usually linked to, and dependent on, a pleasant contact with the senses, a pleasant feeling arising from the senses. A pleasant spiritual feeling would be perhaps Sympathetic Joy or Compassion/Lovingkindness. This is a spiritual feeling, because it doesn't really depend on the pleasantness of the object. For example, Compassion/Lovingkindness, we could have a very warm feeling towards another, but they can be a rather unpleasant people. Whereas a worldly feeling would depend on this person being pleasant, doing pleasant things for us, etc.

On the other side is unpleasant worldly feeling which could be illness or loss as an example, and again here the unpleasant feelings arise due to the contact of the senses. Unpleasant spiritual feeling would be a feeling of Moral Shame or remorse. Yet sometimes an insight can be unpleasant, in the sense that we realize that Dukkha exists in the world. And it is beyond our power to control. This is sometimes very unpleasant for people, because they like to control things

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.