For various reasons I’ve spent the past year studying the subject of emotions. This an involved study in two senses – the human processes and experiences of emotion and feeling are themselves complex, as are the corresponding conceptual and models used in research, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and so on. Emotion and feeling as topics are interesting because they are at the core of what we mean by being human, and track and parallel the evolving understanding of human nature and consciousness.

I noticed the words “emotion” and “feeling” being used in opposite senses. My impression though is that it is more common to use “emotion” to refer to the objective aspect (Wilber upper right) and “feeling” to refer to the subjective aspect (upper left).

So in this usage, “emotions” refer to general categories of observable behavior – what we refer to by words such as “anger”, “grief”, “fear” and so on – as concepts these don’t have a lot of depth; while “feelings” refer to the qualitative aspects (or “qualia”) of one’s experience. In this sense feelings are subtle and capable of wrapping up a complex sense of one’s whole experience, enfolding past, present, and future in a sense of the extent and wholeness of the “greater present moment”. This depth of experience could therefore be well worth turning or “tuning” into.

As far as what Masters was referring to – my guess is he’s talking about the practice of cultivating a deep awareness of the subtleties, qualities, and dynamics of one’s own felt sense and experience, which would pay dividends in self-awareness, richness of experience, and relational intelligence.