How does one stop intellectualizing their entire life and, instead, get in better touch with intuition/feeling? I want to feel like I’m living life, not just thinking about it.

Get creative, out of your head and back into your body

One experienced tiny glances of the "feeling realm" - being here, being present, being alive are all terms circling around this wonderful moment. However, no matter the terminology, there is always that "ugh" thought at the end of every attempt at describing the feeling. Almost as if, each time one tries to convey how one feels and how one wants to feel, no matter how long, thorough or detailed, it's just not quite right... It's just not quite as fulfilling as it is... maybe being here, sitting in a chair or in bed, and reading this response with curiosity. Taking in the experience, not knowing in advance what each sentence, word or a letter will cause which shift in your state of being and evoke a "aha!!! that's it!".

The following bits of your sentences are part of the same routine-like and goal-oriented habit of thinking you're trying to decrease:

How does one stop intellectualizing their entire life

I want to feel like I’m living life

How can I revive that feeling of aliveness?

is there something I can do to bring that passion to my inner life?

How do you advise I learn to cultivate a deep inner life of FEELING

"How to", "Why" and "I want" all create a gap. The content is irrelevant, the mere usage of language, whether it be written, said or thought about, the gap is made at the very start.

Let's switch it around: If you are already living life to the fullest, how would you feel? If you already had all the passion you ever needed, how would you feel? If you already felt your inner life laughing with joy and fulfillment, how would you feel? If you already had all the answers, how would you feel?

Go for walks and focus on just walking in whatever places you feel like. Sit by an open window in your house and listen to the sounds of the city without trying to categorize anything. Cook food and add ingredient amounts based on your intuition. Do something challenging that requires all your attention, like high intensity workouts, cold showers, striking conversations with random people on the street.

Allow yourself to feel the very strange feeling of being bored. Sometimes, we intellectualize because it appears to us as more interesting than actually living in the world. Sometimes living is boring. Allowing even boredom to be with us can be a great tool to be more in touch with how we feel.

The point of all of this is to get you more in tune with your feelings and your intuition. From there, you have the great adventure of integrating them and understanding what the proper role of the intellect is.

Are you actually in touch with your emotions? Do you share what you’re feeling with other people? Can you name your feelings? Do you know where your emotions happen in your body? Have you confronted your trauma? Are you numbing your pain?

Honestly, I think a lot of people that are into Jungian psychology, myself included, have this deep desire to understand. Themselves, the world, how they interact with it. There is a willingness to know and learn, which I think is a superpower.

I recently started a book called Letting Go The Pathway of Surrender, I’m about 100 pages in, much to go, but it has already been tremendously helpful for what you’re talking about. It’s actively helping me rethink how my brain and thoughts work.

You’re asking someone here to give you an answer using words to satisfy your intellect. Do you see the problem?

What type of meditation do you do?

After spending years meditating, I started going to a Jungian analyst, and through working with him I realized I was very disconnected from my feeling function. I was making it worse by the way I was meditating. I was doing mindfulness meditation, but was only being mindful of my thoughts, while totally unaware of my feelings. It was a revelation to me to realize that feelings are actually experienced in the body, not just the mind. This is probably obvious to most people, but it kinda blew my mind.

So, I started including my emotions in my mindfulness practice, by literally paying attention to my feelings - how I felt in my body. What does it feel like in my gut? My heart? My chest? Is there tension in my throat?

Basically, I had the same issue as you, and it's something I'm still actively working on. Here are things that have really been helping me:

-Mindfulness of feelings (i.e. in the body)

-Focusing my attention on the heart/the heart chakra during meditation -Literature (fiction, not philosophy/psychology), poetry, art, music, film

-Prayer

-Immersion in religious experience (this is coming from an agnostic who is fairly anti-religion in many ways -- I've just been opening myself to experience without "believing")...I've been going to services at various Buddhist temples (there's a Tibetan one and a Vietnamese one near me) and just listening to the chanting, going to church services, sitting silently in old cathedrals, attending Quaker meetings, Yoga classes...

One more thing worth noting...this journey isn't just an inward one, about things you can do on your own and in your own head. It's also something that takes place in the context of relationship. Every time you have a conversation with someone, try to speak from the heart. Be honest, authentic, and genuine, speaking how you feel, rather than from your head. Believe me, this has not been easy for me...it's been like uncovering a long lost part of myself that I kept locked in the dungeon. But it's been very liberating.

Edit: watch (and/or read) Zorba the Greek!

It's my personal opinion and experience that feeling can come thru sensuality. You can deeply feel life in your senses. That allows it to seep into your emotions. I learned this from studying thr lover archetype.

I feel the same as you! Really into philosophy/meditation/spirituality and about to finish my undergraduate degree in Philosophy. I always battle with this feeling like I am 'thinking' about life rather than actually living it. Like there is some puzzle piece i am missing. I don't have much help sorry as I am in the same boat but its always nice to know you aren't alone. Sometimes I find simple things like dancing around to music helps me feel more 'alive' though - finding joy in the little things

It sounds like you're forcing it and forcing this routine for the sake of If gaining some clearer perspective ? but you're not being challenged. Why would you want that though?. It is not supposed to be pleasant and if you think you're going to get anything while surrounded by pleasant you're deeply confused. The only way you really learn a lot is of you press deep outside your comfort zone. Usually that is what the universe sends you randomly. It sounds like you're existence is pretty pleasant so why would you even bother.

The answer is fear, go where you re scare to go, area that you re not comfortable to be in. Don’t let your thoughts get the best of you, learn to be aware of them but not act on them.

Learning to let go is an invaluable skill in this endeavor. It might even be impossible without it. Practicing letting go of all sorts of things you just want to hang on to emotionally for whatever reason, you gotta say "fuck it" and stop thinking for a while. After some time, you'll get good at this skill and balancing the intellectualizing with the letting go.

I think something that helps develop the skill of letting go are creative pursuits/hobbies, and exercising or working on something mindlessly. The key is to use this mindless work to enter flow states and/or dissociative states. Technically a flow state is a dissociative state, but it's a particular kind where you retain a special kind of awareness of whats taking place around you and what you're doing. When I mentioned dissociative states the second time, I meant straight up dissociating and losing all the time and awareness of what was going on while you were doing something.

These generally help you learn to stop and appreciate things, in my opinion.

Someone posted thisthis here the other day and i cant stop thinking about it

This seems like it might be a problem of inferior sensing. Static reality is a dead realm to the intuitive type, who always grasps at some 'other'. Should he conquer the world he would only look to the stars.

Its a rather tricky circumstance, as chasing the missing piece is itself perpetuating the problem. Balance is key, you must slowly inject substance and engagement into what is already present to you. Yet ignoring the call of possibility will also destroy you.

Face stillness and stagnation head on. But be mindful as that is also where your demons reside. The difference between a poison and a medicine is the dose.

Practically this means making the most of and mentally residing in what is already or soon to be realized. Should he give himself over to intuition the intuitive will simply burn through possibilities faster than they can be actualized. A passion is a summer fling and prolonged commitment its death. Realize that new passions will not burn for long, should you throw your life away and go with the wind you will soon find yourself at the starting point, as your new becomes old and you once again face stagnation.

Again there is a balance here, you cannot wholly fight your nature and novelty will win. The solution is to have one foot on the other side, to give at least some life to static reality.

Now in some regard more expertly following your nature can help. You will be drawn towards possibility, not necessarily absolute realization of said possibility. Hopes and dreams themselves can become static and stale. If you hold onto a possibility for too long, to where it seems like a certainty or inevitability, this is when its life dies. So within your life you must make many 'blind left turns'. To where you might bewilder those close to you as the trajectory of events make no sense. To get a degree in something yet become something else, to dream of something but find something else, to move cities with little prompting, or to take on random passions. Don't be afraid to follow more sudden inspirations any which way, but again balance is key. Do not give yourself over entirely to it.

How's your relationship with your inner child? Just play a little be, run, be unpredictable, allow yourself to do some light and harmless impulses. Focusing on your breath helps a lot to connect with yourself more

Watch a movie that engrossed you. Find someone to love romantically. Play a sport. Take a cold shower. Listen to music. Eat really good food. You’d be surprised at how little you consciously think while doing these things

IMO, get a job or take up a hobby that really challenges you. That, and try new things. Even small new things can help.

When you have a heavy thought/feeling/emotion come up, make yourself feel it physically. Get in the habit of that. You will find great catharsis and will be digesting your emotions better.

See if there are any ecstatic dances held in your area.  Everyone gathers in the basement of a church, or wherever, and dances their spontaneous feelings.  It’s good fun.

It helps to recognize that your mind is just telling you a story it is making up about you, and others, and your lot in life, and the world more generally. It’s a master bullshitter. Once you recognize this, you can appreciate two things: first, you can appreciate you actually do not know who the hell you are at all, and second, you can have space to not-know. And in spending time in the space of not-knowing, by instead letting yourself sense and feel intuit, you may start to encounter the depths of yourself. I’m guessing that the lack of vitality you are experiencing is a good place begin with all this.

See the paradox here? The very act of seeking answer is intellectualizing. The key here is to stop thinking and actually live.

Because heres the thing, Intuition/Sensing are irrational functions, they are all learnt innately and cannot be “thought”. Sure one can describe and put it into words but your brain and yourself will not and cannot learn this intuition and experience sensation from reading or thinking (unless you want to live life just thinking and intellectualizing).

When you stop thinking then you are using your intuition and sensing function.

They are two sides of the same coin, those that act first and don’t think much find it hard to put it into words about what they actually are thinking and how it is done. On the other hand those that think much but don’t put it into action don’t know “how it feels” and how to put it into action because they lack the intuition behind actions.

So the answer to your question? Quit thinking.

What do you like without reason? What are your secret passions that you cannot justify? These things tap into the energy in you that will put you in touch with what you are looking for.

Start by recording and discussing your dreams. This helps get you in touch with your unconscious which may lead you to deeper revelations.

Stop reading that shit. You think a fat person gets skinny by consuming mcdonalds. Dont read, live, when lived, read

Jung has said it many times. Do the work. The most important thing is the work.

Get your head out the sand (sand give live to trees - trees give life to paper)

Knowledge is nothing. Experience is everything.

What does make you excited?

What is that makes your inner flame burn?

What makes you feel fullfilled?

You need passion. To do things, that you actually want to do, not what you should do/what is good for you.

Try zen.

I disagree with your premise: You actually need to DOUBLE-DOWN on hyperintellectualization... For example, start seeing yourself as a stock on the worldwide stock market of all individuals. You are being evaluated by others constantly for your worth, in many different currencies simultaneously (power, cash money, creditworthiness, physical appearance, personality, strength as a protector, your ability to embody different archetypes etc). These currencies are themselves being traded by society's (however YOU define it, but at its basic its the sum total of the global unconscious minds) running collective unconscious.

You sound, to me and IMO, like someone who has in the past lived a lot and had a lot of thrilling situations. You basically crave the dopamine release of being able to cross lines and boundaries, however the current dynamics at play do not let you. You need to create a strategy whereby you can find that thrill by maximizing your value as a stock in the currencies that matter to you. How?

CONSCIOUSLY Engage in fundamental and technical analysis of your current and past value in the currency you personally care about most in terms of feeling more alive again.

Fundamental analysis:

Visualize and map out what people in your life, people you don't know, people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, people of different faiths, embodying different archetypes, races, ethnicities, orientations etc, realistically expect you to create future value for them based on what they know about your skills and attributes relevant to the currency you are focusing on.

Technical analysis:

Visualize and map out how you were evaluated by others at different parts of your life. Literally draw a chart/graph of how you feel the people who matter most to you (and those people you want to become) evaluated you in a specific currency over time (let's say your value as a friend and/or mentor). Look for patterns and shapes on the lines on the graph and think to yourself why did they repeat?

Then ask yourself, how can I CONSCIOUSLY increase my value, based on what I learned about my past and present value?

Break out of the routine.

Go for a walk somewhere you've never been.

Talk to your friends about something you've never discussed. 

Scare yourself by going for your most off the wall ideas and projects.

Do the things that won't work.

Step out of the cave and into the unknown. 

So many intellectualized answers..

Just meditate on sensory perceptions and do not entertain thoughts beyond simply noticing them and allowing them to go.

Perform body scans. When eating, smell the food, notice how the body responds.. feel the texture of the food. Chew slowly and mindfully. Feel how eating moves the body.

As you walk, feel each step and how it translates up the body.

As you breathe, feel the tip of your nose and the sensations of air moving through the body.

Throughout the day notice when you are becoming lost in past, future or other mentation and redirect your awareness to the feeling of wind, sun, or any other sensation happening in the now.

Create the space for emotion to arise and allow yourself to feel them come and go in their entirety, without intellectualizing them.

Practice enough and your default experience will become more feeling and sensory based.

This is what analysis and therapy helps with. Hard to do on your own cos the thinking will predominate and a lot of this stuff is kept in the shadow by the superior wonders of the thinking function.

If you’re into nonduality, Peter Brown is a master of cutting through mind-chatter and opening doorways into primal feeling and spaciousness: www.theOpenDoorway.org

Process your emotions by living out these truths to directly experience. Don't think, allow yourself to live it.

You do a lot of doing, for a lot of reasons, but have you ever taken the time to just be silent and listen?

“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life...If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature...Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”

Slow down the thoughts a little. After a thought, take a moment to evaluate how it makes you feel. It'll be subtle at first, unless it's something you've already got a lot of emotions around, in which case you'll be able to tell pretty easily. It'll become more an more natural the more often you're doing it. Then you can feel you're way into happiness from every circumstance.

Don't separate thinking from living, which for some one odd reason or another you're doing, and then you won't have a problem. Why do you seperate the two? Some thinkers have had great lives. Other livers, great thoughts.

Stop comparing. Limit social media. Stop judging yourself, and anybody else. Practice gratitude. Spend more time in nature..care for pets

To me it just sounds like you're getting old and are living life as most people would. Nothing about what you described is out of the ordinary, you just have to keep trying until you find something.

All thought is rooted in fear. You have to know in your core that you are loved and the mind calms.

I found the vein during continual psychedelic use for a year and a complete break-down. Stuck with me after building myself up.

I do not recommended the proces but I love the result although the last 3 months of that year was horrible with suicidal thoughts daily. Living my best life now tho.

Commenting as in a similar situation as you and curious what people have to say. May we find more balance and healing on our paths soon. Namaste 🙏🏼

do more activities involving physical movements? Your body also counts.

dude, I’d trade like 200 feeling for 20 intel tbh.

Got to get protection; Y. E. S.

“I want to feel like I’m living life, not just thinking about it.” - for heaven SAKE haven’t felt a sentence like this one in a while.

More than intuition/feeling, you need sensing, which is the present,a more relaxed state. If you have a chance to hang out with intelligent people who are sensors, these people are on adventure and travel often; they experience the body more than contemplate.

Sometimes when we ask life to change for the better and wait patiently for a bit…things start happening.

Hmm

did you read notes from the underground?

I vote for religion to work more like secret societies, and rock bands to be entirely removed as boomer cringe next expansion.

body work

You are essentially talking about building character, the simple answer is: experience. You can stay in your comfort zone and never be challenged, OR you can venture out, see what the world has to offer - it will make you OR break you. It will teach you what you are really made of.

face fears if you have them

Take an in person class and it’ll open your world

You very poignantly described how I feel! The exact same way. Spurs of energy and excitement but overall stuck in over analysis and low level apathy most of the time…

First of all, I think this sort of thing depends VASTLY on your personality type. You need to find out what kind of personality and brain you have. What you're good at, what you like, what you wish you were better at, etc.

For me, at 26, I've felt similarly to this at many points in my life. Some things that I've learned about myself are that I NEED consistent social stimulation. I need my alone time and time to decompress, and I like to tell people to fuck off sometimes.... but at the end of the day, I'm a social person. I need to feel like I'm always working on myself to build better relationships, learn more about how people work, how I fit into social environments, etc.

I've also learned that I crave purpose and meaning. I feel at my best when I'm either doing something that in some way makes me feel like I'm helping the world out a bit, or I'm excited about starting new goals that will eventually help me do that. I have passing curiosities and things I like out of habit, but if I'm honest with myself, it is REALLY hard for me to actually give a solid-state fuck and get into something unless it inspired me in some way at a core, somewhat moral level.

I've also learned lately how important it is for my social life to fall in line with this. I used to think you could compartmentalize the two: i.e. "Well I like what I do at work and I feel fulfilled, so as far as friends go, who cares? It's totally cool to party hard with a bunch of friends that don't really share my world view and aren't working on themselves in the same ways I want to!"..... nope. I guarantee you that if you are spending time with people who don't share your vision, morals, aren't on the same "wavelength"... it WILL dilute your drive eventually and eventually it will wear you down and make you think less of yourself. Respect everyone, but know when you've outgrown certain social scenes and friend groups, and be okay with being alone for a while until new friends come along who better mirror where you're at in life.

Also, maybe consider some therapy and medication. I am on day 3 of meds for ADHD after being officially diagnosed with ADHD and Anxiety. It's a pretty crazy transition to get used to, but I had literally zero idea how bad my anxiety was and how much it was contributing to boredom, restlessness and a sense of hopelessness in my life, until I got medicated. (Not so sure yet that I like having the ADHD dampened though... that might have actually lead to a lot of my best qualities haha. But the anxiety... thank FUCK I now know what it's like to experience what life is like without that lol).

All you had to dwas write your question:

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Take your intellectualizing, and anything else in proximity, and dive a layer deeper into why you thought those things. Undoubtedly, you've been practicing intuition by analyzing your intuition.

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Your intuition makes your thoughts. When you intellectualize, you're simply detangling your thoughts, i.e. your intuition.

When you come to the conclusions you seek from intellectuailizing until you reach an answer, you are finding an answer to your intuition. With the pathway constructed, you can more easily navigate to the deeper essence of those thoughts until intellectualizing would be simply redundant.

​

Why should we muddy intellectualization with all this childhood nonsense? Analysis is fine. intelligent people analyze. You're obviously intelligent. Make peace with your intellectualization. Understand that it's you, and have some stoicism behind your thoughts, that they may be rooted in some good. You ought to control your mind, and so, you must have a good destination in mind when you analyze. I suggest: "Gaining a better grasp of life" as your destination. It's also known as enlightenment when you understand your destination should be always a mile ahead of you, that you may never reach it, for it is impossible to. But accepting that as well is a part of enlightenment. And so, you can accept everything, not without a thoughtful, analyzing, intellectualizing mind..

​

If you are wishing to remediate your anxiety, which it has now become apparent is the true issue, I suggest looking toward things that reduce anxiety. Maybe type in google "therapist ways to reduce anxiety in patients" and extrapolate what you can do to receive the benefit. Taking a walk, a nice one, is sound advice.

I relate to a lot of what you describe as mindset and experiencing. It led me at age 20 to leave the country with the goal of learning the language. Doing so did not help my overintellectualizing but allowed me to continue it with more words and cultural references. After twenty more years I understood that there was an emotional transfer as well as the internalization of "others" imagined and real, as a result of learning another language. It was a genuine satisfaction and not one which I had chased. Hope this helps.

Can try non directive meditation and focus-out meditations (ie sounds, sights, touch sensations; shinzen youngs work is good for this imo) plus somatic meditation (ie yoga nidra)

I’ve been intellectualizing myself to death these last few years and I finally feel like I understand enough to stop and really practice what I’ve learned. Until I really knew what I was dealing with, it didn’t feel safe to let my guard down, to stop getting defensive toward my partner, and to just know that I am generally safe.

My patterns mostly come from being raised by incredibly forceful and critical parents in a high demand religion. Once that started to connect, I started feeling more free to test the waters, make unconventional choices, start trusting my own strengths and intuition. (Left religion all together - sure it may be good for some but not for me anymore - too much abuse) And I keep seeing good results come of it. Now I’m a year off my antidepressants and one month free of cannabis (which I used heavily to numb my anger) and I get to practice sitting w my feelings. But I’m not longer giving them a narrative or trying to intellectualize them (which is what I’ve always done) because I know they are just habitual reactions to different stimuli. I sit w them, I don’t shame myself for them, I allow them to come and go. I breathe through them because feeling anxious or angry or depressed or overwhelmed still hurts. But they come, and they go. And I no longer go with them.

My journey has been a spiritual one and I feel like as I’ve chosen to trust my higher power, it’s shown me that our world really is determined by our thoughts and our thoughts don’t need to control us. They can change. Our minds can change. I’ve been led to book after book for my growth and understanding and knowledge from all across the globe - not ONE church or ONE theology - I feel like this is setting me free.

There isn't one.

To get into the body as an INTJ for instance I go to the gym, take ice baths. And also engage in flow state activites. I was playing Fortnite recently for instance and lost track of myself during some of those games where I was fully engaged. Then I 'wake up' after that experience and I'm more 'in my body' due to this.

Yoga has helped me with this.

You gotta do stuff

Listen to music and DANCE. Make new choices. Travel.

Do you do semen retention?

Dedicate your life to Jesus and watch that spiritual motivational take control. I use to sit around and be to anxious to do anything but when I realised that Jesus is the light that can rid these demons telling me I can’t do this I’m finally living a fulfilling life.

Thought is always limited. We easily trap ourselves in the mechanical system of analysis, thinking everything will get better once the problem is solved.

But, if our focus is immediately on the solution, we fail to see what it really is that haunts us. Because we haven't faced it. Because we haven't taken the time to get to know ourselves.

Life is not a self-improvement project. That is just an idea. I wonder if you see this. Once we see it, that's it. There's no how.

[These are mainly Krishnamurti's discoveries but I don't want to make it sound like it is a system. You can get to know more about him here: https://www.youtube.com/@kft\]