The more muted the feeling motivating action, the more effort is required to act; the stronger the feeling motivating an action, the less will is required. In other words, actions that are in line with the aims of the body are easy to carry out; those which are at variance are more difficult. Restraining behaviour through the will - refraining from doing something - is very difficult if your feelings are impelling you to do it. Willing yourself to some behaviour, when your feelings aren't supporting that behaviour, or are opposing that behaviour, is equally laborious and may seem impossible. 

Conscious will is however very important, since it is the conscious will that informs the unconscious body what it is that you want. But, in itself, conscious will does not mandate action.

This is vital to emotional health and worth repeating: don’t judge your emotions; judge your behaviour. Your emotions are involuntary; your behaviour is voluntary. Similarly, don’t judge other people’s emotions; judge their behaviour. People are entitled not to like you or your opinions. They’re not entitled to be rude to you because they don’t like you or your opinions. Don’t judge people according to what you think their intentions are; and certainly do not judge someone’s behaviour on the basis of your emotional response to someone’s behaviour. ­Nobody else is responsible for how you feel. It's important to take responsibility for your feelings. Others are responsible for their behaviour; you are responsible for yours. 

Now imagine thoughts that have no thinker and no author . . . What would produce unconscious thoughts? Where would they reside? What would give them existence as thoughts (rather than simply brain processes)? Conscious thoughts occur in consciousness; the thought itself doesn’t occur as a physical activ­ity in the brain (even though a corresponding physical activity does occur in the brain). An ‘unconscious mind’ would have thoughts that occur nowhere in space, that no one is aware of, and that have no author.  

The feelings of the body – whether emotional feelings or strictly physical feelings – are important messages. You can use drugs, food, addictions, distractions of all sorts to try to stifle or overcome the body’s messages, but none of these efforts will succeed.  

But if we speak more technically, more precisely, the feeling is the physical counterpart or somatic aspect of the emotion. The emotion exists as a phenomenon distinct from the feeling. The feeling is physical; the emotion is something else. Just as a thought is not a physical object but has a physical counterpart in the brain, so emotion is not a physical phenomenon but has a physical counterpart in the body. Brain process and thought; physical feeling and emotion – these are connected events but occurring at different levels.  

You feel something in your body and you wonder what you could be feeling. Something has happened. You consider what it is you should feel or would expect to feel in response to this occurrence. You decide that you’d expect to be feeling anger, sadness, or some other emotion. Therefore, you conclude, that emotion is what you must be feeling . . . But thinking and feeling are different realms. Reasoning is a cerebral activity; thinking is something you do in your head. Emotions are not in the head: they relate to feelings which take place in the body. Thinking is the wrong way to determine what you’re feeling.