Neale Welch

Experienced Feeling

An examination of the difference between who we think we are and what we are actually being.

We may not know ourselves as well as we think we do.

The observations in this work begin with a simple recognition: who we think we are and what we are actually being are not always the same. Through direct observation, several questions naturally arise:

• What experiences are arising?
• What invitations accompany those experiences?
• How are we engaging with them?
• What might these engagements reveal about what we are actually being?

At the centre of this inquiry are three closely related ideas.

Experienced Feeling explores the possibility that certain experiences may be directly known and lived now, rather than endlessly pursued somewhere in the future.

Upon Realisation asks whether some experiences become available the moment they are recognised. Not imagined. Not approximated. Not remembered. Directly known.

Thinking Being considers the possibility that many of us have organised almost all of our experience of ourselves around thought, and what may become visible when that arrangement is observed directly.

Along the way, the inquiry introduces a number of related ideas, including:

• Observation
• Experience–Invitation–Engagement
• The Operative Self
• Experienced Categories
• Orientation
• Attention Reallocation
• Self-Conception and the Direction of Attention

The central question of the work is simple:

What are you being?
And how would you know?

It is an invitation to observe for yourself.

Status: Working Manuscript
Version: 0.1
Author: Neale Welch
Date: June 2026