Feelings are a natural reaction to what we perceive, while emotions are the product of thought, or reason.
Our basic feelings of sorrow and joy arise from our simply being in the world. They are not energy-consuming, yet emotions are to a high degree.
Both come from a place deep inside. Feelings arise not through reason but through the direct perception of something that makes us joyful. We don’t have to think to feel joy upon seeing new born life.
Emotions, on the other hand, arise not from perception but from thought. They cannot be produced if we are without thoughts.
Typical examples of emotions are wrath, jealousy, rancor, envy, self-pity, self-destructive depressions. None of them can be produced without the appropriate thoughts to accompany them. We cannot become angry without thinking first! In order to become angry, we have to tell ourselves that what someone did to us was unjust, that we deserved better, or something similar.
We all know what these emotional tidal waves can do to us. We can talk ourselves deeper and deeper into the hole, we can even become violent, making it easy to finish off the last traces of love or beauty that otherwise would have been present, and, ironically, we still feel ourselves the victim.
This is how we waste energy, and therefore it is worth the struggle to become a warrior. Look into our Toltec teachings and offerings here.