I wonder what the difference is between the status of thoughts vs feelings as actually existing things. Seems like both are virtual. A product of brain activity, but producing experiences that are very different. One is more like a voice or a string of words. The other is a phantom-like bodily experience. But feelings have a way of wrapping us up in an alternative world in a way thoughts cannot. Okay, meditators would claim something different, but they tend to ignore feelings or see them as a byproduct of thought.
To throw a pretty big and controversial spanner in the works, it seems increasingly likely now that the brain rather than rendering reality faithfully is more of a constructive, modelling and prediction engine - which has to do a lot of work with a rather limited sensory input. So a lot of stuff is made up and filled in (e.g. peripheral vision) rather like a half finished video game where it’s all just chunky pixels.
Tbh, it doesn’t really make a difference at all whether this is true or not. Accepting or not accepting this will not get in the way of actual freedom. I’m an empiricist for the most part and I really don’t care when I’m speaking to someone, drinking a cup of coffee or looking up at the night sky how my brain is putting that experience together. Living an actual freedom is just glorious and magical in its own right regardless. The difference between living like this and as a feeling being is day and night.