We naturally act. Feelings are just perception of this process before it's complete, and give us a way to pause it and understand it. Slowly you can shape yourself to act more effectively. But if in calm times you can't think critically about something, you can never make full use of your being. As you say, feelings are how we know what our being needs, so must come first, otherwise actions are based on something fictional and won't meet our needs.
Feeling is a chain reaction waiting to happen. If you give in to what you feel, then it perpetuates like a chain reaction. Feeling and doing are linked to each other, thinking adds dimension to feeling and doing. When you think, you say to yourself, how can I look at this differently, by thinking you are telling your brain, I need to see this from a different perspective. So the brain obliges and reflects, that reflection allows you to change perspective, change orientation. You see yourself in that reflection in relation to the thing you think about.
Often we get dazzled and amazed at our own reflection instead of what that reflection is in relation to. We focus on the finger instead of what its pointing at.
With thinking you can imagine situations and see the reactions in your mind. Then you can try different reactions. This ultimately allows you to become conscious in the moment and override the natural reaction. If that works, eventually you'll habitually do the new thing.
I don't think feeling is part of action, just our perception of action already beginning. An organism doesn't have to feel to act. The feeling, properly interpreted, gives us an idea of what imbalance we had and are about to act to correct. In general our bodies carry out strategies to reach goals. Lots of them are instinctual, and through thinking we can craft better ones (or not, see all the degenerate things people do due to thought and suppressing their natural reaction).
When I say feel I mean in the primordial sense. Pure sensory stimulation, that sort of feeling, before you can put your 2 cents on it. The same feeling that exists for methane molecules in the presence of oxygen and a spark. Just a deterministic chemical reaction, that kind of feeling.
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