Hi Vineeto, I was making a joke, however it was not well set up. Perhaps also, it was an example of what Kuba was noticing about deliberately wanting to be misunderstood.
The context I was thinking but did not explain was that the aim is to channel all one’s emotional energy into happy and harmless feelings, so the image was one of 2 feelings donating the psychic energy to the cause.
It makes it funnier actually to picture two feelings (like two church goers) putting something in the collection, but that something is bits of rubbish!
This context makes a lot more sense than how I was interpreting it based on my experiences of sacrifice.
“Unless one is willing to contemplate a virtual happiness and harmlessness” is intensified by the “this level of ‘self’ -sacrifice” , and makes it clear that “any interest in an Actual Freedom would remain a purely cerebral exercise…”
Rather fitting emphasis to be reading in my ongoing effort to minimise any intellectualisation and keep the momentum towards feeling consistently “good”.
On that topic, of how consistent it is, reading Srinaths website he emphasized using the scale of rating how one is generally feeling from “bad, neutral, good, great, excellent, perfect” which obviously I had read, but not considered using this scale consistently.
It was a good way to be able to better gauge my day, as in the way I could get the noticing of a dip in feeling good, without any immediate need to be too specific in that moment. Which has always been the opening to intellectualism. That is, I know I am feeling bad, but I don’t call it that. I will start looking for reasons, and such.
So my day is far easier to gauge how it is going. For example, today was mostly"neutral " with decent pockets of "good " and a few spikes of “bad”.
With that in mind, it’s far easier to now think back and contemplate each part of the day, what triggered the spikes of bad, why there was so much neutral (what feelings are hiding out in anonymity there I wonder? Hmm), and what got me back to feeling good.
This gives me useful "homework ".
A decent percentage of the feeling good times are triggered by remembering that I am having success.
This morning, driving in the traffic again, I reacted with instant anger, swearing out loud and honking the horn at someone cutting in.
Without describing the whole event, it really gave me a lot to consider on the rest of the drive. It was so automatic and instant, I was stunned actually.
I have plenty to contemplate now. As your clarifications about Peter’s quote, and Richards quote have injected new enthusiasm into just what I can do more of.