Andrew: Thanks Vineeto,
It’s such a lovely post to read, again. Especially it stands out to me that the harshness is automatic. The belief that I really should be better than I am.
Hmm. Yes, it’s a nonverbal question, an acceptance. It was only the other day, after a week of really only thinking about the single line “emotionally accepting the intellectually unacceptable” that it finally dawned on me that the acceptance was the opposite of rejection!
I spend so much time emotionally rejecting everything! Including myself in whatever form I perceive myself.
I am not exaggerating when I say I was, in terms of Actualism interest, thinking of just this one saying Richard liked. I was determined that something he liked should be something I understood, instead of rejecting it, or glossing past it. (link)
Hi Andrew,
It is a good idea to start “emotionally accepting the intellectually unacceptable”. That, of course, includes accepting yourself as you are, i.e. being friends with yourself. If that is too difficult right away, you can start with something easier – the weather, for instance. And with more practice of observing and acknowledging some of the things you are “emotionally rejecting”, get back to feeling good and then think about it how it makes no sense to make yourself feel bad (that’s what rejection does) about all kinds of things, which are not in your control.
What is in your control is how you feel – and you can bit by bit choose to be a different feeling, a more happy and harmless feeling. Simply because it feels good to feel good.
• [Richard]: ‘Given that people are as-they-are and that the world is as-it-is there are more than a few things which are ‘unacceptable’ (child abuse, rape, murder, torture and so on). What worked for me twenty-odd years ago, as a preliminary step, was to rephrase the question so that it makes sense (rather than vainly apply any of those unliveable ‘unconditional acceptance’ type injunctions): Can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable?
• [Respondent]: ‘What do you mean by ‘emotionally accept?’
• [Richard]: ‘To cease emotionally objecting, resisting, rejecting (or denying) and to be emotionally welcoming, consenting, receiving (or acknowledging) … without being emotionally aloof, indifferent, apathetic (or vacillating).
• [Respondent]: ‘Do you mean to say that you accepted (saw) that you were ‘emotional’ and reacted to persons and events in an emotional way (over 20 years ago)?
• [Richard]: ‘Yes … this is the crux of the issue: ‘I’ am a feeling ‘being’ (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’). (Richard, List B, No. 19h, 19 Aug 2001).
Richard: Which is why I suggest that it is advisable to emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable so that one’s native intelligence can emerge into full view of its own accord. In the jargon it is known as ‘being open’ (as in the ‘unlimited possibility of anything being possible’ ) … inasmuch as one will be embracing each situation that life provides by emotionally welcoming, readily consenting to, receiving fully and unabashedly acknowledging every circumstance so as to find out, once and for all, just what is going on … and to discover what intelligence actually is. This is because one needs to somehow enable an intellectual openness … so as to circumvent/ break through what is known as ‘cognitive dissonance’ (link).
Intelligence will thus no longer be crippled. (Richard, List B, No. 19h, 22 Aug 2001).
If you find that it works to emotionally accept some of the things you emotionally rejected, you can then expand the list of resentments and give attention them to reduce them bit by bit – you will find that the resentment against liking yourself will simultaneously diminish as well.
It’s an adventure, Andrew, and with increasing success it will increasingly be fun too.
Remember what you said about the Global Warming controversy, after you had discussed and investigated it for facts for a while –
Andrew: “Despite whatever other dramas I am having in life, it’s lovely to look up at the sky these days without the doom and gloom of the AGW beliefs clouding my appreciation”. (link)
Cheers Vineeto