Kuba: Richard described ‘my’ self-immolation, that after the fact one (as a flesh and blood body) can know that ‘I’ never actually existed in the first place, and yet for ‘me’ it is a death which is as real as it gets. (link)
Andrew: I was just walking around the river, having a successful time (as per my journal post of a couple hours back), and this exact consideration arose, but in reverse!
I was wondering, after having been considering how I was nostalgia, and how in a PCE or Freedom, I wouldn’t be there and “what would take my place?”
It was a thought and feeling that “nothing” would take my place that seemed somewhat sad to me, but almost immediately I caught the extreme irony of being in anyway worried that nothing would take my place, considering just what a mess I make! All the years of anger and sadness, malice and sorrow, frustration and despondency! How would “nothing” be worse than that!!??I genuinely laughed for a good five minutes, carefully avoiding appearing like a madman when a person passed the other way, but the proceeding to grin my face off with just how ridiculous it was to think and feel that “nothing” was something somehow worse than me! (link)
Hi Andrew,
It’s a pity, that such a potentially beneficial insight only strikes you as “irony” – synonyms: sarcasm, dryness, sharpness, acerbity, bitterness, cynicism, mockery, ridicule. At best it can mean ‘wryly amusing’. The reason I say “it’s a pity” is because the same insight – that when ‘you’ disappear nothing will be left, is the most wonderful condition, the most marvellous beneficence and benevolence one can experience. That is, when you rid yourself of the ‘first commandment’ of ‘me’ that “I have to be somebody”, even temporarily.
Then your genuinely laughter will have no tinge of dryness, bitterness, cynicism or ridicule to it, then you can enjoy the genuine delight of experientially understanding that you can change your human nature to the point where you allow yourself to disappear, simply because it is the only thing that makes sense.
Permit yourself to come back to this contemplation, it has great potential – “How would ‘nothing’ be worse than” the mess ‘I’ make? This “nothing” means that when ‘I’ abdicate the throne it will make the perfection of the actual world apparent.
Andrew: The river was particularly picturesque today. Being an affluent out of the way suburb , there is a certain serenity to the place. The sun sets over the river, with the cockatoos flying about, the boats moored in the river slewing to match the tumbling softness of the moderate south westerly breeze.
Each view could be a postcard. My feelings are that I want to capture this moment, but more than that, I am feeling nostalgia, which is way more than just a postcard.
All the art I ever drew, the music I wrote, but more than that the entire catalogue of art and music in my memory, has strong appeals to feelings, but some of the most powerful are those inducing nostalgia.
Mmh, nostalgia consists of a range of feelings when living in the imagination, colouring the past, often with rosy colours but soon vacillating to doom and desperation. One can revel for a while in the ‘good’ feeling side of it but as you describe yourself, it eventually turns into its opposite, despondency and sadness.
I recommend to ‘nip it in the bud’ as soon as you become aware of it and get back to genuinely feeling good, sensuously enjoy and appreciate being alive now, in this only actively-experienced moment.
Richard: Sensuousness is the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space – which awareness is combined with the fascination of contemplating that this moment is one’s only moment of being alive – and one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever one is … now … one is always here … now … even if one starts walking over to ‘there’ … now … along the way to ‘there’ … now … one is always here … now … and when one arrives ‘there’ … now … it too is here … now. (Actual Freedom Library, Sensuousness).
Andrew: Another aspect of nostalgia is legacy. Leaving a legacy, following someone else’s legacy. In other words, Being a legend. I considered the whole time my sons. (…) (link)
Here is a radical suggestion if you will – how about a legacy of becoming anonymous – being nobody in particular and living in delight and wonder, doing nothing really well. First you learn the skills of ‘being’ less, diminishing the demands of ‘me’ and of society at large.
Instead, you allow yourself to appreciate what is already here when ‘you’ are quiet, cherish what you see, the birds and the colours in the sky and the picturesque river, savour the sounds you hear, smell the scents in the air, feel the friendly balmy air of a summer evening.
Then, when you mastered the skills and joys of being nobody in particular, and it happens more and more of its own accord, it becomes an art of living and you let life live you. No demands, no responsibility, just sensibly taking care of necessities. Wouldn’t that be a legacy worth passing on for the benefit of everyone who cares to emulate it?
Cheers Vineeto