Hi Andrew,
Taking fully on board that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ you enables a decision that you no longer want to be the feeling of being ashamed for ‘taking up space’, for instance, because you sensibly and intelligently see that it is silly to do so. Fact is you are here and obviously take up space by being here, and hence it is silly (if not outright absurd) to apologize/feel ashamed for being here on this amazing planet.
You also understand that nobody forces you to be this feeling but yourself. So it is in your hands, and your hands alone, to be a felicitous and appreciative feeling instead of a shameful and sorrowful feeling.
What complicates or compounds this apologetic feeling of being here is that ‘I’, the alien identity, having usurped control over the flesh-and-blood body from birth onwards knows deep down that it is a contingent ‘being’, exerting dominance via the instinctual passions whilst wholly dependent on your compliance. The more you diminish this dominance via minimising the ‘good’ and bad feelings and maximise the felicitous and innocuous feelings, the more your native intelligence can operate – as you put it so well the other day –
Andrew: Minimising the malice and sorrow, while maximising the felicity and innocuous, IS minimising the entire ‘self’ automatically. (link)
Andrew: It’s very much a starting where I am scenario. I respond to people who speak nicely. I enjoy them, so I am setting out to imitate this type of self talk. My understanding is that habits are shaped through repetition, rather than any moment of instant change.
I am indeed aiming at change at a “deep feeling level” but I see no option than to continue to change habits and verbal self talk. If there is an “instant” way, then I am all “eyes”. (link)
Of course, it makes sense to be attentive to any left-over habitual behaviour and adjust it as soon as you become aware of it but the recognition that it is unnecessary and silly to continue being ashamed makes the adjustment a breeze.
Andrew: Looking around at the river, feeling my skin occasionally itch, seeing a mosquito or a fly. Considering the vast variety of life all around me, on me, and in me, gave me something to both appreciate, and also dispel some of the “special” I feel I should be. (link)
This is a potent discovery which you mentioned here en passant – as part of the whole emotional topic of feeling shame and blame there is hidden a ‘good’ feeling, which needs to be recognized and acknowledged in order to dismantle the whole pattern – in this case, feeling to be “special”. You cannot abandon the bad side of this particular feeling-complex without also abandoning the ‘good’ feeling which enables you to keep it in place.
Richard: By the time I had worked my way through this philosophical dilemma [of pacifism] I had to turn my sights upon the last thing that stood between me and an actual freedom. I would have to let go of the deeply ingrained concept of ‘The Good’. For this to happen I would have to eliminate ‘The Bad’ in me, or else I would be likely to go off the rails and run amok. **Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out. **
(…)
One has to be scrupulously honest with oneself to go all the way and no longer be a someone, a somebody of importance. One faces extinction; ‘I’ will cease to be, there will be no ‘being’ whatsoever, no ‘presence’ at all. It is impossible to imagine, not only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way, shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the universe … that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon. It is impossible for ‘me’ to conceive that without a wayward ‘me’ there is no need for any values whatsoever … or an ‘Ultimate Authority’. [Emphases added]. (Richard, List B, No. 31, 7 Mar 2000)
Cheers Vineeto