Andrew

Journals
343

Rejection.

I am the rejection. The resentment of being here as this body, as this thing which must perform the necessities of life.

Did I already write about this?

I was the one rejecting myself. Perpetuating myself as ‘rejection’.

No wonder I cling so heavily on women who want me! No wonder I never felt free to meet more.

It was disorrientating to consider seriously that I was the one seeking out rejection. Perpetuating rejection. Being rejection.

“Disorrientating” in that maybe, and most likely , I was 180 degrees apposed to the actual enjoying of being here as this body, wherever I am at at, with whoever I was / am with.

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344

I can relate a lot to this post @Andrew.

As absurd as this may sound, I recall being disappointed each time I got into a serious relationship, even when first getting together with my wife. I liked the story I told myself of struggling to find love or a connection, struggling to be understood, I had sort of romanticised rejection. I enjoyed the struggle and battle.

Again, enjoying this outsider, lone wolf identity. I find it hard to reconcile actually being with someone long term and this concept of a relationship. Not as a victim but as this aloof, separate different kind of human, too unique and exceptional to be understood simply. Like something better had to be going on in me than the typical dramas of the human condition. Such an egoic need to be special and more so than the randomness of the genetic lottery of physical attractiveness.

There is a certainty in rejection too, whether of myself or from others, which is perversely comforting.

The reality is uncertainty is more frightening and hurtful to my sense of self, those who might accept me, be indifferent or reject, and the signs and signals to know for sure such reactions or so varied and at times subtle and non-obvious…rejection suits me fine. I have been there and walked that path and it is not so bad or painful in the end. I am perturbed by acceptance and the possibilities that it opens up, it has more unknowns and possibilities that frighten me.

Marriage, long term relationships…their still full of conflicts and micro-rejections. Perpetually criticised for not being romantic enough, interesting enough, funny enough, etc, etc, etc…maybe it is easier just being alone lol. Or at least more peaceful lol.

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345

Rejection is the “bad” feeling, Acceptance is the “good” feeling.

Felicity is what I am aiming for.

I saw simultaneous to the rejection, that I seek to change my partners into me. At least, someone who understands and can help me.

Which is part of the micro-rejections. They aren’t smart enough to understand my special needs. My Precious is more precious, and intricate and important.

346

Indeed. Being ‘me’ is priority.

Without being too specific, I can remember multiple times in my life when this manifest in sex. Definitely it’s always there, but times which stick in memory. When my partner at the time was being playful, was wanting to explore, but I felt extremely uncomfortable, even angry.

As Vineeto talks about, we are at instinctual passion level the same, but our specific dramas are quite individual.

Despite wanting some ultimate sexual experience, my childhood experiences excluded me not being in control, or someone holding me down, or wanting to get messy. Basically, if they weren’t otherwise being Vanilla, I couldn’t play out the drama of “why don’t they want to please me?”

There is only one thing worse than not getting what one wants; getting what one wants.

Which, depending on how that "want " is defined, works to keep everything in ‘me’ intact. ‘i’ have ways of surviving all scenarios. ‘i’ am exceedingly efficient at being ‘me’.

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347

I am also seeing this is a specific manifestation of the “resentment of being alive”.

For the sake of just how absurd this has manifest in my sexual life; quite a number of typical male fantasies I have reacted to and sabotaged them. I won’t list them for sake of politeness, but it is about control. If it didn’t conform to my version of how I imagined intimacy to happen, then I used that moment to revive and play out my own sexual drama and insecurity.

It’s actually humorous. There isn’t even much of a feeling of regret. I feel comfortable rejecting wilder experiences. I do wonder however, had I been brave enough, just how different this journey would have been.

348

Mmm… I think you should apply the same maxim to this… If you had gotten what you wanted, you might not be here today (alive and/or in AF). At least I have thought many times that I have been fortunate that “something” prevented me from making my mental, emotional and physical problems even worse having obtained what I later regretted not having obtained in certain sexual, drugs, money, working experiences. But if I had gotten them there is a good chance I would not be here today (alive and/or in AF).

And this wondering/regret always speaks of this moment: when I feel good (at least above a certain point), I just don’t wonder what my life would have been like if I had gotten what I wanted by being braver, luckier, born into another family, etc.

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349

What a wonderful way to feel good this moment and also to put memories/fantasies to “go to sleep” :smile: at the same time.

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That’s a very healthy and helpful point @Miguel .

Indeed, when I have pushed myself too far beyond my comfort zone in many areas, there has been fallout.

Amateur Exposure Therapy™ is hit and mostly miss.

It’s a function of regret to assume things would be better if “X” had gone differently. There is no way of knowing what would be different. It could have been worse.

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351

Resenting being alive, rejecting this body, means resenting everyone involved, but primarily my mother.

I saw this. When everything I resent and reject is boiled down to a point, blaming the one who bore me , and by extension, all women is natural.

One can’t resent being here without resentment towards her who desired to birth me.

I had seen this prior to visiting my mother last Saturday. The normal angst I have at her house wasn’t there.

The universe replicates life. Regardless of the dramas of the feeling realm, all that is happening is life making more life.

I was walking in the park a few weeks back, and that was the thought I had while noticing the mothers walking with prams etc. Just life making more life. What is there to actually resent?

if a tree grows in the forrest, and no one is there to resent it…

It will grow anyway.

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352

In good news, there have been moments of natural sensuous enjoying lately.

Waking up on Monday, I felt soft and present. I didn’t want it to end. Very different from the usual.

Other moments have been like I became very still and knew I was here.

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353

Who am I? what is being?

I was walking and thinking about Richard’s explanation that he is not telling people to stop feeling, but the end ‘being’.

Using my “the actualism answer to every feeling dichotomy is to be feeling happy and harmless”, I was noticing everything has a feeling attached when I think about it, or see it. Like my body, the suburbs, the weather, etc ad infinitum.

‘i’ am a continuous proliferation of feelings about everything.

It made me see the futility of how I approached actualism for the last decade. By trying to understand each issue, investigation via the intellectual path, otherwise not putting the method in place as prescribed: I have been in effect trying to “prune” all the proliferation of ‘myself’. Like trying to kill a huge tree by plucking one leaf of each week.

‘i’ proliferate instantly. Let’s say I have plucked / cut off some issue. ‘i’ don’t skip a beat. It in no way reduces ‘me’.

It’s ‘me’ as the proliferating ‘being’ which must, if this is ever to work, choose to proliferate in happy and harmless feelings, enjoying an appreciating. Actively monitor myself as to what I am “branching out” into.

Is it happy thoughts? Well wishing thoughts? Useful and sensible contemplating?

The tiny branches of ‘me’ are everywhere. So channelling that into one “wide and wonderous” outshoot, it less about “chopping off” more about actively “growing” around more happy thoughts, habits, facts of existence.

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354

I started noticing this a couple of days ago, regarding one of my favourite thoughts.

I will be straining myself trying to think of jobs/ businesses/ money making ideas. I have done this for most of my life. Always the same result: frustration mostly, with moments of being inspired, then nothing much happening except sometimes buying some new toy.

I should list all the things I have bought because of this process, but it would take me all day!

I just noticed while walking, this habit has very rarely produced anything positive, and I generally feel depressed and sad during this thinking.

So, I decided to not do it.

Today, that’s why I started wondering more about the nature of ‘myself’, and this same habit is there in everything.

Relationships and Work just spin around in this sad cycle of not getting anywhere.

So, because I can’t really just “stop”, in the sense that a tree can’t cut itself down, the choice is how I think about topics, am I well wishing? Is that the feeling I have about my ex-partner(s)?

Am I feeling well wishing towards work? The people and places? The process of earning money?

Things need some thought to get the facts straight, but it’s the feeling choice which is important.

Like the question Pamela asked Richard in the PCE video excerpt; " how do I cut off each emotion at the root?" Richard explained that at the root “you are that emotion”. The only available choice is ‘being’ as happy and harmless as possible.

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355

The wishing for more money is a tactic ‘I’ use to wish to be happy, but it’s only temporary happiness even with the most grandiose hypothetical success

Channeling that same energy, wanting to be happy, wanting to ‘escape,’ into ‘what can I do to become free?’ does get results, can become permanent

Just in the last few days using this guidance has been really effective for me

356

Had a lovely walk today in the rare winter sunshine and decided to do some faux walking meditation. Just focusing on the soles of my feet, noticing what thoughts come an go.

I ended up realising sorta “out of the blue” that the reason I haven’t had any PCEs was that I had stopped being ‘god’ when I started actualism.

Let me explain. When I came out of Christianity, I was 'making it up as I went ', exploring what I called layers of “love and fear”. I was ‘high’ on all these new ideas I was reading, the primary one being that I was god.

The collorary of being god, is that one automatically gives oneself the best possible. One deserves to have all sorts of experiences and there is a momentum. In short god is automatically gods own best friend.

When I left all of that, gradually via Buddhism, the old “I am an unworthy sinner” belief came back. Backed up of course by the fear of the abyss and hell.

I am the One I was searching for. I have that thing I want to experience: happiness. Not only is it only me who can give this, I already have it. No one else was ever going to be able to give this to me.

As Richard noticed, many frisky lambs end up docile old sheep. That innate birthright to be jubilant, happy, curious and carefree is taken away. Not by actually taking it out of one’s possession, but strictly enforcing the belief that one is not worthy of it.

Like having a billion bucks, but being too ashamed to spend it in any way.

Gods however, have no such qualms.

To be one’s own best friend, can be a mistake. One can pity and enforce the status quo. But to be a god, then one can do nothing but enjoy one’s own plenty.

(I am reminded of depth psychology here, where one of the premises is that to a new born, their own psychic reality is the ONLY reality. Which in that theory, is why children have a deep ownership of any and every feeling. The megalomania of being “all that is”, effectively a god, is complete in infants. Every feeling must be exactly what ‘i’ want, no matter what it is, as there is no perception of any external cause. Every feeling of being abandoned, rejected, helpless etc etc, is absolute and final to the 'god infant’s).

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357

Maybe you didn’t have any PCE since you started actualism, but you don’t remember having had any PCE before (in childhood, etc.)?

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Hi @Andrew,

I quickly learned how powerless and weak I was, maybe a part of being the youngest in my family and learned very quickly I was mortal and fragile, possibly at 4 I saw my Gran have a heart attack in the car outside my house, she died that day, later at the hospital. I don’t think I could have ever believed with any conviction that I was a God in this world.

I can see in myself the love of writing and creativity became a manifestation to be a God though. If I can’t be one when in this world then I shall be one in worlds of my making. A world where I decide all outcomes. The allure and addiction of creating solely for myself especially was a super delight. A God of my own realities. There is a power in that creativity and an allure. I find myself now more healthier in sorrow for that state and missing being in creative flows (though I see the silliness of sorrow, I am neither being happy creating or being happy in the felicitous sense when sorrowful so it is doubly useless lol). I was content being a God of my own worlds whilst escaping this one. I had rejected this world for my own creations. I wasn’t even living in the real world let alone the actual, when introduced to AF.

It was a way I had lived for the majority of my life, first with creating games and worlds to play with my friends, as young as 4 I can remember doing this. I was really popular among friends in my school and estate for this and then in high school the rules changed. Nobody cared about creating ideas and the traits that made me popular suddenly made me weird and different.

I started writing stories at age 7, my first story about a black ninja and a pet bat he had trained. I did my first comic around this age called Captain Cool Man but I never had a mastery of art and found it too difficult and slow to progress on. Creating and hiding in my own worlds, comic book stories, short stories, sci fi stories, black comedies, weird stuff became my daily routine…I loved it. I accepted all emotions and all things that existed in this universe and the human condition. To me there was a validity to everything and inspiration from everything so there was a way to re-channel painful emotions and experiences into creative output too. But the most extreme emotions still I had to ride these out, it didn’t make love sickness, intense anger, depression, anxiety or any other extreme emotion improve. As my mental health deteriorated it became totally ineffectual to help me. Creativity was gone in that way, I was no God of my own worlds anymore.

Becoming an adult and having to fend for myself and work and those realities that if I wanted to write I would have to work harder and produce more and network and do all these other things I didn’t want to. I found myself unable to just write and create for me because the need for survival/make ends meet became apparent. I started to think too much about what I should write for others (boo!). I started to read online stories too and see so many ideas the same as mine or superior and it really started to dent my confidence and belief of being some exceptional writer. I truly believed me and my friends were going to start some new form of renaissance, if not for AF I would be embarrassed right now lol.

The dream of the writer was losing validity too. I was denting this dream before exposure to AF and my first experience of writer’s block had happened before AF. Even with writers block I was still day dreaming though but I had lost the drive to manifest those day dreams to the written (or typed) words. To make it something valid and concrete.

AF and intense emotions (positive or negative) are the only things to have disrupted that state, to break it up. A God that can’t be a God. I am not omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent or any other omni…I am just this flesh and blood body.

I too never recalled a PCE from childhood. I definitely had EE’s and moments of sensuousness. I always felt I had a strong sense of self from a young age. People used to always think I was an old soul if you have ever heard such descriptions. More fuel for the ego and deluded sense of exceptionalism. I now wonder if the powerful allure of writing and creativity and rejection of the real world to my own fantasies are the reason I never had any.

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359

Hi @Miguel ,

The only experiences I remember that had PCE like qualities was during my mid twenties ‘god’ period.

I will keep experimenting with meditation while walking. I enjoy the walks, and notice the default things I will habitually think about. That brief attempt at walking meditation did something, allowed a genuine insight to get through the normal chatter.

360

@son_of_bob

Thanks for sharing.

I was recently at the pub with friends and met a woman who was the girlfriend of one of them.

To cut a long story down to thumb typing length, it turned out she was a songwriter.

Listening to her talk about why she wrote songs blew my mind. I was giddy listening to her.

She had for I guess a long time, written songs to process her feelings. In her words, to go from feeling bad to feeling good.

We ended up emailing each other songs and music last week.

It was a revelation. My musical dreams were always very egotistical. I wanted to be famous. Yet, all along I was getting the benefit of what she was talking about, but not with the lyrics, but the instruments.

I actually ended up writing a couple of songs ideas last week. Just trying to do what she had described as her process. It was really fun. Challenging, but it teased out a lot of detail about how I think and feel about music.

It even inspired me to rearrange the house and get a proper place for all my equipment and instruments so I can just sit down and start creating something.

Regarding the God topic, yes, I was God back then, as in seeking to manipulate matter, manifest power and basically be a Superman.

It was the side-effect that struck me yesterday. Obviously all the spectacular desires didn’t happen, but what did happen were a lot of peak experiences. When one believes that one is god, then there isn’t anything out-of-bounds.

It isn’t lost on me that actual freedom was discovered by the last true God-man.

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Richard; ”At times this audacity – that it will be me who does it – approaches megalomania … after all, one thinks, who am I to think that I can break through the impasse that has baffled humankind for millennia? As long as one does not succumb to delusions of grandeur, a healthy dose of what appears to be megalomania is appropriate … otherwise one is held back by the mediocrity of those who say you can not do it. You can.”

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