It has been a while since I wrote as I’ve gone thru a roller coaster of feelings and have come to a more calm and stable place. Of course it had to do with love but it gave me the impetus to move forward. Seeing and experiencing constantly that it does not work in bringing about a personal and interpersonal peace. I’ve also been hesitant in writing as I don’t like to write when I’m feeling not so great but maybe that might help in getting out of it too.
After I wrote my previous response I had begun engaging in ‘nipping it in the bud’ of all the loving and related feelings that I came across. I started doing it as it seemed that was the only course of action. I had already seen and experienced that it brought much suffering. Due to this I started experiencing feelings of meaninglessness, desolation, and bleakness as far as the ‘eye’ can see. What it revealed was that love was a way to cover up my loneliness. ‘I’ created an imaginary version of another person based on a dream and how ‘I’ intuited them to be and then essentially pretended that ‘I’ could be in union with this imaginary ‘other’. An instinctual movement towards assuaging the essential loneliness. When I become vulnerable thru trust in love, I am hoping that this other person will reciprocate this state of vulnerability. But in the process, I am revealing my fundamental loneliness and aloneness. If this other does not match the dream of love, then I feel it more deeply than I have ever felt before. The whole process is illusionary. The other person that ‘I’ am dreaming of does not exist. They can never match the dream. And vice versa as well. A sad state of affairs. This is further compounded for me because it has occurred to me that many people actually ignore or pretend that the ‘bad’ side of love does not exist. People will tell me that ‘I’ am too focused on it. But I cannot ignore it because it’s always there. Something is off with the whole business of relating with other people. And it is from this, my genuine desire for peace springs forth. My desire so far has been to uncover everything I can so that it can be in plain view. I also feel a fear behind this of ‘who do I think I am’. Like an authority telling me to sit down and shut up.
Anyways, I continued this process and due to this desolation I thought my partner would also start feeling the same way. They did not as far as I know and I actually kind of preferred this way of being over being in love. But nonetheless something else triggered possessiveness when my partner was talking with another man. I started feeling jealous and it put me in a state of muddled thinking. I nipped that in the bud. But then my partner brought up wanting to hang out with this other man and their partner. This again triggered the same feelings. This time it caused much suffering and it took some time to claw my way back out. Talking with my partner helped and they confirmed that it had been my own reaction which was making things seem the way they were. So I asked myself if I am repressing something. I genuinely wanted to know if I was but I kept going over and over thru the same old feelings. Then it became clear there was a missing ingredient: intent.
I realized that I would always run thru the same old feelings unless I consistently maintained the intent to be happy and harmless. I realized that it had to be an overreaching intent that had to be weaved thru my entire life for it to work and for me to not fall back thru the same ways of being. Some things I read on here and AFT website gave me clues. I had to do my part in ‘reaching’ as much as I could towards the actual. There were some clues in my everyday life as well. I would feel good when I had the genuine intent for it. The times that I did not feel good was when doubt came thru and I was not being sincere. There was some reason or belief that was in the way that prevented it from happening. I could not pretend to feel good because it intellectually made sense, I have to genuinely want it. Otherwise the instinctual ways of being will easily override any endeavor.
Another clue that stuck out for me was the word ‘unilateral’. Richard writes that only unilateral action will do the trick. That means it is not dependent on others. I had the fear that I would lose my partner if I chose to just feel good. But thru the few times that I have chosen to be that way with her, it definitely was better in every way. In being that way, there was a freedom that love could never grant. I did not experience her thru my insecurities or other fears. She is a free person and another individual. Unlike love, this is a free intimacy and nothing like what my fears intuited it to be. In fact, I think love is a bondage and yet another way of being in thrall. Even writing that, I can feel Humanity shaking its finger at me.
Then realizations had been hitting me back and forth for a bit. One thing that just smacked me in the face was like ‘all I have to do is feel good’. And this is easy. Whatever comes, I will do it feeling good. So I decided that I would not think about anything or do anything unless I was feeling good. This worked for quite a few days. I had the longest stretch of feeling good that I’ve ever experienced in a long time. Right around at the beginning of this I had another realization about being alive. It actually caught me by surprise. I was taking a shower and I became aware instantly that this entire time it has been this moment. It sounds like almost mundane. But quite literally, this entire time (forever) it has only been this moment. Even as I am writing this the implications of this are churning in my mind. All the ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ don’t have an actual existence. When I realized this, I became fascinated and I felt even more good automatically. So much safety and security in this moment. What a relief that only this moment exists. And another realization came some time after this one. Only I as this body can know that this moment exists. This one has been simmering for a little while longer. I am allowing it to gestate. There were a few other stand out experiences of perhaps a similar nature.
So for a good bit of time (at least for me), I continued on feeling good. There were a couple of days that I was spontaneously feeling good. At work, I delighted and enjoyed helping people and speaking with people. Even if they had a sour mood and that sourness tried to take hold, I was more easily able to say no and go back to feeling good.
I also had some insight into authority. I’ve been seeing that very clearly that no one has any idea what they are doing in regards to living happily and harmlessly. I had been reading up on social identity and saw that there’s a semblance of peace in the world but not actual peace. No one was acknowledging the root cause of why there has not been any peace in the world. They are doing anything but addressing it (the same as I had been). So there is a widespread insincerity. Everyone is playing pretend and I also had internalized this and pretended like everyone else. By choosing to feel good irregardless of circumstances, I sometimes feel I am standing up to all of Humanity. How dare I feel good while the world suffers (or something like that)? Yet I feel more authentic when I am feeling good than at any other time. It’s the doubt casted by my internalizing of Humanity’s many ways of being that pull me back every time. By choosing to be how Humanity is, I give up being authentic. Now I see all of this is because Humanity has not actually addressed the root cause of there not being any peace.
So I had a unique experience after that. Unique because I had not experienced something like it before. So seeing as how Humanity does not know what it is doing, were there any real rules? Could I just become actually free if I wanted to? I had been contemplating this at home and then when I was at work as well. It was a particularly slow day at work so I just reflected on it more. As I was feeling somewhere between neutral to good at the time, I thought of this moment and how it has been this moment this whole time. I became aware of a ‘bigness’ or immensity. Not quite sure of how else to describe it. It grew and it was as if my awareness was drifting into outer space without any central focus. My normal way of being I’d describe as ‘indolent’ in the sense of I stayed the same fundamentally. But now I was electrified, invigorated, and exhilarated. It felt like something was performing surgery in my head. As awareness ‘grew’, I saw all of ‘me’ as a point and felt the sensation of it at my navel area. It reminded me of the ‘pale blue dot’. Except all of me was this pale blue dot. I felt all of sorrow and was on the verge of tears but the tears would not come. I’m not quite sure why after that, but I came back down to earth. I was back to normal and felt kind of frustrated after that. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t allow it to proceed further. The following days I allowed myself to slip below neutral. Then I once again gathered sufficient intent to feel good again.
So I moved to my next topic of contemplation: malice. I had asked myself how does malice and sorrow affect me and how I am with others. I’ve simply been observing the small bits of its expression where it is generally even accepted that it happens such as when you are driving on the road. I’ll write more as more comes to mind. And I’m maintaining feeling good for the most part 
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