Cross.Chrono: I’ve been focusing on the last two months on naiveté. Perhaps this is the missing element in my life. And I did have an experience of it. First I saw that it was behind my debilitating doubt about how the world and humanity knows something that I don’t as I wrote on further back. The notion or thought of challenging this made me feel like a fool or embarrassed. I just watched how this manifested in many areas of my life. From work to relationships to all of my interactions and all the dots started connecting. There’s an entire edifice that conveys the feeling that I would just be stupid to just enjoy life right now simply for being alive. It manifests as a rampant cynicism. I can see it clearly now in myself and others being reinforced on many occasions. It has quite an oppressive quality.
Hi Cross.Chrono,
Ah, it’s always a pleasure to hear someone endorse naiveté and even more so calling it “the missing element in my life”.
Even though you may be right suspecting that many people (not “humanity” though) know something, anything, that you don’t – you now know something so elemental to feeling good that many people would envy you for waking up to that and start living it as you seem to have done.
Vineeto: It is advantageous that you felt “a little embarrassed” – this is the very feeling which can open the door to naiveté. Try it out, it is delicious once you overcome your first hesitation to feeling a bit foolish.
Cross.Chrono: I took note of this and kept it in mind. Also as I followed along everyone’s journeys here, I allowed myself to feel embarrassed anyway instead of turning back. Actually I feel it right now as I’m writing this because of sharing it here, like maybe I should doubt my own experience haha. But I’ve already been down that path and it just leads back to the same old same old. When I did allow myself to feel it I had a glimpse into seeing the world in an almost magical way. It immediately reminded me of so many things from my childhood. I had completely forgotten it. I’m not even sure how to very accurately convey it with the proper words on just how wondrous the world looks. It’s like being on the edge of your seat and like you are about to explore something new. I’m just so glad and full of appreciation that this is the world that I live in.
This is indeed marvellous. Richard used to call it “‘the cutting edge of reality’ back in the days when there was an ‘I’ inhabiting this body”, in order to convey the immediacy of experiencing –
Richard: I would say to myself: ‘This is my only moment of being alive … I am actually here doing this reading of these words now’. The past – although it was actual whilst it was happening – is not happening now … and never will again. A past peak experience can never be repeated … it is useful inasmuch as it bestows the requisite confidence that it is possible to experience the purity of the perfection of life here and now … but that is it, finish. One slips into this moment in time and this place in space by being aware that all this that is happening is happening for the very first time and that I have never been here before doing this. In fact: I have never been here before. In everyday terminology this moment in time is the ‘cutting-edge of reality’. Who knows what will happen next as ‘the future’ does not exist until this moment happens.
If this realisation is not thrilling I would like to know what is! (Richard, AF List, Vineeto, 5 Aug 1998).
Cross.Chrono: I’ve had the longest streak of feeling good since perhaps ever. I’ve only dropped down to feeling bad may be a few times but even when I did, it wasn’t quite the same as before. Like it doesn’t quite have the hold it does as before. I’m not willfully ignoring the exit sign from it. The states of suffering that I felt prior felt like I would never get out of it.
I see you are really getting the hang of it. When you are naïve, your previous ‘problems’ can no longer present themselves as serious as before and that makes it also so much easier to either decline them right away or find the triggers no longer as gripping and convincing as before. When it gets to the stage where you can’t even take yourself as serious as before then the fun takes over and life becomes truly an exquisite adventure.
Cross.Chrono: It feels more like I am now standing a little more outside that edifice of doubt. When I visited my parents again with all of this in mind, they no longer had the same effect on me. It became clear that they were the first authority from which the edifice of authority was built on. I could clearly see how they were operating and that they were operating the same way. Trying to instill the same fears in me, but this time it seemed just flat out silly. I knew these fears were of no substance. What a relief! This is like a breakthrough for me.
While parents were the first authority for you – as for most children – it’s helpful to keep in mind that the situation was the same for your parents, and for their parents, and so on. This means that nobody is to blame for the mess one finds oneself in, and by taking the blame away, doubt will disappear as well because you realize that nobody is the ultimate authority – no one or no thing is in charge of the universe … that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It might be a shock at the start but realizing this fact is incredibly liberating. It puts you in charge of your own life … and your freedom (and your happiness and harmlessness) is in your hands alone.
Cross.Chrono: So to continue from where I left off, I can now see an alternative path from my usual modus operandi of how I interact with my partner and with others. A highlight being an alternative path from the road of sexual desire. A soft intimacy which was blocked due to the belief that I will be alone if I did not continue down the path placed before me by Humanity. A path supported with the belief in a ‘man’ and how that identity should be with his partner (a ‘woman’) and to society. Now it’s starting to become easier . I had the thoughts after my pure intent experience before like there’s ‘no way that this is possible’. Now it seems possible! (link)
You will find, when you dare to continue to live it more and more, that both naiveté and intimacy are contagious and enticing for those sensitive to it. The authority you used to believe in and obey is the same authority which set the rules for “the belief in a ‘man’ and how that identity should be with his partner (a ‘woman’) and to society”. This authority no longer has the full credibility now as it used to have for you, and with pure intent guiding you, you can explore in which way a male and a female human being can most beneficially interact with each other in a win-win interaction of two fellow human beings.
Cheers Vineeto