Chrono's Journal

[cross.chrono]

@Vineeto

Let me insert a vital step before your “square one” – getting back to feeling good once you discover that your enjoyment and appreciation has diminished. Unless you are at least feeling good any thinking about/ investigation into your emotions will go round in circles.

Ah! I actually did need that reminder . Sometimes I get overwhelmed. Perhaps I have a tendency to more easily give weight and importance to negative feelings than felicitous feelings. They seem to have a more urgent feeling to them and perhaps even more ‘truth’ to them. It’s like once I am feeling good, then there’s really nothing to think about. There was really no reason to feel bad. It was all a self-fulfilling prophecy. I simply had indulged in them and perhaps the underlying resentment and seriousness gives rise to an obsessive urge or tendency to do something about it. And that in turn sustains the resentment and seriousness. The way I went about it though was misguided.

@Vineeto

– he did not suggest that you “be gentle with” yourself. On the contrary, in many of his correspondences he emphasises that sincerity is the key to naiveté and sincerity requires that one be ruthlessly honest with oneself.

In this instance I was using the phrase “gentle with myself” to mean not telling myself off for not feeling good (which was counterproductive). I still maintain being insistent and uncompromising with myself albeit that quality was misplaced/misdirected.

@Vineeto

To be friends with yourself and abandon the habit of putting yourself down for any or all feelings and cunning ways of the identity you discover is vital – pat yourself on the back and appreciate what your dared to discover and acknowledge – but the words “be gentle” indicate hesitancy, guardedness, caution, yielding and treading lightly in the process of uncovering any aspect of the human condition in yourself (just like the Buddhistic therapist in the above correspondence).

I’d say it was because I had been going in circles feeling bad that I used the words “be gentle”. Since I hadn’t been making progress (due to not feeling good first and splitting myself instead), I thought perhaps it’s because I am just putting myself down too much. Of course all of that was not doing the actualism method and I had forgotten the vital step of getting back to feeling good first. I certainly see the ‘cunning’ part of the identity more now.

@Vineeto

The actualism method is epitomised by “the minimisation of both the malicious/ sorrowful feelings (the ‘bad’ feelings) and their antidotal loving/ compassionate feelings (the ‘good’ feelings) in concert with the maximisation of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings”, the only reason “to stay with the feeling” is when you have difficulty to comprehend “that to be living this moment – the only moment you are ever alive – by feeling bad is to be frittering away a vital opportunity to be fully alive …” (Richard, AF List, No. 79, 21 Jun 2005)

Then definitely the “fascinated attention to the discomfort” - in the name of practicing the actualism method - contributed to the maintaining and continuing of the discomfort. The only thing I would say is that this is extremely persistent, so much so that if I do return to feeling good and try to look into it, I fall back into the same feeling pattern.

@Vineeto

You may also find the following correspondence relevant, a discovery regarding a basic seriousness which stands in the way of enjoyment and naiveté –

Respondent: I came to this when I realized that I wasn’t steering directly for felicity a lot of the time; and that when I was steering for it, there was a limit to how much I could find. While looking for more of it, I became increasingly aware that seriousness and aching seemed to characterize a good deal of my experience. I had read many of your statements about being serious, such as how seriousness ‘actively works against peace-on-earth’ – and thought I was applying them, but I didn’t realize how much seriousness was there(1). (see more: Richard, AF List, No. 82 , 3 Jan 2006 )

Thinking on this basic seriousness led me to another layer connected to it that perhaps I hadn’t noticed before but it makes more sense now. It is this “Need to Belong”. Much of my malice and sorrow revolves around this and could be placed under this header. For example, with my partner and with many others, it feels as if I must feel bad when they feel bad or else I am not caring. It feels like there’s something very important here. I can feel the push and pull from this in all of my interactions. The relating with others is a shared malice and sorrow. If I don’t go along with this then it feels like I will be ostracized and alone. This feels like the source of my doubt in just being happy and harmless forever and feels like it is sourced in pure sorrow and loneliness. It’s like if this pull wasn’t there, then I could just enjoy life without any effort. As it’s from this direction there’s either seriousness or in the other direction which is naivete. Now here it really feels like that to pick naivete fully is to be completely foolish and this feeling is very strong. The pull of seriousness has all the backing of everyone I know and have ever known.

Maybe right now the only thing I can do is to keep returning to feeling good and come back to it again. Actually I just re-read my previous post and it looks like I am going in circles. It seems that this “debilitating doubt” and seriousness has come back full force.