Chrono's Journal

[cross.chrono]

Now I have a string of days off to enjoy, reflect, and compose. I think I also operate to a similar extent in the “steeple chasing” and taking “excursions” mentioned in the replies prior . It does make sense to aim for the in-control virtual freedom as the means to the end and end are no different.

@Vineeto

Well said. Having recognized this you can now decline “projecting power” and experiment with allowing the naiveté which you talked about in your last message (quoted further below) – (link).

Yes I am reaching the “exhaustion” point of all options and seeing that perhaps naivete is the only way to proceed.

@Vineeto

The dare is to become autonomous, less and less dependant on other people’s opinions and demands. It happens when you gradually find out that there is something better than having the fickle approval and praise from your contemporaries. There is an actual world right here, right now, and right under your nose. You may enjoy this story from Richard (wonder-land-tale ).

I can see in this dare how important it is to have a genuine intent to be happy and harmless. As one of the main fears that pops up is how I will be uncaring and callous if I were to be less and less dependent on other people’s opinions and demands. I know that I’ve mentioned this quite a few times in this journal so it’s definitely something central to ‘me’. The callousness may very well be the case if I did not have that intent. Caring in the real world is synonymous with being ‘Good’ and all the ‘good’ feelings.

I enjoyed reading Richard’s wonder-land-tale and it’s a wonderful reminder of how society’s standards can never meet or match the perfection of the actual world.

@Vineeto

Not so fast. You cannot abandon the sexual drive – it is an instinctual passion. It will only completely disappear when the whole identity becomes extinct. Any attempt to abandon the sexual drive will necessarily lead to suppression and repression. This is the old way which both Western and Eastern religions promoted for thousands of years, and if you only know a little bit of history you already know where it leads to.

What you can do is sincerely examine each of the various aspects of your acquired identity as a man, and if it interferes with being happy and harmless aim for as much naiveté as you dare, which already had such fortuitous outcome.

Here is a short excerpt from feeling being ‘Peter’ regarding male identity –

‘Peter’: What we found in our investigations has been quite shocking – a blow to that insidious feeling of pride that inevitably causes human beings to refuse to admit that their behaviour is just plain stupid and that ultimately prevents any possibility of radical, effective change. How could I have been so stupid? But the facts spoke for themselves. How could I have believed that simply because ‘everybody behaves that way’, I should also behave that way? How could I believe that everybody else was ‘getting it wrong’, and not me? Was I going to endlessly try and change every woman I was with or somehow try and find the ‘right one’ amongst the billions? How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me? (Peter’s Journal, Living Together)

I think in these past days I have realized that one of the reasons I am having some trouble with it is because I also have a feeling of guilt and shame at feeling this sexual drive in the first place. It seems locked in place because there are some simultaneously conflicting beliefs that go with it as well and creating cognitive dissonance. The first is the one that I have already mentioned about needing it and indulging in it to some extent for the male “sexual prowess”. But also there’s a feeling of guilt at having it because then you are disregarding your partner. I noted above how this drive is the opposite of appreciation and it is conflicting because society both feels that it is a “need” while also saying that it is ‘Bad’. I remember this quote from Richard standing out and highlighting this confusion:

Richard: To put it simply – and in a way that might just convey it to you – this what I speak of is somewhat indicated by what is possibly the only passage in the Christian’s Holy Scriptures worthy of note. Viz.:
• ‘He and/or she that looketh upon a woman and/or man with lust in their heart has already committed adultery’. [link]

But further to that, probably the main reason for this is that I have never had ‘magical sex’. I’ll admit that that’s probably because all of these beliefs are standing in the way. Thus it ends up not being playful, appreciative, and fun, but instead an act that must be performed “properly”. The physical delight gets stunted to some degree. I wasn’t aware of all of this before though. Just that my experience stood in stark contrast to anything in the gradations of intimacy. Consequently, the rest follows what Peter writes about blaming the other. Blaming them for not allowing me the proper “space” for this intimacy that I desire to eventuate (it’s funny that I am realizing that that is actually what I am looking for as I am writing this).

@Vineeto

This correspondence may be useful as well –

Gary: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to.
In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed.
‘Peter’: (…) Then there are other aspects of one’s social identity that demand attention if one is to ever get to the stage where one can see and treat one’s fellow human beings as fellow human beings and not continue to think and feel them to be separate ‘beings’. A man never meets a woman and sees her or treats her as a fellow human being because men and women have been instilled with opposing gender identities – identities that are mandated by each side in the battle of the sexes and are rife with mutual feelings of suspicion, fear, ignorance and superstition. Similarly, a father never meets a son and a mother never meets a daughter for each has a socially-imposed identity relative to each other – a complex set of social obligations, emotional demands and needs, expectations and resentments that serve to prevent each from either seeing or treating each other as fellow human beings. Similarly, an American never meets an Australian, a Lithuanian never meets a Nigerian and so on, for each believe they belong to a different culture and each call a particular piece of the planet ‘home’. The list goes on, but I won’t, for you will have got the gist by now.
What normally happens in relationships when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, is that the each party blames the other for failing to meet their needs, fulfill their expectations, nurture them sufficiently, respect their feelings, and such like. Often a begrudging compromise is reached in relationships or failure is allowed to run its natural course. As you well know from your experience with actualism, the only way out of this mess is to demolish one’s own social identity, piece-by-piece, element-by-element.
And the proof that this process works is that you begin to not only see but to treat the fellow human beings you come in contact with as exactly that – fellow human beings, regardless of their age, gender, kin, race, religion, culture, nationality, and so on. (Actualism, Peter, Selected Correspondence, Social Identity).

I can see what Peter writes here about the demands of the social identity. I can feel the separation from others and experienced it in an epitomized way when I was going in to work last week. As I was walking from the parking lot into the building, I saw that all the people’s walking about were a ‘they’ and a ‘them’. And ‘I’ was a ‘me’. It was like the social identity program had just booted up and I saw the beginnings of it. It’s clear now that everyone (including me) is engaged in the correcting of the issues coming much later from this through various means but not willing to acknowledge the start of it.

@Vineeto

That’s how it the instinctual passions work – any time you get ‘close’, i.e. more intimate to another fellow human being, there is an apprehension of what might happen, that you might lose yourself. And yet when you pay attention, there is no actual danger, not even real danger. So you can increase the daring just a little bit, and then a little bit more, and be more confident in discovering and enjoying being naïve. It is such fun.

Yes I can see that this is the next course of action.

@Vineeto

You have identified the nub of the old paradigm which applies both to the spiritual as well as the materialistic aspect – your ‘being’ searching for the fulfilment that only an actual freedom can provide. Instead, for millennia people have been settling for second best – either spiritual enlightenment or material fulfilment, as in addictions to ‘highs’, ranging from drugs, success, group-highs, winning competitions, admiration or similar ‘self’-enhancing activities.

It is an excellent realisation to have identified this as “‘my’ path”, in contrast to the wide and wondrous path. It is a dead-end road unless you want to settle for second best.

This “limerence” only reifies the ‘self’ and the ‘self’s’ yearning for grandeur in the dream of the ‘good’ side – ‘self’-aggrandisement. The sooner you recognize, and consequently decline, the nature of the “dream” the sooner the attraction to the “most intense suffering” will also abate. Perhaps a thorough investigation of what is left of “the dream of ‘love’” might be useful – (FAQ Why is love (Love) no Solution? )

It’s something that I have been thinking about since reading the correspondence thus far. Why do I want this dream (of love and limerence) to be true? What is this dream composed of? I realized this past week that for the unknown path to become apparent that the belief in ALL of ‘my’ dreams would have to go. All of ‘my’ dreams were somewhere and somewhen else. They would never actually manifest here. This brought a strange sense of relief. I know at some level that I am only fooling myself with some deception. Then while leaving work and heading home I experienced a sensuousness I quite often experience at the end of the day and had a spontaneous realization that the end of ‘my’ dreams was also the end of all of ‘my’ nightmares.

The next day while I mulled this over, I got a “peek” behind this. All of this was due to the essential pain of being ‘me’. And I felt deep down what ‘my’ essential task was despite this pain. ‘My’ task is to survive at all costs. Every single moment that ‘I’ am ‘being’ is another moment that ‘I’ am buying “time” to survive. At literally any moment ‘I’ can die. There’s a realm of fear here that’s raw and untouched. Very immediate and urgent. I backed away from it. But then I started again thinking about time. I realize that a very big bulk of ‘me’ is this feeling of existing over time. But it’s always any other time than this moment. Much of my modus operandi has been to change ‘me’ while also remaining ‘me’. Now it’s clear that ‘I’ cannot end ‘me’. My thinking was something like ‘I’ trying to expose ‘me’ and this would dissolve ‘me’. But ‘I’ have to ‘be’ naivete. I’ve been cunningly trying to take a “shortcut”.

While all of the above was being “churned” at the back of my mind, I was reading this correspondence and this suddenly made sense:

RICHARD: As simply as possible: human consciousness – as in, flesh-and-blood bodies being conscious (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun expressing a state or condition), or sentient – is common to all human beings.

This flesh and blood body has its own consciousness independent of ‘me’. This was so interesting and so fascinating. I started experiencing a pain at the back of my neck. Then it was like a heavy blanket was removed from over my body slowly and I was here. This body was as if moving on its own. No reference to ‘me’. I went to help someone at work and I expected a near pull back to think about what ‘I’ am supposed to do but I was already doing it. To be friendly and helpful was no longer something that I had to attain to. I am now thinking of Richard’s wonder-land-tale and understand it much more.

But it passed and ‘I’ started to wonder how can ‘I’ get from ‘me’ to “there”. Not long after ‘I’ was quickly met with another challenge at work. Someone came up and demanded with a small level of aggression that I give them their money or they will not leave. I started feeling that fear of being faced with the potential of another’s verbal assault (which seems backed by the fear of being physically assaulted). I ended up being able to help them and get them what they need and had a subsequent realization.

Even though I felt fear, I simultaneously experienced everything to be well due to the “after-effect” of the prior experience. What I saw during it though was that ‘I’ felt slighted by the way they approached me for help. Thus I also became aware of an anger building in myself. Towards the end of it I became aware of how ‘I’ was standing in the way of beneficence operating again. I also became aware of how much “respect” plays a role in society. Respect is backed by the fear of violence. Every identity demands respect. And this respect is to acknowledge their identity in the first place.

@Vineeto

However, there is no point in going into these limerences once you know what they are about or into the feelings of the fear of ending ‘me’ again and again unless ‘I’ am prepared, via discovering and dissolving the last bastions of ‘me’ objecting to ‘my’ demise, especially when you already found out that you “would go in circles”.

Yes I need to bring being happy and harmless each moment again in every aspect of my life while still remaining ‘me’. It makes a lot of sense.