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 (19 Oct). It does make sense to aim for the in-control virtual freedom as the means to the end and end are no different.
Chrono: Yes I have seen these expectations/ obligations featured in many aspects of my life. In relation to male friends (primarily), it could be that I must maintain some outward appearance of confidence, being nonplussed, being “skilled”, being of high status, etc. (…) If I had to go a little further, I could say that all of that is about projecting power.
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).
Chrono: Yes I am reaching the “exhaustion” point of all options and seeing that perhaps naiveté is the only way to proceed.
Hi Chrono,
Thank you for your extensive reflections. The way you phrased the last sentence it looks as if naiveté, though being the least attractive option for ‘me’, is nevertheless the only way to achieve a more continuous feeling good?
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 ).
Chrono: 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.
Yes, there is a tangible dare “to have a genuine intent to be happy and harmless”. Hence unless you genuinely enjoy being happy and harmless for its own sake you won’t care to dare leaving the ties behind that so (comfortably and uncomfortably) bind you. When pure intent is active, there are no worries of being “callous” or “uncaring”.
Chrono: Yes, this hidden yearning is what I’m currently trying to locate. Which perhaps may only come about if I abandon the sexual drive as well. I am wondering if that drive has any role to play at all in any of this. I sometimes struggle to see how it could not arise at all unless one is already actually free.
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 whenever it interferes with being happy and harmless aim for as much naiveté as you dare, which already had such fortuitous outcome.
‘Peter’: (…) How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me? (Peter’s Journal, Living Together)
Chrono: 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 talked to Andrew about guilt recently (link), perhaps you have read it. Additionally to the original guilt of being an instinctual ‘being’ there is the social conditioning regarding sexuality in almost all societies, because man-woman sexuality is the genesis of family and thus the very core of civilisation itself and therefore strictly regulated almost everywhere, not only via laws but also “guilt and shame”. It is possible to unravel this social conditioning when pure intent is firmly in place.
As for the second aspect of the “feeling of guilt” because “you are disregarding your partner” – when you deliberate shift your focus of interest from personal sexual satisfaction only to intimacy, the whole nature of sexual congress will change in the direction of including your partner, as a fellow play-mate, in the direct (bodily) intimacy of sexual congress.
Richard: (…) exploring sex and sexuality is enormously beneficial: there is no better way, in my experience, for a man and a woman to approach such intimacy than sexual congress. (Richard, List D, No. 6, 10 Nov 2009)
Respondent: Thank you Richard for this elaboration, it’s both fascinating and helpful. I would like to clarify a certain point, when you mention sexuality, do you refer to the sex drive ?
Richard: Yes, otherwise known as libido – a Latin word meaning ‘lust’ (which is an Old English word for ‘sensuous appetite’ according to the Oxford Dictionary) – or sexual energy … as distinct from (bodily) sexual arousal.
To explain: that sexual energy (as in feeling lusty) is an affective energy – libido, as distinct from sexual arousal, is an instinctual passion otherwise known as desire – whereas bodily arousal (as in genital engorgement, erectile tissue, lubricious fluids and so on) is only sensuous (as in sensate) or, more properly, purely sensual. (Richard, List D, No. 20, 11 Dec 2009)
Chrono: I remember this quote from Richard standing out and highlighting this confusion:
Richard: {Sure … it is this simple: you are into altering behavioural patterns (rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic) whereas what I speak of is the elimination of that which causes the aberrant behaviour in the first place. As pacifists and their ilk (those who live the doctrine of non-violence) do not eliminate the source of aberrant behaviour … then they have to imitate the actual ease of an actual freedom from the human condition by making a big splash about their ‘goodie-goodie’ behaviour.}
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’.
{Whilst obviously not a direct quote, this applies to all anti-social behaviour … not just a minor thing like sex outside of marriage. Things like all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides, to give but a small yet very representative example.
Which means: clean up your act on the ‘inside’ and the ‘outer’ actions are free to be appropriate to the circumstances.} [link]
Of course it is confusing because you snipped the beginning and end of the quote (added in curly brackets here). Richard is talking about rules made by pacifists and religious moralists to restrain instinctual behaviour instead of aiming to eliminate the very source of the offending behaviour – the instinctual passions. Here Richard points out that the Bible-quote at least considers the instinctual feelings as well as the instinctually-driven behaviour as something reprehensible (but offering nothing but repression for remedy).
Chrono: 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).
Well, of course if you start with the top-most grade, so to speak, and want ‘magical sex’ right away without exploring and getting accustomed to the preceding stages of Grace’s gradation scale (link) first, you have a good excuse for being resentful and not even start. Besides –
Richard: Put succinctly, this intimity, this most intimate of intimacies, has been beyond the ken of humankind since forever! [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 46, 7 Feb 2016).
Which means it is never talked about and hence entirely new to human history. It’s time someone puts it into practice and brings delicious intimacy into “the ken of humankind”. The more you allow yourself to be naïve the easier you have access to the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté.
Vineeto: This correspondence may be useful as well – (Actualism, Peter, Selected Correspondence, Social Identity).
Chrono: 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.
It is indeed the instinctual programming that automatically places ‘me’ in the centre of all ‘my’ feelings and actions, thus creating a ‘me’ and ‘them’, whereas increasing naiveté allows you to recognize that everyone is inflicted with the same instinctual passions as you, and you can more easily (unilaterally) recognize them as fellow human beings.
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? )
Chrono: 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.
This is an excellent realisation – “the end of ‘my’ dreams was also the end of all of ‘my’ nightmares”. The good feelings keep the bad feelings in place. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ often found when there was a stubborn emotional problem that it was a certain dream or other cherished attachment which needed to be looked at before ‘she’ could resolve/ dissolve the problem.
Chrono: 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”.
Excellent contemplations and discoveries, Chrono. Every identity is trying to “take a “shortcut”” – it’s the very nature of being an imaginary yet passionate identity. You can pat yourself on the back for each time you discover another one of ‘my’ strategies and enjoy and appreciate your insights and success.
Chrono: 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. (Richard, List D, Rick, 28 May 2013)
Chrono: This flesh and blood body has its own consciousness independent of ‘me’. This was so interesting and so fascinating.
Yes, there is a consciousness, the sentience of this flesh-and-blood body, naturally. It is not “its own consciousness” because you are this flesh-and-blood body, it is your own consciousness. The identity only hijacks this marvellous capacity and blights it with passions and emotions, distortions and problems. Hence the suggestion to get back to feeling good before you begin to sort out any triggers to your diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation. A flesh and blood body entirely “independent of ‘me’” operates apperceptively and is capable of great clarity.
Chrono: 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.
A great description of a PCE. How easy to be right here, once you realised that a flesh and blood body can perfectly function without any help from ‘me’.
Chrono: 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.
You can give them respect as fellow human beings just as you can give this respect to yourself. With increased awareness how you feel each moment the upcoming problems are easily dealt with, without you having to act out any of the emotions which arise. A perfect example of the actualism in practice.
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”.
Chrono: 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. (link)
It is also a lot of fun, and even more fun when you get into the habit of appreciating your successes.
Cheers Vineeto