Chrono's Journal

[cross.chrono]

I’ve been back and forth and for the most part have been feeling neutral to good. There was one day where I was more in the feeling bad zone but that also didn’t hit the lows that it would have. I have been wondering about this committing to feeling good and its ramifications. With committing to feeling good, it means feeling good no matter the situation or circumstances. My life looked like it’s going in a different trajectory. I would be “giving up” a big part of who I currently thought and felt I was. I was wondering this for most of the day. At one point the feeling came back again that I would be punished. The thought of what my dad said of ‘I would be found out and tortured’ or ‘I wouldn’t be feeling good when they torture me’. And I had this realization that I would only be tortured because of ‘me’. All of the ‘me’ in every body. This was the nature of Humanity. To pull everyone down to its miserable depths. And this feeling went away right after.

Then the next day I was thinking about how self-immolation only happens when I’m ready. Why make it a hard effort? I started thinking about the irrevocability of it. I got some strange discomfort in my head and chest that I’ve gotten before. It’s like ‘I’ have a locality, like I’m hidden somewhere inside the body, but not actually there either. Why do I hide and what am I hiding from? What is it to be here fully? I can’t seem to remember the exact details but I had this realization that what I’ve been trying to do is change ‘me’ (as in purify ‘me’ to be un-corrupt) and that ‘I’ cannot change ‘me’. ‘I’ am all of the feelings waiting to happen. ‘I’ am the very corruption. As long as this ‘me’ is in place, ‘I’ could become anything. Then the discomfort stopped and this was like great news because it meant that ‘I’ did not have to try to change ‘me’. And that is so effortful. I didn’t need to “solve” ‘me’. I just need to feel good.

What followed was an another bout of overflowing feeling good. I was talking with my co-workers and to customers. There was almost no self-consciousness and the conversation was effortlessly fun. I spoke completely unrehearsed. There were no favorites and there was heightened sensuousness. I noticed how I was feeling good and felt even more good. I experienced the dynamic and energizing nature of this moment. I experienced this dynamicness as me. I saw the universe as it occurs right now is always in motion. Always dynamic. Always new. Always interesting. Almost like always being at the edge of my seat. I occur only right here in this moment of being alive. Inseparable from being this flesh and blood body. I saw other people and they too were living this actuality but completely not noticing it. Or rather those flesh and blood bodies were living this actuality perhaps. This experiencing was again other to ‘me’. ‘I’ could never be like this. It is actually occurring. There could be no doubt or comparison. There were ripples of delight flowing throughout my body. It continued from work til I got home. And each moment I am missing out on this.

@Vineeto

Even though it looks as if you are inching your way forward in answering your question “what is at stake” you gather the experiential answer each time you pose this question. And because you have followed your common sense that committing “to feeling good come what may” makes perfect sense, to abandon everything that stands in the way of feeling good also makes perfect sense.

@Vineeto

It’s a pleasure to read of your success – and all because your promise to yourself borne of common sense “to feeling good come what may”. Then everything else is of less importance and willingly given up.

Hi Vineeto,

Yes it makes everything easier if I’ve made committing to feeling good right now the number 1 priority. It makes sense now why I’d be more stuck in certain bad feelings in the past for a long time. It’s because that commitment had not been made. Now that it has, it’s just a matter of returning to that commitment if I notice I’m not feeling good and also figuring out why.

@Vineeto

Do I understand you correctly – that you feel trapped because, even though you “secretly believe” you can escape death, you also know “that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now” you need to abandon this secret belief and instead embrace the fact that you are mortal?

Above you wrote “I am willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams” – is one of the dreams being able to “escape death”? The spiritual dream of immortality via an Altered State of Consciousness?

If that is what you are saying you have certainly hit the nail of the head – coming down to earth from lofty heights, embracing the very physicality of being alive, and as such also your mortality, is how you are able “to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now”.

Yes that is exactly correct. My original start to the “search for peace” was when I encountered Buddhism. At the time, it looked sensible to me as it seemed to offer a solution to the Human Condition. But I did not understand that its peace was otherworldly and “somewhere else”. It seemed attractive to ‘me’ because it also offered escaping death. Which I see was the main highlight for ‘me’. ‘I’ could be “somewhere else” where ‘I’ won’t die. And the entirety of it hinged on this belief. But by actively endorsing being alive here in this moment, I know that I am mortal and will die. To actively endorse being alive right now is to give up any otherworldly otherness. The ASC of being immortal is indeed one of the dreams that I am willing to give up.

@Vineeto

Richard: Okay … this is important, vital, pivotal: ‘I’, the thinker, know that ‘I’ cannot do it … ‘I’ cannot disappear ‘myself’. Only the ‘utter fullness’ can, and the ‘utter fullness’ is ‘calling one’, each moment again, and it is only when ‘I’ fully comprehend – totally, completely, fundamentally – that to be living this ‘utter fullness’ is to be living ‘my’ destiny will one be able ‘to answer that call’. (> > Richard, List B, No 25f, 18 June 2000).

If there were a connection, then ‘I’ would not have to die. To put it differently – ‘my’ logical thinking to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ (or rather from ‘there’ to here) cannot conceive “that ‘I’ cannot do it” and that ‘I’ have to disappear for the actual world to become apparent. In fact it is impossible for ‘me’, by ‘my’ very nature, to conceive that ‘I’ will ever disappear. It can only be understood experientially in a PCE or moments of apperception – and then it is perfectly obvious.

I think I understand and I wonder if there is a reluctance to see that this ‘utter fullness’ as my destiny has to do with death. But also maybe I am doing all this also because I have a simultaneous desire for death/oblivion. Why is ‘my’ being so precious I wonder? What exactly is it that I am waiting for? What would make ‘me’ forsake ‘being’?

@Vineeto

Ha, can you see how you are depreciating the fact that you are “feeling way better than I was then” as in putting it to one side (“aside from”) while berating yourself “how long it has been”?

Yes it’s interesting how cunning ‘I’ can get in maintaining or resurrecting some good or bad feeling. All of ‘my’ way of operating revolves around survival. And actively feeling good goes against ‘my’ essential nature.

@Vineeto

You may find this informative –

Richard: […] The peculiar aspect of this ‘disguised slavery’ system is, then, the vacuity of the peasant-mentality which dumbly perpetuates it.
In a nutshell: what the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body circa 1978-79 began calling a ‘peasant mentality’ was exemplified by that vast majority of peoples not only just dumbly accepting and perpetuating this undeniably-rigged socio-economic system (known to hipsters as ‘The Establishment’) as being ‘just the way it is’ but being fiercely loyal to it, into the bargain, and defensive of it amongst themselves (to the point of defending it unto death, even, in shooting wars against other peasants similarly defending their elite few).
I kid you not; on many an occasion back then, when that identity would share ‘his’ insights with ‘his’ fellow-peasants, they would object most strenuously – especially the salaried peasants (those ‘white-collar workers’ who fondly imagined themselves to be a cut above peasant-hood) – and would vigorously defend the status-quo in a manner not all that dissimilar to what is known in psychological/ psychiatric terms as ‘capture-bonding’ (popularly known as ‘The Stockholm Syndrome’, when localised, and ‘The Oslo Syndrome’, when communalised).
Interestingly enough, some symptoms of ‘capture-bonding’ have been identified, in regards to criminal hostage situations, prisoners of war/ concentration camp internees, controlling/ intimidating relationships (battered wives/ hen-pecked husbands/ abused children), cult members, incest victims, and the like, […]
The hallmark of ‘peasant-mentality’ is, in a word, loyalty. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu3, 28 May 2015).

Hence your “loyalty to Humanity” has various aspects of the social identity/ peasant mentality, which you can each recognize, understand and abandon whenever they stand in the way of enjoying and appreciating being here.

I realized that part of my loyalty to Humanity is because I think that ‘I’ can change Humanity. The same way that I thought that ‘I’ could change ‘me’ fundamentally. Very interesting.

@Vineeto

Vineeto: For a feeling being all caring is accompanied by feelings, so a useful discernment would be to be less guided by what others expect you to do, or you yourself feel obligated to do, according to traditional beliefs and concepts, but instead be harmless, considerate and benevolent (…)
This underlying atavistic fear of “I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity” is universal, only varying in strength and expression. Those cast out from the tribe could not survive on their own. I remember ‘Vineeto’ once had strong fears of being condemned/ burnt as a witch if anyone found out what a traitor to the human condition ‘she’ was.

Chrono: In keeping with seeing what is at stake, I see the nature of ‘my’ connection to Humanity is composed of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. I was speaking with my dad again yesterday and the conversation veered toward human nature. He was of the opinion that you cannot change human nature and that to do so would ensure that you could not function in society (citing the corporate politics that he has to play in his job). But he also agreed that “the bombs dropping” was sanity in action and that there can never be any solution. He seemed to intuitively understand what the nature of what I was saying was as he said if I were to become free from human nature then I would be found out and be tortured. It really felt like I was talking to the embodiment of Humanity. Subsequently, I was very appalled. I realized that there was no saving Humanity. Humanity wants to remain as it is and maintain the status quo. And by remaining a denizen, I am also one of its embodiments.

I understand you were appalled by realizing how remaining a “denizen” you are actively supporting ‘Humanity’, and it is no wonder ‘I’ come up with the most potent and threatening counter-argument to leaving humanity – that you will go insane. But as you more and more realise, the alternative to sanity is not insanity but the salubriousness of being less and less of ‘me’, in other words, being felicitous and innocuous and appreciative of being alive. When you understand this, then chipping away at your loyalty to humanity is no longer such a scary big deal.

I can see this now. Now instead of the fear of going insane, it has turned into a feeling of loneliness.

@Vineeto

Above you said “I am stunned at how long it has been” – to thoroughly and experientially understand how the human psyche works is a gradual process, and you are daily reaping the rewards.

I am most definitely reaping the rewards more now and it is fascinating seeing all the workings of ‘me’.