Hi Chrono,
What you can also include in your considerations is that when you are feeling good, your intelligence and common sense works much, much better than when you are overwhelmed by feelings. As such, when feeling good, you are much more likely to act intelligently and give others no reason at all for “‘I would be found out and tortured’” or any such atavistic scares passed down the ages to keep people in line.
Chrono: 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.
This is an excellent insight and worth remembering whenever you are about to fall back into making “a hard effort” to purify ‘you’, the identity, instead of connecting to pure intent and feeling good. The “strange discomfort in my head and chest” is the psychosomatic reaction to the chemicals triggered by the feelings about ‘my’ survival being under threat.
Chrono: 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.
What a wonderful description of an excellence experience or PCE.
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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.
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.
Chrono: 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.
It is indeed a very helpful commitment to make – when ‘it just makes sense to feel good’ is not enough to counter the swings of emotion which do occur from time to time, which then put common sense is in hibernation.
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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”.
Chrono: 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.
Spiritual immortality being a very popular belief and you having held it for some time, it might take some contemplating and being aware of any reoccurrence of that dream of immortality. But the more you contemplate it sensibly the less it makes sense, being only supported by the passionate desire of ‘my’ survival.
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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.
Chrono: 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’?
What Richard is referring to is a temporary experience this particular respondent reported. You said yourself in the second paragraph above that “I was thinking about how self-immolation only happens when I’m ready”. Obviously you are not ready for the ultimate step and need to find out more about “why is ‘my’ being so precious”. Don’t let your feeling good be spoiled with a ‘self’-created conflict of being impatient. It is just another trick of ‘me’ trying to stay in the picture. (…)
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Vineeto:
Richard: […] 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.
Chrono: 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.
Fascinating, isn’t it – the focus changes from changing oneself to changing Humanity instead. It’s a dead-end road which, if believed, could keep you busy for the rest of your life. The attraction is that then ‘I’ wouldn’t be alone but at what price! It is also very understandable given the misery and mayhem happening all around.
This quote from Richard’s Journal may be helpful –
Richard: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country.
Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race … all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ … it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer … ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world … and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition.
My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly.
‘I’ was not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ tapped into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that ‘I’ had during a peak experience in 1980. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself. Once set in motion, it is no longer a matter of choice: it is an irresistible pull. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life – it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness. Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s normal life … one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants.
Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the universe was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom of the real-world’ that ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow and malice in every human being, ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free … ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so delicious to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly – the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! [Emphasis added]. (Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword).
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Vineeto: 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.
Chrono: I can see this now. Now instead of the fear of going insane, it has turned into a feeling of loneliness.
The above quote also answers your question of loneliness.
Richard: “‘I’ was not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ tapped into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) …”
Once you get the knack of connecting to pure intent and experience the benignity and benevolence inherent to the purity and perfection of the infinitude, i.e. of pure intent, then there is no room for loneliness. When you experienced what you described as “another bout of overflowing feeling good” there was no loneliness, even though no one else shared the same experience. The following quote might also help –
Mark: I have chosen not to tell acquaintances of this happening [health wise] as I have no wish to invoke pity, sympathy or such that would only serve to strengthen the ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’ of same. Two ‘selves’ live in totally different worlds so any sharing (of fear, grief, love) is not actually possible anyway! I have never before felt so at ease with aloneness (engendered by the gradual falling away of the shared beliefs of the ‘real’ world).
Richard: Aye, when loneliness ends, and one stands on one’s own two feet, this independence is a relief … yet there is more. Even aloneness can end. Where you wrote (Part One) that ‘all I can do is proceed, with pure intent, to continue to nibble away at ‘me’, I can only recommend proceeding with all dispatch. When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ entirety, the separative entity’s isolation disappears too … and an actual intimacy emerges that beggars comparison. This is because a person’s isolation is formed by the essence of their ‘being’… and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. (…)
With apperception, what one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ … a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any affective intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality … and I have always been here like this … so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety … a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions. (Richard, AF List, Mark, 18 Feb 1999).
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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.
Chrono: I am most definitely reaping the rewards more now and it is fascinating seeing all the workings of ‘me’. (link)
Ha, every word you write confirms that. It is a pleasure to follow your process to more and more feel good.
Cheers Vineeto