But would it? I have to think you may come into contact with plenty of people who are feeling malicious but suppressing it. Wouldn’t it be nice to be free of those vibes that you truly don’t want to be feeling out if they have nothing to do with you?
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I think I’m very sensitive to such malice but it sure would be possible that they are suppressing it. Now it would be nice to be free of those vibes for sure. There was something that Richard wrote that I can’t find. I could be way off here but it was something along the lines of the victim also putting out a sort of vibe which invites the aggressor in a way. So I too could be playing a part in such malicious vibes. The question is what am I putting out that would invite such aggression or malice? What am I being?
I think perhaps it also stems from my fear of confrontation and physical harm. I went out this past weekend for some Halloween themed activities at an outdoor bar. I saw a guy there whom I immediately felt an aggressive vibe from. I stayed away but as we were leaving he called out to me with a mocking name based on the costume I was wearing. He was also filming or trying to take a picture of my reaction. I acknowledged him calling out to me but acted like I didn’t understand what he was saying and walked off. Inside I was completely terrified though as there was a huge surge of fear (even as I think about it now). And I’m reflecting now, am I really protecting this body or am I protecting something else? And if not the body, what is the benefit of that thing being protected?
I had an interesting experience yesterday. There’s a reason that Richard writes:
Before applying the actualism method – the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – it is essential for success to grasp the fact that this very moment which is happening now is your only moment of being alive.
I realized that I can get stuck in feelings or fantasies and completely miss out on life, but this is the backdrop to everything. When I ask “How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?”, whatever I am thinking or feeling is being experienced while this moment of being alive is happening right now…always. I’ll see I am afraid or being apprehensive and then look at how it is this moment of being alive and then poof. It’s astounding how what felt real just one second ago can seem like it was nothing the next second. But this moment remains unmoved. All of being “away” somewhere else happened while I was here this whole time. As I was reflecting on all this, I would keep coming back to this fact. It is this moment all of the time. It’s just happening on its own. Just for a bit a strange occurrence happened where I did not have any choice because it was this moment. I understood what it means to enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive. There’s really nothing else you can do. I enjoyed and appreciated this moment effortlessly without doing anything. It’s just right here happening all of the time. There’s the illusion that I can go somewhere else. And even while I was “there” somewhere else dissociating or whatever, this moment has just been here happening. I’ve had similar experiences before but this was the first time I experienced it where I wasn’t choosing to enjoy and appreciate and it was just happening by itself. Now I try not to go anywhere else and see how much of my life I spend not seeing the fact of this moment. I’m re-framing my looking at everything with this as the backdrop.
Prey
Actually I reflected on what you said for quite a while as it seemed to resonate a bit. I thought then what should I be instead? I teetered back and forth between being either an aggressor or a victim. There didn’t seem to be another alternative. But it was pretty clear that that was what I was being at a certain point. Then one day the word came to mind on what the issue was. It is all about authority. All of my life I’ve been giving people or events the power over how I feel. It seemed like if I did then I will get something in return. What I don’t know. But that belief deep down manifests in various ways. One of them is that others or Humanity seem to know something I don’t. Some secret to living so confidently as if they’ve got it all figured out. That maybe if I was just subservient to them then I too would be able to know it. Then on the other end I’ve also had the temptation to become an authority. Depending on the situation I could be doing one or the other, but a lot of times it is subservience. Behind this is a fear of being on my own. To go beyond this I need to face the fear of standing on my own two feet.
Seeing this has been quite freeing. I’m able to catch it more now in each instance. I think this also relates to the experience I had that I wrote about previously (?) about how there was not any authority running the universe. There does seem to be some leftover remnants of a belief in a higher power. But not quite in the way that is normally believed. Nonetheless that’s where the authority seems to trickle down from. All of this has been about power. Where there is power there is a hierarchy. Where there is a hierarchy there is no being equitable.
Another word that just stuck with me from an article I was reading is the word “manumission”. An actual freedom is a manumission. I initially interpreted it as I will be released from the slavery of being subservient to Humanity. But now that I think about it, it is for the body to be released from being a slave to ‘me’. When I further think about it, could it ever all be equitable within Humanity? There will always be power there. Now I am also seeing more of how vibes and currents relate to power. I need to activate another PCE.
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You and me both. 
I’m dating a girl who is hyper aware of being stared at. She gets creeped out and generally doesn’t like men looking at her at all.
For instance, she’ll be at a bar and pretending to have a good time with her friends, all the while managing where she looks so as not to make eye contact with someone she’s clocked staring at her. It seems exhausting. And she’ll become aggressive / passive aggressive if they approach. She really resents these people for making her feel unsafe and this can lead to conflict if and when they approach her, where both parties leave more upset than they started.
Identity is really perverse. When it’s comfortable, all it wants is to be seen. Look at me, look at this idea, look at this book I’m reading, ad nauseam. But if it has something to hide, it thinks it can hide behind eyes turned downward, or dissociated gazes. The identity is always trying to hide from others because it lacks pure intent. All of it’s intent is tainted by self-eccentricity and therefor must be hidden from others. And that’s what she’s doing as she carefully manages where her eyeballs go. All the while she’s pretending to have a good time, or at least trying to. (Side note, I found that at least recognizing the self-centric intent & not taking it so seriously is helpful. Might seem obvious I guess.)
I do this too, in my own ways. In the past few months, since I’ve really been noticing, I’ve been challenging myself to really come out to the edge of reality and be here. To stop hiding, as everyone can see me anyway. It’s engendered a lot of confidence & comfortableness in my surroundings. Recognizing that I’m here anyway, already, and that everyone can see me, does wonders during those times I’m trying to slink away.
Also, I only slink away if I have something to hide. I suspect the girl that I’m dating is attempting to hide her fear, repulsion, and resentment from the men that are causing her to feel fear and repulsion through their instinctually driven ogling. She knows a friendly or neutral look their way could invite their presence. But I think there has to be a better way to dealing with it. My previous ex thrived off the attention - but I think there’s a better way than that too.
I wish she wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable, and I know something is up here that could be reconciled. But at the same time I know these men can be dangerous. I wonder how one might walk that fine line. Maybe one eventually has to see that fear won’t keep you safe, but having your wits about you will. Being able to talk your way out of a situation, or not put yourself in one in the first place, are better options than being crippled by fear and social niceties. Being aware of your surroundings & having the courage to bail on friends if need be. It seems like a shift needs to be made where one starts leaning into their better sensibilities more than succumbing to the pull of the instincts.
The other day she got on me for looking at other women. It caused me to think about what I was doing. I’m instinctually driven to look but I also don’t want to manage where my eyeballs go to the point that it’s not fun. But that said, my intent with my looking isn’t pure, it’s tainted by instinctual desire. I’d like to think that in a perfect world we could look at whoever we want and enjoy and appreciate them, and perhaps I can do that at times. But I was recognizing that using that as an excuse to justify my looking which is being triggered off by instinctual desire is just a rationalization.
We have very fine lines to walk & much to discover!
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I can very much relate to what your girlfriend is experiencing. She’s being a similar thing to what I’m being but more of a woman’s version. I used to do this much more often when I was younger (I’m 34 now). But for me it was more that I found the competition and challenging amongst men to be very unpleasant. And that’s despite the fact that I also instinctually felt compelled to compete. It’s that being driven part, the impulse, that was unpleasant. So I would viscerally retreat inward very often. I’m basically trying to hide myself so that they don’t “see” that I don’t want to engage. By doing this I am in some way automatically taking the identity of being like a prey. And maybe there are those who feel this and try to take advantage of it. For now my thoughts are that by doing this I am also attracting the attention of those predators who are seeking to exploit it. I remember when I was very young having some ill-thought out notion of ‘if I hide my feelings from myself then no one would be able to see me either’. A type of dissociation.
I can also relate to this pretty well. I recently started going out on dates with a girl and also noted the arising of this instinctual driving. We were in a crowded bar and there was one guy that kept trying to talk to her and made his advances pretty obvious. It immediately caused an instinctual reaction within me (I kept hands in pockets of course). It felt as if two animals were duking it out for the right to mate. It was very unpleasant and I don’t want to relate to anyone with these instincts. But at the same time, the sexual desire has a pleasant hedonic tone. Pleasant, yet it also automatically makes one look at women as if they were sexual objects. This is probably why many women feel uncomfortable when men look their way through the eyes of sexual desire. They are for sure giving off that vibe. It’s a dance that both people play. This is all in the arena of the instinctual passions. And the instinctual passions are a bottomless pit. What is there to explore? What do I do? All I am able to do is attempt to nip them in the bud.
I’ve come to the realization that you cannot just get rid of one part of the instinctual passions. They come as a package. And so they must also be deleted as a package. That’s why the only way is for there to be an overreaching intent in life above all else. Each moment again. I can see how powerful the instinctual passions are. And honestly I know I’m not dedicating myself EVERY moment to being happy and harmless. When I think about doing that, I get some visceral sense of the enormity of what I would be giving up. How would I relate to anyone? Sometimes I get the feeling of being completely alone and walking off away from the warmth. Sometimes I am overwhelmed. I think I will start with one day. I’m going to feel good for the entire day and I’ll appreciate that day. This will of course be to activate a PCE.
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That sounds like a good sign.
I can relate, but there’s no going back. You can still enjoy the company of others though.
Most of your life is being played out in society, where you go and make money. And then the other part is spent at home doing what you like presumably. If you were actually free, you could likely do both of these better. And the people you relate to will hopefully like the actually free you better than the regular you.
The point is, a lot of the people you come into contact with, you can’t even relate to on a deeper level anyway. Your colleagues at work won’t open up, certainly not on the regular at least. And you can pay whatever lip service you need to.
That just leaves the close connections that one has. Perhaps to parents, friends, or a lover. Are you scared to lose them or be unable of making friends or lovers? How is it going in terms of relating to other people right now? There’s plenty of ways to relate to people on non-emotional levels, such as appreciation for music, nature, hobbies, sports, etc. Do you want to be there for them when they are emotionally distraught? Do you want to be there for them all the time, even when they’re being unreasonable, or just some of the time, when they really deserve empathy? Do you value the titillation of being ‘seen’ when relating to another more than being happy and harmless?
I love how backwards instinctual logic is, and I am a victim of it. I’m fearful that I won’t be able to relate to people when I’m actually free and incapable of feeling fear of missing out on relating to people. I’ll tolerate getting angry and malicious sometimes, where I have to manage it and keep a lid on it, as long as it’s directed at the right people and in return I get to emotionally relate to others, which is sometimes fun but also sometimes really sad. Sometimes it’s annoying and I don’t have the energy. But it keeps me safe by staying with the herd that by-and-large I disagree with on numerous issues and generally resent for holding me and the rest of humanity back. I want to relate to people because that means I can capture another person via the emotional bond of love, which I know isn’t what actually keeps people together and functioning as a couple well. Preferably, they will love me more which gives me security and control. I know this won’t make me happy, but I fear not having it. I can guarantee a 2nd place prize this way, at least. It’s worked for others and it can work for me. I worry that without having emotions, other people won’t be able to relate to me and I won’t be able to get my hooks into them via affective vibes. I want people to need me.
My words not yours 
But it’s truly silly and making me laugh at the moment.
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I guess the thing of actualism being a in the marketplace, each moment again method is that those ‘what if’ fears can be tackled experientially and incrementally.
As in instead of thinking ‘how will I relate to others when I am actually free’ (basically intellectualising), it can be a case of - let’s find out how relations go when I am feeling good, when I am feeling excellent, when I am in and out of PCEs etc.
So then the fears fall away because there is experiential groundwork showing that it’s safe.
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I am finding all the writing as of late very inspiring! The emphasis on appreciation is very much a game changer. Like some others, I wasn’t paying attention to that word and how much up-leveling it can do to feeling good. All the way to feeling the sweetness! There was an experience that I had while trying it out. An experience that I only had once before when I was reading a particular story that Richard wrote.
Firstly, it was Claudiu’s very clear post some time ago on trying it out for yourself that made it happen. So thanks for the effort you put into your writing. I was actually feeling bad while reading that post. But I wanted to try it out. So I set aside the reason for just a minute and felt good. Then I started thinking about how it feels good to just feel good. I got a sense of ‘this is precious’. I continued thinking on it and it turned into a ‘wow it’s amazing to be alive’. I’m not able to quite convey it with words, but it was so amazing to just be alive that I thought ‘everyone deserves this’. It really made me think ‘could I really live like this forever’? Then it occurred to me that this experience is actually a moment away at anytime I want. In fact I can do it right now as I write this. And I know this may sound crazy, but instead of going fully into it, I have been thinking every day if I should because of some objections that keep coming up.
My feeling bad stemmed from how I become in relationships. I’m not sure if it’s trauma or if it is how I am but I always become very insecure and afraid my partner will abandon me. It’s an all pervasive feeling and I can only describe it as hell. The worst feeling in the world. I’m currently in a relationship and it’s at that point despite my partner not having done anything for me to feel this way. My main objection then is that I will lose my partner if I feel good all the time. It’s like I have to be ever-vigilant. How will I have a relationship? The only thing that doesn’t send me spiraling into it is that I have this sense that I can feel good anytime I want to that’s stayed with me. All of this sounds insane as I write it actually. I’ll have to think on it more 
.
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Hi @Cross.Crono,
I am finding all the writing as of late very inspiring! The emphasis on appreciation is very much a game changer. Like some others, I wasn’t paying attention to that word and how much up-leveling it can do to feeling good. All the way to feeling the sweetness! There was an experience that I had while trying it out. An experience that I only had once before when I was reading a particular story that Richard wrote.
Firstly, it was Claudiu’s very clear post some time ago on trying it out for yourself that made it happen. So thanks for the effort you put into your writing. I was actually feeling bad while reading that post. But I wanted to try it out. So I set aside the reason for just a minute and felt good. Then I started thinking about how it feels good to just feel good. I got a sense of ‘this is precious’. I continued thinking on it and it turned into a ‘wow it’s amazing to be alive’. I’m not able to quite convey it with words, but it was so amazing to just be alive that I thought ‘everyone deserves this’. It really made me think ‘could I really live like this forever’? Then it occurred to me that this experience is actually a moment away at anytime I want. In fact I can do it right now as I write this. And I know this may sound crazy, but instead of going fully into it, I have been thinking every day if I should because of some objections that keep coming up.
This is an excellent experiential report how the actualism can work in practice instantly. All that you needed was “I wanted to try it out” with the intent to succeed. And you discovered that “in fact I can do it right now”. So now you know experientially how to feel good “all the way to feeling the sweetness!”
It is that from this vantage point of experiencing this moment that you can look in a dispassionate way at whatever objection is at the forefront of your mind preventing you to continue the feeling the sweetness.
My feeling bad stemmed from how I become in relationships. I’m not sure if it’s trauma or if it is how I am but I always become very insecure and afraid my partner will abandon me. It’s an all pervasive feeling and I can only describe it as hell. The worst feeling in the world. I’m currently in a relationship and it’s at that point despite my partner not having done anything for me to feel this way. My main objection then is that I will lose my partner if I feel good all the time. It’s like I have to be ever-vigilant. How will I have a relationship? The only thing that doesn’t send me spiraling into it is that I have this sense that I can feel good anytime I want to that’s stayed with me. All of this sounds insane as I write it actually. I’ll have to think on it more .
What you are describing here is love. Naming the issue is the first step to be able to successfully contemplate it. Being in love invariable comes with both pining and possessiveness, to name but two, resulting in “an all pervasive feeling and I can only describe it as hell”.
[Richard re Devika/Irene]: […] the power of love surging through the bloodstream is too strong to deny … the body can be persuaded to produce quite an array of chemicals; a veritable cocktail is available to the insidious entity that has a psychological and psychic residence within …”. (from pp. 235-239, ‘Richard’s Journal’, 1st. Ed. (pp. 256-259, 2nd. Ed.), in Article 36, ‘There comes a Time when one must Leave the Nest and Fly’).
Here he also describes how love inevitably fails –
[Richard re S.U.R.B.H.I.]: […] namely: love and its failure to deliver the goods (with its resultant blaming of the ‘love-object’, in lieu of facing the fact that love itself failed, along with its attendant resentment/ hatred and/or jealousy/ envy and/or bitterness/ vindictiveness and so on and so forth). […]. [link] (Richard, List D, No. 15, 24 June 2013)
And here is Richard’s collected description about both ‘Peter’s’ and ‘Vineeto’s’ experiences and investigative realisations during their time of being in love, which can give you some ideas how to contemplate and investigate your own situation – [link].
Of course, you don’t have to talk it through with your partner unless she is willing, you can have the necessary realisations and actualizations unilaterally. After all, you said that “despite my partner not having done anything for me to feel this way”. The important thing is that you recognize that the sweet feeling of love and the “all pervasive feeling” of hell are not two different issues, they are the two sides of the same coin.
When love is gone (which it inevitably will once you stop feeding it) the way is clear for recognizing your partner as a fellow human being and allow the resultant naivete and an exquisite intimacy to flourish.
Cheers Vineeto
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Hi Chrono,
This is truly a wonderful experiential confirmation that it works for another person like it has been reported to work – that once one is feeling good, directly contemplating and appreciating that feeling good allows one to increase it to stratospheric proportions, and even within such a short span of time! It is truly wonderful. I experience what has happened here as an instance of the universe’s expression of pure intent, pouring fourth.
What you wrote here also caught my eye:
To me this reads like your successful experiential trying it out allowed you to establish that connection to the purity of the actual world, which has come to be known as pure intent. It sounds like you were able to maintain that connection and you continued with it even once the feeling bad returned, which allowed you to experience that feeling bad without “spiraling into it”.
This is especially wonderful as it didn’t even require a PCE to establish the connection. It appears actualism gets easier and easier for each successive person as more and more people are successful with it.
Needless is it to say that I encourage you to continue doing what you did here as the rewards are immense.
Not crazy at all – and reflecting on the apparently perverse nature of that (why not go fully into something so wonderful?) helps to see the ultimately rotten nature of being a feeling-being.
On a final note, you wrote:
This reads to me as an issue of control. You feel you need to be (anxiously) in control so that you can guide the relationship to being successful. When you are feeling good, you are not anxiously controlling every little thing, you are letting things be – and you are concerned that by letting things be, your partner will leave you.
I agree with @Vineeto that you are describing love here. My advice would be as follows: it is entirely possible that by attempting to control everything in the relationship, that the relationship will last longer than it otherwise would. The key is to consider what type of relationship you really want to be in. Do you want to be in a relationship where you have to be anxiously grasping to maintain it? Or do you want to be in a relationship where you are feeling good, not having to try or control anything, and your partner is drawn to this and actually likes it and wants to continue the relationship because of how you are?
To me one is clearly superior, but it is up to a personal choice ultimately. If the latter one also appeals to you more, then I will point out that by continuing down the anxious control route, you are actually preventing that latter type of relationship to flourish.
There is definitely a risk here. Your partner may not be a person that is drawn to such a thing. But if that is true, and that is the type of relationship you want, then the sooner you find out the better. And again, by not doing so, you are delaying finding out that it actually will work out wonderfully that way.
There have been a few times where I personally was faced with making a choice, where the apparently ‘safe’ choice was to continue as I had been, which would seem to assure the relationship continuing as it has (although it actually in fact doesn’t assure that), and there was a risky choice, a choice that I actually wanted to make, but would actually change something, which might risk the relationship ending. Every time that I made the choice I wanted, it paid off immensely. I had to actually be willing to risk what I already had, in order to allow the possibility of something better to eventuate. And that is indeed what came to pass. I would put it this way: taking the risky choice will not always result in the relationship continuing and evolving, because it depends on the other person also, whom you don’t control. But by always making the risky choice, the choice of what you actually want, I don’t see why you would not eventually find yourself in a relationship that has the qualities you actually want, with a partner that actually appreciates those same qualities. The world is a wonderfully large place!
Cheers,
Claudiu
Thank you @Vineeto for your helpful response.
Perhaps that may be the issue. I keep trying to look at it from a vantage point of being in the feeling. But when I’m out of it I ‘check’ if it’s there and it can come back. But this ‘checking’ that I am doing may really be a perverse way of being these loving/hellish feelings over and over again. It really drives home the ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ fact. Because when I’m feeling the sweetness, there are really no issues at all. It’s like I’ve been playing pretend.
It’s funny that you call it that because I have been approaching looking at it as anything but that. Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a ‘truth’ that has been blocking the seeing of this. Basically it goes something like ‘love is not like that’ or ‘real love is not like that’ or ‘healthy love is not like that’. It’s further cemented when I read forums where everyone describes healthy ways of being in love and how it seems to be great and what not. Maybe there is, but I don’t know how anyone can describe it as so amazing to be honest. The one thing I can’t get past is how anyone can be in love without being possessive or being exclusive. So I keep thinking perhaps there is something wrong with me.
Thanks for your reference to the correspondence. Perhaps now I can look at it with a different light. I might have to do this one on my own as I’m not even sure how to approach the conversation with love being as sacrosanct as it is.
Thanks for your encouragement as that is ultimately my aim.
Actually this hits the nail on the head I think. People have suggested maybe I have OCD or something. And I’m not planning on looking at it that way and live a life of coping. It’s just I’ve always looked at this issue as something separate from it being love. But maybe I need to look at it as this is just how I experience love. I for sure don’t want to be in a relation ship where I am anxiously grasping. And just as you said, it had also occurred to me that there’s some risk to picking the ‘unsafe’ choice. Time for some more contemplation!
Au contraire, it is not that something is wrong with you, nor is something wrong with them, either. Rather, something is wrong with love itself.
This is easy to see. Just witness any couple that is in a “healthy love” state for long enough, and you will inevitably see squabbles and bickering rising to the surface. Their emotions may range from peeved to upset to (on rarer occasions) furious when it happens. Eventually they forget about it or “kiss and make up”, and around it goes again.
When they write about the benefits of “healthy love”, they are talking about the times in-between the squabbles. These times can indeed feel ecstatically amazing, invigorating, full of flowing beautiful energy. They are simply not writing about the bad times in-between, or they will mention something like that love prevails through it or whatnot. But they never have a solution where it is fun and enjoyable all the time rather than only some of the time.
The most appealing way I would put it, which of course is also a factually correct way, is this. There is a vision or ideal of what a relationship is ideally like. Love promises to be that ideal, but actually never reaches it. On the other hand, an association with enjoyment and appreciation coursing through it, exemplified by naive intimacy derived from sincerity and guided by pure intent, actually does attain to that which love only promises to be. It is the actual answer you are looking for. The key is that love is not the way to get there.
As such by abandoning love, you are not abandoning that ideal, but rather clearing the way to get far closer to it than you would with love. My experience was different from Vineeto & Peter’s:
My experience was different as it was one-sided rather than two-sided (my partner is not an actualist per se). The way it practically worked is that love was gradually replaced by increasing naive intimacy, enjoyment and delight, rather than a “dramatic change”. I did have many conversations with my partner over time though and she had since near the beginning wanted a way of living her life that was marked more by consistent good moods rather than up-and-down swings. I also note that whenever I am experiencing particularly delectable intimacy, she immediately notices and remarks on it with something along the lines of that I’m giving her a sweet look. It is truly delightful!
Cheers & all the best,
Claudiu
Hi @Cross.Chrono,
I appreciate your thoughtful response.
[Vineeto]: It is that from this vantage point of experiencing this moment that you can look in a dispassionate way at whatever objection is at the forefront of your mind preventing you to continue the feeling the sweetness.
Perhaps that may be the issue. I keep trying to look at it from a vantage point of being in the feeling. But when I’m out of it I ‘check’ if it’s there and it can come back. But this ‘checking’ that I am doing may really be a perverse way of being these loving/hellish feelings over and over again. It really drives home the ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ fact. Because when I’m feeling the sweetness, there are really no issues at all. It’s like I’ve been playing pretend.
You probably know from experience how different it is when you look at some issue from the vantage point of feeling good, even of feeling excellent. Then you can examine the trigger and look at your previous feelings not only dispassionately but an also contemplate dianoetically [link] rather than affectively of what was happening then.
“[Richard]: […] reflective contemplation rapidly becomes more and more fascinating […] When one is totally fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness … and then apperception happens of itself” [link]
[Vineeto]: What you are describing here is love. Naming the issue is the first step to be able to successfully contemplate it.
It’s funny that you call it that because I have been approaching looking at it as anything but that. Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a ‘truth’ that has been blocking the seeing of this. Basically it goes something like ‘love is not like that’ or ‘real love is not like that’ or ‘healthy love is not like that’. It’s further cemented when I read forums where everyone describes healthy ways of being in love and how it seems to be great and what not. Maybe there is, but I don’t know how anyone can describe it as so amazing to be honest. The one thing I can’t get past is how anyone can be in love without being possessive or being exclusive. So I keep thinking perhaps there is something wrong with me.
Ha, there is nothing is wrong with you– as Claudiu already explained below [link]. It’s the human condition. Love has forever been sacrosanct and for many people love is what makes a grim and dour life worthwhile. Devika, who was by temperament a pessimist, said she lived for love, and she deliberately fell in love in such a way that it would remain unrequited so she could maintain it longer.
Hence love itself (the ideal of love) has never been questioned (until Richard). It was always considered to be the individual’s fault that it never delivered what it promised. The intrinsic promise of love is that it will dissolve the separation, which two identities automatically experience, yet by the very nature of love being within the human condition and arising of the instinctual passions, this promise can never be fulfilled.
[Richard]: ‘Man’ and ‘woman’ are in two separate camps; it is as if they are two different races. So they start from separation … and love seems to promise to bring them together, to provide the intimacy they all long for. But my question is: why are humans separate to start off with? Is it an actual separation – apart from the physical differences – or have humans been trained into an artificial separation? Is one not conditioned to think – and feel – as a ‘man’ and as a ‘woman’? Has one not taken on a gender identity and think and feel it to be ‘me’? So is there not an artificial entity, an ‘I’, that one takes to be me as I actually am? One’s most intimate ‘being’ is a fiction anyway, so any gender identity overlaid is equally false. If ‘I’ am false, artificial, then any connection – a bridge – between two psychological entities can only be as artificial as the separation itself.
Love is this bridge. Love is artificial. Being artificial it needs constant stimulus to keep it ‘alive’. Therefore, the moment it starts to sag, the cycle automatically swings into action; frustration, niggles, fights, hurt, resentment, remorse, repentance, forgiveness, promises … then back to love and trust again. Although everybody promises each time, in contrition, to forgive and forget, they never do. The promise to forgive and forget is never carried out. The hurt, frustration and anger is unconsciously stored away, adding to the already existing resentment that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ feel toward each other for being separative in the first place. This entire process has no chance of producing anything other than an artificial intimacy. (Richard’s Journal, 1997, Article Three)
Richard gave the breakdown of “The Chemistry of Love” in his “Examen of the Invention of Heterosexuality” [link], which you might find interesting –
“Love can be distilled into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment; though there are overlaps and subtleties to each, each type is characterised by its own set of hormones; testosterone and oestrogen drive lust; dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin create attraction; and oxytocin and vasopressin mediate attachment (…); the testes and ovaries secrete the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen, driving sexual desire; dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin are all made in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain which controls many vital functions as well as emotion; lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which includes rational behaviour …”. [emphases added]. (https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/)
The alternative is to “increasing naive intimacy, enjoyment and delight” as Claudiu explained it so well below [link]. Naïve intimacy can reveal the other to you as a fellow human being rather than an extension of your own fears and desires. It is when you can see the other person as a flesh-and-blood human being existing in their own right. It can be quite an astounding surprise when you experience this for the first time.
Feeling being ‘Grace’ had a gradation of five stages of intimacy –
[Richard]: The gradations of ‘her’ scale were, basically, good, very good, great, excellent, and perfect – whereby, in regards to intimacy, ‘good’ related to togetherness (which pertains to being and acting in concert with another); ‘very good’ related to closeness (where personal boundaries expand to include the other); ‘great’ related to sweetness (delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other); ‘excellent’ related to richness (a near-absence of agency; with the doer abeyant, and the beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian); and ‘perfect’ related to magicality (neither beer nor doer extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails) – all of which correlate to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence. [link] (several explanatory tooltips in the original link, especially about a bifurcation manifesting to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy).
Remember to have fun when you are inclined to explore it.
Cheers Vineeto
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Wow isn’t that fascinating, and it is exactly the same mechanism which Richard mentioned in his journal - “therefore the believers in mystique must quell any desire to find out”. Essentially love (as well as the other ideals within ‘humanity’) can never deliver the goods and so the only way to ‘successfully’ live them is to apply some form of deceit, either to oneself or to others. To be a ‘mature adult’ is to be a master at such deceit. Of course the outcome is that one moves further away from experiencing the world as it actually is and instead escapes into fantasy.
The attachment to these ideals is so perverse that any suggestion that it is the ideals which are at fault is met with immediate resistance. It seems what prevents the clear assessment of these ideals is the fear that there will be nothing left behind. The trick then is to locate that which is more precious than the ideal itself. Otherwise one ends up endlessly trying to make the ideal work, which is essentially what ‘humanity’ is doing with all the various ideals and morals.
I find this fascinating because although love in my case has been thoroughly examined there is another ideal which somewhat remains, it is that of authority and the power which it confers. It holds the promise of safety and yet it can only be gained through competition and thus inevitable conflict, it leads to the existence of the hierarchy with all of it’s evils. Yet the lie of power and authority has not been seen comprehensively in the same way as the lie of love has been, not yet anyways.
It is clear that as long as power and authority hold sway I cannot be a fellow human being, instead ‘I’ have to play the game of being ‘someone in particular’, a ‘who’. It is a game ‘I’ instinctively play in order to generate safety and yet writing this now where exactly is the ‘danger’ haha.
It’s interesting because although I am no longer able to engage in this game there is still an affective drive which fuels it. I noticed this yesterday when I was teaching a BJJ class, I was sparring with a visiting student who managed to catch me in a tricky submission. Now there is that whole thing of the belt system in BJJ which is essentially that very hierarchical structure of power and authority.
The visiting student being a lower belt felt an immediate threat straight after submitting me, he even said “Oh now I am going to get it bad from you aren’t I”? It was so lovely (both for me and him) that I could not help but be virtually harmless in the situation and of course he did not “get it bad from me”, rather I had fun asking him after sparring to show me the very technique he submitted me with. It was lovely to interact in such a way and I could tell the appreciation he had for this way of relating. And yet this drive is there - ‘reputation at risk - danger ahead’. So all in all a very interesting place to find myself in because I cannot play that game anymore and yet that passionate drive is still there, ‘I’ no longer have the capacity to contain it in some way or to shift it into something else, or to apply deceit etc now it’s freely exposed in all it’s potency.
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Now’s a good time to write as any as I’m going through love. All that’s left is the bond or feeling connected. It always starts with a seductive dream. It promises something that will last forever. It could be as simple as ‘oh I’ve found someone who will stay with me forever’. This is all a lie. An illusion. Especially if you see the other side of love. Possessiveness, jealousy, anguish, etc.
About a few weeks to a month ago, I had been suffering and also feeling the ‘good’ side of love. All dependent on how my partner behaves or is perceived to be behaving according to the dream. If they aligned with it, then I feel the bliss and euphoria. But if they didn’t, then I felt those other things. But I had a different experience as I contemplated why I felt this need for someone to stay with me. I found that I did not find myself likeable and did not like myself(among other things). Then I immediately remembered that naivete was where you found yourself likeable and liking. So I tried to remember where and when I had felt like that before. And I actually remembered that I had a few experiences while talking with people where I felt genuine and actually spoke with others in equity. There was no relationship with them. I just enjoyed talking with them and I enjoyed myself in the process. I remembered the feeling and I tried to feel it. Then immediately I was feeling it as well. So I tried to keep that feeling for a while and it tipped over completely surprising me to being here. There was a sensation in my head of unending delight. I was here again. There was immediacy and there was so much in this moment that I could not ask for anything more. Complete abundance the likes of which I had not experienced before. What surprised me even more was that for a few moments, I could not go back. It was happening on its own. This unending delight. This experience has been stuck in my head since then. I’ve been trying to experience naivete since then. There is a doubt that if I choose this route then it means that I would lose my partner and love too. This “connection” that I feel with them is all that I have left with them. In a way it feels manipulative. This feeling is inherently manipulative and self-centered. But the thought of letting it go scares me.
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What I have always found with each discovery on the wide and wondrous path is that you cannot know or plan what it will be like in advance, otherwise it would not be a genuine discovery.
So on one hand you have that experience of being liking and likeable and you even have the experience of immediacy and unending delight. Then on the other hand you have the experience of love with both it’s good and bad sides.
Then the rumination about what it will be like when love is gone is ‘you’ trying to decide in advance, ‘you’ are sitting back and with the limited tools which exist in ‘your’ worldview ‘you’ try to paint a picture of what it will be like - the picture can only ever be a blinkered version of the actual, it is not an accurate indication of what the destination is like and therefore it is silly to let it halt your progress.
So you can accept this fact of not knowing in advance and see that it is a blessing, what you will discover will be fresh and completely outside of ‘your’ worldview. You can have confidence that it will deliver the goods because you have experienced what the destination is like :
So you can rememorate the flavour of this experience and dare to allow it (without knowing in advance how it will play out) then you can have your experiential answer as to what it will be like when love is gone, and from that place (if you like) you can look back at love and see it pale in comparison.
Now I know this can work (proceeding towards pure intent without knowing for sure what the destination will look like) because it is all I have been doing lately and each time where I find myself landing is even more glorious than what was before, indeed the word ‘betterer’ comes to mind 
.
What I realised yesterday is that this is the ‘doing’ aspect of the method, the hanging back and trying to decide is the opposite, it is stalling. It’s quite telling whenever there is lack of progress to consider just what one is busy with most of the time, stalling or doing?
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We are going through something very similar @cross.chrono . I have also been experiencing love, with all its variants. I think I have reached a point where I see its advantages but also its limitations. And pure intent is the guide to gradually replace the feeling of love with that of pure intimacy (@claudiu experience) and appreciation for the simple fact of sharing and living together, care and consideration for one’s own life and that of another.
I also don’t know what will happen, I also feel (sometimes) fear or sorrow when I think of abandoning humanity and these feelings of connection (and I’m investigating this moral mechanisms). But it helps me to think and trust that what will come will be 100% better (infinitely better) and that is not blind trust, it is based on my last PCE where I could see it very clearly.
It has been a while since I wrote as I’ve gone thru a roller coaster of feelings and have come to a more calm and stable place. Of course it had to do with love but it gave me the impetus to move forward. Seeing and experiencing constantly that it does not work in bringing about a personal and interpersonal peace. I’ve also been hesitant in writing as I don’t like to write when I’m feeling not so great but maybe that might help in getting out of it too.
After I wrote my previous response I had begun engaging in ‘nipping it in the bud’ of all the loving and related feelings that I came across. I started doing it as it seemed that was the only course of action. I had already seen and experienced that it brought much suffering. Due to this I started experiencing feelings of meaninglessness, desolation, and bleakness as far as the ‘eye’ can see. What it revealed was that love was a way to cover up my loneliness. ‘I’ created an imaginary version of another person based on a dream and how ‘I’ intuited them to be and then essentially pretended that ‘I’ could be in union with this imaginary ‘other’. An instinctual movement towards assuaging the essential loneliness. When I become vulnerable thru trust in love, I am hoping that this other person will reciprocate this state of vulnerability. But in the process, I am revealing my fundamental loneliness and aloneness. If this other does not match the dream of love, then I feel it more deeply than I have ever felt before. The whole process is illusionary. The other person that ‘I’ am dreaming of does not exist. They can never match the dream. And vice versa as well. A sad state of affairs. This is further compounded for me because it has occurred to me that many people actually ignore or pretend that the ‘bad’ side of love does not exist. People will tell me that ‘I’ am too focused on it. But I cannot ignore it because it’s always there. Something is off with the whole business of relating with other people. And it is from this, my genuine desire for peace springs forth. My desire so far has been to uncover everything I can so that it can be in plain view. I also feel a fear behind this of ‘who do I think I am’. Like an authority telling me to sit down and shut up.
Anyways, I continued this process and due to this desolation I thought my partner would also start feeling the same way. They did not as far as I know and I actually kind of preferred this way of being over being in love. But nonetheless something else triggered possessiveness when my partner was talking with another man. I started feeling jealous and it put me in a state of muddled thinking. I nipped that in the bud. But then my partner brought up wanting to hang out with this other man and their partner. This again triggered the same feelings. This time it caused much suffering and it took some time to claw my way back out. Talking with my partner helped and they confirmed that it had been my own reaction which was making things seem the way they were. So I asked myself if I am repressing something. I genuinely wanted to know if I was but I kept going over and over thru the same old feelings. Then it became clear there was a missing ingredient: intent.
I realized that I would always run thru the same old feelings unless I consistently maintained the intent to be happy and harmless. I realized that it had to be an overreaching intent that had to be weaved thru my entire life for it to work and for me to not fall back thru the same ways of being. Some things I read on here and AFT website gave me clues. I had to do my part in ‘reaching’ as much as I could towards the actual. There were some clues in my everyday life as well. I would feel good when I had the genuine intent for it. The times that I did not feel good was when doubt came thru and I was not being sincere. There was some reason or belief that was in the way that prevented it from happening. I could not pretend to feel good because it intellectually made sense, I have to genuinely want it. Otherwise the instinctual ways of being will easily override any endeavor.
Another clue that stuck out for me was the word ‘unilateral’. Richard writes that only unilateral action will do the trick. That means it is not dependent on others. I had the fear that I would lose my partner if I chose to just feel good. But thru the few times that I have chosen to be that way with her, it definitely was better in every way. In being that way, there was a freedom that love could never grant. I did not experience her thru my insecurities or other fears. She is a free person and another individual. Unlike love, this is a free intimacy and nothing like what my fears intuited it to be. In fact, I think love is a bondage and yet another way of being in thrall. Even writing that, I can feel Humanity shaking its finger at me.
Then realizations had been hitting me back and forth for a bit. One thing that just smacked me in the face was like ‘all I have to do is feel good’. And this is easy. Whatever comes, I will do it feeling good. So I decided that I would not think about anything or do anything unless I was feeling good. This worked for quite a few days. I had the longest stretch of feeling good that I’ve ever experienced in a long time. Right around at the beginning of this I had another realization about being alive. It actually caught me by surprise. I was taking a shower and I became aware instantly that this entire time it has been this moment. It sounds like almost mundane. But quite literally, this entire time (forever) it has only been this moment. Even as I am writing this the implications of this are churning in my mind. All the ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ don’t have an actual existence. When I realized this, I became fascinated and I felt even more good automatically. So much safety and security in this moment. What a relief that only this moment exists. And another realization came some time after this one. Only I as this body can know that this moment exists. This one has been simmering for a little while longer. I am allowing it to gestate. There were a few other stand out experiences of perhaps a similar nature.
So for a good bit of time (at least for me), I continued on feeling good. There were a couple of days that I was spontaneously feeling good. At work, I delighted and enjoyed helping people and speaking with people. Even if they had a sour mood and that sourness tried to take hold, I was more easily able to say no and go back to feeling good.
I also had some insight into authority. I’ve been seeing that very clearly that no one has any idea what they are doing in regards to living happily and harmlessly. I had been reading up on social identity and saw that there’s a semblance of peace in the world but not actual peace. No one was acknowledging the root cause of why there has not been any peace in the world. They are doing anything but addressing it (the same as I had been). So there is a widespread insincerity. Everyone is playing pretend and I also had internalized this and pretended like everyone else. By choosing to feel good irregardless of circumstances, I sometimes feel I am standing up to all of Humanity. How dare I feel good while the world suffers (or something like that)? Yet I feel more authentic when I am feeling good than at any other time. It’s the doubt casted by my internalizing of Humanity’s many ways of being that pull me back every time. By choosing to be how Humanity is, I give up being authentic. Now I see all of this is because Humanity has not actually addressed the root cause of there not being any peace.
So I had a unique experience after that. Unique because I had not experienced something like it before. So seeing as how Humanity does not know what it is doing, were there any real rules? Could I just become actually free if I wanted to? I had been contemplating this at home and then when I was at work as well. It was a particularly slow day at work so I just reflected on it more. As I was feeling somewhere between neutral to good at the time, I thought of this moment and how it has been this moment this whole time. I became aware of a ‘bigness’ or immensity. Not quite sure of how else to describe it. It grew and it was as if my awareness was drifting into outer space without any central focus. My normal way of being I’d describe as ‘indolent’ in the sense of I stayed the same fundamentally. But now I was electrified, invigorated, and exhilarated. It felt like something was performing surgery in my head. As awareness ‘grew’, I saw all of ‘me’ as a point and felt the sensation of it at my navel area. It reminded me of the ‘pale blue dot’. Except all of me was this pale blue dot. I felt all of sorrow and was on the verge of tears but the tears would not come. I’m not quite sure why after that, but I came back down to earth. I was back to normal and felt kind of frustrated after that. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t allow it to proceed further. The following days I allowed myself to slip below neutral. Then I once again gathered sufficient intent to feel good again.
So I moved to my next topic of contemplation: malice. I had asked myself how does malice and sorrow affect me and how I am with others. I’ve simply been observing the small bits of its expression where it is generally even accepted that it happens such as when you are driving on the road. I’ll write more as more comes to mind. And I’m maintaining feeling good for the most part 
.
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Part One
CrossChrono: It has been a while since I wrote as I’ve gone thru a roller coaster of feelings and have come to a more calm and stable place. Of course it had to do with love but it gave me the impetus to move forward. Seeing and experiencing constantly that it does not work in bringing about a personal and interpersonal peace. I’ve also been hesitant in writing as I don’t like to write when I’m feeling not so great but maybe that might help in getting out of it too.
Hi CrossChrono,
Welcome back. What an excellent and rich report about your discoveries and insights!
After I wrote my previous response I had begun engaging in ‘nipping it in the bud’ of all the loving and related feelings that I came across. I started doing it as it seemed that was the only course of action. I had already seen and experienced that it brought much suffering. Due to this I started experiencing feelings of meaninglessness, desolation, and bleakness as far as the ‘eye’ can see. What it revealed was that love was a way to cover up my loneliness. ‘I’ created an imaginary version of another person based on a dream and how ‘I’ intuited them to be and then essentially pretended that ‘I’ could be in union with this imaginary ‘other’. An instinctual movement towards assuaging the essential loneliness. When I become vulnerable thru trust in love, I am hoping that this other person will reciprocate this state of vulnerability. But in the process, I am revealing my fundamental loneliness and aloneness. If this other does not match the dream of love, then I feel it more deeply than I have ever felt before. The whole process is illusionary. The other person that ‘I’ am dreaming of does not exist. They can never match the dream. And vice versa as well. A sad state of affairs. This is further compounded for me because it has occurred to me that many people actually ignore or pretend that the ‘bad’ side of love does not exist. People will tell me that ‘I’ am too focused on it. But I cannot ignore it because it’s always there. Something is off with the whole business of relating with other people. And it is from this, my genuine desire for peace springs forth. My desire so far has been to uncover everything I can so that it can be in plain view. I also feel a fear behind this of ‘who do I think I am’. Like an authority telling me to sit down and shut up.
In order to successfully ‘nip in the bud’ it’s essential to have understood the underlying patterns of the occurring feelings you want to ‘nip’. Obviously there is still some remnant investment in love, which is not surprising, as it is considered the highly-prized cure-all for loneliness and the mess of the human condition in general.
You have made some significant inroads into understanding love, especially knowing that it has a ‘bad’ side.
The key ingredient for feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ was, when ‘she’ investigated the pining aspect of love, ‘her’ childhood-inspired romantic dream of belonging to a man and therefrom having an iron-clad identity as a woman (A Bit of Vineeto, #love). Seeing this fact, thus abandoning the romantic dream, and reclaiming ‘her’ autonomy, was only the beginning of a longer process of weening ‘herself’ off the whole maze of female identity and man-woman relating in general.
You say “The other person that ‘I’ am dreaming of does not exist. They can never match the dream.” It goes further than that, love itself can never fulfil the dream it inherently promises – it’s an empty chimera and will never bridge the separation so longed for by the lonely isolated identities who fall for love’s glamorous promise.
If this fact, that love will not solve your problem of aloneness and loneliness, is allowed to sink in, as an irrefutable fact, love will lose its appeal and you can regain your autonomy and dignity as a person in your own right – and simultaneous recognize your partner’s own autonomy and dignity. It also dispenses with pining and jealousy in one fell swoop.
With autonomy and dignity restored you can then naively relate to your fellow human beings in an increasingly intimate way, unilaterally. I know from experience how much a woman can appreciate intimacy, even though she may not know that this is really what she is looking for when she says she wants love. You will find out yourself when you proceed interacting with your partner in an intimate rather than loving way. (link)
CrossChrono: Anyways, I continued this process and due to this desolation I thought my partner would also start feeling the same way. They did not as far as I know and I actually kind of preferred this way of being over being in love. But nonetheless something else triggered possessiveness when my partner was talking with another man. I started feeling jealous and it put me in a state of muddled thinking. I nipped that in the bud. But then my partner brought up wanting to hang out with this other man and their partner. This again triggered the same feelings. This time it caused much suffering and it took some time to claw my way back out. Talking with my partner helped and they confirmed that it had been my own reaction which was making things seem the way they were. So I asked myself if I am repressing something. I genuinely wanted to know if I was but I kept going over and over thru the same old feelings. Then it became clear there was a missing ingredient: intent.
I realized that I would always run thru the same old feelings unless I consistently maintained the intent to be happy and harmless. I realized that it had to be an overreaching intent that had to be weaved thru my entire life for it to work and for me to not fall back thru the same ways of being. Some things I read on here and AFT website gave me clues. I had to do my part in ‘reaching’ as much as I could towards the actual. There were some clues in my everyday life as well. I would feel good when I had the genuine intent for it. The times that I did not feel good was when doubt came thru and I was not being sincere. There was some reason or belief that was in the way that prevented it from happening. I could not pretend to feel good because it intellectually made sense, I have to genuinely want it. Otherwise the instinctual ways of being will easily override any endeavour.
To have sincere intent is vital. I noticed an aspect in your report is about control, ‘me’ controlling ‘me’ to move into the direction ‘I’ think is right – and that approach is sudorific, at best. Even though the ingredient may be right, the outcome is still a serious enterprise of ‘you’ forcing yourself to be in a particular way.
Sincerity will allow you to unlock your hidden-away-during-puberty naiveté (link), to allow yourself to become more and more guileless, artless, ingenuous, unsophisticated, open, aboveboard, direct, frank, straightforward, child-like but with adult sensibilities. With that sincere and naïve intent you will see that suddenly life becomes easier, more fun, more allowing things to happen rather than vigilantly directing them to happen.
More in the next section.
Cheers Vineeto
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