Claudiu's Journal

[claudiu]

@claudiu

@Kub933

So yesterday I understood this intellectually, today I had a glimpse of what this is referring to, that at the end of the ride there is no ‘me’ left, and that is a wonderful thing!

That is great to hear .

For me realizing this I hit a bit of a speed bump. It was two nights ago. As I wrote in #187, the momentum was increasing and it was all scintillating and wonderful. It seemed like I had been riding this wondrous wave and sufficiently paving the way, so I set my sights on what will come next – the actual ending of ‘me’.

Faced with this as the obvious next step, I hit upon a distinct patch of hesitation and “well hold on a sec”. This is something that I will actually have to do, which will mean the actual end of me – no longer a theoretical step at some point in the future, but something that actually will happen, or rather has to happen for me to attain my destiny.

The “speed bump” has turned out to be more of a derailment, which I am starting to get back on track now. I am glad to see others on the forum have continued with their successes, especially @Kub933 – so it doesn’t entirely rely on me .

The interesting thing about this derailment, during which I have certainly gotten to the low levels of feeling bad and terrible and upset, is that there is no longer an element present of feeling stuck or resentful about it or that it ‘has to be this way’ or ‘woe is me’. In other words, consistently throughout is the constant experiential understanding that I am feeling the way I am feeling because of my choices, and nothing imposed externally whatsoever. This is very different than before.

And basically at any point throughout the familiar experience of there being no brakes available could start happening. So although it took a long time to go out-from-control the first time^[1], now it appears to be readily available at any moment. How wonderful!

The salient question then is why the train has been derailed for so long? Actually I’m realizing a “train on the tracks” analogy is not so apt as that implies a one way to do it, narrow approach, whereas it is more a wide & wondrous path… but the analogy can suffice for now.

I can only draw it back to that seeing how continuing down this path will genuinely be the end of me. And when I thought of just getting back to feeling good and staying there as a first step (and not committing to the end per se), it didn’t work because I saw how that was just the first step in a series of steps that I would then follow that would then actually be the end of me. So I did not even want to go there – I can’t fool myself!

What has happened to get me back on track (to the trackless wide&wondrous path), is seeing that nothing that occurred over the past 10 days has been anything of any value whatsoever. It’s like, ok, I “get to” avoid self-immolating, I “get to” continue (illusorily) ‘existing’ … and what is my reward? Feeling bad! Haha. It’s like playing a stupid game and getting a stupid prize.

Combining that with the fact that it feels bad to feel bad, it’s just not a pleasant experience to feel bad, and there really is no reason to continue avoiding the wide & wondrous path, that is so readily accessible now. In other words, the only way to continue is forward, facing whatever resistance and objection full on, regardless of how uncomfortable it may be. In other words, avoidance is no longer an option.

Then a key third piece to the puzzle was seeing that the reluctance to change comes directly from the loyalty to humanity and the fear of abandoning humanity. Besides being rotten to the core, there are rotten parts to me – as to all feeling-beings – aggressive and malicious parts. They will not actually disappear until self-immolation. Until then, they will remain latent – able to be activated and channeled and expressed on a whim.

Now I am faced with the choice, to minimize those parts of me. And when faced with that choice, a voice comes on, a super cynical thought/feeling along the lines of “oh you can’t really change. you would just be fooling yourself, lying to yourself. you aren’t so foolish as to think you can really change, are you?” And somehow that thought was enough to browbeat me (me browbeating myself!) into allowing myself to continue expressing that malice rather than minimizing it.

But now I see the reason for that – because by doing so I stay within humanity, I stay within the tribe. But if I actually change… I prove the entire mass of ‘humanity’ wrong! I break away from the tribe – which then is felt as immediately exposing me to danger, if that tribe were to then turn on me.

The answer is a practical one of course: it is trivially easy to blend in and not expose oneself to this actual danger. The amusing thing is that everybody is so self-centered that they just assume everybody else basically thinks and feels like them. When presented with someone whose vibes either don’t exist, or exist but are not sorrowful or malicious, it intuitively registers as a “neutral” or “friend” rather than a threat – so they assume you are like them and there’s no problems.

Finally the fourth piece was seeing how me being in this worse mood negatively impacts my partner and the other people around me. Even if I am not doing anything to express the mood. I will say something neutral in response without intending any malice towards that person, and people will understand from the vibes that I am upset, and then understand my neutral response in the framework of “upset person” and then assume what I said has to do with why I am upset and then try to react accordingly. It is terrible not just for me but for everyone.

So here I am, now propitiously directed back towards the purity of the actual universe, which lies all around, abundant and evident.

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1. (I found a post of mine from 2011 on the DhO about affer-ism (which I thought was actualism), so at least 13 years from first exposure to actualism) ↩︎