Claudiu: Brief update: I found that what really works to cut through any possible complications or hurdles or obstacles or whatnot, is seeing that I actually deep down do want this, to self-immolate, more than anything else!
In other words it isn’t a desire I have to conjure up or manufacture or get myself on board or whatnot. At the root, underneath it all – I do actually want this. This immediately orients me towards enabling just that to happen. All my passions line up for this purpose – aggressively pursuing it, desiring it above all, thrillingly going into it, for the benefit of this body and every body. It feels like endless layers of ‘me’ just slough off in a sense in the face of this unified sincerity. This really appears to be key, placing it as the absolute highest priority above anything else, nothing else even coming a remote second.
Hi Claudiu,
I like this – “this unified sincerity”, “placing it as the absolute highest priority above anything else, nothing else even coming a remote second.” This is exactly what is meant by –
RICHARD: Yes, one has to want it like one has never wanted anything else before … so much so that all the instinctual passionate energy of desire, normally frittered away on petty desires, is fuelling and impelling/ propelling one into this thing and this thing only (‘impelling’ as in a pulling from the front and ‘propelling’ as in being pushed from behind). There is a ‘must’ to it (one must do it/it must happen) and a ‘will’ to it (one will do it/it will happen) and one is both driven and drawn until there is an inevitability that sets in. Now it is unstoppable and all the above ceases of its own accord …one is unable to distinguish between ‘me’ doing it and it happening to ‘me’. (Richard, List B, No. 19d, 3 April 2000)
Claudiu: Going for intimacy has been really beneficial as well as it automatically orients me to something outside of myself (other people) and makes the target much clearer.
Today this led to whilst walking across a rock face, finding that the experience was now a PCE, an experience of actual Claudiu expertly clambering over the rocks. I was nowhere in particular as evidenced by the experience that the rock face, a sea cliff with the water undulating at the base, could be on Mars or anywhere in the universe at all as the experience would be the same whether it is there or on ‘Earth’. There was no past or future or even a present per se, there was just this moment. This was arrived at as a smooth transition, no ‘gap’ was discernable in hindsight during the transition from feeling-being to apperceptive consciousness. I clearly existed. Was I the universe? Well, I noticed that I am not this rock in front of me… but I am the experience of this rock. The immediate is the ultimate – I experienced this directly. There is no other way for experience to be. This what I experience as a flesh and blood body is the ultimate of what can be experienced. Here and now is all there ever is or was or will be. I am not a “part” of the universe, separated out… I am the universe, experiencing itself as this particular flesh and blood body! How simple and perfect!
And then I thought to contrast this with regular feeling-being experience, and now suddenly ‘I’ was ‘me’, experiencing the rock through ‘my’ senses – an immediately recognized shift, although again no discernible gap (very interesting!)
Fascinating how it works! And yet, only when you are in the “regular feeling-being experience” can you actively and actually move towards this “unified” goal, “the absolute highest priority above anything else”. Isn’t that cause for celebrating, savouring, enjoying your “regular feeling-being experience”, interspersed with bona-fide PCEs to confirm that this is what you actually want?
Claudiu: Following it was a common after-effect I’ve had after PCEs in the past sometimes, a feeling of… I don’t know exactly how to put it, but a negative feeling for sure. It had something to do with the comparing of ‘me’ the feeling-being vs how actual Claudiu was experiencing himself. I realized this was a ripe avenue of contemplation – what indeed, is this feeling about?
Isn’t it obvious, even without deep contemplation, that second best is not as good as best?
Claudiu: I saw that it has to do with ‘me’ viscerally knowing that ‘I’ was indeed completely absent, and, everything was far better off without ‘me’. In other words, not only am ‘I’ completely unneeded and superfluous, but ‘I’ actually make everything worse… and through much pain and striving (as ‘I’ experience it) and burden, too! In other words ‘I’ put in all this effort and it is seen to actually be for nothing at all.
Then I realized just how very strange it was for this to be a negative feeling! I saw there’s really two components to it, one is the above, and the other is seeing that ‘I’ have to really go away, go extinct, ‘die’, in order for that to be the permanent experience. But all of this actually readily coincides with that deep-down desire, for extinction! The fact that ‘I’ am superfluous and it is better without ‘me’ is wonderful news because it means nothing will be lost. And that ‘I’ have to die for it to happen – well that is the whole point haha.
Having read yours and Kuba’s (link) posts, both on the theme of ‘I’ am an illusion, and how this perception is being used to confuse you in your case, and to trick you in Kuba’s example, perhaps it is apt to mention that Santa Claus never had the opportunity to either believe nor regret that ‘he’ is only an illusion. He simply disappeared when you stopped believing in him. Only I, the actual flesh-and-blood body know by experience with utter confidence, that ‘I’ or ‘me’ never existed.
‘I’ am real, very real, as long as ‘I’ am a passionate entity hijacking and controlling the actual flesh body. Thinking that ‘I’ am an illusion while ‘I’ am in existence is to transfer information gained from apperceptive seeing during a PCE into the passionate realm of ‘me’ – what Richard calls from “3D-stunning” to “one-dimensional thought” in his correspondence about “utter fullness”. (Richard, List B, No. 25e, 16 June 2000).
Claudiu: I would say it seems I have not fully come to terms with it yet as if I did it would all be wondrous fuel for the fire, but, something about seeing it so distinctly still has hit ‘me’ in a way…
You will get used to it, and then you will be able to embrace it and welcome it.
Claudiu: The other overall thing I’ve noticed is that my experience is basically the same since going out-from-control, there is no shift into or out of it, and I distinctly experience it as different from ‘normal’. There is never any decision to make whether to self-immolate, it has already always been made. I would say it seems that when some issue comes up, I can feel like I am experiencing myself like I would in the past, but this is always seen to be a chimera, sort of a ‘pretend’ forming myself back into that way of experiencing. I have wondered if it’s just always been like this my whole life and I never noticed haha, but there was a distinct difference after going out-from-control so I would have to say it wasn’t. In other words it’s not just an intellectual re-framing of experience or whatnot, the experience is actually different. (link)
There is something different now, as you just reported, from when you first went out-from-control – there is “this unified sincerity”, “placing it as the absolute highest priority above anything else, nothing else even coming a remote second.”
Cheers Vineeto