Thanks alot for this post. It really hits home with me - this subject of sincerity.
This also reminded me how I once stoped smoking. I had many failures behind me and at one point in my 30’s I realized that I acctually smoked because a part of me wanted to smoke - no matter my feelings of guilt/anxiety of it being harmful and bad etc. I back then came to see myself as two persons; one part that wanted to smoke and one that was feeling guilty/anxious about it. I understood that I had to end the conflict within and fortified with this realization I thus decided to let the smoker have his way “until he felt completely done smoking”.
From that point I just smoked… and whatever bad feelings connected to this occupation I just saw them slowly subside to the fact that it was impossible to kick the habit without the WHOLE of me being on board. I thus kept on smoking every cigarette with utter sincerity - consciously focused on each cigarette and each and every inhalations for about two months… so that the smoker I was would really have an quality experience. I even stoped thinking much about my approach as having an end to it.
Then one day, when I had been out running. I had come home and entered the shower and while I stood there covering myself in shower cream - suddenly and from out of nowhere this sentence entered my mind (totally unrelated to what I was doing):
“I don’t want to smoke anymore.”
And I quit right then and there… And it was so rediculously easy, no craving, no nothing at all - not even a trace of a thought of wanting a ciggarette. I just quit right then and there and moved on with my life.
Now, I acctually started smoking again a year later, simply because I wanted to see if I could get addicted again after such an experience. I thought maybe I’d become immune to this addiction (I had all sorts of ideas [beliefs] connected to this expereince) Haha, of course I wasn’t immune and there was no magic behind my experience. I once again became a smoker. Now, I don’t smoke anymore but I use a vape and I love it and I have no intention of kicking this habit.
Now this has me thinking about the method and my own difficulties of asking HAIETMOBA and applying the method in each and every moment; my constant falling of the horse and losing whatever sincerity I thought I had (I run with it for a few months and then something happens and I slip back into my old ways).
I just need to accept this and let whatever sincerity be lost when I experience it as lost. I have to make no big deal about ‘my slips’ and I need to be as relaxed with falling of the horse as sitting upon it - I just need to be conscious and pay it a little attention - and I must also accept when I have failed to be attentive. The action of picking up the thread where I lost it should be done as if - no time has passed - between the application of the method and the non application of the method. I should get back upon the horse as if I had always been applying the method without falling of the horse in the first place (make no emotional fuzz about it). Even if this means I’m only able to apply the method for 1 minute a day with complete and utter sincerity.
Oh, yeah, whatever I feel; good, bad or whatever and in relation to my ‘quit smoking experience’: I feel whatever I feel because I want to feel that way (just as I wanted to smoke). There is no way around this. How I feel is my choice at all times. Thus there’s no point feeling bad because of feeling bad (it’s just silly). I just need to be [want] each and every feeling with utter sincerity. I mean I know why I have failed getting anywhere… I have failed because I don’t want to apply the method (when I’m not applying it) and having this break from actualism must be as okey as the times when I feel engaged. I must be as sincere about living out my old patterns as those brief moments of wanting to become a happier person.
As a matter of fact, rather than wanting change, I’m so much more comfortable feeling, thinking and walking down the same old trodden path - that I’ve been walking upon for so long. Most of the time I want to stay as I am. Most of the time I have no desire to change at all… and I acctually need to be utterly sincere about it.
So please guys… don’t ever make the misstake of seeing me as some sort of acutalist, when most of the time I’m just being this old fart - unwilling to change and stuck in my old ways. 