That is a great point @Miguel, I remember us having a similar discussion a while ago with regards to love and coming to the conclusion that the ‘good’ feelings are really the worst because they can be so hard to see for what they are, as Richard says about love, it is the eternal seducer!
That seems to be the thrust of the good feelings, be it feelings of power and authority within the group, or feelings of love and bliss. They lure one with the promise of something that in the end never delivers, the worst thing is that the failure to deliver seems to actually strengthen the desire to pursue those good feelings more, and round and round it goes.
This reminds me of Richard writing about the difficulty of going beyond the Enlightened state, because who would voluntarily give up the feelings of power, authority, love and bliss.
@frank_otto For me personally the good feelings tend to be brought up mostly around training/coaching MMA and writing on here, and I can relate to a lot of what you write. Personally it has taken me a very long time to resolve these, in fact they are the 2 themes that have stayed with me since the start 2 years ago and up until now, although there has been much progress made, it is still there to an extent. This morning though something big happened, it seems to have been a culmination of the 2 years looking at this, coming to fruition!
I woke up in the morning feeling rather clear and light, for a short moment I felt that very familiar pang of ‘I am not good enough’ this deeply buried feeling with a flavour that I know so well because it has been in one way or another colouring my experience of being alive for as long as I remember.
But it was only a pang, it was weak, almost like it was the last embers of the feeling. I went outside for my morning cigarette and noticed that everything around me looked so sparkling and brilliant. I felt so light, like a huge weight has been lifted, it is like this big heavy blanket of sorrow has been lifted from my psyche. It was only because the blanket was finally lifted that I could see just to what extent it influenced me, in fact to what extent it is me.
What I could see immediately is that it is this sorrowful persona, this ‘I am not good enough’ persona that so desperately yearns for the good feelings, to be a someone, he is forever trying to correct that something missing, when the blanket was lifted the appeal of the pursuit for the good feelings also disappeared. I noticed this because often in the mornings there is a pull to spin various stories, plans and schemes, the reason I do this is because I want to generate the good feelings. At that moment however that whole game was no longer attractive, there was no longer anything lacking which needed to be covered up by the good.