Thanks Vineeto
Interesting, it seems like your overall impression is that I’m putting the cart before the horse a bit. I can confirm that the investigation side of my practice has maybe been a bit light recently. I wouldn’t say I neglect it entirely but it certainly hasn’t been the focus. With the flavor of naivete powerfully enticing me right now, I’m definitely interested in making it more consistent, so thank you for the advice that the way to do so is more focus/investigation on the issues that interrupt it.
I think I am on the same page in terms of the ruthless honesty with myself, and it is clear to me how the sincerity of that intention segues into naivete. Basically if I am really honest about how and why I’m not happy and harmless, it segues into an experiential realization that ‘I’ am the problem, which segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful.
The form that this takes for me right now is mostly focused on intentions and vibes more than beliefs, which may be a shortcoming. This is related to previous struggles going in circles of ‘philosophizing and psychologizing’ in the past when my practice did have more focus on investigation.
It’s somewhat rare that I get back to feeling good by recognizing an unexamined belief, much more often it’s closer to a ‘resolution’ that I don’t want to experience life this way, fueled by the memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way, plus the memory that once I am experiencing life in that other way all of those ‘problems’ will seem imaginary and get dealt with in a manner that is effortless and harmless. Perhaps what is necessary is that once I get into that state where all the problems melt away and seem imaginary, what I need to do is basically dive back into them and closely examine how and why they seemed real vs. how and why they now seem imaginary? Or is there something more fundamentally off with how I’m approaching things?