AdamH: So I am running into some difficulty getting back to feeling good from a state of stress. Over the last week I observed myself moving from happy and harmless, to good feelings, and now to stress. Although I saw the good feelings replacing naivete as it happened, I basically didn’t have enough motivation to stop it. It basically manifested as taking credit for naivete, congratulating myself, and imagining a future where I was praised for my naivete. Now that the good feelings are replaced with bad, the motivation is there and I am definitely keeping this whole cycle in mind in hopes that it gives me more focus the next time around.
Anyways, stress is what is here now preventing feeling good. The stress is about work (as per usual) and specifically fears about how I am replaceable and ultimately at the mercy of the whims of my boss. I’m also seeing that I’m embarrassed about having this stress, partly because I think it suggests I’m incompetent, and partly because I’ve dealt with it so many times in so many ways that I think I should have really figured it out by now.
Anyway, I don’t think I’ll solve this right here and right now, I’ve been contemplating it while writing this post for a while, but just wanted to get something into my journal while I’m in this spot. (link)
Hi Adam,
The first thing that occurred to me was that you were feeling good and feeling naïve and then “it basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté” and you were “imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté”. It could well be that this hijacking of naiveté by ‘’me’ is what caused the original feelings of stress. To fulfil this imagination you would have to manufacture being naïve, which is the very opposite of being naïve, i.e. letting life live you, and therefore a stressful task rather than a joy to be.
Because the feeling of stress continued you then found a likely cause transferring it all to work-related problems. I am not saying they don’t exist but the primary trigger was that your naivete was taken over by the desire to being praised “for my naiveté” – in other words manifested as the co-joined twins of pride and humility, swinging from one end to the other.
I suggest to get back to feeling good, or at least feeling ok, and then see if what I said makes sense to you. Perhaps it helps to understand more of this aspect of your social identity and thus can be declined so you will be able to get back to a more consistent feeling good.
It’s also useful to remember that when you fight/reject any of your feelings you add affective energy to that feeling and thus increase it.
As a reminder, here Richard wrote in detail how to access sincere/ pure intent, which is essential for having success with the actualism method –
Respondent: (…) How did you get the pure intent or how did you keep the intent running? Are there certain events that lead to it’s discovery? Is there are a particular approach you would advise other to get pure intent?
Richard: G’day No. 13, Just putting in a plug for what is propagated by the website.
The ultimate source of an actualist’s pure intent is, of course, the pristine purity of the innocence which prevails in the pure consciousness experience (PCE).
For those who are unable to recall/ unable to trigger a PCE there is the near-purity of the sincerity which inheres in naiveté – the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ – which naiveté is an aspect of oneself locked away in childhood through ridicule, derision, and so on, that one has dared not to resurrect for fear of appearing foolish, a simpleton, in both others’ eyes and, thus, one’s own.
(Because ‘naïve’ and ‘gullible’ are so closely linked – via the trusting nature of a child in concert with the lack of knowledge inherent to childhood – in the now-adult mind, most peoples initially have difficulty separating the one from another).
Now, seeing the fact (as ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’) that it is plainly and simply ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment (the only moment one is actually alive) is a first step leading to its discovery.
And, as the part-sentence you have quoted (further above) has been extracted out from the middle of the first paragraph of the section entitled ‘The Who And How of Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’, in the ‘Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’ article, then the opening lines provide a clue to an answer for your queries. Viz.:
• [quote] ‘The intent is you will become happy and harmless.
The intent is you will be free of sorrow and malice. The intent is you will become blithesome and benign. The intent is you will be free of fear and aggression. The intent is you will become carefree and considerate. The intent is you will be free from nurture and desire. The intent is you will become gay and benevolent. The intent is you will be free of anguish and animosity. The intent is that, by being free of the Human Condition, you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body … as is evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) (…)’. [endquote]
Spelled-out sequentially that first part of the paragraph, immediately prior to the part-sentence you extracted, can look something like this:
- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming happy and harmless.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of sorrow and malice.- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming blithesome and benign.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of fear and aggression.- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming carefree and considerate.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free from nurture and desire.- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming gay and benevolent.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of anguish and animosity.
–
All of this vital interest/ vested interest enables sincerity – as to be in accord with the fact/being aligned with factuality/ staying true to facticity is what being sincere is (as in being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous) and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté … then the summing-up sentence can now look something like this:
The [sincere/ naïve] intent, then, is that by being free of the human condition you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body … as is evidenced in the PCE.
As that summary sentence leads straight on to the sentence you have part-quoted from then it too can now look something like this:
• [quote]: ‘(…) An actualist’s intent is a [sincere/ naïve] intent and discovering how to blend this [sincere/ naïve] intent via attentiveness – into one’s conscious life is the process that places one on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom … this path is a virtual freedom’. [end quote] (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness)
Which in turn is immediately followed by the how-to sentences:
• [quote] ‘Uncovering how to prolong the condition of virtual freedom – via attentiveness and sensuousness – is still another process. These are felicitous and innocuous processes, however, and they are well worth the effort for attentiveness and sensuousness are central to virtual freedom and the key to the whole condition. Attentiveness and sensuousness are both the goal of actualism and the means to that end: one reaches apperceptiveness by being ever more sensuous and one activates sensuousness by being ever more attentive … and one activates attentiveness by no longer ‘feeling good’. [endquote]
In other words, it is the experiencing of no longer ‘feeling good’ (or ‘feeling happy/ harmless’ or ‘feeling excellent/ perfect’) which activates attentiveness again (as in it ‘jogs the memory’ to pay attention).
It is all a very, very simple method, actually. (…) (Richard, List D, No. 13, 21 May 2009).
Let me know how it works for you.
Cheers Vineeto