Hunterad's journal

[hunterad]

This post initially triggered some understanding but also some frustration that I saw later came out of my own cunningness. I think I want to leave in my initial reaction and then show the moment where I connected the dots for myself as a reminder for future me how that transition can occur :

---------- Initial reaction -----------

@Vineeto

Hi Adam-H,

I get the impression, and I might be wrong, that you put a certain moral pressure on yourself when “trying to get back to feeling good” as if you renamed your normal moral code to actualism. Then upping the ante simply means that ‘you’ are at loggerheads with yourself that you must feel good … or else.

The result is that for this you have to push away the unwanted uncomfortable feelings, which only gives fuel to ‘me’ and those feelings. So, the first thing is to relax, and become interested in what is going on. Someone shared that going back to before the incident which caused the dip in the good mood did help to get back to feeling good, at least sufficient enough to look into the cause of it.

I think you’re right, and I can see how the moral pressure leads to pushing away those feelings rather than genuinely seeing that they are silly and moving into feeling good. Reflecting on this more, I think I move back and forth between the ‘genuine’ practice and the disingenuous practice fairly often. There’s something difficult for me though about how to make the genuine practice happen.

@Vineeto

Richard’s suggestion is to first see, really see, the silliness of feeling bad – not with control like you do it – but as a genuine insight that it is a waste of time to feel bad when you could feel ok or neutral or good.

I guess there is a difference between a genuine insight and ‘trying to see’. I think where I struggle is that ‘having’ a genuine insight as a method feels difficult, it almost feels like you just have to wait until the genuine insight comes if the effort to have it is not going in the right direction.

@Vineeto

Perhaps it is not about sudorifically upping the anti or “having a standoff” with yourself but really seeing that it is not worth your while feeling bad, ever. Then you can go back to look at what caused the dip in the mood and sincerely find out, possibly to never have it happen again. Or to put it differently, the commitment to being happy and harmless is not by trying to do but by cutting the fondness/ attachment to feeling bad, no matter what the reason. I know from experience, it wasn’t always easy but that it takes a readiness to ‘sacrifice’ one’s cherished feelings of bitter-sweetness, righteous anger, pining, or perhaps virtuous impatience – whatever it is that keeps you from feeling good.

I see again that the key is the genuine willingness/readiness, it makes total sense to me and fits with my past intermittent experiences. When that willingness/readiness is there, the practice is hardly even a practice, it’s effortless. But again it feels like this is just saying “here is what it is like when it works.” How does one make an identity…

---------- end of initial reaction -----------

While writing that phrase out I had this thought “wait, I am that identity, I don’t have to ‘make’ it do anything I can just do it.” I can see how I reacted to bad feelings - by becoming a virtuously impatient identity whose narrative is a story about being special for wanting to feel good. As soon as I saw that, there was a feeling of having my ‘split’ self fuse back together with my relatively more naive but stressed self. This consolidated ‘me’ was able to then instantly go back to feeling good because it saw that it was silly to feel bad when it was entirely up to me how to feel. I think this is the clearest I’ve ever been on the point that sincerity can unlock naivety. It’s also clear to me how being my own best friend was missing.

It’s interesting that being your own best friend sort of has two meanings:

1. don’t be hard on yourself for your mistakes
2. actually want what’s best for yourself, meaning you won’t let yourself ruin your own day

@Andrew

This has been a contemplation lately, and that is there is a lot of subconscious stress, we get so used to it that it’s just “how things are”, reading what you have written really brought it into focus. . What I mean is, I see these deeper issues reflecting in all aspects of life, but often don’t acknowledge them. So, they do “pop up” when I am in a better mood, and I know the experience of some simple intension (being determined to feel good), just not working like it did yesterday.

Reading what you wrote really brought this into focus just now. It reminds me that some issues are going to take time, we have to make space for ourselves, over time, to hear what it is we have buried under everyday issues.

It definitely seems like it takes time, but I have a feeling whenever we are on the other side of this we will look back like all the other people who became actually free seem to and say “oh I guess I could have done that all along”

@edzd

I was reading Vineeto’s “Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness ” last night and an area in particular stands out to me because you say, “I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself.”

This was great to read, thanks. Who am I trying to fool indeed. It’s funny to realize that the self splitting into two is not about it “trying too hard” to make something happen as I previously thought, it’s actually about try to make sure nothing happens