Adam-H: It’s never felt more possible than it does right now. Sincerity is the key to naiveté – when I am sincerely benign, the need to control myself fades away. Without the pressure to control myself, life is an easy and fun affair.
When I lose it, all I need is to reestablish the intent to be happy and harmless in the world as it is with people as they are. Establishing that intent at the most heartfelt sincere level leads directly back to being carefree. No matter what challenges I’m facing, I know that I will do my best if my intent and sincerity is at its best, so once I’m at that point there’s no need to worry.
Hi Adam,
It seems you have lost/ overcome your various worries about being naïve and are discovering how easy it is to live naïvely (being “sincerely benign’). In hindsight, it’s such an easy thing to do and yet all the dire warnings of the serious sophisticates make it out to be something dangerous, ridiculous or even contemptible. They say: “Don’t have too much fun, it’s bad for you”.
Adam-H: I think what would have gotten me here sooner was to focus more on harmlessness and sincerity as their own reward.
In actualism, being happy and harmless are two aspects of the same condition – you cannot be happy unless you are also harmless and you cannot be genuinely harmless unless you are also happy.
Richard: “(…) it may be worthwhile bearing in mind that it is impossible to be happy (be happy as in being carefree), as distinct from feeling happy, without being harmless (being harmless as in being innocuous), as distinct from feeling harmless, and to be happy *and* harmless is to be unable to induce suffering – etymologically the word ‘harmless’ (harm + less) comes from the Old Norse ‘harmr’ (meaning grief, sorrow) – either in oneself or another”. [emphasis in original]. (Richard, AF List, No. 62, 26 Mar 2004).
I can also recommend Claudiu’s excellent post on harmlessness (link)
Adam-H: Happiness can be seen as something that happens to me.
Happiness can only “be seen as something that happens to me” when you are solely focussing on a conditional happiness, which is dependent on certain events and circumstances, whereas you have the option of feeling good, each moment again, delighting in the awareness of being alive in this very moment, which is unconditional.
So when you aim to feel good and enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive you don’t go around looking for ‘happy circumstances that might happen to you’, you aim to enjoy each moment of being alive, whilst looking at and removing the obstacles that prevent you from feeling good.
Richard: A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event. (…). Doing something pleasant/ beneficial – or something pleasurable/ beneficent happening – is a bonus on top of the sheer delight of being alive/ being here. (Richard, List D, Srinath, 5 Jan 2014).
Adam-H: Harmless intentions are more clearly coming from me, how I am disposed towards the universe. (link)
I understand why you make this distinction but when you understand that being happy and being harmless is one and the same condition then many of your prior concerns regarding pacificism, putting the other before oneself or similar moral connotations fall by the wayside. When you are happy in an unconditional way – because you have dealt with the obstacles to being happy – you are automatically harmless, and should you feel not harmless you can equally explore why not and deal with the cause right then and there. In that way your “harmless intentions” can never develop into a moral/ moralistic principle.
Cheers Vineeto