Vineeto: Could it be that the desire to be “somebody important” is mixed in with the worry for safety and financial stability? I am asking because when you are feeling good why would that interfere with “job/ financial stability”? However, if you want to be somebody important and climb the social ladder then you might have a reason to be in conflict with your superior or co-workers.
Adam-H: I’ve been considering this. I think you are on the right track to question whether it’s really just about safety/ security, but it’s also not exactly about being someone important right now. It feels a bit more like a resentment towards the environment of my work, where nothing is as it seems and everyone (including me) is scheming with their own personal angle. Being naïve, straightforward, happy and harmless in this environment feels like bringing a knife to a gunfight. It seems like everyone is misrepresenting the work they are doing and the level of expertise they have, and it feels like doing the same puts me at odds with being happy and harmless. I’m resentful that it is this way and I resent other people essentially doing the same thing I am doing.
Hi Adam,
Ha, the way you describe it, being “someone important” is out of the question because you can’t even find your footing in this environment which is supposedly about your “safety/ security”.
Adam-H: Is it just a case of needing some ‘nerves of steel’ to make unilateral change, be happy and harmless, let the chips fall where they may?
I see you are still deep into worrying, as if that gives your life the meaning you are looking for. I found a conversation we had in April this year which is still applicable –
Vineeto: Perhaps you can instead rememorate how you were experiencing the world during your PCEs, or how you were when you were genuinely naïve and the world was a wondrous place to explore and appreciate? It’s enjoyment and the very appreciation of it which has the capacity to enhance feeling good, and then feeling better and feeling great. When you feel great a lot of imagined/ anticipated problems reveal themselves as phantoms – but this is not the outcome of rational thinking alone, it comes from feeling good first.
Adam: Part of me wants to dismiss this as a tautological/circular suggestion. It seems like saying “try feeling good, then the worries which are preventing you from feeling good will fade away”. What’s funny is I know it has actually played out this way many times in my experience, so I’m sure it is actually a great suggestion. (3 April 2026)
If it worked before, why not now? You don’t need “nerves of steel” to get back to feeling good, do you?
Moreover, you don’t need to make your ‘self’ perfect, even if everyone else is hypocritically doing that. Your aim is to be happy and harmless, i.e. to channel all the affective energy into the least ‘self’-enhancing feelings so that you can even more enjoy and appreciate being here. The already existing actual world is already perfect, as is your flesh-and-blood body (without the alien entity stuffing it up). You only need to get out of way – whenever you notice you are in the way of the already existing perfection – and enjoy being here. Knowing this you do not have to follow all the bad examples others are giving you and/or competing with them for supremacy – it is plain silly.
Adam-H: In terms of my “modes of failure” way of thinking about it, I’m definitely more on the “won’t” side than the “can’t” side. It does seem totally possible, but I am scared to do it because I don’t know if it will work out. But talking through it, it does seem like it’s eventually going to be what I need to do. (link)
Ok, knowing that fear is preventing you from getting back to being happy and harmless – your life’s aim – then you can cast it aside, decline going down that futile alley, including all the worries you create out of that fear – and get on with feeling good and enjoying being here. It’s just a matter when you realize that enough worry and fear is enough because it doesn’t lead anywhere. In the end nobody is stopping you but yourself.
Cheers Vineeto