Thanks for providing more detail @hunterad, I think what @henryyyyyyyyyy wrote is a useful way of looking at it. The ‘dirt’ will always be there in some degree, it’s probably to be expected that my feeling good will usually be tainted by this or that. It sort of reminds me of Geoffrey’s video where he talks about arriving at a more pure feeling good, and that the good feelings tend to go last.
So for example at the moment there might be an intent to feel good but also a slight fear that my friends will think I’m weird when I act in a way that is not considered ‘normal’ or maybe some pull towards the ‘good’ feelings of appearing this or that way to my friends.
With more experiences showing that feeling felicitous and innocuous is actually completely safe, sensible and desirable, the ‘extras’ can begin to drop. But if I nip the whole process in the bud out of fear of not having pure feeling good to begin with, then I miss out on the chance of going through this whole process of cleansing the ‘dirt’ bit by bit.
I don’t know how useful all my Brazilian jiu Jitsu metaphors are to others but this reminds me of something that I see with people starting out in martial arts.
The ultimate goal is to arrive at a place where I am able to use sophisticated technique and strategy to ‘neutralise’ pure strength and athleticism.
I often get new guys just starting out saying that they feel bad that they are not being technical and only using strength. The thing is that for the first few years of training they have to do exactly that to realise that there is a more efficient way, they can’t just jump to this idealised concept of ‘only using technique’ because at the moment they have none! Yet they have to start somewhere.
If they are to stop now by castigating themselves for ‘only using strength’ they will never give themselves a chance of bit by bit integrating technique and strategy in place of brute strength and athleticism.
If we all start ‘dirty’ then the best way to proceed is to accept this and get stuck in.
@henryyyyyyyyyy@Kub933 thanks for these perspectives. I’m giving them more thought at the moment. I do sometimes second guess my efforts in a way that holds me back, that’s for sure. I guess I thought that this was the way to move forward… but I can see that the approach you are describing would be meaningfully different and probably easier to sustain motivation for.
@hunterad So I wanted to write about these ‘tentacles’ because it is exactly what I have observed in action today which is pretty exciting.
I noticed both in my writing here and for example when I am coaching martial arts there is this deeply ingrained habit, it seems core to being a social identity.
Basically the way I operate is as you describe, my intent is mixed with some ‘dirt’, this ‘dirt’ takes form of these ‘feelers’ I am continually sending out in order to be re-assured as to what ‘place’ I am currently in.
I will give 2 examples which became very clear to me this morning, that is when the whole thing ‘clicked’.
I noticed that after writing this post yesterday - Confessions of a Sociopath - #3 by Kub933 for the remainder of the day there was this underlying need to feel reassured, this expressed itself with a need to keep thinking about the post and anticipating what others replies would be like.
Also I have noticed after teaching a class yesterday that there was a similar need to feel reassured by my students that it was done well and that I was on the ‘right’ track.
It would be an oversimplification to say that I am only teaching martial arts to get praised by others or that I am only writing here in order to get likes and praise. Instead it is as you described, mixed. There is the more genuine intent to share experiences here and to coach martial arts to the best of my ability, however there is also this continual sending out of ‘feelers’ in order to be re-assured that what I am doing and where I am heading is good and correct.
This morning I was experiencing some of that residual worry from the above 2 scenarios and instead of trying to end it I decided to go with it and see where it leads, I allowed myself to experience this part of myself fully and immediately saw that it arises out of the need to belong. I stuck with it for a bit longer and I really did experience it as these emotional ‘tentacles’ (this is when I thought I must write to you) forever reaching out, influencing and trying to get an idea as to where ‘I’ can place myself within the group. The most prominent part of this whole thing was the need to feel reassured, it is like these ‘tentacles’ are out there to collect data via others reinforcement/punishment as to how well I am doing.
The other thing that I have been thinking about this morning is that without writing on here, and without applying the method in the marketplace, I would not have had the chance to observe this thing in action, and it is really fascinating to see just how deeply ingrained this thing is.
Also seeing this process in action it is obvious why the hallmarks of being a social identity is to forever be unsure, insecure, manipulative, insincere etc. Because the reactions of others are so unreliable and yet my image of myself, my security, my self esteem is created out of this process of sending out these feelers. No wonder this process leads to feeling unsure, insecure and even resentful to others, or looking to manipulate them in order to get the right sort of feedback.
The other great thing is that seeing this process in action so clearly now I have the chance to replace it with the third alternative!
Thanks for sharing. I have been pursuing the “tentacle”-image-paradigm since my last post and I’ve been finding it really useful. I went on a walk by myself into a wilderness area with that image in mind as something to build from.
I started contemplating how immediate and easy enjoyment and appreciation is. Usually the only thing stopping me is a consideration being paid to whether other people are approving of me or liking me. It is a sort of navigational tool… I look to how they see me to help figure out whether I have permission to feel good. Yet it is totally optional to do that.
I moved onto the question of ‘what would it be like to pursue wonderment [1] and happiness without any consideration for how people reacted to me’. As a condensed image-thought it was essentially leaving a group of people behind and walking into the woods without knowing exactly where I was going, except that it was an enticing wonderful adventure. I moved into an EE and it was occurring to me that I had wanted to be able to ‘bring people to my side’ but if I was willing to go it alone there was really nothing stopping me from pursuing living in this state all the time. Going it alone specifically in the sense of not trying to convince anyone that me and my ‘direction’ are valid.
So that’s my direction for the time being, I’ll see how it plays out given more time.
[1] I’ve lately been particularly enjoying these moments of unexpected wonderment when walking somewhere new to me. Especially somewhere that I have no preconceptions about. There’s a very childlike quality to it and I am getting tinges of pleasant nostalgia for times where the simple natural surroundings I was in sort of ‘ballooned’ up into being my entire world. Sort of like if my simple walking through some woods had the exact same significance, detail, and scale as an entire fantasy novel.
Gonna keep it quite brief since I talked on here alot during may.
Basically I have continued having periods of feeling good and then other periods of bouncing back and forth between good and bad feelings. The thing that primarily distinguishes these periods is whether I am being a group member or being an individual. Irene/Devika’s writings in chapters 28&29 of Richard’s journal are presently informing my thinking on this. To sum it up… there is nothing to prevent me from feeling good outside of catering to what other people expect of me or wanting them to approve of me. Once I decide to simply live as I would prefer, happy and harmlessness is there.
Some really great progress in the last 2 weeks of June
Things continued very much along the lines of my last report with the issue of wanting approval as being central to my lack of feeling good. I was able to really drill deep into what my hopes for being approved of are about… and why I am unwilling to stop seeking approval. A certain sentence of Devika in Richard’s journal helped spark this realization:
“by the time the child has reached adulthood, they will never dare to be authentic, genuine, original … and will be forever afraid to risk entering into an area believed to be boring, dull, unemotional and lethargic.”
This sentence had puzzled me in the past as I didn’t relate to this fear, or so I thought. I made an effort to experientially understand everything she wrote in Richard’s journal as I related very much to her particular conditioning and her obstacles to felicity & innocuity. So the question I ran for a while was “am I fearing felicity and innocuity will be unemotional and boring?”
What I came to realize is that I had a notion of a happiness that was ultimately fulfilling via a sort of union with other people through their approval, recognition, and understanding of me as I am. It is a sort of childlike hope that eventually I will find people who totally understand and unconditionally love me. Maybe a romantic partner or group of friends who appreciate me as much as I appreciate myself… who understand that I mean well and have a ‘heart of gold’ underneath my superficial weaknesses and foibles.
The notion of simply pursuing enjoyment of life as it is and people as they are without this approval-seeking seemed like giving up on real happiness in my mind… trading it for a state that indeed seemed boring unemotional and lethargic, in comparison to that fantasy of total safety while being myself ‘warts and all.’
In actuality, once the fantasy fades away, and a good mood based on appreciating and enjoying stabilizes for a few hours, it becomes experientially clear that such a state is genuinely fulfilling. While that fantasy is still hoped for though, the state of enjoyment goes back to seeming unappealing. So there is a bit of a ‘stark reality’ barrier to endure while switching from approval-seeking mode to enjoyment of this moment mode.
The second I began to realize all this a persistent peace of mind came to me and continues fairly uninterrupted. Certainly there are still places where I am seeking approval but there has been a big relative improvement.
From my experience, that choice of going for the experiential PCE / happy + harmless over whatever fantasy is an essential step, I have to have some reason to let the fantasy go that is worth it to me
I think that’s part of why Richard frequently talks about total commitment, boots & all, wanting it more than anything else, ‘I knew that I must do it’ etc is necessary once we get to the most dear fantasies
Oh hey there looks like I forgot to make my ‘July report’
Well I’ll make a post now even though it will include a lot of August material haha. Lot’s has been happening and I’ve been just barely processing it. First I made a decision to go back to school part time to seek better employment. Although I’ve been struggling with my working experience for years I’ve always taken the approach of trying to more fully accept and be unaffected by the difficulties of working in food service. This despite the fact that I had a good education and the means to pursue further education for a better job.
I made plenty of progress over time with becoming more at ease with work, but I found a strange unintuitive thing happen eventually. Somehow the difficulties with work seemed to be linked to this commitment to not “striving” to better my situation. I think what was happening was a deep suppression of that natural instinct to seek the best circumstances. I thought that this inclination in and of itself was suffering but in fact it appears it is the “complications” around that simple inclination that are the problem.
Seeing things this way allowed me to start investigating the fears around pursuing better employment, mostly fear of failure and thus shame at people knowing my failure. And this shame was ultimately the same source of stress as at work. Becoming open to a different path of action (pursuing better employment rather than just accepting worse employment) shone the spotlight more clearly on what the actual suffering was. Seeing active pursuit of valuable things as being inherently misguided is likely a ‘spiritual hangover’ and created a red herring for the real emotions to hide behind. There was an aspect of ‘the right way’ and ‘the wrong way’ that shifted my focus away from being happy and harmless.
That brings me to the far more poignant and meaningful feelings that I am now going through. Essentially I think I fell in love, whoops! I think in a similar way to what happened regarding work, I opened up my set of ‘possible actions’ and ‘possible feelings’. Through being less closed off, I finally allowed feelings to bubble up that had been fluctuating under the surface for a year. Feelings of love for a girl i work with.
We had often worked closely together over the last year and when I was with her there was an incredible sense of safety, an ambiance that was free of judgment where we could both act far more naive and childlike than was the norm. Those times in hindsight were probably what allowed me to start being more in touch with myself though other factors were at play as well. The problem is she is in a committed relationship already, with a woman, though I know she has dated men in the past. During the last few weeks where I really let my feelings “come up” I began to wrestle with expressing my feelings to her. It felt somewhat harmful like it would not only risk our friendship but could put her into a state of anxiety and possibly affect her relationship with her current partner whom I know well, like, and respect.
Eventually the remote possibility to become closer to this girl who I saw and currently see as being an incredible person was too much to ignore so I sent her a short message expressing how highly I regard her… and in the context of our normal communication it was clear I was suggesting I wished for something more than friendship. Anyway she essentially said she appreciated me as well and was glad I was her friend which was a gentle rejection. So now I’m feeling really sad, there’s truly no shred of resentment just a sense of guilt at having crossed a boundary that we had implicitly held sacred in order to shelter and compartmentalize the intimacy we had been experiencing. There is also a great sense of grief in losing her and the safety I felt with her.
Alongside the really sharp pain I’m experiencing, there’s a gladness that I ‘broke out of my shell’. I am seeing how i don’t want this pain to end because I don’t want to be back where I was. I’m committed to find a real happiness that isn’t based on numbing myself to pain more than ever before. Right now the only thing that looks like the type of happiness i want is being with her specifically.
Since that’s off the table I’m interested in examining whatever it was that made being with her so incredible and cathartic. I suppose there are many ways I keep my guard up and since I eventually have to seek happiness again that’s where I guess I need to look. To even consider ‘trying to be happy without her’ though, it feels like I’m already closing off again slightly. Until I understand how not to go back to being closed off, i would rather experience this feeling of heartache.
Why can’t you still be friends with her without expecting more?
Well I think I can at least to some degree, but right now it feels like it wouldn’t be fully satisfying. That said i do intend to try. This is a good question though and it brings up some important stuff.
I have been considering why friendship seems like something unsatisfying right now. In this case I’ve not been focused on physical intimacy with this person at all really, it’s more an intimacy of a particular way of being together. There seems to be a certain set of boundaries between friends where the interactions are based on pre-defined parameters around intimacy. It’s like a relationship becomes a friendship rather than a romantic relationship when you hit an implicit shared boundary around not feeling safe venturing into more mutual exposure. In this case I think these boundaries will now be far more present because I made my feelings more explicit and thus forced her to set a boundary. For us the boundary will probably take the form of more seriousness and carefulness in our interactions. Previously there was a really delightful silliness and playfulness that felt like it had no upper limit.
It’s interesting to define what this playfulness was made up of. I think in part it was a mutual agreement to do no harm to the other. Additionally there was a deep inclination against competition between us. This left us amazingly safe to let go of the social controls on our behavior when we were together. It’s something I’ve never experienced before really.
I suppose the crux of the issue is the belief that this environment of safety has to be mutually created. It’s because of this that I feel I’ve lost something so precious. I can’t imagine being that way with someone unless they are equally dedicated to it. It seems like they could harm me or take advantage of me so easily if I were being that way and they weren’t.
This is something to investigate. I think having seen what is possible I won’t settle so easily for a non-intimate way of being even if that move towards intimacy seems to leave me so exposed and vulnerable. I’ll leave off writing now to consider a thought experiment of what would it be like to be that way with people who were not mutually participating in creating that environment.
It’s lovely to read about the fun you had together. That’s really all we can expect really as the best possible normal; to have had fun.
For a few fleeting hours I felt that towards the songwriter I met. She was an attractive girl, but it didn’t matter much. Infact the idea of sex with her was somehow way below what I already had; an admiration and respect.
How to have such a situation and also have sex? To have the admiration and respect without losing it? The safety.
I think that sex is a way to explore more intimacy. In this case sex would have been great but what I was/am really longing for is just the intimacy of being together in any way at all. So as to your question of how to have such a situation and sex, either would be an improvement from where I am haha!
But the intensity of feeling is certainly fading a bit as days pass. I did reach out to her again to express that I want to spend time together, and she said she would be interested. This allayed some fear that there was something really wrong with me and she wouldn’t even want to be friends.
Lots of people here lately have been writing about loneliness and the longing for intimacy. Those longings have always been around and I have previously assumed that the way to deal with them was to reject the desire to reach out to people and instead just ‘be happy here and now’. In reality that was a false dichotomy and I never gave much credence to the option of being happy while reaching out. Even to consider this as an option has opened up some new territory for me I think.
Had a nice chat with Andrew and Henry last night. Main topic we discussed that aligns with where im at is vulnerability. I’ve been exploring what it is to be as vulnerable as possible. This has meant seeking to fully feel anything that comes up and to give ‘merit’ to the things that I want. Previously I was more ‘invulnerable’ by choosing to always remain passive and not seek things that i desired, especially intimacy with people. Recently I’ve been more frequently reaching out, putting myself out there, and making my private wishes into public actions. In the most pragmatic terms this has meant simply asking people if they want to hang out, seemingly a small thing but actually a big change for me. Additionally in situations where I am invited to anything, I am tending to almost always say yes rather than saying no due to an assumption that I was only being invited out of courtesy rather than actual interest.
All this is putting me in a position where I can be rejected by people, previously I was essentially rejecting myself, thus allowing me to maintain an illusion that if I chose put in the effort to I could be ‘accepted’ and ‘liked’ by anyone. I’m aware none of this can be made into a rule or a practice e.g. ‘always accept invitations’ or ‘always reach out’. The only real practice that seems sustainable is to seek some internal alignment of desires that allows me to feel at peace while also fulfilling the intention to diminish separation between me and everyone/everything.
Currently in trying to do this I am finding lots of anxiety in being rejected. In fact I am being rejected most of the time it seems[1], which makes me think of the Vineeto quote Andrew paraphrased to me yesterday of “we usually dont get what we want”. I think this is better than what was happening before where there was no reaching out and I was instead staying totally safe and hidden… but it is far from ideal. The question for me right now is how to be ‘reaching out’ without experiencing it as such an ordeal.
A somewhat intellectual answer that I am exploring experientially is that it is through total involvement that it can be possible. Somewhat akin to Richards ‘giving himself totally’ but without a single person as a focus. As soon as I am fearing rejection, I think there are doubts about whether I should be reaching out or protecting myself. If there is no doubt then there is only this force of reaching out and ending separation/self-protection and whether I am rejected or not isn’t important. I guess this is because there’s no question of whether I should keep reaching out? Not that I will necessarily keep inviting someone to hang out over and over forever, but I will always be seeking to take some step to diminish separation.
Anyway am I way out on a limb here far from actualism? I think this is all a response to my previously corrupted faux-actualism practice… I’m not yet sure if this is a case of the pendulum swinging to the opposite extreme or if this really is the way to be happy and harmless come what may. I’m hoping that I am in an initial anxious period of pursuing a new way of being but once it settles down it will be more deeply rewarding than other ways of being I have settled into.
[1] Not necessarily referring to constant refusal of invitations or anything, more about an emotional disinterest in me seeking to bridge a gap.
This has been my experience as well, where I’m at on that now is that it has much more to do with them than me… even when I’m perfectly peaceful and happy others will keep up a ‘wall’ of rejection which I can see/detect. Usually this rejection is felt, as awkwardness or a sharp “I’ve been rejected” pain, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s observation that that’s what they’re doing, it can be very simple like that.
What keeps me ‘involved’ is the awareness that there can be delightful social encounters, so I’m willing to bear plenty of rejection (in subtle and un-subtle ways) because sometimes it’s a lovely encounter. What I can do to give this the best chance is ‘be’ delight, myself, from my own side. That way, 50% of the encounter is guaranteed to be delightful. It’s in their hands at that point.
There is no actualism without some risk. Recognizing one’s own emotional landscape, as well as seeing clearly the actions and emotions of others, carries with it the potential for and likelihood of suffering/negative emotions to occur.
The subtle thing is that the negative emotions were there / have been there the entire time, inside of you. They were just held at a distance, via avoidance of triggering situations. The wonderful thing about putting ourselves in those situations - risk - is that it brings those triggers to the surface, where they can be observed, patterns can be recognized, they can be ‘known,’ and you have the opportunity to experiment with feeling good in those situations.
When avoidance is occurring, none of this is possible because we’re refusing to even look at the emotion happening. It’s kept in a fog - which means that ‘I’ am in a fog, as an ongoing experience.
It’s useful to be gentle with all of this, don’t push more than you yourself are ready for at any particular time. But when you are ready, plunging in is where the action is.
The reason to reach out is because you want to. That’s reason enough. By consummating your own desire via trying, you’re on the path of investigating aka ‘finding out the facts.’ In the facts are confidence, as well as the actual world itself. The rejection that occurs is part of the facts; it’s a fact that people reject - frequently. That’s part of the landscape of humanity.
Your own fear of rejection is a part of this landscape as well - that’s part of what’s being studied with this experience. What types of situation trigger rejection? What does it feel like? What is sensible to do? Et cetera.
I’ve been on a very similar path of ‘admitting my desires’ the last 6 months and it’s been nothing but beneficial for me. I’m carrying a sincerity that I didn’t have before; these are sincerely my desires. And actualism is all about living the best life possible, so if I’m interested in something / desire something, it only makes sense to dive in and separate the wheat from the chaff.
And it’s all perfectly compatible with actualism; I want to hang out with pretty girls, and I see that the Henry who is happy and harmless is the best at getting along with pretty girls (and everybody). It’s a coast-to-coast win.
I have also been going out far more often. I have a friend who is quite amazing in his ability to get to know everyone and has built an entire social network from scratch. He is from Mumbai, India.
He enjoys people. We were chatting about it, and he told me that just about everyone in his now tight “core” group of friends rejected him.
He is now the ring leader. We walk into all his usual clubs, straight past the que outside, he greets the bouncer and we are in.
We walk in the club and there will be another group of friends which excitedly greet him.
I’ve also attended a “Meet Up” group which was a positive psychology lecture. Again, just getting out there.
Funny, when I am walking now, I tend to enjoy the busier roads, where before I wanted only the quite streets.
I don’t try to make some huge effort to talk to people, only the “core” group. But I smile, ask names, forget names, ask again!
Tomorrow I am going to a birthday party at a pub for one of the girls I only briefly met in one of the “satellite” groups my friend has.
Apparently, she insisted. But my mate could be making that up.
but this reminds me of something that I see with people starting out in martial arts.
