Ian: More on the seeing of resentment/ injustice/ unfairness/ unhappiness/ rejection/ confusion/ desperation.
So a large part of my identity has been someone who has been ‘injustly treated’ – one with that chip on their shoulder – except for me it was not so much on the shoulder as an assimilated way of being that was so old (being from primary school times) that I wasn’t fully aware of it being the lurker behind my way of living, thinking, behaving.
It seems to have been becoming clearer and more recognisable over the last few weeks and now I reckon I’ve seen the way to let it atrophy.
Yesterday I went for a walk and was wondering what was preventing me to enjoy more than I was. There were no adverse conditions – lovely sunny day, plenty of time, out in a lovely bush walk area. I was bumping up against a ceiling of my ability to enjoy and appreciate that wasn’t there last time, so I had to stop and pay more attention to what was going on. I came upon an old sense of sadness. It was not acute but still clouding my experience, quite a lot like a light overcast cloud actually. I realised this was what I referred to in the first paragraph. An on going feeling of sadness from a series of social rejections that shaped me, and that it was a core part of my full personality, a foundational perspective. Luckily I as of the right mind where I could see how silly it was to hold on to a broader emotional mood as a way of being, and it dissipated as if I just stopped holding it. I realised how weird it was that I could ‘hold on’ to a mood and for years! as if it was a real thing instead of just a story I kept at heart. Thinking about it now it reminds me of the description of a belief as emotion backed thought.
While continuing the walk it was funny to see that all this time I could just let go of this thing of being this way, and how peculiar it was that from what I could tell, many people live this way – live according to a held belief/mood that then described their identity and motivation toward life. The feeling of injustice, the unfairness, the rejection and resentment – all achieving nothing more than self serving suffering. A reason to feel important.
Very silly to live this way.
To be able to see the silliness required willingness to change myself/be changed by facts combined with the recognition that emotions and moods are merely habitual, that I am not necessary for anything to continue happening, that the actual world exists, and a desire to increase my enjoyment of being alive.
Hi @Ian,
You are in fine form today, including your follow-up posts. A very enjoyable read.
You have indeed laid bare the whole structure of resentment and why so many people decide to hold onto it and more so, so many people don’t even recognize it as the underlying attitude which shapes their lives and obstructs their “ability to enjoy and appreciate”. And not only have you laid it bare but described it in so much detail how to allow it to atrophy that whoever wants to can do the same.
When feeling being Richard embarked on his adventure to live the perfection of his four-hour PCE for the rest of his life, he had little difficulty in recognizing and giving up resentment, hence it is not even mentioned in the description of the actualism method, and a lot of people overlooked how vital it is to tackle resentment in order to successfully enjoy and appreciate being alive –
• Richard: ‘Speaking personally, the first thing I did in 1981 was to put an end to anger once and for all … then I was freed enough to live in virtual freedom. It took me about three weeks and I have never experienced anger since then. The first step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for I located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ This is why remembering a PCE is so important for success for it shows one, first hand, that freedom is already always here … now. With the memory of that crystal-clear perfection held firmly in mind … that basic resentment goes. Then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger forever. (Richard, AF List, Irene, 11 Oct 1998)
He did however write about how in order to renounce resentment it is also necessary to do away with gratitude, because they are two sides of the same coin –
• Richard: Renouncing resentment obviates the need to apply the commonly accepted antidote: gratitude. Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. As strange as it may initially seem, gratitude has the same deleterious effect upon one’s well-being as the resentment it seeks to reform. When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Virtue and Sin, Hope and Despair, Gratitude and Resentment, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity. (Library, Topics, Hope)
Ian: And it was discovered by being purposefully attentive to the subtleties of how I was experiencing the moment of being alive – funny that.
Brilliant.
Cheers Vineeto