James: Thanks for speaking frankly which is what I need. […]
I appreciate your help and I know that you can assist me in getting to where I need to go. [link]
James: Objections to experiencing pure intent:
Pain and pain meds interfering.
Loss of love to and from ex-wife and no one left.
Its been too long.
Old age.
Sadness.
Don’t know how.
Realizing that my life is nearing the end. [link]
Hi @James,
Here is something that even with no connection to pure intent you will be able to do. Acknowledge the fact that death is inevitable, that pain and old age are part of life and especially part of your present condition.
These are facts of life; you can do nothing about them.
What you can do however, when you have some common sense and if you so choose, you can stop objecting to those facts, and also you can recognize and give up the life-long habit of resentment to such facts of life.
Resentment is what turns physical pain into suffering and realizing the nearing of death into anger and fear.
You can do yourself a favour, and recognize and abandon this habitual resentment. You can also, of course, stay as you are and keep suffering. The choice is in your hands and actualism gives you that choice.
Richard: Aye … this is something I come across almost on a daily basis and it is amazing how many people tell me that I am being ‘optimistic’, or ‘positive’, or ‘up-beat’, or that I am ‘forever trying to talk things up’. For example, I might comment upon what a great day it is and, as sure as eggs are eggs, the plighted person will find fault (even if only ‘it won’t last’) … or I may say how marvellous it is to be living in a technologically advanced society (take contemporary surgical procedures, for instance, or current dental practice) and a whole litany of doom and gloom comes forth.
Even sitting at a caff by myself, with snippets of nearby conversations drifting by from time-to-time, it is remarkable how much of the content of social chit-chat is, as you say, gripe, grievance, complaint, and resentment … and the last-named is the key to it all (the basic resentment of being alive in the first place).
Until one wakes up to implications and ramifications of the factuality of already being here on this planet earth anyway, whether one wants to be or not (‘I didn’t ask to be born’), one is fated to forever seek consolation and commiseration in the arms (both metaphorically and literally) of another similarly afflicted. Yet the simple fact is that, despite the ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ rhetoric, one does want to be alive (else one would have committed suicide long ago) and all that it takes is to fully acknowledge this and thus unequivocally say !YES! to being here now as this flesh and blood body … and this affirmation is an unconditional agreement/approval of life itself as-it-is.
I did not ask to be born either (truisms can be so trite) … but I am ever-so-glad that I was. [Richard, Actual Freedom list, Gary, 24 Jun 03]
Cheers Vineeto