James: My current objection to pure intent and self-immolation: How can I experience pure intent and self-immolation when I am hurting all the time? (link)
Hi James,
Regarding your pain, you can start by ceasing to emotionally object to the pain. By fighting the pain you give it additional energy with your affective objection and thus add suffering to physical hurt.
Richard: Every moment again is an occasion to improve your lot … when you are interacting with someone, either face to face or on the telephone … or a back-ache: ‘Oh god, how terrible!’ … another opportunity. It is bad enough to feel pain, why make it worse by adding an emotional suffering like ‘I feel terrible’? To feel terrible, emotionally, on top of the physical pain is simply silly when it is possible to disentangle oneself, emotionally, and still feel good about being alive, about being here. This is being sensible, is it not? To feel good, if not happy, all the time? (Richard, Audiotaped Dialogues, Silly or Sensible).
You recently wrote in Claudiu’s Journal –
James to Claudiu: (link) In your day to day experience when you are not in a pce do you want self-immolation more than you want your significant other or your work and career?
I don’t recall wanting self-immolation like that? Right now I want to be healthy more than I want self-immolation. Of course I am not in a pce. (link)
You made it clear, that “to be healthy” is your top priority. However, if you do not consider self-immolation as your top priority you can nevertheless choose to live in virtual freedom –
Richard: What the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom is on about is a virtual freedom wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to feel well, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time. If one minimises the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous/ innocuous feelings – happiness, delight, appreciation, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability and so on – in conjunction with sensuousness – then the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness.
If it does not … then one is way ahead of normal human expectations anyway as the aim is to enjoy and appreciate being here now for as much as is possible.
It is a win/win situation. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 19e, 26 Dec 2000).
For experiencing Virtual Freedom “the first and crucial step” is to get rid of resentment. If, for instance, you prefer to complain about/ resent an obvious fact of life that one can only be as healthy as one is at this moment of being alive (with the available help of modern medicine) then that would be a sheer waste of this moment of being alive –
Richard: … the first thing ‘I’ did, in January 1981, was to put an end to anger once and for all … then ‘I’ was freed enough to live in an ad hoc virtual freedom. It took ‘me’ about three weeks and I have never experienced anger since then. The first and crucial 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 vanishes forever, and then it is a relatively easy task to eliminate anger once and for all. One does this by neither expressing or repressing anger when an event happens that would previously trigger an outbreak. Anger is thus put into a bind, and the third alternative hoves into view, dispensing with the hostility that is a large part of ‘I’ the aggressive psychological entity, and gently ushering in an increasing ease and generosity of character. With this growing magnanimity, one becomes more and more anonymous, more and more selflessly motivated. With this expanding altruism one becomes less and less self-centred, less and less egocentric … the humanitarian ideals of peace, kindness, caring, benevolence and humaneness become more and more evident as an actuality. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 34b, 11 July 1999).
Does this clarify, and perhaps simplify, things for you?
Cheers Vineeto