James: Love still has a hold on ‘me’ because it is the memory of the feeling of love. As we know this feeling doesn’t last and we are back to the bad side of love with hate and all the rest of it sooner or later.
Hi James,
Who is “we”?
James: Nevertheless I have been thru that many times before yet the feeling persists and continues to return along with the memory.
I’m thinking that if I stay with the feeling I can burn it out.
I’ve never really stayed with the feeling long enuf to extinguish it. (link)
Whereas the actualism method is –
Richard: … consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is. And this is because the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself. (…)
The more one enjoys and appreciates being just here right now – to the point of excellence being the norm – the greater the likelihood of a PCE happening … a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing the magical event, which indubitably shows where everyone has being going awry, to occur. Plus any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).
I am reminded of the conversation you had with Richard about addiction –
James: … Would you say that an addiction is the ‘me’ trying to cling to or recreate a ‘good’ feeling?
Richard: Indeed … but there possibly is more to it than that (I was involved in a verbal discussion about this only a couple of days ago) as what may become obvious, upon closer investigation, is that ‘I’ can be as much addicted to the suffering, which ensues as the eventual result of the high evaporating, as ‘I’ am addicted to the high in the first place.
Arguably more so, perhaps, despite how perverse the notion may sound at first hearing. (Richard, List B, James3, 22 Oct 2002
(…)
James: Upon looking at it further it appears that I am addicted to ‘me’ (suffering) but that I am also addicted to the escapes from the ‘me’.
Richard: Okay … is the addiction to being ‘me’ stronger than the addiction to escaping from being ‘me’?
I only ask because if the addiction to being ‘me’ is the more powerful addiction then successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods).
Whereas if the addiction to escaping is the more powerful addiction then successful escape can (and will) happen. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)
In other words, when you say “love still has a hold on ‘me’” is it because you hold onto love and its bitter-sweet memories? After all, ‘you’ are your feeling and your feeling are ‘you’.
Cheers Vineeto