I don’t have a connection to pure intent. It seems like I have abandoned that pursuit.
Will try and read TMOBA again.
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James: I don’t have a connection to pure intent. It seems like I have abandoned that pursuit.
Will try and read TMOBA again.
Hi James,
Can you pinpoint the trigger which caused you to “abandoned that pursuit”?
Cheers Vineeto
Hi James,
I just found a quote that might be useful –
• [Alan]: ‘… the only question which remains – do ‘I’ have the necessary intestinal fortitude to proceed?
• [Richard]: ‘No … because no one has ‘the necessary intestinal fortitude to proceed’ before they proceed: it comes in sufficient quality, and only as required by the circumstances, as one proceeds.
The question is: what is preventing ‘me’ from proceeding? (Richard, List AF, Alan-b, 28 January 2001).
Cheers Vineeto
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Back to enjoying, appreciating and having fun. Still no pure intent. I think what is stopping me is the belief that ‘I can’t.’
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Hi James,
I thought so. This is a habitual belief adopted by you from your dead father, you can recognize it as being unproductive and decline to believe in it any longer.
Because it has become a habit it requires your attentiveness to decline it as soon as it makes its appearance and replace it with a habitual confidence that you can, and have already done so a few times.
Changing yourself does involve a bit of effort but it is well worth it.
Cheers Vineeto
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I’m an old affective habit. Pure intent has two sides, or two aspects. The one that comes from ‘my’ commitment to change that habit, and replace it with a beneficial one, throu the practical actions that ‘I’ do to achieve it (attentiveness, enjoyment, investigation, appreciation, fun, etc) and the other that comes from the universe, that will help this body, pulling ‘me’ towards the actual world until ‘my’ erradication, but only if I take the first step, and the second, and so on:
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I need to say goodbye to the memory of my late father like I did to the memory of my ex-wife. That memory is holding me back. Goodbye dad.
The only memory I need now is the memory of pure intent. The memory I have of pure intent is that it was so clear and so pure. I remember it now.
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‘I’ have been letting the pain win and take away my feeling good, enjoyment, appreciation and fun. I have decided not to fight the pain by not objecting to it. I need to see the fact of the pain instead of fighting it.
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The wheels have come off. ‘I’ am depressed. I need to keep my hands in my pockets and ride this out.
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James: The wheels have come off. ‘I’ am depressed. I need to keep my hands in my pockets and ride this out.
Hi @James,
Alternatively you can look for the trigger which caused you to be depressed. It may just be a habitual reaction which you could easily decline to obey any longer.
Additionally you can do whatever works for you to get back to feeling good and then look closer at the trigger so that it won’t entrap you again. You are your feelings, hence those feelings are not able to dictate how you experience this moment unless you allow it.
Also you can remember the 2 takeaways which got you back to feeling excellent a month ago –
James: Another thing I noticed during this experience was that I was the experience of what was happening. I didn’t stop to analyze what was happening.
I don’t think this experience is gone although I am talking about it in past tense. I was still the experience of what was happening on my drug store run and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I have two takeaways: 1) There is no inner world and outer world. There is only the actual world. 2) I am the experience of what is happening. (link)
Cheers Vineeto
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The trigger was the painful condition of my back and not seeing anyway for it to get better and that it can only get worse.
The fact is the pain is tolerable with the pain meds and my new back doctor might can help me. The name of his practice is Texas Intervention Pain Care so maybe he can intervene although I can’t see it. I need to be patient and give him a chance. Patience is the key.
My motivation is my memory of the actual world.
I can get back to feeling good by getting a good night of sleep and start eating better and doing what exercise I can to strengthen the core of my back like he told me to do.
James: The wheels have come off. ‘I’ am depressed.
Vineeto: Alternatively you can look for the trigger which caused you to be depressed. It may just be a habitual reaction which you could easily decline to obey any longer. […] 2 takeaways which got you back to feeling excellent a month ago –James: 2) I am the experience of what is happening. (link)
James: The trigger was the painful condition of my back and not seeing anyway for it to get better and that it can only get worse.
The fact is the pain is tolerable with the pain meds and my new back doctor might can help me. The name of his practice is Texas Intervention Pain Care so maybe he can intervene although I can’t see it. I need to be patient and give him a chance. Patience is the key.
My motivation is my memory of the actual world.
I can get back to feeling good by getting a good night of sleep and start eating better and doing what exercise I can to strengthen the core of my back like he told me to do.
Hi James,
According to the sequence of what you wrote, the tigger is not the pain itself but your emotional reaction to it.
This is called resentment. You had the pain for a long time and it waxes and wanes, that is the nature of your particular condition. Of course, you do whatever is practical and possible regarding the physical condition. However, it is your resentment about having the pain in the first place, which acerbates it and feeds ‘me’, it feeds your feeling bad and angry about the pain.
Or you can change being resentful and angry because you acknowledge that are your feelings. I had feedback from several other people who have given up their resentment with instant success including diminishment of pain for some, after understanding this simple mechanism that one can change one’s affective outlook on life when recognizing that ‘I’ am my feelings.
Richard lived with his severe back pain for about a decade, after the pain medication stopped working. I never ever heard him complain about it nor did he stop enjoying and appreciating being alive.
You do not have to be depressed, unless you choose to be.
Cheers Vineeto
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Ok, there is resentment to having the pain because it is the only thing taking away from me having a very good life in my golden years. Other than this one condition I am in great shape physically and financially to have a great life for twenty more years. People tell me all the time that I don’t look my age. I need to drop the resentment (emotional reaction) to the pain and enjoy and appreciate my life.
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I intend to do what it takes to enjoy and appreciate the rest of my life in the actual world.
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I’m sorry for your condition and your situation James. I really relate to your thread. I’ve been contending with a slew of health issues for years which for the past 3 years have rendered me consistently exhausted and often uncomfortable, with no stamina to enjoy most of the things I used to love. I’m not even 30 yet. I understand how hard it is to appreciate and enjoy when your life is shadowed by pain.
I feel this, I feel so much resentment. I don’t want to live like this. I enjoy the one walk a day I force myself to go on to not be entirely sedentary, and the occasional activity I rally for, but mostly I lead a painful and lonely life and my peers are healthy and experiencing what life has to offer and I feel scared and frustrated and sad. I would give anything to change things but I’ve been trying for years with no success so I’m turning my efforts to making peace with the situation. Even considering that leaves me frustrated, it’s not what I want, I don’t want to make peace with it. I just want to not be in pain anymore, and the anguish seems like the only pain I might have any agency to change
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I spent my youth being uncomfortable and anxious because the discomfort was making me miserable but I was so dissociated from my body (since that was the only way I knew how to cope for years) that I couldn’t even trace the cause of my misery or advocate for my needs, I just withdrew deeply into my own head. I was perceived as lazy and awkward and learned to hate myself to force myself to neglect the discomfort of my body and do what it took to fit in.
This might sound self-pitying but the recognition feels like a relieving break in the wall of self-hate that has dominated the last 18 years of my life. But now I feel grief for the time wasted, and for all the self-abuse.
Sorry for hijacking the thread, I felt pretty emotional while writing. After the catharsis of venting though, as the pain of emotionality is subsiding, the physical pain alone is definitely more tolerable. The habit of hating it is a hard one to break
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Sorry to hear of your troubles @scout
Although I don’t have any experience with the type of issues you describe, I wonder if this would help… it basically comes down to that there are aspects about life that you don’t want to be the way they are, this is outside of your control, and you feel that the only or only appropriate way to react to this is with anguish, misery, hate, self-hate, self-abuse and grief.
Yet there is one common aspect that nearly every feeling-being can relate to that they don’t want it to be that way: namely that one day we will die! We have absolutely no say in the matter. Death will come for us all, we are all mortal. And no matter how much we don’t want it to be that way, we can’t change it. Whether we believe in a God that gives us an afterlife or not, or try to build a legacy for our children, or any of these things, they’re all just ways to try to avoid the inevitable.
However rather than trying to change the fact, what about accepting the fact? Accept the fact and embrace the fact that one day that will be the end. I wrote about this recently and it was transformative:
In other words, try to really let it sink in, over even picture it, that your consciousness will end, and for the rest of all eternity, it will not exist anymore, you will not exist anymore!
Now considering that, and work backwards a little – how is it that you want to live the time you do have left?
Of course it would be preferable to have your health issues cured rather than not, but considering you can’t change that for now… how do you want to be experiencing this, your only moment of being alive? Do you really want to live in anguish and self-pity and hate and pain for the rest of your days until the end? Or would you rather take the opportunity to live it as best you can?
I’m not sure if it will help but, it really helped put things into perspective for me. I am curious if you will find it helpful at all!
Best regards,
Claudiu
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This is an excellent discussion…Its for such reasons people say things like “You can have a 100 problems but you have only 1 problem when you have a health problem”
I’ve been through all kinds of physical pains and now they don’t bother me much…As Vineeto said in a reply that they sort of remain in the background…
But then I can’t say to what intensify others experience pains
I’ve noticed an intresting thing about health issues…something I found out due to my ongoing daily gut issues…that if everyone were to suffer the same issues as I have or perhaps if I were the only person left on Earth, how would I see my gut issues ? And I realize they wouldn’t matter much or perhaps not matter at all…which means there is a comparison factor which makes the health issue much worse than it actually is !
PS : I’m truly enjoying all the posts here by everyone…its the most happening place on Earth 
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@scout I hear you about your pain and suffering. What you quoted above from Vineeto really helped me and I hope it can help you. The point she made is that it is the resentment (emotional reaction) about having the pain that acerbates it. When I dropped the resentment to the pain then I wasn’t suffering. There is just the pain itself which isn’t all that bad with the pain meds I am taking. Iow, the pain itself is a lot easier to deal with without the resentment about it which is what causes the suffering.
PS: I am actually back to enjoying and appreciating now.
Good luck Scout. Let me know if I can help.
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I think that grief/mourning is a good way to characterize this type of situation. I am familiar with both as I lost a close family member at age 20 and spent years primarily in grief. I now recognize that in many ways those were ‘lost’ years in which I experienced great sadness, retreating from life, and later resentment for those lost years. Those lost years were ultimately for nothing and was really something that I did to myself; yes there was a death, but death is something that comes to everyone sooner or later - it cannot be avoided in the long run, as @claudiu points out. However, the emotional dynamic can be avoided.
I see this dynamic of circumstance → sadness/mourning/grief → resentment repeated in many aspects of life now, and this example of health issues is another such example.
The circumstances themselves may not be easily changed and we certainly can’t go back and change the past, but the elements of present-time sadness, mourning, grief, and resentment can evaporate in an instant, if you choose.
When I look back at my years of sadness and then resentment, I see nothing but a missed opportunity. No degree of sadness could reclaim any time with my dead family member - all that happened was I didn’t enjoy my early 20s as much as I could have. Because of that experience, I now see it as an easy choice: if I have an opportunity to feel grief, I decline it.
Am I happy that the initial death happened? Certainly not, but it did happen, and there is nothing I can do about it. But now seeing those events occurring, whatever circumstances occurring, as unavoidable, and turning my attention to making the most of my life and of this moment.
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