James' Journal

Journals
609

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

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Yes thanks Vineeto, actually it does clarify and simplify things for me. I am still living independently at home and its not that bad. I have plenty of help from my doctor prescribing some relative mild to moderate pain meds which help w/o being addictive w/o bad side effects , my maid who cleaned my house today, and my neighbor who put in my new air conditioner yesterday. I am still able to enjoy and appreciate while getting my shopping done and eating.
Your reminder of a virtual freedom was timely because that sounds doable even if I am unable to go all the way and there is nothing wrong with being 99.9 % free.
Also, I haven’t given up on improvement of my condition. While scrolling on Facebook I ran across an add for Texas Back Relief and clicked on it from which they got my phone # and persistently called me about getting a second opinion. I have agreed for an appt with their Neurosurgeon who is an Indian Dr with 37 yrs experience so maybe he can help me.
A virtual freedom with mild to moderate pain sounds doable, Thanks for the guidance, The appt is Thurs so will let you know how it goes. This just my be the right path for me at this point. It is 20 miles away with a nice freeway all the way and the person I talked to on the phone sounded friendly and courteous. I expect everything to go good,

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James: Yes thanks Vineeto, actually it does clarify and simplify things for me. I am still living independently at home and its not that bad. I have plenty of help from my doctor prescribing some relative mild to moderate pain meds which help w/o being addictive w/o bad side effects, my maid who cleaned my house today, and my neighbor who put in my new air conditioner yesterday. I am still able to enjoy and appreciate while getting my shopping done and eating.
Your reminder of a virtual freedom was timely because that sounds doable even if I am unable to go all the way and there is nothing wrong with being 99.9 % free.
Also, I haven’t given up on improvement of my condition. While scrolling on Facebook I ran across an add for Texas Back Relief and clicked on it from which they got my phone # and persistently called me about getting a second opinion. I have agreed for an appt with their Neurosurgeon who is an Indian Dr with 37 yrs experience so maybe he can help me.
A virtual freedom with mild to moderate pain sounds doable, Thanks for the guidance, The appt is Thurs so will let you know how it goes. This just my be the right path for me at this point. It is 20 miles away with a nice freeway all the way and the person I talked to on the phone sounded friendly and courteous. I expect everything to go good, (link)

Hi James,

Thank you for your reply. I noticed that you only commented on outward physical changes which improve(d) your condition but not about the experimental option which might well bring a permanent change to feeling more felicitous and appreciative being alive –

Vineeto: … 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. (link)

You do understand, do you, that as long as you nurse any kind objection/ resentment, you are not yet “99.9 % free” and there is still room for improvement.

Cheers Vineeto

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Thanks again Vineeto for another timely reminder. I really got it this time. Actually, I really got both of your salient points: 1) Its the experiential option that can bring about a permanent change along with the physical changes, 2) Don’t harbor objection/resentment to the pain or anything else. I cannot be 99.9% free as long as I do.
I have really noticed this time that as long as I have any objection or resentment to the pain or any thing else then I will not be virtually free.
It has made a huge difference to me to focus on virtual freedom before I try for actual freedom.
I recall @geoffrey saying this was important also.
I really appreciate your detailed attention in guiding me.
I can now better cope with my pain whether the new doctor can help me or if it gets worse. This has helped me to make a huge breakthrough in pain management and virtual freedom simultaneously.

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James: Thanks again Vineeto for another timely reminder. I really got it this time. Actually, I really got both of your salient points: 1) It’s the experiential option that can bring about a permanent change along with the physical changes, 2) Don’t harbor objection/ resentment to the pain or anything else. I cannot be 99.9% free as long as I do.
I have really noticed this time that as long as I have any objection or resentment to the pain or any thing else then I will not be virtually free.
It has made a huge difference to me to focus on virtual freedom before I try for actual freedom.
I recall @geoffrey saying this was important also.
I really appreciate your detailed attention in guiding me.
I can now better cope with my pain whether the new doctor can help me or if it gets worse. This has helped me to make a huge breakthrough in pain management and virtual freedom simultaneously. (link)

Hi James,

You are welcome.

This is really a great report of success. As you say “I really got it this time.”

I particularly like that you say you “can now better cope with my pain whether the new doctor can help me or if it gets worse”.

Each time the habit to reject pain wants to return you replace it with an emotional acceptance as being all part and parcel of being alive. So it will no longer be a hindrance to you enjoying and appreciating being alive.

This is wonderful.

Vineeto

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I have some objections and resentments arising that are interfering with my quest for virtual freedom which seem to be related to authority.
The private messages on this forum aren’t really private if some people have access to them. I don’t even know who these people are or why they have the authority to do that.
Also still have an issue with my health care. I have resentment to them stopping me from using thc even though this could be helping me. It is the authority I resent.
I think this is related to my father asserting his authority over me and the way he did it.

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Deleted double posting.
Vineeto

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James: I have some objections and resentments arising that are interfering with my quest for virtual freedom which seem to be related to authority.
The private messages on this forum aren’t really private if some people have access to them. I don’t even know who these people are or why they have the authority to do that.
Also still have an issue with my health care. I have resentment to them stopping me from using thc even though this could be helping me. It is the authority I resent.
I think this is related to my father asserting his authority over me and the way he did it. (link)

Hi James,

Having a complaint that live isn’t fair?

And yet you are presenting the same topics of problems I have answered for you several times – resentment and objection to authority, which both means you are really resenting that the world is as it is and people are as they are. For instance –

Vineeto: According to the sequence of what you wrote, the trigger 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. (link)

Vineeto: 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. [Emphases added]. (Richard, List B, No. 34b, 11 July 1999). (link)

On March 6 you reported that you “really got it”.

James: I really got it this time. Actually, I really got both of your salient points: 1) It’s the experiential option that can bring about a permanent change along with the physical changes, 2) Don’t harbor objection/ resentment to the pain or anything else. I cannot be 99.9% free as long as I do. (link)

And yet you here you are today wondering what to do about being resentful.

First, read what has been written before and what Richard said about getting rid of resentment – reflect, contemplate and become fascinated how the human condition works in you.

Then feel it, allow the feeling of resentment to the point or experiencing that you are this feeling, long enough to experientially recognize how silly it is to be this way.

From there you can choose to be something different, for instance instead be felicitous and appreciative of being alive on this wonderful planet earth.

Once this works, take note how you did it in order to use it next time – until you really get it, that any resentment is utterly silly, a waste of time, and doesn’t change anything at all except spoil this moment of being alive.

The same with the issue of authority – which is really emotionally saying, “I want it my way”, and then blame your father that you have this problem. Your father is long dead, you now have to deal with your feelings yourself, and you do it the same way as I laid out above. Accept emotionally what you may not be able to accept intellectually –

>>JAMES: … My question is: Can I accept the unacceptable? (…)
RICHARD: Given that people are as-they-are and that the world is as-it-is there are more than a few things which are ‘unacceptable’ (child abuse, rape, murder, torture and so on). What worked for me twenty-odd years ago, as a preliminary step, was to rephrase the question so that it makes sense (rather than vainly apply any of those unliveable ‘unconditional acceptance’ type injunctions):
• Can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable?
This way intelligence need not be compromised … intelligence will no longer be crippled. (Richard, List B, James2, 18 Aug 2001).

Again, take note how it works, so you don’t forget what to do when it occurs next time.

High time to play now rather than resenting something you cannot change, such as healthcare systems.

When you have a problem with list privacy, ask a moderator to explain it to you.

There is really nothing, nothing at all, that is worth giving the power to spoil this very moment, the only moment you can actually experience being alive.

Cheers Vineeto

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Thanks Vineeto, I really did get it this time. In the words of John Mellencamp: “I fight authority, authority always wins.”
I am actually better off w/o thc and I don’t have any private messages anyway. As you said it is a waste of time to resist authority which takes away from my enjoyment of the moment. :slight_smile:

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I’m in a hospital rehab now trying to piece my life back together after a fall at home caused by pain medication. I’ve been in three hospitals which were a lot of suffering with various operations and treatment. I have felt suicidal a lot and would rather die than go thru it again. I may still have some kind of good life left. It’s just unknown now what my brain and body will be able to do.

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James: I’m in a hospital rehab now trying to piece my life back together after a fall at home caused by pain medication. I’ve been in three hospitals which were a lot of suffering with various operations and treatment. I have felt suicidal a lot and would rather die than go thru it again. I may still have some kind of good life left. It’s just unknown now what my brain and body will be able to do. (link)

Hi James,

Welcome back and good to hear you are much better after your fall at home, and that you say that you “may still have some kind of good life left”.

While you are recovering and mainly inactive, here is a way of experiencing being here via being aware of the variety of your sensate experiencing –

Richard: ‘… if one were to close the eyes one will find there is a sensing, or perception, of being oriented in space (of space all around including behind the body) … and this has as much to do with balance, acceleration and/or rotation in space, orientation in a gravity field (if there be one) as it has to do with the proprioceptive senses proper in the muscles, tendons, and joints.
The proprioceptive senses are part of the somatic sensory system (somaesthesis/ somaesthesia) which is the faculty of bodily perception (sensory systems associated with the body) and includes skin senses (cutaneous receptors for hot/cold, pressure, physical pleasure/pain, for example) and the internal organs sensors (cardiovascular or circulatory receptors for blood pressure, heart rate, and carbon dioxide and digestive tract receptors for hunger and thirst, for instance) as well as the equilibrium sense, or sense of balance, already mentioned.
Thus proprioception is the ability to sense the position and location and orientation and movement of the body, and its parts, because of the proprioceptors in the muscles, tendons, and joint capsules (in combination with the sense of balance, acceleration and/or rotation in space, and orientation in a gravitational field, of the inner ear or vestibular organ).
In other words: the sense of being here, in space, as a body is not just because of sight (visual perception), sound (auditory perception), touch (cutaneous perception), smell (olfactory perception), and taste (gustatory perception). (Richard, AF List, No. 44a, 10 Jul 2003).

The definition in the Abditorium about proprioceptive sensing gives even more details (link).

I wish you success in getting back to feeling good.

Cheers Vineeto

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Hi James,

I thought of the following quote and thought I would share it as it may be of benefit:

Is it not worth it to first give it your all, give 100% of everything you got, to attain that which is so precious, to live it and experience it yourself?

Best regards,
Claudiu

  1. ↩︎
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Starting to pick up the pieces of four weeks in four hospitals and not knowing where to start. I have to begin with what to do about my pee. They still have me peeing in a bag attached to me so that is taking precedence.
I have gone from wanting to die to dealing with what’s next. The health obstacles seem insurmountable but doesn’t seem so bad by doing what is necessary next. Slowly starting to enjoy my life as it is now.

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What worries me is the uncertainty of my various health conditions and not knowing what I will have to do. The hospitals and doctors have left me hanging as to the various conditions I am facing.
This has left me with good training to take things as they come w/o any expectations.
So far the hospitals, doctors and nurses haven’t met any of my expectations. It seems as if they really don’t care.
Basically, I know very little to nothing about what’s ahead for me.
I have learned to be patient and wait.
I could be lucky and die in my sleep or I could recover somewhat and lead a happy life.

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James: What worries me is the uncertainty of my various health conditions and not knowing what I will have to do. The hospitals and doctors have left me hanging as to the various conditions I am facing.
This has left me with good training to take things as they come w/o any expectations.
So far the hospitals, doctors and nurses haven’t met any of my expectations. It seems as if they really don’t care.
Basically, I know very little to nothing about what’s ahead for me.
I have learned to be patient and wait.
I could be lucky and die in my sleep or I could recover somewhat and lead a happy life. (link)

Hi James,

Good to hear from you.

Being worried is an understandable reaction to your present circumstances but, once you get back to feeling good and have a clear-eyed look at the overall situation, you will, perhaps bit by bit, discover that almost all that is happening is not in your control and as such ‘I’, the controller, really can’t do anything about it but to worry, i.e. make you feel bad, which is not only an unpleasant pastime but unhealthy as well.

The actual situation is not in your control because, as you say, you don’t know what you “will have to do”. You are in the system of care of hospital and doctors and they will eventually tell you what your choices are, if there are any choices which are not already obvious.

So really, it cannot cause any harm to stop worrying and start feeling good instead. It’s a much more pleasant way to spend your time whilst being “patient and wait”. You are alive and able to appreciate each precious moment of being alive.

Cheers Vineeto

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Seeing and feeling the resilience of the body this morning. Starting to feel like I am coming back. I am for sure on the right path.

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Been pulling myself up by my bootstraps and the results are paying off. I have been experiencing enjoyment and appreciation slowly but surely. How sweet it is!

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James: Been pulling myself up by my bootstraps and the results are paying off. I have been experiencing enjoyment and appreciation slowly but surely. How sweet it is! (link)

Hi James,

Good to hear from you and I am glad you “been experiencing enjoyment and appreciation” despite “the uncertainty of my various health conditions”. (link)

I looked up the term ‘pulling oneself up by the bootstraps’ which ‘Peter’ introduced and ‘he’ and ‘Vineeto’ made use of on several occasions. They both used it in a similar sense of ‘getting back to feeling good’ as quickly as possible but with a hint that it sometimes was an effort to extract oneself from the glue of the ubiquitous human condition.

‘VINEETO’: There is something else that helps me and that is to remember to be friends with myself and rather than being down on myself for being irritated or fearful to instead give myself a pat on the back for noticing that I was. This way it’s much easier to pull myself up by my bootstraps and to get back to being happy again in no time. It’s a persistent habit to break, this telling myself off for not being perfectly happy for 24hrs a day, but I do notice it much quicker these days than I used to. Then it is not so much a matter of weening myself off the ‘trough of the Human Condition’, as you call it, but more a slipping out of ‘my’ skin and sensately – and sensuously – enjoying being here.
I also had to realize that after I’ve been through certain intense feelings and passions there is nothing further to be learned from staying in the feeling. I used to be suspicious of Richard’s expression of ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’, ostensibly for the reason that it could be confused with repressing the feeling. But now I realized that I was also avoiding the technique itself because ‘I’ wanted to hang onto being ‘the explorer’ of deep passions whenever they occurred and I can see now that there is neither meaning nor value in ceaselessly examining an instinctual passion over and over and over again. In other words I have come to understand that no valuable insight is to be gained from deeply and repeatedly feeling fear – the most prominent of the passions for me – and this understanding has greatly helped to simply notice and label the feeling, in this case my fear of oblivion, and then get on with enjoying this moment of being alive, which is after all the point of actualism. (V – Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence Gary – 7))

Richard used the expression only once (“writ large”) in this quote –

Richard: Speaking personally from experience, eventually – and ultimately – all the instincts are undone instantly via psychological and psychic ‘self’-sacrifice. This is, purely and simply, altruism at its very best … and altruism’s energy is an instinctual passion (this is indeed hoisting oneself by one’s bootstraps … writ large). However, until the initiation of the process that leads to ‘self’-immolation is consciously triggered – whereupon the ending of ‘me’ happens of its own accord – one can become acutely aware of the operation of the instinctual passions as they are experienced moment-to-moment. It is but the same ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ investigation of beliefs and feelings … only extended deeper into one’s psyche.
Strangely enough, it does mean an exploration into the psychic realm … which is why it is essential that one first establishes a firm base – called virtual freedom – to fall back upon when the going gets tough. A journey into one’s psyche – which is the human psyche – is not for the faint of heart or the weak of knee … one must have nerves of steel to go all the way. The rewards for doing so are immense, however, and the ramifications far-reaching.
It means peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this flesh and blood body. (Mailing List 'AF' Respondent Mark)

And here is one just for fun –

JAMES: … I speak with personal experience because I have been in two cults in the past. One of them was very similar to this one which is why I think I initially identified with this one so well. I have extreme reservations about sending this to this list because I am sure it will be denied …
RICHARD: Yes, as I understand it, from the information provided to this Mailing List by several concerned people, I cannot know that it is a cult because I am in denial … so, given that you too see that I am in denial (‘I am sure it will be denied’), perhaps you can throw a little light on the matter for me if I share with you something from my personal life that I am currently involved in up to my neck (some would say obsessed with).
Four-five years ago I purchased a computer for the first time: at the time I considered it a major achievement if I could manage to get cash out of an ATM and I was incapable of tuning my TV and VCR (I arranged to get them tuned from the shop I purchased them from as part of the deal) so I searched around for someone who demonstrably knew about computing and who was willing to share their expertise with me.
So as to ensure anonymity I will call the person I found ‘Rachael’ and the name of the small company she was a director of ‘Bootstrap Computers’: I came to look upon Rachael as my mentor as she was only too happy to take the time to coach me through, not only the early stages of learning about the computer’s software programmes, but even through the more advanced stages wherein, thanks to her guidance and tutelage, I was coming into direct contact with the deeper aspects of the (to me at least) arcane world of computer hardware. For the sake of convenience she called the system she had devised to assist people like me ‘bootstrapism’ and digitally provided brochures, pamphlets, articles and books (there are even two that are for sale in paper-back form).
However, I have since found out – the more I became drawn into the intricacies of the computer condition – that not only was there a coterie that had formed around Rachael and the Bootstrap Computers organisation – but that I was starting to use the same-same lingo as all these other bootstrapists that she had sucked into her … dare I say it … her cult. And to think that all this was because I was ignorant enough to take advice from another – to follow another’s advice – instead of starting off from scratch (painting symbols on cave walls with various iron oxides and subsequently inventing pencils, pens, paper, typewriters and thence computers) in isolation from my fellow human beings.
Now, here is my problem: I have confronted her again and again – I have even hurled gutter invective against her and/or her followers using all the satirical criticism I can muster – but she steadfastly maintains that bootstrapism is not a cult and that she is not a cult-leader … and not even unknowingly a cult-leader being deviously used by her followers at that. Obviously, seeing that she denies all the charges levelled against her, she is in denial too.
What should I do … especially as I still want to learn about computers? (Richard, AF List, James, 12 Jul 2001).

You have come a long way since then, James – and now you can really enjoy and appreciate the tangible practical results of “bootstrapism” – “how sweet it is!”

It is truly marvellous.

Cheers Vineeto

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I am not bouncing right back and still not sure of coming all the way back so I was using the bootstrap analogy in terms of helping to pull myself up. Not yet ready to give up. I appreciate having you and the others here to help pull myself back up.

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There has been a noticeable breakthrough this morning. There is a discernible enjoyment and an upgrade in feeling good. Back to being glad to being alive. Things are looking up. I need to stay on track.
One thing I thought of is to enjoy and appreciate w/o thinking of how it should be.

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