Vineeto: Do you take a closer look at anxiety, for instance, once you are back to feeling good, to find out what causes this anxiety to arise in the first place so that it won’t have to arise in the first place?
JesusCarlos: Yes! Doing this has been essential to dismantle that old habit, that I and Felix share. It’s a weakening process right now.
That is excellent to hear.
Vineeto: Why do you say you are not free of the resentment after you identified it? Why did you allow it back into your life after you have realized how silly it is?
JesusCarlos: Oh! I said it in theoretical terms, but maybe I misunderstood something. When to my previous post you answered:
Vineeto: So you see, you discovered straight away what the solution to longing “for recognition” will ultimately be.
I concluded that only when ‘I’ self immolate, I can become free of this and every aspect of the human condition (the need of nurture and desire that are the instincts from which ‘I’ emerge) and that before it happens what I can do is to diminish it to a 99% degree.
Mmh, so you essentially understood it that you can put off the solution to your problem to when you self-immolate?
Here is the quote from ‘Vineeto’ in that previous post –
‘Vineeto’: Once I made the commitment to become free ‘I’ then agreed to be discovered and to be dismantled … and there is an inherent joy and relief in no longer having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 32b, 6.3.2005) (link)
Did the fact of not “having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud” change anything in your “longing for recognition”?
JesusCarlos: But apart from this, it also makes sense to me that I need to look more closely at the problem to see if I can root it out. From what I have been researching and working on in therapy (cognitive-behavioral therapy), this aspect of my personality, the intense needing of recognition and approval, was born mainly in the first three years of my life, due to the particular dynamics that occurred in my family and was strengthened over time after not having been detected earlier and dismantled it (I didn’t knew any method to do it anyways). I am now 40 and it has been my main discovery since last year and especially in these last two months.
Mmh, all you get from therapy is a justification for any particular persistent feeling or problem. You can blame your upbringing, your peers, your teachers, your parents, society, capitalism or whatever else, it is merely justifying to have that problem or holding onto that problem. In therapy feeling beings treat other feeling beings with sympathy and compassion to make them fit better into the human condition. I am not saying to stop therapy, that is for you to decide. What I am saying is that it needs a lot more – to have the courage to acknowledge that one is addicted to being ‘me’ and commit oneself whole-heartedly to the task of becoming free from that addiction.
That’s why Richard says in This Moment of Being Alive
[Richard]: If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh … yes: ‘He said that and I …’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I …’. Or: ‘What I wanted was …’. Or: ‘I didn’t do …’. And so on and so on … one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood … usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most …
And this is because the actualism method is about one thing and one thing only –
[Richard]: … 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.
I admit, it does take courage to change oneself, to willingly diminish the influence and control ‘I’ have on my life – to stop feeling sad, or proud, or humble or malicious when those feelings happen. But unless ‘I’ “consciously and knowingly” set out to “imitating life in the actual world” everything ‘I’ do is just patchwork, to feel a little better than before but fundamentally stay as I am. Unless I have a “commitment to become free” and agree “to be discovered and to be dismantled” I might as well forget the whole business.
I keep being reminded of what Geoffrey wrote, cutting through the whole charade of ‘my’ precious feelings and ‘my’ precious identity –
[Geoffrey]: For a split second I saw like a veil in front of me. I saw how I could be on the other side of the ‘mirror’, on the safe side, the magical side, how I could… But there was a last second resistance: My precious! I will not give away my precious!
Later on the way back, I was thinking about this ‘precious’ thing, how only here on this tiny planet right now there are 7 billion people just as ‘unique’ and ‘precious’ as my self, when it clicked… and I burst into laughter. This was simply hilarious. Everybody is so precious. I must then be SO precious hahaha.
Every little ‘me’ waging wars against other little ‘me’ because they are so precious. Whereas they are just the same product of evolution and animal passions, with the same hiding place, the same hunger, the same dirtiness. You can’t be serious!
I saw without a shadow of a doubt that ‘I’ am the cause of every evil, corruption, dirt… just because ‘I’ am ‘so precious’. How ‘I’ mess everything up for myself and everybody just because ‘I’ am. And not some dissociated ‘I’ with enough quotes not to be me, but me right now thinking this. [emphasis added]. (Becoming Free Reports, Geoffrey).
Cheers Vineeto