Vineeto: I remember asking both Claudiu and Kuba the same question: “who or what do you want to give all of ‘yourself’ to?” Was this what you were referring to?
JesusCarlos: Yes! Exactly, and I remember that it wasn´t very obvious or clear for them at the beginning, but thanks to your retro they were able to acknowledge it. If I’m not wrong, their answers also included my “second carrot” (humanity), which, in my perspective, first comes in a more intellectual way until you experience it viscerally after touching naivete thanks to intimacy with some specific being in your life. But well, this can be different with each one.
Hi JesusCarlos,
I find it curious that your term “carrot” (as in carrot and stick) designates you more as a donkey responding to reward and punishment rather than a sensate, sensitive, intelligent human being motivated by pure intent – that which is outside the human condition – and as such outside the dichotomy of desire and fear and all of the instinctual survival passions.
My question to Claudiu and Kuba and to all who want to be actually free from the human condition was aimed at discovering for themselves what is outside of ‘me’, more precious[1] than what ‘I’ hold most dear – ‘my’ self, ‘my’ presence, ‘my’ self-centric importance, something for which ‘I’ am willing to agree to ‘my’ extinction.
[1] There is something precious in living itself. Something beyond compare. (Richard, Selected Writing, Universe, #precious)
Regarding your question to what you call your “second carrot” I already replied when I said “you can’t help but be also more caring about the plight of others and “the global situation””. Sincerely and emphatically caring about all the wars and murders and suicides and domestic violence gives you plenty of reason to dare going all the way, for the benefit of this flesh-and-blood body JesusCarlos and that body, your partner’s flesh-and-blood body, and everybody.
Vineeto: You probably noticed that the way to become more immune to “emotional ups and downs” – both yours and hers – is to be paying particular attention to the seductive lure of affectuous intimacy –
JesusCarlos: Yes! And I’m having a little trouble here, understanding more clearly the distinction between that sweetness and the “direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate)”. Maybe a good parameter is to detect that sweetness doesn’t require a retribution, it’s all in itself, and love always require payment in back. Am I correct?
You probably meant reciprocity because “retribution” means punishment, justice, revenge and tit-for-tat. I agree that love, unless it’s the delusional state of Love Agape, requires mutualness and possessiveness to maintain itself because being a feeling it requires affirmation and confirmation. Whereas when you experience the felicitous advent of naïve intimacy and delight in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other, this very experience is fulfilling in itself and this intimacy is autonomous and unilateral.
Richard: (4) an utter lack of dignity in being so far up oneself (narcissistic) as to render the term ‘egotistical’ a mere bagatelle in comparison … and
JesusCarlos: Lol! Don’t know if I get this one right (sometimes I have difficulties in the translation to spanish, my mother tongue), but it means something like losing all fear or shame of being as one is and letting others see that, despite the risk of being classified as what in modern psychiatric terms means total narcissism? Of course I understand it doesn’t mean let passionate impulses run free across the meadow. It refers rather to allowing oneself to think about one’s own well-being in absolute terms, regardless of the desires or whims of others.
You have to remember that Richard in the above quote was referring to a fully deluded enlightened ‘being’. Hence what he described was that ‘he’ then gradually recognized the utter ridiculousness of upholding ‘his’ dignity in the light of the narcissistic nature of his passionate feelings of grandeur – being the Absolute and thus the latest saviour of humankind.
It does not mean “losing all fear or shame of being as one is and letting others see that, despite the risk of being classified as what in modern psychiatric terms means total narcissism” [Narcissism: self-love, extreme vanity; narcissist: an excessively self-admiring person]. (Oxford Dictionary).
A sincere actualist will not be a narcissist.
What it can mean for you, practically, is to recognize that whatever your egocentric good and bad feelings – such as feelings of pride/ humility, self-importance, feeling hurt/ insulted – want you to believe, acknowledge that they are just feelings and not facts – and when you are back to feeling good you can verify this fact for yourself and move in the direction of being less ‘self’-centric. For instance –
egocentricity: ‘Holding the view that the ego is the norm of all experience; viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre; assessing people via the filter of one’s own ego (also ‘ethnocentric’: judging people through a belief in the superiority and rightness of one’s own ethnic group; racism; nationalism). Oxford Dictionary
I am using the word egocentric – ‘viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre’ (The American Heritage® Dictionary) – in the same way as ‘ethnocentric’ is used:
• ethnocentric: centred on one’s own race or ethnic group; based on or characterised by a tendency to evaluate other races or groups by criteria specific to one’s own; having assumptions or preconceptions originating in the standards, customs, etc., of one’s own race or group. (Oxford Dictionary). (Richard, Abditorium, e, #Egocentricity)
It is rather the last two points (5) and (6) which are applicable for everyone – a sense of humour and “a delightful resurgence of the earlier felicity/ innocuity which again brought about, in combination with sensuousness, an outstandingly ingenuous sense of amazement, marvel and wonder”.
JesusCarlos: Thank you so much for the full quote. I didn’t know it before. It’s wonderful, especially considering how difficult it was for Richard to emerge from enlightenment.
And as always, thank you so much for your retro and support V. It is invaluable. (link)
You are very welcome. I posted the quote more for fun and historic reference. It was indeed extremely difficult to emerge from enlightenment but now a precedent has been set so that nobody needs to follow in Richard’s footsteps, and the danger of becoming fully deluded could well have disappeared from the horizon.
Cheers Vineeto