Jesus Carlos Journal

[jesus.carlos]

Thanks for your kind and detailed reply @Vineeto

@Vineeto

Have you ever thought that it might be the other way round, that your fear is created by ‘me’ wanting to force ‘me’ to do something ‘I’ am not ready to voluntarily do?

This makes a lot of sense. And now I can see that in the last 2-3 weeks I’ve pushing myself to feel good when not. Or I have been reproaching myself for not being able to feel good in the midst of the sea of ​​difficulties I am facing now. So it makes sense to me to think that I caused that fear myself by trying despite everything to feel good, excellent, perfect and to become extinct.

@Vineeto

In this case this is not pure intent informing you but passions pitched against each other in order to keep ‘me’ in existence.

Got it!

@Vineeto

I don’t know the film but this is not synchronicity but real-world sentimental fantasy for bitter-sweet feel-good effect.

I didn’t realize it until I read it, and now I can see it clearly. It makes sense to me, especially because at that moment I felt very different than I did after the PCE a year ago. This time there was no lightness, but rather a kind of feeling of shock after the trauma, and with that feeling I fell into the trap of seeking shelter in good feelings…

@Vineeto

As you describe well, the effect of this fantasy is that you feel grateful, not appreciative, towards your partner – which is a ‘good’ feeling not a felicitous/ innocuous feeling.

Thanks to this feedback, I see that I need to further refine my differentiation between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings.

@Vineeto

‘I’ am feeding the fear, either by fighting against it or by wanting to have something immediately which needs a gentler more friendly approach, especially when it comes to ‘my’ extinction.

Of course! I can see that this way of wanting something immediately is an old, tantrum-like pattern of my personality. The other side of the coin, or the other extreme, is believing that achieving something will take forever, which turns me into a passive entity waiting for salvation.

@Vineeto

Stand back and have a chuckle about the antics ‘I’ get up to and get back to feeling good.

@Vineeto

As you might have gathered by now, when you are a friend to yourself and look at/ sort out the various obstacles to being happy and harmless, enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive, when you become more and more naïve, like yourself and others, then you can follow the wide and wondrous path of felicitous discoveries and appreciative amazement, then there is no need to get lost in the scary thicket of self-created fear, sorrow and bitter-sweet fantasy.

Then, following pure intent, one day the choice is so crystal-clear and irresistibly attractive, then the facts speak for themselves and inevitably trigger ‘my’ permission to the only obvious action which is not of ‘my’ doing.

Thanks for the “wall of fear” quote! I’ll read all the correspondence you mention. And I really appreciate this last summary of the method you’ve given me. I see that where I’m failing the most is in being a friend to myself. Especially this weekend, I was noticing that I don’t like myself, or that I’ve returned to that point I thought I’d overcome.

Thank you so much, @Vineeto . Your feedback helps me a lot to correct my course and avoid getting lost in more mazes.

@Kub933

But I can wholly agree now, that there is no need for anything serious or sudorific in all of this. Perhaps I had to run head first at that wall enough times for this to click though.

Thanks, Kuba! It’s encouraging to read that something similar has happened to you and that you’ve been able to turn it around. Needless to say, I read your diary with great enthusiasm, because I often find details I had overlooked and I never cease to admire your increasing clarity. Keep going!

@Kub933

So I wonder is this just another aspect of the “straight and narrow path”, a tenet which holds that suffering is required to succeed, that one’s success is predicated on how much pain they are willing to endure in the process etc.

An ancient belief, both Christian and Buddhist! Perhaps older than religions themselves. And a mantra of today’s world, of meritocracy that justifies inequality between human beings.