JesusCarlos: 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?
JesusCarlos: 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. (…)
Hi JesusCarlos,
You are welcome.
When you notice not feeling good, instead of “pushing myself to feel good”, stand still and let the feelings ebb away, perhaps go back before the trigger event until you get back to feeling good again. Then you can look at the cause which triggered the diminishment of feeling good. Here is what Chrono reported –
Chrono: Something I re-read a few days ago that helped immensely as well was tracing back to feeling good before the trigger which caused a diminishment in feeling good. That itself automatically restores feeling good and when look at the trigger after that, it amounts to almost nothing and easily seen as habitual. [Emphasis added]. (link)
Vineeto: I don’t know the film but this is not synchronicity but real-world sentimental fantasy for bitter-sweet feel-good effect.
JesusCarlos: 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…
Thanks to this feedback, I see that I need to further refine my differentiation between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings.
I am pleased you can see that. Of course, one notices the bad feelings first, and now you can refine your attentiveness to distinguish “between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings”, which in normal-day parlance are lumped together in one category.
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.
JesusCarlos: 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.
Indeed. Here is how feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ put it –
‘Vineeto’: Expectation is certainly not the full description of my attitude towards extinction, obsession is a more appropriate word to use. It is one of the widespread spiritual requirements that one should not aspire, desire, expect but wait for the grace of Existence to grant fulfillment of one’s dreams. But as actualism is about the actual and not about some spurious feeling-state granted by some even more spurious Energy, I can be straight forward with wanting Actual Freedom, desiring it, expecting it to happen and doing everything I can to achieve it, just like people in the normal world aspire tangible, non-spiritual values like riches, a car, a position or a woman. What I mean is that I am the only person who can bring about my freedom from malice and sorrow and I am the only one who can rewire my brain to facilitate self-immolation. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF-List, Gary-b, 19.8.2000).
This recent exchange may also help –
Kuba: Which is to say that at the core of it there is no pre-set list of conditions which ‘I’ have to tick off as the ‘doer’ before felicity and innocuity is granted to ‘me’ – this is completely the wrong paradigm. It pre-supposes that felicity and innocuity is something that is granted as an end result of some kind of deterministic domino effect, all the while ‘I’ remain passive, waiting.
Vineeto: You put it well – this is the difference between actively taken life into your hands and changing yourself fundamentally, rather than following the reward/ punishment template and therefore passively wait for an authority, ‘mother nature’, karma or some supernatural force/ entity to capriciously dish out the rewards. In fact, this is one big difference between the straight and narrow path and the wide and wondrous path. (link)
It is useful to recognize the typical real-world affective paradigm of swinging from one side to its affective opposite while in actualism, when you get back to feeling good, you look for the third alternative using pure intent as your guide.
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.
JesusCarlos: Thanks for the “wall of fear” quote! I’ll read all the correspondence you mention.
It’s good to be up to date with the descriptions, reports and explanations about self-immolation because before the direct route was opened in January 2010 Richard had only his own path to an actual freedom to describe what happened for the first pioneer. It is a lot easier now to become actually free.
JesusCarlos: 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.
Indeed, being a friend to yourself is vital and helps you to uproot the detrimental habits of blaming and berating oneself, or others, being resentful, angry, lost or sad as reaction to unexpected events. Then naively enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive comes more naturally, and you recognize you live in a friendly world, all the while imitating actuality as much as possible.
Kuba: 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. (link)
JesusCarlos: 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. (link)
Here is a question for you – if meritocracy is the cause which “justifies inequality between human beings”, then why do you value the expertise, reports and explanations how to become actually free from those fellow human beings who have succeeded?
When you choose expertise and competence over ineptitude and incompetence then you choose merit over inadequacy (in a particular field). Whereas the “mantra of today’s world” is equality – ‘all are born equal’ – now cunningly renamed equity, which detrimental results of implementing this belief in law and regulations can be seen in many areas of human endeavour.
Note, Richard talked about “equity[1] and parity[2]”, for peace and harmony to flourish amongst human beings. (see The Formation and Persistence of the Social Identity, #04).
[1] Equity: the state, action or quality of even-handed dealing, even-handedness; fairness, justness; impartiality; unbiased;
[2] Parity: the state, action or quality of being on a par; an equivalence of status, level or value; correspondence, similarity;
(Adapted from Oxford Dictionary, see Neoteric Online Dictionary).
Richard: ‘It is important to remember, that when one questions a principle (such as equality) and its opposite (inequality) becomes obvious as a result of the question, that nothing has changed except that a belief has disappeared … inequality was always happening anyway. (Richard, List B, No. 37, 20 Mar 2000).
Cheers Vineeto