Vineeto: Remember to get back to feeling good once you come across one of those “uncomfortable feelings” before you endeavour to investigate them. Often they are merely bad habits and easy to nip in the bud, but sometimes, when they return again, they need further exploration, like when you “cannot force this seeing”. Then there might be a dearly held belief or a personal truth or a cherished desire which keeps it in place.
Josef: This is very true in my experience. For me personally, getting back to feeling at least neutral happens by stop trying to force feeling good. This may just be my own tendency, but I redouble my efforts and try extra hard to push bad feelings away, often by “investigation” (this kind of investigation is just an attempt at suppression). Real, organic investigation happens when there’s no pressure and one is curious.
Hi Josef,
What you experience in those instances of trying to force feeling good is the increasing affective power of ‘me’ whenever you add energy by fighting unpleasant feelings, such as pushing them away, or trying to force good feelings by what you call “this kind of investigation”. Such action will only increase the intensity of your affective feelings. As you correctly observed, “organic investigation happens when there’s no pressure and one is curious”. Hence Richard’s suggestion that whenever your mood dips below feeling good, notice what it was that triggered the diminishing of feeling good and then get back to feeling good before endeavouring to sort out the obstacle in question.
Richard: What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.
What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.
Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet. (Richard, AF List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005).
Josef: I’ve put things on a “does not matter” basis recently. This has been quite difficult for me to do, and I have realized I am quite a domineering personality, wanting to always have my preferences met. Going along with others’ preferences recently has triggered this fear in me of being taken advantage of or being a doormat for other people’s whims. But yesterday when I tried this, honestly everything turned out fine and I had a great time. I felt light and happy and harmless. It seems my pushing of my preferences is driven by this fear. Most of the things that happen do not really matter…
It’s great that you tried it out experientially, because events always turn out differently with sincere intent operating than theoretically or philosophically anticipated. This tool of putting everything on a “does not matter” basis also applies to weather, or situations beyond your control and whatever else happens in your daily life. “Pushing of my preferences” may partly be driven by its opposite, “this fear”, and it is also part and parcel of an identity’s inherent self-centricity, i.e. seeing everybody and every event and every thing merely from ‘my’ point of view/ my benefit or loss. When you become increasingly aware of this automatically operating self-centricity /ego-centricity [egocentric – ‘viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre’ (The American Heritage® Dictionary)] and how it interferes with felicity/ innocuity, then putting everything on an ‘it doesn’t really matter basis’ makes even more sense.
Josef: And for the things that do, I take a stand only if what’s happening is falling outside the realm of being sensible. This kind of action comes from a very different and more grounded place. (link)
You may find this recent post interesting in this context –
Kuba: I never thought to question assertiveness, in fact I even remember as a kid in school being taught how it is so very important…
Also to tie it into Richard’s quote about preference, if I am asserting myself it means that I have already made it serious, which means it is no longer a self-less inclination, it is now a self-centred urge. This is exactly how I have observed conversations turn into arguments too.
Vineeto: Yes, you will be surprised how much effect it has on your whole outlook in life when you deliberately and consistently replace any self-centred urge which occurs with what is to happen as just being a preference. This quote from Richard might give you encouragement – (2 Oct 2025)
Richard: An anecdote might best illustrate what I mean: many years ago my then-companion Devika would oft-times say to me that I should stand up for myself and not let peoples (such as you describe) push me around … indeed, it was one of the reasons she created a psychic force-field in her psyche (which is, of course, the human psyche) so as to protect what she saw, experientially, back then as innocence personified.
(She was wont to exclaim, on occasion, how ‘Richard brings something marvellous – something absolutely wonderful – into the world and yet everyone deposits ordure on it’ … albeit not expressed quite so politely as that).
What she did not realise – except during a PCE of course – is that innocence itself (the genuine article and not the so-called innocence of children) requires no affective vibe/ psychic current protection whatsoever and, therefore, in vain would I explain to her that, in everyday situations such as you report (where the whole point of the exercise is to walk out the door with the goodies which those in a position of power and control can either dispense or withhold), I had no interest whatsoever in futilely striving to win a puny ego-battle with some officious power-tripper but, instead, walk away with the said goodies each time. (Richard, List D, No. 32, 7 July 2013).
Richard: … the counsel I consistently offered to Devika – vis-à-vis her insistence on ‘standing up for oneself’ to all and sundry – came from feeling-being ‘Richard’ (i.e., from ‘his’ success) and not from this flesh-and-blood body typing these words. (Richard, List D, Srid2, 14 Jan 2016).
The key ingredient, apart from aiming to be felicitous/ innocuous it to sensibly, i.e. when necessary, emotionally accept what is intellectually unacceptable so as to not compromise one’s intelligence.
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).
Cheers Vineeto