Journal de Henry

Journals
210

3|16|22

Brought out of a really nice few days in a ‘new space’ of freedom when a friend thought I was rejecting her / seeing her as disposable

I found myself pulled into her narrative, that I was letting her down by not hanging out with her, talking with her.

I reduced its power but still as I was attempting to fall asleep (~30 minutes ago) I could see that I was no longer in that free-mind that I had recently broken into. The contrast was clear

I realized that I was trying to investigate (while vainly attempting sleep) from the space of not feeling well/semi-neutral, and could see that I was just going in circles. So I made a greater effort to get to feeling good

Because of the near proximity of the recent (relative) freedom, I soon found myself ‘out of the woods’ and back in a space of ‘free rein’

By the way, I think it’s very underrated to connect with one’s own PCEs, and pick out whatever characteristics can be recalled and use that ‘flavor’ when looking for feeling good/imitating the actual

Once I was experiencing purity again, I re-looked at the issue with my friend, and found to my surprise that the entire thing looked completely different

I can see now that she is one person among many, 30,000 people in my town alone, and that she does not have any more right to my time than any other person

I had been thinking of it in terms of her narrative, and in terms of the standard ‘friendship’ narrative, when the actual is so much bigger than that

It’s so predictably human for everything to be indexed back to the social

While I was attempting investigation from the space of feeling neutral-bad, I kept trying to ‘figure out’ the social angle, trying to piece the people and archetypes together in different ways to figure out the ‘right way’ that I should ‘do it.’

The best case scenario in this would be for me to ‘make a realization,’ ‘figure it out’ and ‘charge ahead’ with my new strategy… only to run into the weeds in short order as my ‘new strategy’ showed its lameness (as in, hobbled).

Rather, in the actual world, there is so much happening beyond these social archetypes

Even now countless cells within my body are metabolizing food, oxygen, and water, creating the energy necessary to do all the countless activities going on within my body

Just outside my house there are trees growing incrementally, shuttling water up from the ground

The wind is blowing tonight, rushing tremendous quantities of oxygen from one place to another

And here I am, fixated on the social, thinking that I need to ‘solve it’ for my security

My fear has been of boredom if I don’t have friends

How could I be bored? With all this activity going on

That boredom only exists at the social layer

Further to that, in this new free space (over the last couple of days) I’ve noticed that people have been remarkably friendly to me, approaching me

So all my plans to ‘figure out’ the social layer are merely the desperate strategems of a trapped entity, trying to manipulate and control others so I’m not alone

And they never work very well, I end up with the same repetitive interactions trying to force something to happen which isn’t happening

I can see that this is ‘leaving humanity’

The taboo aspect arises for me with this particular issue

It is ‘wrong’ to not prioritize friends, to not prioritize people

And here my attention is going to the motion of all things!

It’s so wonderful!

And in that social belief-layer is only ever more hurt feelings, more failures of attempting love over and over again

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Cheers @henryyyyyyyyyy

Such useful instructions in how to actually feel good and investigate.

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3|17|22

[Respondent No. 6] I am beginning to understand pulling back/ turning away: it is like crossing a rubicon, an experience of it can be physically felt as an empty space/ throbbing right under the belly (the uterus contracting).
…

• [Richard]: A deep feeling of dread, the abject intuition of impending doom, is fraught with foreboding, be it a grim, dire, or awful presage, and this intensely apprehensive trepidation is symptomatic of the existential angst (the anguish of the essential insecurity of being a contingent ‘being’) which underpins all suffering.

As such an occasion of profound dread is an opportune moment to plumb the depths of ‘being’ itself (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being) rather than avoidance through realisation of the portentous event as all manner of phantasmagoria can be manifested by such evasion.

With pure intent one can enable a movement into the existential angst, rather than despairingly grasping at doomsday straws, which movement facilitates the bright light of awareness being shone into the innermost recesses of ‘my’ presence … which is ‘presence’ itself.

Such an active perspicacity in ‘my’ moment of reckoning will reveal that ‘presence’ itself feeds off ‘my’ fear – it is its very life-blood as it were – and this functional acuity brings an abrupt end to its nourishment.

Whereupon all-of-a-sudden one finds oneself on the other side of the wall (to keep with the ‘cornered’ analogy for now) with the hitherto unseeable doorway to freedom closing behind one and one is walking freely in this actual world where one has already always been living anyway.

All what happened was that upon ‘my’ exposure dissolution occurred and the Land of Lament sank without a trace.

Did my own experiment last night based on the above passage

Basically on-purpose looked for fear so I could check its association with ‘me’ - the felt presence

‘presence’ itself feeds off ‘my’ fear – it is its very life-blood as it were

That would indicate that where fear is stronger, ‘I’ am stronger

Where fear is weaker, ‘I’ am weaker

With PCE involving no ‘me’ at all

After running the experiment a few times I can say experientially that that is indeed what is happening

When this body & brain is at its apperceptive clearest, without fear, there is also hardly any/no ‘me’ perceived either

I had taken it so for granted, ‘me’

Of course ‘I’ am, I’m always there after all! Right?

Nope. Only when there is some tinge of fear

And then when fear mounts, ‘my’ concerns grow to take up all my attention, as well.

All the coddling and protection I’ve done of myself over the years has only been protecting the fear. It’s all because of fear

I’ve sometimes struggled to understand what Richard meant by ‘self,’ but it is literally me. The felt inner me. The one that’s always been there since birth. Without fear, it’s not there anymore

Without ‘me,’ the ‘inner world’ collapses and attention is left on what’s happening, i.e. collected directly by the senses

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This also means that ‘nipping it in the bud’ can just be whenever I see ‘myself,’ too

Going immediately into enjoying & appreciating what’s happening

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Fear is the ‘food’ of the entity (me) in the same way that physical food is for the body: the body is literally made up of the processed/re-purposed food

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3|26|22

The core of my upset is pretty simple: if ‘x’ pretty girl doesn’t like me, I’m unhappy.

So what I can ask is, is that silly or sensible?

By continuing to be miserable, I’m indicating that I value misery in those situations more highly than happiness.

‘I’ think there’s something romantic about being miserable… and I think that those girls will respond to my misery.

Sometimes they do in a pitying sort of way, but living in that space doesn’t really feel good for them.

That ‘doesn’t really feel good to them’ in time turns into a sort of disgust.

So, they are disgusted with me because of the mutual vibe we exist in

My misery leads to disgust.

That means it’s silly to be miserable, because it will lead to the disgust-moment happening.

It feels ‘wrong’ to be happy if I’ve been rejected for example, as if it were a denial of the ‘importance’ of the time we have spent together.

I’m supposed to grovel for a bit

I’m worried about being perceived as weird

Which worry is because, again, a fear of rejection

So, what is sensible?

To continue feeling unhappy? Because it is considered normal

My belief is that anything romantic should be all-consuming in its intensity

Considered a cruel playboy if not behaving that way

I can just not be cruel by genuinely considering the emotions of the other

I don’t have to feel bad to genuinely consider their emotions

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General sense of disappointment in my life because living in Seattle didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped

I imagined that life would be handed to me on a platter

And money

Portland was something of a verification of this, in my mind, that I wouldn’t be able to ‘have what I wanted’

In girls, friends, money

I learned that the world worked in a different way than I thought it did

I still don’t really understand it, I just have this disillusionment

Ok, I’m disillusioned

That’s where ‘stark reality’ comes in

Twin fears of not being attractive to girls and of becoming homeless/being dominated by work

For me the second fear is interesting, it’s being dominated one way or another: either by stupefication from being homeless, or from being dominated and exhausted by an employer/work situation

Both have the image of, ‘hard’

“What if life is too hard for me?”

And

“What if I don’t do enough, and so I’m not attractive to girls?”

I imagine that it’s something ineffable in me that makes me attractive, and that if life is too hard for me, that I’ll lose it

Another way of saying, there’s too much of a mystery for me to ever understand it, but also paradoxically that I do understand exactly what I’m “supposed to do,” meanwhile I’m frozen in a different fear and unable to do what I’m “supposed to do”

There isn’t too much mystery. It is explicable.

Attraction comes in layers of ego and then soul.

People are attracted to the simplistic beliefs they hold about “what is attractive”

And they are attracted to the beautiful, whatever that is to them. There are things that the soul is attracted to. It all depends on the individual, but there are commonalities.

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And then there are all sorts of “attraction”.

I may be attracted to this woman because of their personality, but i am not attracted physically.

I may be attracted to this woman because of looks, but otherwise don’t enjoy their personality.

One of the fundamental tricks pushed blindly by social memes and beliefs is that these types of attraction are interchangeable.

They are not. Correct? Isn’t that obvious when pointing it out?

I will always be attracted differently to women. The idea that one type of attraction can make up for the other is all part of the delusional parade of romanticism.

Have you heard of the manosphere saying “she will never love you they way you want to be loved”?

It’s very true IMO.

The idea and situation that a woman is going to somehow “love” me into being “happy” is at very best, a temporary illusion that depends on fiercely believing anything but the evidence of the relationship itself.

Said without any angst or anger, because the reverse is also true. A man cannot, in anything but short spurts which depend on fierce delusion, “make a woman happy”.

There is a lot you are dealing with. So much.

Are you chatting with anyone here? Because it seems you are seeing a lot of very accurate and positive insights, i just wonder though if any will stick. (I have my boy scout badge for "years of things not sticking, but getting really well versed in “insights” :sunglasses:)

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That is a good insight, thank you.

Not really, just re-approaching an old issue with a bit more sincerity than before. I realized the other day that my way of investigation was flawed / spiritual-bypassy.

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I think it is the single hardest thing to get anywhere with, that the one’s we are attracted to cannot make us happy.

Or better put, the One we are looking for is the one looking. It’s the choice to feel good, no matter what. The worst of the “no matter what” is grasping directly that actualism will not “get us the One”.

It makes us the one. The one who finally chooses, to, no matter what, feel good.

I am the one I was looking for.

(Cue Lionel Richie :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

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I have some kind of ‘gap’ happening in my experiencing that I can see really clearly, and the last time I experienced that ‘gap’ closing was shortly before a big disillusionment a few years back. Though that may be a memory-trick, I’ve experienced that before.

I can say definitely that many PCEs have ended for me with “I know how to be attractive now!!!”

‘Me’ arrogating

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The gap is me, but I keep making it about love

I just can’t see it clearly yet. Hence the investigation

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Right, i would say PCEs never happened to me because i was too busy trying to get the girl / be attractive.

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That makes sense.

The times in my life I had the most PCEs I was very independent

Maybe sometimes during ‘honeymoon’ phases as well though

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The gap is probably that void, maybe?

The feeling that having everything “out on the table” we otherwise have something to occupy ourselves with.

The gap for me is somewhat behind me. A void. Sometimes in front too. So, filling it over, or turning away to “investigate” keeps it like “just something i don’t quite understand yet”, a “gap” in my investigation.

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Waiting for verification

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Hmm yes… keeping it ‘obscure’ rather than “what you see is what you get”

I don’t want to see the facts because it makes me see ‘me’

That ‘I’ am the problem

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When really, the “gap” is the ever pressing and growing reality of never having actually existed.

Of course, that appears to be a void to me. A big scary one. So, yeah, if i am attractive I must be something right?

Its not park benches and no sex we fear.

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Ah, are we really the problem here?

I think that is stopping short.

The problem is what we continue to do.

We can be the solution, indeed, there is no one else that can do it.

I think that " ‘i’ am the problem", in many ways right now, is really “i am not attractive enough, and that’s the problem”

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”There was the actual world just right there in front of me, obviously existing, pure and perfect, and then there was ‘me’, ‘humanity’. The contrast was simply hilarious. I can’t describe how hilarious this contrast was. What we’ve all been doing forever and ever, on a ridiculous parade of malice and sorrow, with the greatest seriousness.

I realised that I would indeed gladly die right now, gladly give away all I am, all I ever was, all I’ve done and felt since I was born, for peace-on-earth to be apparent (not even for me but) for everybody. For things to be as they are. And that it would be of no importance at all. No ‘weight’, no drama… just the only thing that made sense, the only sensible thing.”

From @geoffrey ’s report of becoming free

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I’m hanging onto a belief from years ago of something that never happened, and never could happen. But I’m still holding it