So it’s natural that, as you say Henry, if someone we spend time with isn’t “living the PCE” we notice this. Just about every “judgement” we could make about others could be filed this way.
Then, as you say, it really comes down to our preference. Do I like this aspect of this person enough to live with the aspects I don’t like?
Which, is a choice we do get to make.
The kicker is when we look into ourselves. We have a choice about changing what we don’t like, but there is no choice about living with it if we don’t change.
Which simplifies everything. Choice becomes a matter of finding out as much about what purpose the other is persuing, what makes them tick, and whether that will be conducive to one’s own naive enjoying of today.
@claudiu said something earlier that the very action of relating is aggrandizing in itself… I think I’m so important that it’s important that I categorize how someone exists in relation to me. What??
It’s an imaginative game I play to convince myself of my place in an imagined hierarchy…
I am currently building scale models of tanks. Something I used to do as a pre-teen. It never occurred to me then why such a thing was enjoyable. I just liked the process of building things. The precision, the power of the object the model represents.
Each moment back then had no conscious reference to another.
It was me and the feeling of creating these powerful objects that would belong to me.
Another person is entirely different to this scenario. A conscious entity can’t be constructed to suit the image of the model. It is whatever it already is, and will change for no-one!
So choice is everything. We can choose to spend time with them, we can choose to try and convince them of various things, if we want.
That is something we can do. We can’t actually change them however. Even the most cunning of manipulators never gets what they want.
I was reflecting earlier on the Australian saying “She’ll be right” earlier.
I have no idea where it came from, but I chose to think it embodies a certain amount of common sense. Ultimately, “she” will have to work out whatever she needs to work out. We could try to make life into a comfortable paradise for her, but even then she will have to appreciate it.
I’ve connected with someone new and had the best sexual experiences of my life with them. I had this quote that @hunterad posted in the back of my mind going into it,
and with that attitude and approach in place I was able to enter into purity of sexuality that I had very rarely ever approached before.
I’m still reeling from those experiences… it was a breakthrough into feeling-states that I hadn’t accessed in some time.
She has left town - she lives in a remote part of Alaska and it will be awhile before I see her again, if ever - but I am determined to continue in this thread. There is palpable purity - and fear - and love. All mean that I feel very alive.
I had another friend over to my place last night and we discussed all things life & emotions for hours.
An observation she brought up was that she had recently purchased a house, and that ever since moving out of an apartment into that house, she had much less of a feeling of neediness for a man in her life.
I connected the dots to earlier in the night she had told me that her mother had once told her that she would one day need a stable man in her life in order to be safe - implying that she would never be able to take care of herself.
Now as an adult, divorced, operating a successful business on her own and now purchasing a nice house of her own volition, her mother’s point was solidly refuted. She was now experiencing a peace she hadn’t felt in decades.
It made me connect something I had vague notions of but hadn’t been able to penetrate, in my own issues of security, desire, and parental pressure.
After a night of some of the most intense and lucid dreams I’ve ever experienced, I awoke ready to take my time waking up on the day off from work and continue investigating this issue.
Several times in my life I’ve set off away from home in a bid to ‘make my way in the world,’ and each time after around a year I would return home, discouraged (though glad to be home), in debt, and needing help from my parents to get back on my feet.
This pattern created a few narratives for myself and my parents.
Similarly to my friend, there began to be a belief that I could not take care of myself on my own but needed help - and rather than from a man, it was coming from my parents. I’ve set myself up with a tiny house, which I still don’t regret, but it came out of that attitude of dependency.
That sense of dependency was accentuating a sense of being a ‘loser’, a feeling which has dogged me throughout most of my life.
I connect it largely to my relationship with my father, a dominating personality who is not afraid to use intimidation to get his way with people.
In any case, that attitude has followed me around throughout my life, and I have at different times taken various steps to get beyond that sense of being a loser. I’m glad I have done that, because it has caused me to go on many adventures, expand my horizons tremendously, and become experienced in things which would later serve me greatly in these investigations to become free.
However, that overall sense of being a loser would rarely leave for long.
Another way of describing that feeling, which I have written about here on occasion, is feeling ‘pathetic.’
Once I was able to identify that feeling, and connect it with that larger ‘loser’ narrative, I was able to use @Josef’s approach of 100% committing to the emotion.
It hung on more tenaciously than most other emotional states do, but after a couple of minutes peace overtook me - a purity, directness, and stability of peace I haven’t known in a long time.
It immediately became apparent that my efforts to fight being a loser by ‘winning’ in some way - frequently in my mind related to ‘getting the (right) girl’ - were doomed to failure because they existed in direct relation to the ‘loser’ narrative, which had to continue as an anxiety to maintain the existence of any ‘winner’ narrative.
The answer, rather, is in simply not feeling like a loser.
By coincidence I had something on the AFT open - which page it was specifically doesn’t matter - it was enough to remind me of the purity and simplicity of the actual world. None of these narratives or feeling states are actual. As long as I exist within the narrative I can continue re-combinating & wandering in circles forever and never get out. But escape is as simple as deciding that it doesn’t matter. I don’t have everything I want in life, but I don’t have to feel like a loser. I don’t have to feel pathetically. I can sit in bed on this luminous Monday morning, and gaze out the window at the trees swaying in the remainders of the overnight storm.
And then after a few more minutes, I put some pants on and made coffee.
Strangely enough, I had a similar realisation yesterday eve - there is one “world” where things go on and on forever and the only solution is to leave it forever and completely…not like keep a small portion of it and continue, but a total abandon…
…and then there is the world “behind” it…where a magical like show and celebration is going on with a quality of strangeness to it…almost feels “unreal” from the normal experiencing of life - like how could it be that a simple, confusion and ghastliness free perfect world exist?
Last week I went on a series of dates with a new girl (‘T’) that went extremely well, and as a result I could see my interest in C dropping off considerably.
This drop-off in interest was accompanied by guilt, which it took me a bit to spot but is now quite obvious.
I connect the guilt to the similarities between the current situation and the break-up I went through in the Spring.
In both cases, there was a couple and then another person coming along, and the interest in the new person being more engaging than the previously-existing person. The only difference is in my position in the dynamic. Previously, I was the one being ‘left behind,’ and now I’m ‘the one who leaves.’
I’ve been trying to determine a best way forward ever since noticing the guilt, and the obvious answer was to ‘break-up.’ However, I can also see that the very concept of a ‘relationship’ doesn’t exist in the first place, that my ‘disinterest’ in C is partly driven by feelings of love for T which I don’t fully grasp yet, and finally that a lot of my discomfort has only been because of the guilt itself, rather than anything to do with the situation.
C invited me to hang out this afternoon and I accepted, in the back of my mind wondering what I was going to say to her.
I didn’t want to continue ‘playing it cool,’ keeping her at a bit of a distance and internally being more interested in someone else. I also wasn’t sure if breaking things off was the right move, it just seemed drastic. What to do?
All this thinking about intimacy came in handy when I realized that I couldn’t control what her reaction would be, but from my own side I could be intimate. Basically engage with the situation, and be genuine with her.
I think I’m going to just describe the situation to her allow her to be a part of figuring out what’s best. I’ll still continue paying attention to what I think is best for me, but it is her own life and I don’t know exactly what she wants or is ok with and not ok with.
On seeing this option, I felt considerable relief. I don’t have to fake anything, I can just express things the same way I am here, and then the ball is in her court. I don’t have anything to lose, I’m just interested to investigate and see if the very best is possible.
I’ve already talked with her about some of these matters, which makes the situation easier as well.
My fears from my breakup played a big part in my concerns, because I was projecting that she would basically take it the same way I did - by feeling very hurt. However, that is up to her and in the words of Vineeto is her own business. It’s not a fact that she must feel very hurt, just as it was not a fact that I had to feel very hurt.
There’s a very interesting mirroring happening in that, as I have found myself having to get past more of my hurt feelings from that breakup as I have tried to figure out the best course of action here. In fact, I have plans to meet up with my ex with an eye toward understanding better what happened for her - so I can understand better my current position and do the best thing possible, as well as to no longer feel anger or desire toward her.
It’s becoming apparent as I look for a match that I’m caught between wanting women to ‘see my value,’ to ‘love me for who I am,’ while I am applying my values to them, loving-desiring some and casting others aside without a second thought.
My fears of rejection have everything to do with concerns that I am in fact not valuable, consigned to being a low-value ‘loser.’ In the same vein, by finding some ‘high-value’ (by my values) partner, I’m proving my value.
I’m reminded of the transition in young childhood when one is no longer fawned over for simply being a baby, but begins to be rewarded for certain ‘accomplishments’ and punished for ‘behaving poorly.’ At this stage, I began to learn to perform, and that a good performance would be met with good treatment.
Now as an adult, that internalized attitude means that I believe that I must only perform correctly, and I will be rewarded with good treatment - in this case, being loved by one of these ‘high-value’ women.
The first flaw in this is that no one is capable of constantly feeling lovingly, no matter how good one’s performance is.
The second is that my idea of a good performance increasingly does not match up with those of the women I am attracted to.
As I have found myself catapulted by life circumstances to the outer rim of humanity, I have discovered that I ‘relate’ to fewer and fewer people, and hold fewer and fewer goals and values in common with others.
This has proven maddening as far as that normal conception of performance-reward goes, because as my conceptions of ‘good’ have changed toward the eccentric (becoming free of the human condition), the logic of ‘perform well, get rewarded’ has collapsed at least in those simplest of terms. For example:
If I were to have enough money to purchase a Lamborghini, I could hop into that Lamborghini and drive around the block and attract a woman who was attracted to men who could afford a Lamborghini. Simple!
Now that I have different goals, it’s not quite as simple. I want it to work in terms of “I tell them about my super-impressive & cool goal of becoming free, and they are attracted & love me.” Perhaps a good second option would be “thanks to my super-impressive progress due to actualism, I now emanate a quality which makes (high-value) women immediately fall in love with me.”
While I have certainly made progress, neither of those stories are remotely my experience of being alive.
In fact, they both sound very similar to spiritual patterns.
In any case, I’m beginning to see the cracks in the entire value-based conception that I hold as a being.
Richard points out, “all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon.”
I’ve been agonizing over my place in the world, when ‘my place’ is predicated on the individual beliefs of innumerable different people. There are no official power rankings across the world. It’s just how other individuals feel about me, and then how I feel about myself.
I can see myself critiquing the performances of the women in my life in the exact same way that I critique my own performance, and see that I’m being critiqued by others.
It’s all so circumstantial.
I look for their approval because it makes me feel safe, it’s a confirmation that I’m performing correctly. But women fall in love with extremely silly men all the time. It is no such confirmation.
Rather than ‘feeling safe’ when others love me, I can find the safety already existing in the actual world.
I was contemplating something like this recently, that my mind keeps returning to my ex, not because it was a fairytale experience, but because she is “high value” and it makes me feel successful.
Like you, my interest is eccentric, but the normal “copes” are still appealing.
I really like Shashanks recent post on the topic of happiness needing social validation to be appreciated.
Like you, my mind imagines that success in actualism will be the equivalent to normal success (houses, money, cars holidays etc) as far as women are concerned. And I suppose other men too. Which is something I don’t often consider; the power of being valued by other males.
How about this @henryyyyyyyyyy, instead of breaking down your own performance based behaviour further, looking into the fact that the ‘high value women’ are actually playing the same game of performance for reward, they are just good at it so that the spell can be cast upon the one looking, to appear as the genuine article.
I remember when I was younger I was so enamoured with ‘women’, a ‘woman’ was this perfect thing on a pedestal that apparently held some hidden treasure that I could be rewarded with. Then I started looking clearer and saw the same shady patterns that I found in myself. Then eventually this ‘thing on a pedestal’ disappeared which also meant that I was no longer under their spell with all that it entails.
Perhaps though you want to believe in the image because of the promise of reward? The promise of love, bliss, gratification etc that a woman apparently holds.
The hope that by acquiring this woman, ‘my’ identity as man is finally affirmed in one way or another.
I can relate to much of this. When my girlfriend is in a bad mood or mad at me for example, I panic because the love and validation has stopped. I’m like a baby whose mother is unavailable. I actually used to do this same thing at work, while craving validation from my peers/boss and working like hell to make sure that if I perform well, my utopia of an unending stream of validation will be realized. After enough times on the roller coaster though, something clicked for me and I realized experientially that no matter what I did, something could always go wrong. This is a fact as opposed to a fantasy/belief. Since then I kind of stopped giving a shit. I work hard still, but I’m not afraid of getting humiliated or even fired. Yes it would suck, but I could find another job.
I’ve been trying to realize the above in my relationship as well. But no investigation has killed the allure of the utopia yet. I fear that there is no other way other than to dash my head against the wall repeatedly until I’ve had enough.
Yeah I can relate that the pedestal begins to crumble once one realizes that the cherished “woman” is just as rotten as you are. That we’re both just feeling beings.
The way I am approaching it is that what I really really want is the perfection I remember. As Kuba said, the allure is being performed “so that the spell can be cast”. What is the spell? " I am the perfection you are looking for".
Thus, one can immediately resent the deception, and say to oneself "I am going to end ‘you’ ".
It’s a malicious thing we do when pretending to be the One. It’s a malicious thing a mother does to bring a child into this world knowing they have made their entire reality ( or it was made for them, to be more precise) around you, and demand that you make your reality around them. A father is just as culpable. What does he have really? A blind desire to build a world around her at best, or as my father put it “fill her with arms and legs”.
I think there is something to this you know, it’s been my experience with most things actually. Eventually I get sick of banging my head against the wall and stop
The funny thing is that I have been through that a few times, I guess I need a few more runs
Yes I think this is it, I still ‘want to believe.’ And I guess what I’m happy about what I’m doing now is that I’m actually investigating rather than holding the mystique at a distance as I had been for awhile
Haha yes, I have been using pretty much the exact same approach… it helps to have some purity to contrast it with… 2 days ago and then again last night I got some whiffs of how nice it is to just bin the whole thing and enjoy whatever it is I’m doing. So I’m at least beginning to question the validity of head-bashing. But maybe some girl will be impressed by how well I bash my head…
This is interesting, seeing the falseness of the whole setup does make me want to break it down. But I don’t fully see it all as false yet - hence the continuing.
Ok this got me thinking about that ‘genuine article,’ and I started by thinking about how it’s a mirror, that I criticize the women I see, while also trying to perform to do well in their eyes.
Some of those critiques are pretty simple, eg ‘please take out the trash,’ but as I followed the thread I realized that really what I wanted was for these women to already be free, a statistical impossibility (Where are you, mysterious Indian actually free woman?? ).
When I turned that around, I realized that that was the standard I was trying to perform up to as well - I have been trying to perform actual freedom, while being most definitely not actually free!
It’s religious in nature… in the same sense that some folks a long time ago had a PCE, saw it was very peaceful, that their minds were very quiet, and thought that the way to go was to sit in meditation for hours at a time every day. The performances are based on little snippets of observed purity, which are then repeated in a ritualistic manner… and then it’s hoped that a woman will observe me and think that I’m the genuine article, thus securing gene transfer & I’m all good. It’s sexual mimicry for humans.
