Journal de Henry

Journals
902

Thank you for the responses @Kub933 @Vineeto @claudiu, I have taken them to heart. Especially this:

I was initially a bit taken aback, but it became clear that that very dynamic was at work in my life. Upon reflection, I could see it was defensive in nature and ultimately served to sustain insecurities.

Since exploring those aspects, things have been ‘coming unstuck,’ and as of yesterday afternoon a ‘christmastime atmosphere’ has become predominant. There is a glow, a sense of magicality, a delight wherever my attention wanders.

There is a question of where there is love at play, as I have been getting some attention back from a girl I’m interested in, but I’m paying close attention. Experience will inform. In the meantime, enjoying this atmosphere, which I do recognize from PCEs. A sensation of circling the drain.

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Vineeto: If your own parameters are merely about “I am better than someone else” then those parameters are well worth looking at and worth reassessing.

Henry: I was initially a bit taken aback, but it became clear that that very dynamic was at work in my life. Upon reflection, I could see it was defensive in nature and ultimately served to sustain insecurities.
Since exploring those aspects, things have been ‘coming unstuck,’ and as of yesterday afternoon a ‘christmastime atmosphere’ has become predominant. There is a glow, a sense of magicality, a delight wherever my attention wanders.

Hi @Henry,

There is no shame admitting that competition is operating in you – pretty much everyone has this feature of the human condition to a greater or lesser extent. But it is wonderful that you can own up to it and are “exploring those aspects” to the point where things are “coming unstuck” resulting in “a delight wherever my attention wanders”. Well done.

Don’t stop here as competition and rivalry are quite a pertinacious occurrence inherent in the peasant mentality and deserve attention whenever they stand in the way of persistently enjoying and appreciating one’s association with fellow human beings.

Henry: There is a question of where there is love at play, as I have been getting some attention back from a girl I’m interested in, but I’m paying close attention. Experience will inform. In the meantime, enjoying this atmosphere, which I do recognize from PCEs. A sensation of circling the drain.

As Richard explained in detail, there is a way of bypassing love with sufficient naïveté and attentiveness when moving further into intimacy with one’s partner –

RICHARD: I also detailed how feeling-being ‘Grace’, who was exacting in evaluating ‘her’ differing ways of being a ‘self’, had gradations of scale in regards to intimacy (togetherness: → closeness: → sweetness: → richness: → magicality) – all of which correlated to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence – in the second and third paragraphs[1] following on from the above.
[1]What did not get included in those second and third paragraphs, regarding feeling-being ‘Grace’ and her rigorous gradations, was ‘her’ oft-repeated observation – regarding the onset of the third stage, on that range of naïveness, where ‘her’ gradation of ‘great’ related to sweetness [“delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other”] – about a bifurcation manifesting where the instinctual tendency/ temptation was to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate) as contrasted to a conscious choice being required so as to somehow have that sweetness then segue into a naïve intimacy via what ‘she’ described as ‘richness’ [“a near-absence of agency; with the [sophisticate] doer abeyant, and the [naïve] beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian”] and graded as ‘excellent’. [emphasis added].
MARTIN: What does that mean practically then Richard?
RICHARD: Essentially, what “that” meant practically for feeling-being ‘Grace’ was how ‘she’ needed to be fully alert, upon the emergence of (if not prior to) that third-stage ‘sweetness’[2], to the attractiveness of the feeling of affection/ of ‘self’-centrically being affectionate – so as to not instinctually veer off into the intimacy of love – and thereby remain steadfast with delighting in the physical proximity of the flesh-and-blood body typing these words. [emphasis added].
[2] This ‘sweetness’ is an emergent effect of that second-stage ‘closeness’ – which came about due to feeling sufficiently safe/ feeling secure enough, emotionally, to intuitively enable an inclusive expansion of viscerally-established personal boundaries (and which ‘closeness’ was an outcome of that first-stage ‘togetherness’ which had been engendered by the willingness to be and act in concert with another in the regular relationship/ companionship way of feeling intimate) – and is epitomised by its physical proximity (i.e., immanence) effect. (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 March 2016).

They key is to activate sufficient naïveness and naïveté and be attentive and “stay fully alert”, as Grace termed it, to the instinctual tendency of love and affection whose unpleasant side-effects most of us know so well.

Cheers Vineeto

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904

An interesting development for me around the theme of competition.

I’ve been playing the pokemon trading card game pocket on my phone lately, and as usual chasing the high of winning, and getting fearful if things are getting hairy and frustrated/‘down’ if I lose.

Eventually I got the hang of it and was winning more often than not, but because I was using the same deck/setup, it started to get a bit stale. So, I started to experiment with different deck setups. All along I knew that I had my original winning deck that I could go back to, but I was interested in seeing what other options there might be. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t as well, but there weren’t emotional stakes like there had been previously… ‘I’ wasn’t emotionally involved.

I realized that all I am really doing when I’m playing these games is finding out what works and what doesn’t, there’s no need for any emotional involvement / involvement from ‘me.’ If I do it ‘x’ way it doesn’t work as well as ‘y’ way, that’s just the facts of the situation. I found myself realizing that I was seeing a completely new frontier of how to experience these games and by extension many situations in life. All I’ve ever been doing is experimenting with this and that approach.

By doing all that I’ve developed a wonderful library of knowledge of what works and doesn’t, which I can carry forward and share with others. And I can continue every day - trying this, trying that.

There was something I was doing as an identity, ‘identifying’ with particular outcomes - “I am a winner / I am a loser,” not aware that both of those are completely dependent on conditions - all there is to do is tweak a condition here and there and the whole thing can flip. There is winning and there is losing but neither are permanent states - just as nothing in this universe is permanent. It’s wonderfully dynamic, and quite fascinating to take part in.

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Hi @Henry,

Henry: I realized that all I am really doing when I’m playing these games is finding out what works and what doesn’t, there’s no need for any emotional involvement / involvement from ‘me.’ […]

By doing all that I’ve developed a wonderful library of knowledge of what works and doesn’t, which I can carry forward and share with others. And I can continue every day – trying this, trying that.
There was something I was doing as an identity, ‘identifying’ with particular outcomes – “I am a winner / I am a loser,” not aware that both of those are completely dependent on conditions – all there is to do is tweak a condition here and there and the whole thing can flip. There is winning and there is losing but neither are permanent states – just as nothing in this universe is permanent. It’s wonderfully dynamic, and quite fascinating to take part in.

Now that you have discovered your, the identity’s, propensity to be a winner/loser and discovered experientially that you don’t have to do that anymore, you could apply this to your whole life and live your life on a preference basis. Viz:

Richard: I did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. That is, ‘I’ would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but if it did not turn out like that … it did not really matter for it was only a preference. ‘I’ chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make ‘me’ angry … or even irritated … or even peeved. (List B, 12a)

Richard: I did everything I could to be as happy and harmless (as free of sorrow and malice) for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by first putting everything on a does-not-really-matter-in-the-long-run basis. That is, I would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but, if it did not turn out like that, it did not really matter for it was only a preference. I chose to no longer give other people – or the weather even – the power to have me annoyed, irritated, irked, or even peeved(*), if this was possible.

Then, as it was patently obvious in those experiences of pristine purity how this very moment of being alive is the only moment of ever actually being alive, I began to treat each moment again as precious. After all, it is not as if we have an unlimited amount of moments and – unlike a bank account which can be replenished – our supply of such moments is our most valuable (albeit dwindling) asset. In practical terms this meant being aware of how each precious moment was being experienced; if feeling good (felicity and innocuity) was the prevailing experience then this attentiveness ensured enjoyment and appreciation, of the sheer fact of being alive, each moment again; if feeling bad (unhappy and harmful) was the prevailing experience then whatever had displaced feeling good became readily apparent, upon such attention, with so much at stake. (Richard re Out-from-Control, (*)check out the tooltip after “peeved” in the original).

In other words, if you put everything in your life on a preference basis then you can be winner big time, not only in a rather insignificant game on your mobile phone (I mean in the grand scheme of life) but in every moment of your life. It can look like this –

Richard: I do have personal preferences … one of which is a marked disinclination to engage in any sport or sporting activity (including all aspects of spectatorism).
There is, for instance, a preference for omnivorism over vegetarianism; a preference for water-based activities (boating, swimming, and so on) over land-based activities (hiking, mountaineering, and so forth); a preference for comedic entertainment over the dramatic/ a documentary over a fantasy/ the voluptuous over the horrific … and, to detail a few general ones at random, a preference for creature comforts over frugal asceticism, a preference for the warmer climes over the colder, and a preference for civilisation over savagery.
Please bear in mind, however, that a preference for something is to merely prefer this over that … and if ‘this’ is not available/ does not happen then ‘that’ does not detract one iota from the utter enjoyment and sheer appreciation of being just here, at this place in infinite space, right now, at this moment in eternal time, as this particular form which perdurable matter (mass/ energy) has taken shape as. (List AF, No. 118)

Doesn’t this course of action intrigue you?

Cheers Vineeto

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906

My plan precisely!

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Hi Henry,

Excellent.

And now you only have one thing in life which is not a preference but an imperative – to become actually free from the human condition. :blush:

Life is so much easier when one has sorted out one’s priorities, isn’t it?

Cheers Vineeto

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