James: I do understand this completely that I am this flesh and blood body and not a precious identity. (link)
Vineeto to James: You need to understand experientially and affectively ‘who’ you are in order that this passionate energy can propel you forward with sincere intent towards your goal to leave the ‘self’ behind and live as “this flesh and blood body”.
Presently you are not “this flesh and blood body” but you are the identity using your flesh and blood body as a host. Hypnotising yourself that you are already “this flesh and blood body” does not achieve anything but fooling yourself. (link)
Alexander: Hi Vineeto!
I was wondering if you could explain exactly what you meant by this:
“Hypnotising yourself that you are already “this flesh and blood body” does not achieve anything but fooling yourself.”
I assume you mean dissociating. But why assume when I can ask.
Hi Alexander,
There is a difference between hypnotising and dissociating. Hypnotising is a mental effort to convince yourself of something you are not – though it can involve pushing emotions under the carpet and Kuba has just explained very well what can happen with hypnotising oneself of something you are not.
Whilst dis-associate (disconnect, separate, detach) and dissociate have similar synonyms, Richard used the word dissociation in its psychiatric meaning (splitting off a component of mental activity to act as an independent part of mental life). In other words, dissociation is repressing emotions and harder to undo than dis-associating which is the result of suppressing emotions – in other words a matter of degree.
Alexander: When I’m feeling good and then up it to feeling great then to excellent, I find that the senses become more pronounced and pleasurable. I feel pressure in my head and it’s like I’m on the verge of remembering a dream that was too good to be true. But I don’t want to waste my time dissociating or fooling myself.
The best way to not “waste my time dissociating” is to pay diligent affective attention to how you experience this moment of being alive and take note of every diminishment of feeling good. Then, once you get back to feeling good, you look at the trigger of what caused the diminishment so to avoid a repeat. It’s described in detail in Richard’s article This Moment of Being Alive.
Feeling being ’Vineeto’ used to ask herself some questions –
’Vineeto’: In those situations when I couldn’t think my way out of my mental block, a condition which I later discovered to be cognitive dissonance, I used to ask myself what it was that was preventing me from understanding. Rather than accusing Richard of being bone-headed, stubborn, silly or wrong, I instead chose to question why I was so bone-headed that I could not understand what he had discovered and what emotional investment ‘I’ had in maintaining ‘my’ status quo by not understanding what he presented as his ongoing delectable experience of the actual world.
These were some of the questions I used to ask myself –
-What feelings prevent me from seeing this one particular fact?
-What fears do I have that prevent me from coming to a new understanding?
-What consequence will this understanding possibly have for ‘me’ and ‘my’ worldview if what Richard is saying is right?
-What consequence will it have for ‘my’ lifestyle, my friendships, my working situation if what Richard is saying is right?
To ask these questions was to sharpen my attentiveness as to how I felt, what I felt and why I felt it when I contemplated the issues that caused a mental block and this attentiveness also showed me how to move past those affective feelings that prevented a clearer understanding of those issues. In other words, attentiveness counteracts the instinctive ‘self’-centredness that is more or less happening all the time unless I become aware of it. Attentiveness combined with contemplation does wonders when one wants to penetrate ‘my’ automatically ongoing affective reactive-ness to emotionally charged topics.
Eventually my burning desire and my persistence not to settle for anything less than indisputable facts won over my fears of questioning what I believed to be absolutely right and true and, to make a long story short, one day something had to give – ‘my’ worldview collapsed in one fell swoop and I had my first pure consciousness experience which lasted for a night and the better half of the next day. I was with Peter at the time and experienced for the first time what it is to be with a fellow human being without having ‘self’-oriented expectations, fears and preconceptions. In fact I only noticed that those ‘self’-centred expectations, fears and preconceptions towards others were a constant feature of ‘me’ when they temporarily ceased. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 60c, 26.1.2004)
Alexander: Bottom line, the better I feel the more sensuous my experience becomes. Is that the way forward? I feel like it’s so simple and then again like I’m juggling twenty things at once:)
That sound good. “Juggling twenty things at once” means that you can increase your affective attentiveness, so much so that it becomes an automatic approach to life or a wordless attitude to living. Then you can catch yourself each time when feeling good/ feeling excellent diminishes and won’t have to be “juggling twenty things at once” –
• [Richard]: ‘… once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good … but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud() before it gets out of hand* … with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive …’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).
(*)Footnote: The phrase ‘nipping them in the bud’ is not to be confused with either suppression/ repression or ignoring/ avoiding … it is to be consciously and deliberatively – with knowledge aforethought – declining oh-so-sensibly to futilely go down that well-trodden path to nowhere fruitful yet again.
It is also beneficial to watch out for and renounce resentment. “Hope is an impoverished proxy for the actual, the resentment remains. Only by firmly renouncing resentment, by abandoning one’s commitment to proving that life on earth is a ‘vale of tears’, can one’s commitment be staunch only to the ultimate goal. (…) Renouncing resentment obviates the need to apply the commonly accepted antidote: gratitude. (…) When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. Good and Bad, Right and Wrong, Virtue and Sin, Hope and Despair, Gratitude and Resentment, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity.” (Library, Topics, Hope)
Alexander: Glad to see you posting here. I talked to you once or twice on the old message board, I think yahoo, maybe back in the olden days.
You are welcome. (Do you remember which number you had in the correspondence?)
Alexander: Would be cool to hear from Peter as well. (link)
As Claudiu (after conferring with me) told you before (link), Peter has retired from writing ca. 15 years ago.
Cheers Vineeto