Kuba: Thank you for your wonderful reply Vineeto, there is a lot here but I just wanted to comment on the below for now :
Kuba: At times it seems I am just going round in circles, this is where I will feel insecure about simply wasting your time responding
Vineeto: You do not waste my time at all – it is a pleasure and a privilege to correspond with you – it’s simply the enjoyment of seeing a fellow human being gain more understanding and success in revelling in the fact of being alive and becoming more and more naïve.
Vineeto: Perhaps you can appreciate this process yourself, and value the radical newness of it – at least then you don’t have to depreciate yourself, be hard on yourself, when it appears not to have a straight and immediate result.
Kuba: This really shows something, I remember a while ago when me and Sonya had a zoom chat with Geoffrey I made a comment which although it was a joke it exposed this same kind of approach to myself and others. I said that what he was saying was so useful that I felt I should pay him for it!
So it is as if mutual beneficence comes with a cost, or that it is to be earned or that it is reserved for the special few, or for the right performance etc. This is very much the old paradigm and I don’t particularly see interactions with my fellow human beings in this way.
But clearly I still hold this view in some degree as to depreciate myself with it. And I have already discovered that this sword I will cut both myself and others with, sooner or later. So as noble as self-depreciation may appear it benefits not me and not others, so it can be dispensed with.
Hi Kuba,
Ha, I am glad you can see this – it is indeed a very old paradigm derived from the spiritually-inspired virtue of humility and there is nothing “noble” about it but the self-centric desire for immortality and/or after-death reward.
Kuba: Of course it is so wonderful to see actual magnanimity from you, to have this for comparison. That beneficence between fellow human beings can flow freely, it doesn’t have a cost or a condition or a cap to it. Of course, I don’t start going round the streets and showering all with my savings but it’s rather that I am no longer saving myself for something else ‘out there’, that this moment is happening now and we are all actually here doing this business called being alive – so how could I be anything but freely beneficial towards my fellow human beings, why should it cost a thing? Or why should it have a cap?
Because actual magnanimity is not a virtue, but the actual quality of the benevolence of this infinite universe it is free, unconditional and unlimited. It’s interesting that ‘you’ were thinking in terms of the old paradigm and automatically equivocated magnanimity with giving away one’s life-savings which could be given away only once. Whereas this is how Richard describes magnanimity –
Richard: There is an innate purity in being me as-I-am, for this universe is already always perfect. There is a magnanimity and a beneficence everywhere all at once and I find that I am benign in character. It therefore follows that all my thoughts and deeds are automatically benevolent and beneficial – I do not do it, it happens of itself – and communal service is no longer a duty, an obligation, a responsibility. I can readily enjoy a free association with other – flesh and blood – individuals to form a loose-knit affiliation that acts for the good of each individual … for when ‘I’ expire, the ‘whole’ also ceases to exist. The ‘whole’, which created ‘me’, was being re-affirmed and perpetuated by one’s very ‘being’. (Richard’s Journal, Article Twenty).
Kuba: Of course in the old paradigm the belief in God and the Afterlife provided plenty of motivation for people to inflict horrors upon each other in anticipation for their heavenly rewards, there was apparently something else ‘out there’ worth savings one’s caring and consideration for.
But once it is seen that there is nowhere else but here then there is nowhere/ nothing else to save oneself for. If it is not my fellow human beings that are the recipients of my beneficence then just who is? And if not now then when?
And looking at it now it is the same with regards to intimacy, just who am I saving myself for? And for those same reasons as above, why should it have a cap or a condition? This belief in the metaphysical, in some ‘other place’ – it is a very rotten thing. (link)
It is fascinating how deeply the shadow of the belief in an afterlife/ “some ‘other place’” runs, long after you have dispensed with the belief in a God and/or enlightenment. It is indeed “a very rotten thing”. Seeing this there no longer is any overt or covert reason to ‘save yourself for’.
Kuba: Hehe and the one which for some reason I don’t want to fully allow is that the same applies for enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. That if I am not enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive then just what am I saving myself for? I’ve never seen it so clearly, of course only this moment is actual and there is no other place but here, so whatever that ‘thing’ is which I am saving myself for – it is a waste, a complete and utter waste. I am putting off enjoyment and appreciation for a time and a place that does not exist!
Ah, this is a valuable insight – the very reason why so many have resistance to enjoy and appreciate being alive – one could diminish one’s ‘bank account’ in the afterlife, the “other place”, if one has too much fun here on earth. It is indeed a dominant aspect of all religions and equivalent to an ubiquitous taboo.
Kuba: Wow it’s like that non-existent metaphysical realm has been swallowing genuine human happiness, harmlessness and intimacy since time immemorial, and all for nothing since it does not exist.
So yes, just as Richard wrote in a finite and expanding universe actual freedom would not be possible. All those things which we discuss flow from infinitude, this is the earth shattering discovery, the basis for the completely new paradigm. So indeed actualism without infinitude is sandpit actualism. (link)
Ha, I like that – “sandpit actualism” – and to tie it into your next post (link) – this “sandpit actualism” includes all concepts, all armchair activities and even “believing perfection to be possible” (Richard in my last post to you (link)).
So, isn’t it finally time to take Geoffrey’s suggestion and “take off their clothes, and swim through the sea?” Time to abandon the limits and actualize your insights and go map-less. You have nothing to lose but your shackles.
Cheers Vineeto