Vineeto: It’s interesting that you should say that “I only have plenty of experience where it concerns a progression to an excellence experience”. It seems that your focus has primarily been chasing extraordinary experiences, wonderful in themselves, but have not contemplating to up-level your default state of happiness to the next level as Richard explained …
Kuba: Hmm yes I have to admit that this is the case, even yesterday I was already thinking about this PCE I had 9 months ago where I glimpsed actual Sonya and how utterly extraordinary it was – and I have only just begun looking at intimacy!
I can see that it would be quite different if there was not a neutral to go back to. Whereas right now it’s like oscillating between neutral and extraordinary experiences. Like I am running from something… I am running from that in-between where ongoing feeling good can take place. It’s weird, actually I don’t quite know what it is. Even as soon as feeling good happens there is this inclination to take it into something extraordinary as opposed to just letting the feeling good sit there, feeling good.
I remember talking with Felix about this kind of oscillating, and it’s weird, it’s almost like being addicted to that up and down motion. Perhaps because if ‘I’ just allow feeling good to happen then ‘I’ have nothing else to do.
Hi Kuba,
You have just revealed why you never want to arrive at your destination. Your concern is that there would be nothing to do but enjoying and appreciating simply being alive – no excitement, no thrill, no ups and downs. Do the variation of oscillating feelings present themselves as the true meaning of life to you?
Kuba: I just observed it now, there is feeling good which happens and there is this almost fanatic need to ‘go somewhere with it’, like it has to be the launching pad to the next extraordinary experience, as opposed to just luxuriating in this feeling good for its own sake.
Ha so what seems to be the way to go, for now at least – is to just have feeling good without moving in either direction, this in itself is interesting to allow, not what I would normally do… (link)
Again, this is where the quote from Richard I presented in my last message gives a clue in which ‘direction’ to move –
Richard: A general rule of thumb is: if it is a preference it is a self-less inclination; if it is an urge it is a self-centred desire. (Richard, AF List, 25d, 14 Jan 2004)
So far you seem to prefer obeying the commands of the self-centred-inspired urge for excitement. Is it a lack of continuous attentiveness or are you perhaps fooling yourself that becoming actually free from the human condition is your number one priority?
Whatever your predisposition, as an intelligent human being you can make a determined choice to give up the addiction to being ‘me’ with lots of elation, agitation, intensity … and the inevitable suffering when the ‘high’ subsides.
James: The addiction to being ‘me’ is stronger because it always wins out.
Richard: If ‘I’ am to be honest ‘I’ will have to acknowledge that the addiction to being ‘me’ has only always won out so far because so far ‘I’ have always sought escape from being ‘me’ via a path that ‘I’ know will not deliver the goods. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Addiction).
Cheers Vineeto