Kuba: Hi Vineeto,
Vineeto: It bears well that you now know which direction you want to go.
Kuba: Yes I do indeed and solidly from experience too, over the weekend and today I have been delighting in this mirificent flavour, I am glad that Claudiu got me onto this word but if not I would say it is a magical fairytale like flavour, this sense of endless wonder and amazement – “how can the universe exist, how can all this be so” etc.
Hi Kuba,
Ah, Richard was equally delighted when he found the word and created a long list of definitions and samples of literary use for it (Richard, Abditorium, Delight, #Mirific). It appears in a lot of dictionaries but is rarely used.
Kuba: With the immediate reward being the wonder and amazement itself rather than any intellectual answer. I am amazed each time this flavour is tasted because it is just as wondrous every time. This flavour, what it is and where it leads is the direction I want to go in, and not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. It is what I want to do with my life. And there is a golden clew in place now back to this flavour, and it is so very worth it every time.
Those obstacles are there – to be squarely addressed rather than gingerly walked around – but now there is such a worthy goal, and such a pinpointed attention to it that I am confident it is possible to proceed. (link)
It’s wonderful you now have access to this flavour of “the wonder and amazement itself rather than any intellectual answer” . Intellectual answers are never successful in the long run standing against any onslaught of instinctual passions, whereas “wonder and amazement itself” are very potent and ultimately irresistible.
You and Sonya seem to have infected each other with the joy and fun of considering obstacles “to be squarely addressed rather than gingerly walked around” – it needs a bit of daring at first but once your abandon your pride and acknowledge that ‘you’ are as bad and as mad as the person next door, then the fun of addressing any obstacle to feeling excellent begins, and as I said to Sonya, nothing succeeds like success, “and it is so very worth it every time”.
By the way the terms ‘as bad and as mad’ comes from Peter –
Respondent: What follows below is, I think, Peter, a nice example of your freedom of the need to justify yourself and to identify the character flaws of other people as opposed to your own absence of such flaws.
[Peter to No 60]: One of the major problems with having pet peeves …
Peter: I have had this criticism levelled at me many a time before but it simply makes no sense at all. I have always been upfront about the fact that ‘I’ was as bad and as mad as any other instinctually-driven being on the planet.
Again from (the very first page) of my Journal –
[Peter]: ‘As I sit on the balcony of our small flat contemplating life, I am moved to start writing my story. The urge has been welling in me over the last few months, so I’m now making a start. There is now ample time, given that I have all but retired, to reflect on the sense I have made of life.
Indeed, that has been the innate drive in my life: to make sense of this mad world that I found myself living in. The insanity of endless wars, conflict, arguments, sadness, despair, failed hopes and dreams seems endemic. And worse still, as I gradually forced myself to admit, I was as mad, and as bad, as everyone else. I had tried all of the solutions that Humanity offered in order to be happy, but in the end they made no sense and haven’t worked to sort out the mess.’ [emphasis added] (Peter’s Journal, Foreword)
Acknowledging that I was ‘as mad and as bad as everyone else’ was the starting point of my realizing that I needed to change – that I needed to become free of malice and free of sorrow if I wanted to be harmless and if I wanted to be happy.
Such as simple matter-of-fact acknowledgement, the necessary prerequisite for change to happen, is what is sometimes colloquially known as ‘getting off one’s high horse’. (Peter, AF List, No. 89)
Kuba: Oh and the other thing I can see now, the morning resentments and the evening gloom, these feelings were there as a result of me walking down the path which I know cannot deliver the goods. It’s because that flavour would be already gone, and then I would be going through the motions of the ‘real world’, knowing that it leads nowhere. There was always this sense to those feelings like ‘what is the point of all this’ and indeed what is the point of living anything but that which delivers the goods, especially when that thing has already been located.
It’s like spending the day-time in paradise and then going to look for meaning in hell afterwards and wondering why something is off … It’s selling out that which is first place for something that doesn’t even compare.
All of those feelings as well as the “high achiever” who would come in to assuage them, none of this is of any relevance when I am allowing that mirificent flavour. And at the same time nothing at all in the ‘real world’ can make up for what is missing when that flavour is lost.
Ah you recognized what caused “the morning resentments and the evening gloom” – according to Geoffrey’s metaphor “being lost in the woods nearby”. Naturally that also means you were not “spending the day-time in paradise”, they were feelings of a conditional happiness or perhaps good feelings. This paradise was a real-world paradise, not actuality or near-actuality. I can say this with confidence because if you had spent the day in actual “paradise” you would not have experienced “the evening gloom” and “morning resentments” day after day. The meaning you were looking for was not in the day-time “paradise”, those feelings ended when the conditions/ activities causing your happiness ended. As you said yourself – “it’s selling out”.
Now that you found the genuine flavour, the “mirificent flavour” of pure intent, you know what you had been missing.
It is from the ongoing experience of the actual world that Richard says –
Richard: Aye … when ‘I’ willingly self-immolate – psychologically and psychically – then ‘I’ am making the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make for oneself and all humankind … for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘my’ moment of glory. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement … it makes ‘my’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed … to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life. In an ecstatic moment of being present, ‘I’ expire. ‘I’ am extirpated, rubbed out. ‘I’ cease to exist, permanently. Something irrevocable takes place and every thing and every body and every event is different, somehow, although the same physically; something immutable occurs and every thing and every body and every event is all-of-a-sudden undeniably actual, in and of itself, as a fact; something irreversible happens and an immaculate perfection and a pristine purity permeates every thing and every body and every event; something has changed forever, although it is as if nothing has happened, except that the entire world is a magical fairytale-like playground full of incredible gladness and a delight which is never-ending. (Richard, AF List, Mark, 18 May 1999).
Some people objected to his standard of the actual world – perfection –
Respondent: I once stated that I thought that actualism had a ‘dark underbelly’. This was largely due to a host of negative adjectives applied to being ‘normal’. For example, ‘the pits’, ‘abysmal state of affairs’, ‘petty life’, ‘pathetic’, ‘miserable’, ‘bad situation’, and so on. It is obvious to me that most ‘normal’ people don’t see it that way – which is why I thought you to be displaying the ‘dark underbelly’ that I spoke of.
Richard: It is life in the real-world (being normal) which has the dark underbelly – and thus, albeit sublimated and transcended, so too has life in the unreal-world (being abnormal) – not life here in this actual world … the pristine perfection of the peerless purity the infinitude this universe actually is ensures nothing dirty (‘being’ or ‘presence’) can get in.
Respondent: It is helpful to take this all in context – and the context in this case is ‘compared to an actual freedom from the human condition’. My misunderstanding appears to have been based upon the fact that I didn’t notice the shifted standard.
Richard: There is only one standard (to use your terminology) here in this actual world: perfection.
Respondent: That is, ‘normal’ people usually have quite a different standard of what constitutes a good life than an actualist does. Is this a correct assessment?
Richard: Indeed it is … an actualist settles for nothing less than the perfection evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE). Hence my report, in the previous e-mail, that I could not deny that all the while I was both normal and abnormal there must be/ surely was something better, far better, than either the ‘great life’ or the ‘glorious life’ – and thus I would not, could not, and did not, settle for second best – and that this is precisely what I am conveying to my fellow human beings: whatever you do, do not ever settle for second best.
For the best is just here, right now, where it already has been, all along, and always will be. (Richard, AF List, No. 27f, 24 Oct 2003)
Kuba: It looks like (and I don’t know when exactly) but I already signed the contract, in that I have already seen what is possible, so how could anything but that ever compare. I see now how for ‘Vineeto’ virtual freedom was never an indefinite platform to remain but rather a dynamic stepping stone to the ultimate.
Indeed, although ‘Vineeto’ had a long period when ‘she’ ran away from even contemplating going out from under control (the genuine virtual freedom). It was only ‘her’ determination not to “do a Devika”, and never to give up when the best was so obviously achievable (because of her own PCE and because Richard lived it day after day), that ‘she’ eventually dared, and cared, to stop running and leave ‘her’ fear behind in lieu of near-actual-caring.
Kuba: Of course ‘I’ would look for steeples within the ‘real world’ when that flavour was lost and yet knowing deep down it is pointless. Having experienced pure intent ‘I’ can never fully forget the experience, the wheels are in motion and ‘I’ can either kid ‘myself’ or press on.
So the warning, not to “do a Devika” this is relevant, it looks like at least I had my endless stubbornness that would never allow it. (link)
Yes, “never fully forget the experience” of “wonder and amazement”, tie a golden clew to it each time you experience it.
And don’t castigate yourself for your “endless stubbornness” – more than likely it’s not only the deep fear of venturing into the unknown but also the fear of leaving behind everything which is dear/ familiar to you and common to all. And the moment you dare to look the fear in the eye, acknowledge its existence and refuse to be beaten, fear will instantly lose a large portion of its power (because fearing fear is feeding it) and then you can look for the thrill of the adventure of a lifetime.
It bears well indeed.
Cheers Vineeto