Kuba: Today it happened when I ran a bath and just as I got in this shift occurred, and magically I found myself in the world where “nothing dirty can get in”, the perfection and purity was undeniable, and in that experience I as this body am just as clean as the rest of the world. This aspect in particular is so delightful, that there is nothing ‘dirty’ anywhere to be found, not in the world and not in the body.
Vineeto: This is amusing in the way you described it…
Kuba: Lol I did not notice that at all, but it is quite amusing.
Hi Kuba,
Vineeto: … and it is indeed so that utter purity prevails here, of which the feeling of beauty is only a paltry imitation (plus it requires ugliness for comparison). And yet beauty is considered the highest value in the real world, equivalent to truth (Truth) – in spirituality – and in mathematics.
Kuba: So this is the other thing that I can see now, the role that the good feelings played in maintaining the dramas.
You wrote to me a while back :Vineeto: 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”.
Kuba: I remember back then I took note of what you said but at the time I just couldn’t quite see how there could be any good feelings in there. But that is the thing with good feelings, they are seductive and as such they can be difficult to see for what they are. I see it clear as day now though, that the bad is indeed kept in place by the good. In fact this is a useful clue in general, that if one’s suspected ‘felicitous and innocuous’ feelings have one swinging from one side to the other then they are good feelings in disguise. Experiencing the utter purity of actuality I now have a solid reference to check whether there are indeed any good feelings going on.
You recently discovered one of the major ‘good’ feelings – hope –
Kuba: A few days ago I saw that the next step in the direction I was proceeding was to abandon hope. It took daring for sure, it meant no more “redemptive straws”, only extinction ahead. I found though that without hope, despair also took its leave. Without hope and despair to maintain ‘me’ I have found myself pulled ever closer to my destiny, which is more and more experienced to be right under my nose. (link)
This all-encompassing hope, which is the affective aspect of any expectation, ultimately the hope for ‘my’ survival, made the way clear to recognize that only extinction lies ahead and you had willingly, daringly abandoned this hope. Naturally also despair disappeared – there was nothing left worth fighting for, for ‘you’ that is. A wonderful cause for celebration and gay abandon.
Here is what Richard says about the ‘good’ feeling of hope –
Richard: To enable one to live in virtual freedom one can, among other things, renounce resentment. For the commitment to achieving peace-on-earth to become total, for it to become a complete devotion to effecting perfection, for it to become a dedication of oneself to the consummation of the freedom-of-the-moment, one gladly forsakes humankind’s ‘wisdom of old’. That ‘wisdom’ is a wishy-washy, part-time, lip-serving, casual approach to the ultimate goal. It is called ‘Hope’. All peoples are constantly exhorted to: ‘do not lose Hope’. But, as Hope is an impoverished proxy for the actual, the resentment remains. (…)
For thousands of years humankind has been struggling along, fumbling around in the dark for some miserable ray of light to act as a beacon to guide one’s way to perfection and peace. All of the philosophies and psychologies and all of the ideologies and theologies have not been able to deliver the goods. Peoples everywhere were forced to live on hope – and hope is a poor substitute for the exquisite purity of the actual. It is the complete eradication of sorrow and malice that is the essential pre-requisite for peace and harmony to prevail. One is then happy and harmless … and well equipped to face the now inaptly named ‘rigours of life’. One is able to make one’s way in the world with joy and delight, marvelling in wonder at the magnificence of being alive on this verdant planet. (Library, Hope)
As you can see hope is indeed a very powerful stumbling block to experience the already always existing perfection, and your daring to abandon it has born excellent results.
Kuba: But those good feelings they can be very slippery indeed!
Yes, the difficulty in spotting the ‘good’ feelings is because in the beginning one only sets out to rid oneself of the bad feelings of sorrow and fear, and with growing intent of malice. But the ‘good’ feelings are lumped together with enjoyment and even appreciation and it takes some sincere finding out the reasons for dipping below feeling good to discover that the search and attraction to ‘good’ feelings is more often than not the reason for disappointment, resentment, and bitter-sweet sorrow.
It was only in his tenth year of enlightenment that Richard discovered the vital role the highly revered ‘good’ feelings played in keeping him from breaking through to an actual freedom –
Richard: … I had to turn my sights upon the last thing that stood between me and an actual freedom. I would have to let go of the deeply ingrained concept of ‘The Good’. For this to happen I would have to eliminate ‘The Bad’ in me, or else I would be likely to go off the rails and run amok. Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, SC, Enlightenment Resumé, #ahimsa).
Kuba: I am reminded of the below :
Richard: 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 – 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’ and graded as ‘excellent’. (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 Mar 2016).
This is an excellent example where the ‘good’ feeling is preventing you from experiencing the excellence of near-actual intimacy or the perfection and magic of actual intimacy. It requires diligent attentiveness at the start because it is not only instinctually ingrained but also habitually the automatic route to take when being close to your partner. Here is a reminder which might be helpful –
Richard: Actual intimacy – being here – does not come from love, for love stems from separation. The illusion of intimacy that love produces is but a meagre imitation of this direct experience of the actual. In this, the actual world, ‘I’, the personality, the subjectively experienced identity and self, have ceased to exist; whereas love accentuates, endorses and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am relative to other, similarly afflicted, persons; vying for position and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials … to verify ‘my’ very existence.
To be actually intimate is to be without separation … and therefore free from the need for love with its ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth. I am not apart from the universe … I am the universe experiencing itself as a thinking, reflective human being. Whereas ‘I’ can never be intimate for ‘I’ am distanced from the actual by ‘my’ very ‘being’ … ‘I’ stand in the way of actual intimacy. The intimacy that ‘I’ as a personality can have, as a feeling – an emotion or a passion – for another in a relationship, pales into insignificance when compared with the actual intimacy of being the universe experiencing itself. There is no need for a relationship here. Relationship requires a separated identity in order to do the relating. By being what I am – ‘what’ not ‘who’ – I am not separate from the universe. This body is literally made of the very stuff of the universe … there is no difference whatsoever between this stuff and me. I am it. [Emphasis added]. (Richard’s Journal, Foreword, p. 16)
Kuba: The good feelings in question were not specifically “love and its affectuous intimacy” in my case but they “slipped in” unnoticed nevertheless. I know now that I am on the right track when I am no longer swinging from one side to the other (from the good to the bad, from hope to despair, from security to insecurity etc) which is exactly what is going on recently.
Well observed – it’s because ‘good’ and bad feelings are stemming from the same instinctual source, they are conjoined twins.
Kuba: But this is a good warning for others, that one has to be rigorous with regards to the content and quality of one’s affective experience, I mean in my case those good feelings went completely unnoticed, it took quite some time before I was able to pinpoint what was going on.
Now that you have become aware of the insidiousness of ‘good’ feelings you can have fun honing your skills to discover them sooner. ‘Vineeto’ found watching movies, especially those feel-good movies, an excellent training ground.
Kuba: To summarise the game ‘I’ was playing – ‘I’ was addicted to being saved, and round and round in circles ‘I’ went. (link)
That sums it up well – one at first only transfers ‘the saviour’, or ‘the method’ from one person/ objective to another until one finally realizes that an actual freedom from the whole of the human condition is a different ballgame altogether.
Cheers Vineeto