Kub933's Journal

Journals
899

Your post reminds me of the saying - ‘If all I have is a hammer, every problem is a nail’. Except ‘being your own best friend’ (as an axiom) is the hammer and my description is the nail haha.

It’s like you are wanting to interpret my post in light of this ‘being your own best friend’ taken to a point of being a moral. So then you have set up the scene to see my description as apparently pointing to rancour against the real world or internal combativeness towards myself.

Peeling away the nonsense and seeing yourself bare is nothing to do with those things. The ‘going straight for the jugular’ just seemed an apt metaphor for doing exactly that.

900

You think someone’s advice wasn’t helpful when that very person then went on to succeed and become actually free?

What metric are you using for ‘helpful’ then?

That’s like the single most definitive evidence or proof that someone was on the right path… that they actually succeeded!

901

This is the way.

Though what’s likely to happen isn’t that the issue gets dissolved, but transforms into the next issue. And the joy is in the journey not the destination.

I read the four hour work week, and did the long term holiday thing which counterintuitively was hell. Won’t do that again! I’m now happy to work for the rest of my life.

Got better with women than my wildest dreams - it was empty and meaningless. I remember having a chat with my therapist years ago. And she asked why was it empty and meaningless, and my response was ‘what else could it have been?’.

Similar lessons with drugs, money (just numbers on a screen), enlightenment (there’s still post enlightenment work to be done) etc.

Do update us on if the issue does dissolve, because with my mindset, I feel the issue will evolve into the next lesson we have to learn.

I guess I feel I might want the issues to go away, and have them stick to our plan for them to feck right off. But maybe just maybe the issues and emotions are going hand in hand to teach us valuable lessons to move us along in life.

If the issue just gets completely dissolved by just looking at it, then more than happy to be disabused of my above notions.

902

So there isn’t 1 particular issue I am referring to here but rather a general trend. If I look at myself now vs when I started with actualism there is certainly less junk in the way as a totality. Actually I always forget to do this, what Peter recommended, to consistently pat oneself on the back by seeing just how much one has changed. Even recently I have been feeling as if I am no longer progressing in any way but then I look back and I realise that moment to moment I have the kind of stability that I have never had before in my life. There are certain things that used to trouble me day by day and they no longer exist in any significant capacity to cause trouble.

So it seems there is some kind of movement towards virtually eliminating dramas from my life. There is these various affective structures, these bundles of emotion and thought which are being looked at and are being slowly worn away like a sand castle, to the point where they now look nothing like what they were at the beginning.

‘I’ as a feeling being remain unchanged at core, always ready to ‘roar back into full existence’ as Srinath wrote, but at the same time there is just less and less reasons for that to happen.

I am certainly not content with accepting this kind of fate though, that the dramas will simply change into another one and I will continue to have endless lessons to learn. At the very least I am aiming for a virtual freedom where the various dramas are eliminated 99.99%.

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903

Thanks for that clarification, Kub. It’s appreciated, and clears things up for me.

I am certainly not content with accepting this kind of fate though, that the dramas will simply change into another one and I will continue to have endless lessons to learn. At the very least I am aiming for a virtual freedom where the various dramas are eliminated 99.99%.

Exactly how I feel. Not content with the various dramas. My current approach (will change over time doubtless) is that there are 3-4 dramas that keep repeating (and my somatic experiencing shows they are all connected) and if I get to the root of it, then hopefully eradicate them 99.9%. :slight_smile:

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. One thing I’m confident of it WILL NOT go how I expect it to. :rofl:

But excited to see how the journey progresses.

904

OK so making headway with this one, it’s fascinating stuff. I was on holiday in France the past few days and something kept popping up time and time again. Also had a PCE and a long EE probably due to the holiday atmosphere, these helped to clarify things even further.

Somehow I began to see all the emotions, all the various interactions in light of the fundamental ‘human’ drama of ‘being a group member’. It clicked one day that virtually all that I deal with day to day comes directly from this, it’s an ancient and fundamental aspect of what it means to ‘be human’.

The long EE I had was a glimpse of what it would be like each moment again if I no longer identified as a ‘group member’, it was a glimpse of a life of freedom.
The PCE was a glimpse of what it is like when this archaic drama called the ‘human condition’ is completely out of the way, it’s only perfection.

The reason I wanted to write this is because I can see why I am on the look out for vibes, why I leave that window open, why it is apparently necessary. It is intricately linked with this aspect of ‘being a group member’. In the past, being a valued group member was a necessity for both survival and reproduction, this deeply imbedded habit of constantly feeling others out and then getting involved in all sorts of messy relationships was the way of life. It was a necessity for ‘me’ to fulfil ‘my’ instinctual imperative.

The stakes were high for sure, if I piss of my tribe and they decide to ostracise me I am as good as dead and with no access to females either. This is before I could just go get a new job or call the police or complain to the HR or go on tinder to find a new partner.

So there is this instinctual tendency to (constantly and in each situation) turn other human beings into ‘groups’, and from there to relate in light of this ancient drama with ‘me’ as the group member. Which is silly as none of these things apply anymore, it is an outdated way of living, although I do not see this fully yet. What I can see though is just how pervasive this aspect is and also how it relates to this need to feel others out at all times.

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905

I’ve had this experience the past few days where at times it seems like the step is right there, to step out of ‘humanity’ to no longer be a ‘group member’, I can see the immediate freedom on the other side and also the sensibility of this (as per above post). It’s kind of exciting and then frustrating that something keeps me pinned each time.

It’s as if stepping out of ‘humanity’ is letting that whole house of cards tumble down, all of the various dramas unwinding and nothing of ‘me’ left.

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906

Yes I’ve done that with particular things. When you get to the bottom it’s apparent the emotion is just sourced in fear and I can stop.

That doesn’t mean that I never experience that emotion ever again, but it does weaken its power and in that instance it does cease.

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907

It’s the difference between “latent” and “active”

They can’t be eliminated except by self-immolation, but they can be greatly minimized - as in rendered latent. To an amazing degree anyway (99% of the day).

908

So just now I had a customer ringing to lodge a complaint about the way the couriers related to her mum. As soon as I pick up the phone I experience quite a strong sorrowful and malicious vibe, these things are actually quite interesting because on the surface she is speaking in a perfectly civilised manner and so am I, yet we both experience what is going on under that civilised surface, it’s a psychic battle for survival.

She feels that someone close to her was wronged and she must regain justice, she is there to protect her innocent, elderly mum. In these situations I find that individuals will try to use every possible trick to enforce a narrative in which their feelings are validated. They are hunting for anything at all that could be used to gain a moral high-ground.
It is very much the case of “it is impossible to combat the wisdom of the real world”, every question, every sentence is constructed specifically in order to elicit a response in line with their passionate narrative.

What I am wondering is how on earth to deal with these situations :laughing: I can see that whichever way I respond they will simply engulf it back into the narrative, unless I give them specifically what they are fishing for - to fully endorse and validate their passionate response. So either way they will get what they ask for which is ‘to be right’, the mind of the accuser in this case is already made up.

And actually that I do not have an issue with, the thing that still gets to me and which is why I am writing this, is that at core I am still affected simply because I am feeling her out. As soon as the call starts and I feel the sorrowful and malicious vibe I have already lost, from here any action I take is starting from a crippled place, now I am bound to operate within the boundaries that she has set out, I am unable to operate cleanly and sensibly because by the mere action of feeling her sorrow and malice I am now trapped in the very same drama.

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909

When I think about Richard’s correspondence on the AFT it really is a solid indication that his claim of actual freedom was genuine, because in those thousands of words of identities trying to use every trick in the book to draw out an emotional response there was nothing at all haha.

There is just no way an identity would not eventually slip up.

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910

Just re-reading the Q&A from Australia today and something clicked for me, which is my own misunderstanding of the application of the method, I wonder if this might be useful to others too.

Richard advises that :

‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now?.. 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.

So in this scenario feeling good is the baseline one operates from, when one deviates from this baseline one applies the above steps and one is then back on track. Over time when this is habituated then the baseline can be upped.

Where I have misunderstood the advice is that I mostly operate from a baseline of feeling ok/neutral, When a trigger comes up and I am now knocked a step down into feeling bad, by applying the recommended steps I will not fly into feeling good, I will simply return to the baseline which was active before the trigger. Following those steps is not a magical recipe for a flight into feeling good, rather it is what I do to return to where I was before the trigger happened.

The ‘secret’ is in habituating whatever baseline one is at and then slowly creeping it towards progressively more felicitous and innocuous. This makes a lot of sense to me now, why the method worked so seamlessly for Richard, because he had already committed to that baseline of feeling good, so then the steps will work exactly as described.

Where I have been confused is I would be operating from a baseline of ok/neutral → get knocked into feeling bad → then expect the prescribed steps to land me in feeling good.

So I could re-write the above advice as below :

‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling ok. If ‘I’ am not feeling ok then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt ok and now?.. Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel ok 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 ok.

Once feeling ok is habituated to a point where it takes little to no effort to remain there indefinitely then the next increment becomes available, but all this will depend hugely on where one is coming from when they start, I came from miserable as a baseline.

I suspect this might be quite a common misunderstanding actually.

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911

I think this is where a lot of the various resistance to feeling good comes from also. Because one is not near that baseline yet, so to go from being a generally unhappy person as a baseline, to contemplate the jump into feeling good as a moment to moment MO will be too much of a shift to be feasible. It will have no solid groundwork on which to build upon.

Once whichever baseline is habituated then there is this window that opens up, it’s within reach now to allow oneself to creep to the next step of the ladder.

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912

Interesting.

Respect for the elderly, foremost one’s parents, is a very ancient thing. Julian Jayne’s much shunned book traces the origin of God et al back to this pre-modern conscious devotion to one’s forbears.

(Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind, 1976 Julian Jaynes)

It would be fascinating to have been a fly on the wall of the interaction between the couriers and her mother.

What possibly could it have been?

Did they beat her up? Not smile? Sorta get impatient with her doddering ways whilst being paid barely enough to make rent?

My recent NPS ex had a photo of her mother on the side table or similar everywhere. I find it disgusting to see parents demand reverence from their children. How pathetic that the mother wasn’t the one on the phone. Has a lifetime of experience given her nothing with which to deal with a (supposedly) impolite courier?

One can aim for at least the dignity to deal with couriers without having ones own children complaining to the company.

#lifegoals

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913

Focusing on the little things…

Today I was thinking about how there isn’t much ‘low hanging fruit’ left for me to address. Things are very stable these days but I know there is more to go in terms of a virtual freedom.

This is where I have been stagnant for a while now, because things have not been bad enough to force me (via suffering) to change now, so i’ve been hanging out on that ‘ok’ plateau.

I do remember at the beginning it was like ‘swim or sink’, I was either going to continue suffering or I was going to push forward and change myself.

What I realised today was that the task is still the same, except now it is not these overwhelming emotional structures that I am dealing with but rather it’s the little things that consistently chip away at my enjoyment and appreciation.

It’s not a case of ‘what is making me miserable’ it’s more like ‘what is making me remain only at feeling ok’. In a way this is good, because ‘ok’ is as bad as things get.
But the next thing is, can I contemplate being virtually free of sorrow and malice? I can see there is not much between me and this goal, it’s like bits of shrapnel left flying about at this point.

I think because these little things do not have the capacity to disturb my equilibrium I have been ignoring them altogether. Not realising that the damage is caused because I end up wasting this moment of being alive doing something other than actively enjoying and appreciating being here.

On some level it seems ‘too good to be true’ to have enjoying and appreciating each moment again as an actual goal. It seems I have been content with setting the bar much lower instead. That as long as I was not actively resenting being here I was winning, like that was the end of the road.

Looking at what’s ahead though the word megalomania screams at me, as in am I really going to expect that much from being alive?

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914

It is becoming increasingly clear that what reality is, is an ancient memory that is echoing inside the minds of human beings today, the identity arises out of the sum total of this conditioning.

I am getting more and more clarity on this, it’s like I am outlining this big picture bit by bit and it is all starting to come into sharper focus. I am having these experiences where the above is seen very clearly, the contrast between what is factually the case and the illusory nature of reality.
Then reality is seen as this archaic memory playing on repeat, this memory has absolutely no relevance to what is actually the case now, it is like a hang-over from ancient times.
The other thing is that this memory was never of the actual, it is all feeling and belief.

I can see that ‘I’ am simply the core aspect that arises out of all this calenture, ‘I’ am not separate from it, ‘I’ am literally made of that illusory stuff pooling together. Therefore ‘my’ emotions are real and yet at the same time they are as illusory as ‘I’ am. ‘I’ can never be free from ‘my’ emotions as we are made from the same illusory stuff.
But something quite miraculous can happen though, when ‘I’ am seen for the illusion that ‘I’ am, then emotion disappears also, both the subject and the object disappear, there is no-one left inside to have the emotions happen to them. So it is all quite simple after all, the ending of illusion is the ending of the human condition.

I wonder how this relates to self immolation, because ‘me’ being as illusory as ‘I’ am, cannot actually cause anything to change, it is this body that gets rid of the illusion that is ‘me’. What I suspect is that the complete seeing through of the illusion coincides with ‘me’ altruistically sacrificing ‘myself’, they are the 2 different lenses for explaining the same event, one is of what is actually taking place and the other is of what happens on the level of identity.

This is actually kinda cool to contemplate, that this whole thing is being chipped away at in 2 dimensions, even though only 1 is actual. There is this actual body and mind slowly coming out of calenture and there is the ‘agent’ on the ‘inside’ busy doing all ‘he’ can to end the human condition.

915

I have been reflecting a bit on Richards writing about what he later released he saw at 19; that no one was in control of the world.

One of the curious, yet predicable characteristics of middle age is an interest in politics. When all else fails, or is otherwise irrelevant, the idea of what is happening with those “in charge” becomes interesting.

The more I look, the more I read the paper (at lunch) the more Richard’s insight echoes in my mind. None of the so called “leaders” are really in control.

It is as you say, an ancient memory on repeat. The same perverse, childish, grasping for some evidence of the immortality which is implied in such an ancient memory.

916

Yes exactly! that whole belief in authority etc none of this is actually taking place, it’s so wonderful to see this, that it is only because of belief that we collectively act ‘as if’.

I have been watching ‘below deck’ with Sonya and it’s basically reality TV about people working on cruise ships in a very high pressure environment with lots of power plays, strong hierarchy etc.
And I had that same seeing at one point, where those very real emotions they are all experiencing are part and parcel of something that simply does not exist, they are just playing along and suffering the consequences.

917

I am mildly tempted to create the model of the planet that was a part of my musings when we were discussing the anthropomorphic climate change topic. Just to watch the squirming of the latest global religion in the face of a rank amateur debunk the latest fear fuelled frenzy for immortality.

Acting “as if” the completely unaccountable priests of science are in charge, and a force majeure of all liability; to actually have evidence is in play. All contracts with facts are not only null and void, but the ancient god of fear has ensured that no such contract was ever signed.

The best trick the devil pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist. As it were.

918

I managed to endure the first third of the Tucker Carlson/ Putin interview; watching two grown men essentially playing with stories to justify their power given to them by the deranged masses.

Whilst thousands die, mind you. Both sit and get what they both most dearly treasure; the idea of themselves as someone in power.