Kub933's Journal

[Kub933]

Yes I can relate to both of those good feelings although they both play a minimal part in my life these days. That Divine Compassion type feeling is an interesting one because for a long time it blocked me whenever I got close to the actual world. I think because my first PCE devolved into a powerful ASC and so afterwards this Divine Compassion somehow became associated with the PCE. Eventually I came to the conclusion which you mention in your post, that what I am really after is the purity of the PCE.

The good feelings which wreak havoc in my life are more closely related to the instinctual passion of desire. It’s this desire for power and authority, if we’re going overblown then I am after omnipotence

The name for this archetype I came up with the other day is ‘the quest’. It’s like every moment is interpreted within this framework of a pursuit of some kind of special achievement, something that will grant me power and authority. The thing is none of this exists in the actual world, there is no longer anything to achieve, there is only the delight at being here and this is 180 degrees opposite to my normal state of mind where every moment is another opportunity to grind out ‘the quest’.

It reminds me of gaming when I was a kid, I was really into MMORPG games where I would grind for hours to level up my character only to add some skill points and then continue grinding some more, that was it

There are times when all of this falls away, one happened a moment ago which prompted me to write this. Then I can see for a fact that all of this is just a burden and a hindrance, that I actually do want to live in a world where authority and power no longer play any role, where I am no longer on any quest.

Writing this makes me realise that I have to eventually come to the conclusion that I am done with these kinds of feelings, just like I did with Love and Compassion - they are still there but I simply have no interest in them anymore, in this sense they can be virtually eliminated, minimised to the point where they don’t really feature in my life anymore.

[Paul]

Oh, I get it. I just want to add that the propensity for mastery and excellence isn’t inherently silly. If you strive for that and let the chips fall where they may, esteem or no esteem, it’s water off a duck’s back eventually. The only “silly” part is if it’s driven by and dependent on esteem or recognition by others, or the desire for power and authority over others, because that’s literally insatiable and has the darkest of all dark sides. They’re different things that often get mixed up into one.

[henryyyyyyyyyy]

I’d just like to add that it doesn’t matter too much whether you’re trying to impress others or trying to impress oneself, the feeling is the same - and the external projections (impressing others) and internal (impressing oneself) are the same. That’s where ‘I am humanity and humanity is me.’

I can really identify with that drive to be on some quest, it’s interesting to consider that in the end we’re just here, even freedom is already here, so at some point that striving is itself the obstacle.

That’s where the sincerity of pure intent becomes essential, that seduction of being someone is pretty significant

[henryyyyyyyyyy]

And of course there’s nothing wrong with improving at whatever one is doing, that only makes sense, but I can see so many cases where there is that identity factor of ‘accomplishment’ as well as the fact that the structures of ‘accomplishment’ or ‘better’ were generated by past social identities in the first place

[Paul]

Makes sense. Either way, I guess the litmus test is how much ‘my’ feeling of well-being is invested in the performance.

[Kub933]

Continuing this one here - Paul's Journal - #13 by Kub933

I am wondering now whether it is the same with fear and anxiety, to what extent I have taken on the belief that I show how important an event is for me by how anxious I feel about it.

I am wondering this because even nowadays doing my hen party jobs there is almost always an element of anxiety before the event. I have done hundreds of these by now and 99% of them have gone very well and not a single one has ever ended badly. There really isn’t anything that could remotely justify the anxiety, nothing left that I can link it back to.

It’s almost as if I feel like I am supposed to feel anxious, that feeling anxious is the ‘correct way’ to experience such an event. That if I am not feeling anxious I somehow don’t care about how important the event is.

I can see this being conditioned from a young age, when you have your first ‘big day’ at school, the adults will try their hardest to impress upon the child the importance of taking it seriously, of how important the event is and that some flavour of fear/stress/anxiety is the correct lens for this experience.

From then on the child learns other ‘important events’ which rightly should be experienced through this anxious energy - exams, performances, making good first impressions etc.

In fact writing this now it seems to me that the fear is used as a means of control, as in the child is forced to see an even as important by teaching them to fear it. In this way they have no choice, they will treat this thing as seriously as we want them to, the fear will ensure this.

Because why is it that all the anxiety inducing events are so cliche? Why is it always the first day at school/new job, or performing in front of a crowd, or doing something for the first time etc Doesn’t it seem a bit suss? Why isn’t anxiety a bit more original lol

I know that the general explanations will involve some kind of evolutionary thing saying that we evolved in a different environment and that’s why we get anxious now but I am not so sure.

I can see the kid messing about in a busy city centre and the mum pulling him to the side and telling him with seriousness ‘look everyone is laughing at you’, she is teching him when it is correct to feel anxious, and in this case it will teach him not to make a fool of himself in front of others.

And with these hen party events, these are filed in my psyche under ‘performance’. And who would be so foolish to perform in front of others without some anxiety?!
So the category of feeling (anxiety) is matched with the category of event (public performance).

[Kub933]

This is actually quite fun to dig into! For example tonight I am teaching BJJ in a gym that is in a different city (not my home gym). Again there is this sense that there is a correct way to feel in such a situation, some level of fear that should rightly be felt because I am going into ‘stranger territory’. Some distance has to be placed between me and the strangers, that distance is anxiety itself.

But the funny thing is that I first had to swallow this concept of ‘stranger’ so that later I can feel anxious around them lol. I had to learn all the rules and correct feelings I should experience when interacting with strangers.

And the same applies for all the different categories, the feelings are taught as the correct lens for interacting with the boss, the wife, the child, the stranger, the police officer, the homeless man, the customer etc.

I always find it fascinating that when I interact with male colleagues, I can only get so close. There is this learned rule that men keep a certain distance between each other, some kind of man to man respect.

[Paul]

@Kub933

I can see this being conditioned from a young age, when you have your first ‘big day’ at school, the adults will try their hardest to impress upon the child the importance of taking it seriously, of how important the event is and that some flavour of fear/stress/anxiety is the correct lens for this experience.

From then on the child learns other ‘important events’ which rightly should be experienced through this anxious energy - exams, performances, making good first impressions etc.

In fact writing this now it seems to me that the fear is used as a means of control, as in the child is forced to see an even as important by teaching them to fear it. In this way they have no choice, they will treat this thing as seriously as we want them to, the fear will ensure this.

Along those lines, here’s another predictable comment from me that ends with “just feel happy and harmless and let the rest take care of itself”

As wayward, passionate beings who live with complex social contracts, is it any wonder we’re so full of conflict, doubt and stress? My natural inclination is to do X, but the contract requires me to do Y. As a new feeling being entering the world, I have to be manipulated with rewards and punishments, made to desire one thing more than another, to fear one thing more than another, to offset one feeling/drive against another. My inner life is an unstable and constantly shifting tension between fear, desire and other feelings. It spans all facets of life, with short term and long term interests, personal desires and social cohesion, individual preferences and group loyalties often in conflict with each other. Most of my time as an adult is spent trying to secure the tenuous conditions of my conditional well-being. It’s manageable enough on small and large scales, but if we screw up badly enough, all hell can break loose. There’s no true peace in it, but I can get by with a series of balancing acts until God or society eventually figures it out and fixes it, hopefully before I die. That’s human history. That’s the real world.

After a while, feeling happy and harmless, come what may, looks like a pretty good place to start (or start over) from The details of particular conflicts are as diverse as people and circumstances, and they’re good to dig into because that’s where it’s all felt intimately, that’s where it gets personal. Otherwise it’s too abstract. But the big picture always points back to the same solution – or at least the same basis for a solution.

The reason I like to zoom out to the big picture and back in to the personal is because it gives context to whatever particular thing I’m struggling with. Otherwise I can get tangled up in the details and lose sight of why this is the way to go and why it actually works, if I allow it. Then that makes it easier to apply to whatever is happening here and now.

[Paul]

And for further context, we’re all going to be utterly destroyed, as Rick kindly reminded us, so how can we take anything too seriously? Being here while it lasts is such a blast!

[Kub933]

@Paul

After a while, feeling happy and harmless, come what may, looks like a pretty good place to start (or start over) from The details of particular conflicts are as diverse as people and circumstances, and they’re good to dig into because that’s where it’s all felt intimately, that’s where it gets personal. Otherwise it’s too abstract. But the big picture always points back to the same solution – or at least the same basis for a solution.

Yeah it’s all really interesting, I have never managed to find any kind of set formula for the explorations and I don’t think there is one necessarily, as in it can never be taken on as a discipline. Like oh I just do 3 sets of 5 on this exercise and now I am feeling good, and it works like this in every scenario.

I always wonder about what Vinneeto mentioned in the Q and A from Australia, that once she committed to feeling good it was always an of course. So feeling good was not contingent upon anything anymore, if she noticed she was not feeling good she would be back to feeling good due to the noticing. Then if any investigation was done that would be a subsidiary thing.

I find this really interesting because I am not there and I can’t yet see how this is possible. As in currently it seems that whatever success I have with feeling good is due to exploring and removing the obstacles. As in until I remove or weaken the affective structure which is in the way, I cannot allow feeling good.

So then is a virtual freedom a situation where 99.99% of the obstacles have been removed and as such the choice to feel good is always an of course. Or is it a situation where one has committed to/habituated feeling good to such a degree that it is chosen each moment again regardless of what is going on.

But the second one doesn’t quite make sense to me, if there are affective structures in place, let’s say a belief that I should not feel good unless X, this structure is a part of ‘me’, this is what ‘I’ currently hold as true. So how can I sincerely allow feeling good whilst at the same time holding the belief that it is not possible unless X. Unless that belief is seen for what it is I will not allow myself to feel good, not that there is anything actually blocking me, but due to the belief I will not allow it.

It seems to me that those affective structures are a bar with regards to what level of enjoyment and appreciation I will allow. I get to choose to feel good within/up to this bar that I have set for myself, but only when the boundary is weakened or removed do I get to go to the next level.

This is that experience when a big belief disappears and it’s as if I can breathe properly for the first time, there is this experience of a huge load being lifted off and the freedom that is now available. Then it is seen that this freedom was here all along but I held myself back due to belief.

[Paul]

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that feeling good is an “of course” for me either. It only becomes that way after I see the silliness of what’s stopping it.

I was rarely able to feel good by simply choosing to. If I tried, I often found myself struggling in the wrong places (fighting feelings with feelings) and I couldn’t make it last.

When I started looking at the conditions I impose on my well-being moment to moment, that’s when it really clicked because it showed me it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t. I have much more say in it than I thought, and it showed me how I can change if I want to. Not by will alone, but by seeing that it really is silly to place absurd and impossible conditions on my well-being!

Then habituation works too. I never got the benefits of feeling good by thinking about it, only by feeling it and finding out that life is easier and better for everyone when I do. Now it’s more of an “of course”, because the more often I feel good, the less sense or benefit there seems to be in ever feeling bad That said, when I feel bad, I don’t usually get back to feeling good just by noticing it. I have to extract myself out of whatever worm’s-eye view put me there in the first place!

I note that Vineeto said once she committed to feeling good it was always an “of course”. Maybe by that time she had already done most of this, ie. burned a lot of bridges and dropped more illusions and conditions in previous phases of her life.

[Kub933]

@Paul

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that feeling good is an “of course” for me either. It only becomes that way after I see the silliness of what’s stopping it.

I was rarely able to feel good by simply choosing to. If I tried, I often found myself struggling in the wrong places (fighting feelings with feelings) and I couldn’t make it last.

OK yes so that is more or less the same experience I have had up until now.

@Paul

When I started looking at the conditions I impose on my well-being moment to moment, that’s when it really clicked because it showed me it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t. I have much more say in it than I thought, and it showed me how I can change if I want to. Not by will alone, but by seeing that it really is silly to place absurd and impossible conditions on my well-being!

This one I also relate to up to a point it seems. As in I was able to apply this approach with most of the smaller things, the little peeves that would chip away at me moment to moment. Like seeing that it’s absurd to get angry every time someone cuts me off in traffic or when I have plans outside and it starts to rain etc. Then it is just a case of seeing that the conditions I am placing are silly, it’s like a simple recalibration of my approach to life.

Then what has been left since is maybe 3/4 core dramas that seem to be rooted so deeply into my personality that this recalibration does not work. It then begins to have a flavour of me trying to convince myself that I don’t care about something which I actually do care about. It’s like if I have an exam tomorrow which I have been preparing for for a long time and the outcome is important to me. Can I then distinguish between caring and conditions? Which got me onto this whole thing yesterday about emotion getting in the way of caring.

I guess what I am trying to get to is how to fully care about something without getting in my own way. To see that even if I want things to play out a certain way (I do want to pass the exam) that feeling bad is only an obstruction, not an assistance.

Because currently it is as if caring and emotion is intertwined, which means that to crank up caring I am also cranking up the possibility for sorrow/malice. So then there are attempts to stop caring in one way or another as a way to reduce my vulnerability to emotion.

What I am considering is if it is possible to fully crank up the caring (caring about people, things and events) without getting passionately involved.

[Kub933]

This is quite fun, to give myself permission to care. What I see already is that there are many many things which I genuinely care about and which I have been blocking under some kind of morals.
Morals dictating what I should and should not care about and also in which way this caring should be carried out.
If I allow myself to genuinely care (which I have been all along anyways) then it seems like a lot of the emotional turmoil disappears also, it’s like I am finally removing this internal conflict by allowing myself to… be the person I have been all along, thanks @claudiu

In fact I have just jotted down a list of the things that I care about (people, things, and events), the same things which I have been denying myself from caring about all this time, in the name of Actualism. Looking from this naive vantage point I see absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t care about these, at the end of each of these things is the same consideration, I want myself and those that I interact with to have fun.

[Kub933]

Ok so a few more things I can see so far is that there are many things I care about as an identity for example to be respected by others. When I look at this caring without any morality though it quickly becomes clear that there is something underneath the respect, maybe I want others to hold me in good esteem, then I go even underneath that and find something more pure, that actually I want to relate to others amicably. Then if I go all the way I see that what I actually want is what the PCE demonstrates.

It makes me think to how reality is a distorted imitation of actuality. But that caring for something pure and perfect is there, it is just that it gets distorted through all the real world concepts.

So in the past I would moralise the situation and end up rejecting the caring along with it! I can see that in actual freedom caring is automatic towards anything and everything, it’s just a feature of being the universes experience of itself as a flesh and blood body, it would be impossible to switch off.

And there is a seed of that in me now, as in I cannot help but care about people things and events. I’m not sure why I have been blocking it all this time actually I can’t see any good reason right now other than taking on some form of morality.

But if I stick with this caring then I start to see that the real world concepts get in the way of what I actually care about, and then they can be removed as they are no longer needed.

[Paul]

@Kub933

What I am considering is if it is possible to fully crank up the caring (caring about people, things and events) without getting passionately involved.

For what it’s worth, I think it is. It’s possible to feel good because I care, not because I don’t. If I endorse and approve of feeling good as the solution (because it’s good for everyone, including me, and anything else ultimately is not), then it doesn’t have to be a passive thing, it has all the energy of ‘me’ behind it.

What I’ve found is that it works best if I don’t take myself and my feelings too seriously. It’s not a moral crusade, and I’m still going to be a fool sometimes, but it makes sense that the (interim) answer to ordinary human unhappiness is ordinary human happiness. If I care enough about my own suffering and human suffering in general, I know what I can do about it, starting with me.

[Paul]

Oh, I get what you’re saying now. Underneath what seemed to be a personal quest motivated by desire for esteem and recognition (with accompanying performance anxiety, fear of failure, fear of rejection, etc) there’s actually a pull toward excellence and ultimately perfection that doesn’t depend on that and is hindered by that, and you want to crank that up all the way. Cool.

[Kub933]

Yes exactly that is a great way to sum it up. For a long time I kinda split things in 2 and moralised the whole thing. There was the ‘identity motivations’ and there was the ‘actualist motivations’ and I was stuck trying to convince myself that I want one over the other.

It reminds me of when Devika challenged Richard to love her completely as opposed to loving all of humanity, he went through love to realise that it could not driver the goods.

I see the same with all these little things I care about as an identity, if I give myself permission to want them, then I can find out for myself that ‘I’ only stand in the way of what I genuinely want.

But no longer moralising all these ‘identity motivations’ I have removed a ton of internal conflict, then I can go through them as opposed to circling around them.

I remember @claudiu mentioning a conversation with Richard (that went something like this) where Claudiu said he should be happy and harmless even if he doesn’t have a partner, that his desire for a partner was in some way the issue. Richard mentioned that this sounded more like Buddhism and not Actualism.

And this is the flavour of what I have been doing to myself, removing my involvement from the marketplace and trying to foster some kind of unconditional happiness, so I might as well find a cave to sit in…

And why should being happy and harmless be unoriginal in its expression? Any kind of actualist morality doesn’t make sense, it is the wide and wondrous path after all, not the straight and narrow.

[Paul]

Ah, brilliant. It can’t be “boots and all” if you’re divided against yourself, right? Sounds good.

[Kub933]

Lots I wanted to write today but not enough time. Don’t know if @milito.paz has blown some big hole in the psychic web or what But it’s like this whole new ground has opened up to me. Feeling good is beginning to make sense as an ‘of course’ each moment again, why wouldn’t I ?

The thing which I wanted to write though is briefly seeing my step mum today, actually seeing her. The only word that I can think of to describe the experience is rich, it was infinitely rich, completely fascinating.

Now what I can see is that genuine fascination with this moment of being alive is the doorway into apperception, into actuality. The great this is that again fascination is something ‘I’ am capable of, in fact ‘I’ am already fascinated by so many things, I was always like this. The best thing is that now I have this infinitely rich world that I can turn this fascination towards, how could it ever get boring?

[milito.paz]

Not enough time my ass. This is perfect.

You wrote a perfect post about a perfect visit to a perfect woman in this perfect, infinite and eternal universe.

It can never get boring