Vineeto: This is really an excellent acknowledgement/ insight in that you now can see your way forward to in fact traverse the wall of fear, become naïve all the way to being naiveté, become harmless, considerate, caring, inclusive, likeable and liking, benevolent, benign and magnanimous – non-sudorifically, with joy and delight because it’s the best way a ‘self’ can be and appreciate this magnificent planet we all live on.
Claudiu: But this has got me all looking around, now that I’m confident I am not out-from-control in the way Geoffrey was at the end (‘constantly accelerating’) I know there’s that next step I can take, which will be smaller than the step to self-immolating, in other words it will make it easier.
Vineeto: The quicker you drop any plan and/or map and/or concept you might have in your head and start living naïvely, the easier it will be to experientially find out the next step the moment you take it. Mental maps are the opposite of being naïve and they have an inherent flaw that imagination takes over and pretends one is already where one wants to be according to the concept.
Claudiu: Sure but I don’t see the difference in what you said vs what I said? I wrote I “know there’s that next step I can take” (i.e. going out-from-control genuinely) while you write that I “now can see [my] way forward to in fact traverse the wall of fear” (i.e. going out-from-control genuinely), what’s the difference such as it makes the former a mental map but the latter not?
Hi Claudiu,
I understand, they do sound similar – I was more commenting on the tendency I have observed of following the finger on an imaginary map rather than naively experiencing the next moment without a plan but unwavering intent.
How do you know which is the next step – I know that ‘Vineeto’ didn’t know which was the next step to get out-from-control, even though Richard had explicitly urged ‘her’ to do just that –
Richard: … although I was not advised of her [Irene’s] death until the following day, within the hour I was as if lifted forward by a cresting wave (to utilise surfing terminology), impressing upon Vineeto the necessity of being out-from-control/ in a different-way-of being (most unusual of me to do so), and have been effortlessly riding this perfect wave ever since … (Announcement 1)
Claudiu: But maybe the way to do it is just to be vigilant and purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route (yet again), due to all the above (caring, altruism, blessed oblivion), which for both of us it seems like it does lead to something that we experience like being out-from-control, but indeed to keep doing that and ‘stabilize’ in it (in the sense of making it my baseline) and then from there it’ll be easier/ more obvious how/ more obviously sensible to make that irrevocable decision. (link)
Vineeto: Ha, the addiction to sudorifically finding one’s way through an imagined jungle of chores and traps is not easy to abandon, hey, but it’s really worthwhile. Make friends with not knowing what’s going to happen next, with experimenting living without plan and scheme, don’t envision you have to ‘tick off’ ‘self’-set tasks. It’s not vigilance you need, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself and towards your fellow human beings. Re-discover how to play and play together.
Claudiu: Humm I don’t see how what I wrote is “an imagined jungle of chores and traps” though.
It seems I haven’t been precise enough to be understood correctly. What I was responding to were your words “the way to do it is just to be vigilant and purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route (yet again), due to all the above (caring, altruism, blessed oblivion) …” and “keep doing that and ‘stabilize’”.
Richard somewhere described ‘his’ change to out-from-control similar to changing to a higher ‘gear’ –
Richard: … where there would be a ‘slippage’ of the brain, somewhat analogous to an automatic transmission changing into a higher gear too soon, and the magical world where time had no workaday meaning would emerge in all its sparkling wonder, where I could wander for extensive periods in gay abandon with whatever was happening. (Richard, Personal Webpage)
Unfortunately I was unable to find the exact quote where Richard used a similar description when in January/ February 1981 the change into virtual freedom occurred comparable switching into a higher gear. He said he only fell out once and it was so unpleasant he never wanted to revert back to normal after it recommenced a few moments later.
This is to emphasize that the transition to being out-from-control is indeed a radically different-way-of-being, which can neither be achieved by “vigilance” nor by “keep doing that and ‘stabilize’” and arises out from being naiveté (see last tooltip in A Clay-Pit Tale). Also you are referring to “all the above (caring, altruism, blessed oblivion)” almost as an afterthought, something you just forgot to mention –
Richard: Yet without naiveté – the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ – pure intent will remain still-born. (Richard, AF List, 60g, 1 Nov 2005).
When you said in two other messages –
Claudiu: This is just crazy, forgetting about the caring aspect lol (link)
And
Claudiu: Ok so now that I somewhat care again (lol) it all makes sense (link)
– it makes me wonder what happened to pure intent, this actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity which makes it impossible not to care or being considerate and endows one with virtual magnanimity and caring and benevolent generosity towards one’s fellow human beings. How can you just “forget about the caring aspect lol” as if you had just forgotten your keys when leaving the house?
Claudiu: If I put it differently what I would say is that being in an excellence experience is very familiar to me now, this is where caring, naiveté, fun, being likable & liking, etc., are all part of it without having to put effort into it (because the ‘beer’ is operant rather than the ‘doer’), and it’s way less self-centric.
It may be familiar as past experiences, the memory of which is a belief right now unless it is happening now. And unless it is presently happening then your conclusions (for instance of “without having to put effort into it”) are informed by the rational, logical, reasonable identity ‘Claudiu’, who cannot, by ‘his’ very nature, know how to move from the ‘doer’/controller to the naïve near-innocent ‘beer’ experiencing overflowing pure intent (because that is not ‘his’ territory).
Claudiu: It is very contrasted with going back to the regular self-centric way of being which is no fun at all by comparison. So what I’m saying it makes sense to do is, when being alive in the way of being like an excellence (or intimacy) experience, just decline to go back out of it back to the self-centric way of being. Like make the choice to not go back there. It seems like an obvious thing and I am not sure I need to do anything else actually lol. (ADDENDUM: I mean I think there is still actually going out-from-control from there but I think I will see where to do that/ it’ll be obvious how to do it, as a natural consequence of doing this, not going back to self-centric ways). (…)
First you will need to abandon “the regular self-centric way of being” to contrast it with something else.
That is what I mean by working along a concept, a map, rather than moving one step experientially while you are doing it.
Here is something for you to ponder: Richard had neither a blue-print nor a map nor anyone’s reports of what happened to them on the way to an actual freedom. He figured it all out by himself. However, what he had in abundance was naiveté (the naïve boy from the farm, as he kept saying).
One would think that those who have all these past reports, explanations and confirmation available for their own experiences would be better off now, but the cunning of the genetic/social identity can and does use any opportunity to turn a helpful tool into a stumbling block. As such pure intent is vital, essential.
Claudiu: Does it make sense, do you still see it as a sudorific thing when I put it that way? (link)
The alternative of “sudorific” is not its logical opposite as in “without having to put effort into it” but a major ongoing re-experiencing of your way of being (without the ‘controller’).
A bit like what you said in your next post –
Claudiu: Yea it’s more like a not-sure-what-will-come-next, it doesn’t make sense to plan the next steps for how to self-immolate. Although all the stuff I discussed w/ Geoffrey and we discussed here is all relevant to keep in mind I suppose. Will see how it goes. (link)
Richard: Naiveté is so vital to freedom. This is because even the strictest application of moralistic and ethicalistic injunctions will never lead to the clean clarity of the purity of living the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. Purity is an actual condition – intrinsic to this universe – that a human being can tap into by pure intent. Pure intent can be activated with earnest attention paid to the state of naiveté. To be naïve is to be virginal, unaffected, unselfconsciously artless … in short: ingenuous. Naiveté is a much-maligned word, having the common assumption that it implies gullibility. Nevertheless, to be naïve means to be simple and unsophisticated.
Pride is derived from an intellect inured to naïve innocence; to such an intellect, to be guileless appears to be gullible, stupid. In actuality, one has to be gullible to be sophisticated, to be wise in the ways of the real world. The ‘worldly-wise’ realists are not in touch with the purity of innocence; they readily obey the peremptory decrees of the cultured sophisticates. … Human beings have not ‘lost their innocence’ … they never had it in the first place.
Innocence is something entirely new; it has never existed in human beings before. It is an evolutionary break-through to come upon innocence. It is a mutation of the human brain. Naiveté is a necessary precursor to invoke the condition of innocence. One surely has to be naïve to contemplate the profound notion that this universe is benign, friendly. One needs to be naïve to consider that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile. (Library, Naiveté)
Cheers Vineeto
