i just read this one , that geoffrey wrote this quote:
why not use that situation to finally see ‘yourself’ as anger and imaginary anger and your imaginary nature?
Rather, I would use that situation to have a good look at ‘yourself’, which it looks like you’re trying to do, but rather than lament about the human condition you’re seeing, its ‘vale of tears’ nature, and the sick joke the gods have played on you, in order to pump up yourself with perceived ‘courage’ in the face of tragedy and doom (which is a validation of the said condition), why not use that situation to finally see ‘yourself’ and your imaginary nature?
There is no ‘untimely’ death. It happens when it happens, and it only ever happens now. It does not make a difference whether one envisions one’s death tomorrow, or in fifty years. If one is busy envisioning it, it means that it is not happening now, therefore not happening at all. That death you’re envisioning and reacting to is not an actual death, it’s an envisioned death. It’s a play in your fertile imagination (just like ‘your’ existence is).
If you are to stay in that imaginary realm (note:IF), then you might get to see through contemplation that beyond all that imaginary dread and terror (and the actual bodily consequences of such), is a place of peace, a place of oblivion… As Richard puts it: Have you ever craved oblivion?
But why stay in that imaginary realm? Why not go into oblivion now and allow that body of yours (which is not in the grip of dread at imaginary future outcomes) to be alive here and now? (edited)
why not allow that body of yours (which is not in the grip of dread at imaginary future outcomes) to be alive here and now?
why not ? why not keep on doing what you were doing leila?
you said you were doing good , so why not continue doing that ?
well, i may die , i dont want to have fun because i know i will die ,
but I will die either way , why not keep on doing the method and feel good ?
i have to be worried , i want to know the reason why i have this pain ?
but , you dont want to see any doctor , so what difference does it make to know what is it from ?
well , i have to keep on worrying , because i might die soon …worrying makes me feel alive …not worrying makes me feel dead ,or i might be dying …
nonsense …do you remember how worried you were , when you went for extraction of your teeth ,do you remember in the middle of extraction , you were laughing out loud
…?
i was laughing because of the sound of the vibration of that thing inside my mouth ,
well , do you remember how much you were worried for this , for getting numb, and all that ?
but , in that moment you were laughing on that seat …
did all that worrying helped you ? no it was imaginary
The past couple of days I was thinking how I never properly understood the very meat and potatoes of the actualism method.
I always understood that it was about enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, by feeling as happy and harmless (felicitous and innocuous) as humanly possible.
But it was the “how to do it” which never quite clicked for me… Reading your posts it looks like you also do not see this.
And the thing to see is that :
Feeling good (felicitous and innocuous) is unconditional. It is that kind of feeling.
Getting back to and habituating to feeling good is all about an affective awareness and an affective rectification (when one has wandered off the path).
It looks to me that you are approaching things in the same way I did all these years, which is that from the position of feeling bad ‘I’ am trying to “crack the case”, by making this and that connection, hoping that if the puzzle is solved correctly ‘I’ will be graced with feeling felicitous and innocuous. That whole modus operandi can be swiftly placed in the bin… It is actually a self-reinforcing and insidious habit, because each time you only prove to yourself that you need to go on this merry go round in order to feel good, that it is all conditional, that the stars need to align first etc. Essentially you reinforce the habit of being a victim to your emotional swings, and no amount of intellectualisation ever fixes what is wrong either, you can probably see this by now.
So the thing to see is that feeling good is indeed a choice, and that it is unconditional, which means it is an option that is always available now. That habit of worry and despair needs to be broken by establishing a new habit, and the words affective awareness and affective rectification spell out the means to it.
[Just to add, I have purposefully missed off the part where once feeling good again ‘I’ can have a look at what it was which caused the issue in the first place. Ultimately this is also required as to ensure that the same issues do not keep resurfacing. But I think for now the key thing to see is just how one gets back to feeling good, and habituates to feeling good, and the fact that investigation is not the tool for doing so. In short - ‘I’ do not get back to feeling good by investigating.]
The first thing I would suggest is to be way, way nicer to yourself. You are beating yourself up horribly here! It’s no wonder this is causing you agony and pain – on top of any existing health issues you have, and the feelings surrounding that, you’re spending extra effort and time just to make yourself feel bad about yourself.
The way to proceed is to accept that you are as you are now. This will be an enormous relief – you don’t have to pretend you aren’t anymore! Note that when you are hitting yourself for not doing something, you are splitting yourself into two pieces, the one that ‘wants to do the right thing’ who is then hitting ‘the bad one’. But you are both of these, you’re not only the first one. The only thing this pattern will do is result in you continuing to be the way you are now, without being able to change.
Once you accept as you are then you stop hitting yourself. You become your own best friend… you become gentle. The ‘harmless’ in ‘happy and harmless’ is not just referring to being harmless to other people, but also yourself!
Once you accept yourself as you are, then the question is… what do you do now? This becomes a very potent thing to contemplate on at that point.
Secondly:
It’s possible this is just you beating yourself up. You clearly are unhappy and part of you wants to change, while the rest of you doesn’t. The key is you have to get it to where all of you wants to change.
If you have this comfortable pattern of feeling bad then emotinoally hitting yourself for feeling bad, then you will not be able to change, though!
Thirdly:
Mm this is just not true. Nothing ‘makes’ you do or not do something. It is all up to you. You are choosing to relate to yourself the way you are now.. nobody is forcing you to do it. This is part of accepting yourself, realizing and accepting that you are like this. It’s ok, it is very common!!
Fourthly:
If you are currently in a situation where if you eat anything besides rice and apples, you get physically ill… then you really definitely absolutely should go see a doctor about this. This is not normal, it can indicate severe health issues, which modern medicine can very likely resolve or ameliorate. But if you do don’t do this it will just get worse.
The other possibility is that it is psychosomatic – this doesn’t mean it’s “fake”. It’s a real issue, but it means it’s an emotional one not a physical one (which your body then acts out via real physical pains and issues that you really feel). However, going to the doctor to see there is nothing wrong, will help to fix this too, because then you don’t have to worry anymore.
I had such an issue in the past. What worked is to stop and ask myself, when feeling the pain I suspected was psychosomatic: “Hmm, is something really bothering me emotionally right now? What is it?” The physical pain is a way your subconscious distracts from a psychic/emotional issue. If you instead sit to reflect on what that might be, then your subconscious recognizes this distraction doesn’t work anymore, and stops doing it.
Thank you so much Kuba and Claudio these are really helpful
I think this is it Claudio , this is exactly what you say …
it might be 80 percent or more that this is “ fake “ and psychosomatic …
this is a “ distraction “ as you 're saying it !
I beat myself up a lot , “ attacking my self “ , when I remember I have been behaving badly , or i have been grumpy with my partner , or I was not so nice etc. ,
and the result is this “ discomfort “ !
but instead of pinpointing what is the emotion , or what happened ,
I pinpoint that to what I have consumed , and I go straight to the food that I have eaten !
So , I guess this whole story is “ fake” , I made that for myself , to distract myself from acknowledging emotional pain!
and also maybe it is a fake thing that i do , so that i cover up the whole situation .
I behave badly toward my partner , and then blaming myself , then this discomfort and physical thing , i tell my partner : “ see i feel unwell and the part of me not changing is because i have this disease , i can not sleep “
so this is something i learned to cover up the whole emotional issue and to give myself reason not to change my behavior!
I say : I can not change , because i am sick so i have to be like this , grumpy and sad ,so this way i dont get punished by the other for my bad behavior , rather , i myself punish myself …as if i am saying : see i have been punished by god , so please don’t punish me , i know i am bad but i am in hell because of my condition ! and i repeat this thing again …
I looked at “ my food journal “ today after reading your posts , and also at my emotional journal , I saw that for example I ate salmon with rice , and I was ok …
then i saw that i wrote one month later , that i ate ham and bread ,but I was very unhappy while eating it , Frank was not in a good mood , or i assumed he is not in a good mood , because I have said something and made him angry in the morning , so at lunch time i was stressed by this thought that he might be angry with me …
And i wrote 2 days later , i was not feeling well , and maybe because of consuming that bread and ham …so i have to ditch ham and bread out of my lunch …
claudio : It’s possible this is just you beating yourself up. You clearly are unhappy and part of you wants to change, while the rest of you doesn’t. The key is you have to get it to where all of you wants to change.
I dont know how i can make myself a whole to want to change ?
as you were saying when there is acceptance of who i am /all my parts , I can be friends with myself and then i can change …
It is like when i tell myself : “ i want to be a nicer women at home , but one part of me does not want to be nice , or , i want to be a different person , but i dont do it , then beating myself up for not succeeding in this …
Then it is like with this " self attack" , my white blood cells get activated and attack the wall of intestine or the other part of the body…so I myself attack myself , then this thing happen and this discomfort appears …
So , I only need to stop this behavior toward myself , and as you say accept myself as i am , i might be able to be harmless toward my partner and then be healthy and feel good again …
Kuba , yes, that is true , I don’t know “ how to do it “ …
And also , what Vineeto wrote for me year ago , “ to stop and be still “ ,
which i never applied it unfortunately ,
I think if i had applied this , i would be quickly come back to feeling good , or neutral at least …but I did not , and i was just “ a victim to my emotional swings “…as if i was kidnapped by my emotive thoughts , and then wanting to figure the cause out in a midst of feeling bad and calling it investigation
Vineeto : “Can you see that the deciding factor between analysing your past and seeing the fact now is that you have the choice, right now, to actually change – not because you are forced to for moralistic reasons but because you are intelligent and have a benign and benevolent aim in life?”
Vineeto : After you understand that the whole actualism process is about diminishing the ‘self’ – both ‘I’ and ‘me’, controller and soul, good and bad feelings – and that enjoyment and appreciation is the successful way to do that, then you can more easily recognize (and decline) where and why ‘I’ cunningly step in to sabotage the endeavour. Then complaints such as “the actualism method is too hard” or “I can’t do this” are part of the same attempted sabotage and can be explored intelligently.
important :
for looking at the causation of getting upset , i do this : by attributing causation of an event onto my mother, my childhood experience and habituation since having been a toddler ! and by doing this I justify and cement my reaction rather than uprooting it.
Going by the quotes you selected it looks like you do see the point I was trying to make which is great. Essentially that with an affective awareness up and running ‘I’ can return to feeling good whenever there is any dip in felicity and innocuity without having to go through any kind of intellectual puzzle solving first. In fact that “puzzle solving” - from the position of being in the grip of emotion - is actually desperate spiralling in disguise.
So getting back to feeling good is nothing to do with investigation, and once feeling good again ‘I’ can actually have fun working out how ‘I’ tick.
I would also add (and this is because I have also been prone to the same kind of thing) that the next time the ‘attack’ comes and there is the begging of going into the worry and despair and the seeking of ‘security’ and the rest of it. That you will find yourself at a very important fork in the road, there is a choice to be made right there and then. That is exactly where the old habit is to be broken and the new habit to be formed. The action then is to decline to go in that direction in any form, because you know full well where it leads. From my experience this is where the ‘good’ feelings will seduce also… “Let me just take a few steps down this path and make sure it is all ‘safe’” etc. And yet you know that underneath this ‘security’ is always more ‘danger’. So instead you refuse to walk down that path at all.
A nice funny example of this is that thing of “let me just check one more time that I locked the door when I left the house”, I have watched my brother and my boss take turns doing this multiple times when locking up the office And with each bout of ‘safety’ came another bout of ‘danger’.
Really Appreciate you Kuba for being so persistent in writing and interested in helping .
This word “ to decline “ is very important and it is what gives me more success also.
This morning after reading your reply, I was feeling a bit tired and weak , and I saw my tendency /pattern /habit to want to go to the worry path , and get grumpy over being tired ,or even start a complain about my health with my partner .
But by remembering your reply and also Vineeto’s quotes , I just declined to go to the same path , and a few minutes later after having my breakfast , I was not tired anymore and did not need to beat myself up for being grumpy over it with my partner , my mood did not go down as well like the other times .
Also I remember Claudio’s writing :
“ The only thing this pattern will do is result in you continuing to be the way you are now, without being able to change. on top of any existing health issues you have, and the feelings surrounding that, you’re spending extra effort and time just to make yourself feel bad about yourself.”
And with each bout of ‘safety’ came another bout of ‘danger’.
