Vineeto: And it is not necessary to allow yourself to continue feeling threatened by it.
Edzd: During my path thusfar, the PCE has actually been a REALLY threatening thing. “I” would get scared at times when my baseline would improve, or when I would feel happier. “Scared” that I could slip into a PCE or die at any moment. All irrational but felt!
Hi Ed,
Every feeling is irrational, no matter if common wisdom says that some fear is rational. Today I saw a clip from Elon Musk on another matter (link) and one quote of his at the 1min mark struck me – he said “when thinking about fear, look fear straight in the eye and it will disappear, (…) look at it directly and it will be gone.” I was struck by his insight because I so far have heard nobody say anything like this except in the AFT writings. ‘Vineeto’s’ experience was that when she stopped objecting to fear, running away from fear, fighting against fear, it would diminish substantially and eventually subside.
However, at the end of the post, you say –
Edzd: I’m constantly on the lookout for a PCE.
How can you be “constantly on the lookout for a PCE” and simultaneously consider “the PCE has actually been a REALLY threatening thing”? Is it any wonder that the PCE is so far unattainable – or rather that you avoid the PCE like the plague despite your constant lookout for it at the surface level.
Unless you face the fear – stop objecting to it, stop running from it, and allow to feel it as what you are, the experience you are constantly looking out for will remain elusive.
Edzd: A pang of fear would pop up and diminish the movement towards happy & harmless – presenting a boundary for the happiness and harmlessness. It was like I kept having to see it was safe to go a little-bit further. Or kept having to see that what was keeping me in place wasn’t what I wanted at all, providing some needed gumption to move forward.
Instead of inching forward towards being happy and harmless tiny step by tiny step you also have the option to take the bull by the horns, as the saying goes, and face the core of your feeling of fear –
Richard: What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites … there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be … just like before birth. Where is the problem? (Richard, List B, No. 21, 10 Mar 1998)
And –
Richard: Now, whilst the word ‘fear’ is not the feeling itself, the feeling is very, very real whilst it is happening (as real as any ‘I’ is). By ‘being with it’ as it was happening – without moving in any direction whatsoever with escapist thoughts, feelings or urges – ‘I’ would come to experience ‘being it’ … and ‘I’ am this fear and this fear is ‘me’. Thus ‘I’ came to experience ‘myself’ in all ‘my’ nakedness. All ‘I’ am, is this fear … and fear is but one of the instinctual passions that blind nature genetically encodes in all sentient beings at conception in the genes … ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. (Richard, List B, No. 33a, 8 Oct 1999).
I presume you read this yourself at one time or another, so I ask you, what is it that prevents you looking at the one obstacle which so obviously stands in the way of what you presently want most (a PCE) and what you want for the times in between PCEs – feeling happy and harmless?
Vineeto: it is natural/ intrinsic for the identity to fear for ‘your’ continued survival but that is the very nature of the purity and perfection – that nothing dirty can get it.
Edzd: Let me see if I understand what you’re pointing out. The nature of purity and perfection provides the security I’m looking for since nothing dirty can get into it. Since it provides security, there is no need to fear it as something that is a threat to my survival as I have been doing thusfar?
What I am confirming is that what you are looking for – “the security I’m looking for since nothing dirty can get into it” is also the reason for your greatest fear, because in order to live where nothing dirty can get in, ‘you’, the identity, will have to die in its totality.
However, ‘you’ don’t have to die to have a PCE, ‘you’ only have to go into temporary abeyance. And ‘you’ don’t have to die in order to become more happy and harmless, ‘you’ only have to give up some, or a lot, of the control ‘you’ have at present over your flesh and blood body and Ed’s life.
Vineeto: Why should “the PCE […] be unreachable” because it was “profound”? You have certainly described the actual world in great detail and quality and other actualists can confirm this.
Edzd: I think the unreachable element may have something to do with feeling like an imposter.
I think there’s more to talk about and respond to but I’m about to go off to work. One last thing I wanted to mention is this:
I’m constantly on the lookout for a PCE. I both want to have one, and secretly avoid it (as made clear by feeling threatened.) I can find myself attempting to evaluate how close I am – usually happens when making progress and can spoil it. Or all of a sudden becoming momentarily scared and begin wondering what’s behind the fear.
Feeling like I’m falling into a repeated trap here and like I have to let something go but I can’t because my mind is always on these things. (link)
How close you are is not measured in inches or feet or hundreds of feet – existentially it is a very short step –
Richard: In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ (and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’; ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’; ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’).
The direct experiencing of this is the ending of ‘me’ … and I am this flesh and blood body only being here now as only this moment is. (Richard, List B, No. 33a, 8 Oct 1999).
If that is too scary for now, which is natural, then you can begin with, bit by bit, letting go of aspects of control and start allowing yourself to first feel the feeling (instead of merely thinking about it) and then begin to acknowledge that you are the feeling you feel instead of having the feeling. From there it is easy to choose to be a different feeling.
Cheers Vineeto