‘Vineeto’ to Gary: When Peter and I met, he had grasped enough from Richard’s radical discovery to not want to fall in love again. And yet, as he has described it in his Journal,, falling in love happened despite all good intentions, inevitably unfolding all the typical emotions between man and woman within the Human Condition. To get a handle on the overwhelming impact of my tender emotions, I had to feel, experience, acknowledge, label and investigate each and every single emotion of the bundle called love in order to understand what love consists of. There was sexual attraction, fear of loneliness, my personal dreams and fantasies, my emotional dependency, my expectations of the other, the male and female conditioning, constant mistrust, fear, jealousy, worry and feelings of inadequacy that I tried to overcome by anticipating, attempting to interpret and empathizing with the other’s moods and feelings. (…)
As I successively became aware of and understood one feeling after the other, I first had glimpses and then increasingly longer periods where neither tender nor savage emotions would interfere in the delightful magic of a direct unimpeded peaceful interaction with another human being. It became more and more obvious that love is nothing but a shield of ‘my’ projected feelings that act to keep me at a safe distance and therefore love only stands in the way of intimate interaction with others. (link)
Syd: Thank you, Vineeto.
I’ve been reading what other actualists have written of love. And it is quite amazing to discover how much we all have in common (I can recognize myself in their words), in regards to how love ‘operates’. Love, which resumed upon re-establishing contact, is finally leaving my system again. Oh boy, I don’t think I want to go through this again … all the more reason to be watchful of the ‘bi-furcation’ … and prioritize near-actual intimacy from the get go for future acquaintances (speaking of which I did speak to someone briefly today and I’m pretty satisfied with how I handled it overall). (link)
Hi Syd,
So you had your first encounter with the beginnings of falling in love as an adult – and conclude that reading what other actualists say about love gives you enough theoretical knowledge to “be watchful of the ‘bi-furcation’”. With such high expectations don’t let yourself be discouraged when romantic feelings mixed with sexual desire strike again. As ‘Vineeto’ reported, ‘she’ had to become “aware of and understood one feeling after the other” until eventually, after many investigations, “neither tender nor savage emotions would interfere”.
One experience, by your reports, mixed with some detachment, rejection and suppression of your ‘tender’ feelings, lots of hope and high-flying intentions, is most likely not enough to overall, experientially and affectively, understand how you operate. Hence I suggest to be more realistic, down-to-earth, and patient in order that you can be naïvely interested and genuinely attentive (possibly as in “attentiveness does not play favourites”) about what is happening when the cocktail of what is called “falling in love” starts setting in the next time.
Only by allowing to let the experience itself unfold can you learn about its intricacies, the hopes, dreams and beliefs it all entails, its unspoken assumptions on both sides, the psychic push and pull, the interactive power dynamic and the very cunning mechanism of ‘you’ to ‘get out of here as fast as possible’, or, as you say “I don’t think I want to go through this again”.
Rejection and resentment of the topic you want to experientially research interfere with a thorough and possibly enjoyable inquiry where you can be confident about the results you get. So perhaps your first inquiry is about what was so terrible, so frightful in this past experience, and why.
Kuba gave you an insightful and excellent suggestion how to proceed from there –
Kuba: It seems you have got down to some of the nitty-gritty of what is going on. I remember some years ago having this realisation, that it was my desire which was keeping me a slave. Initially it seemed like it was the woman who was at fault, after-all she had the power over me, the power to affect my self-worth etc. But then it was so clear that I was a self-made slave, it was my desire which made it possible for women to dangle various glittering carrots in front of me, and for me to mindlessly follow.
This is nothing new, that men desire sex and women can and do exploit this… Blind-spot. The game-changing thing with actualism is that I can unilaterally step out of this power game. However, it does require attending to the fundamental fact – it is my desire which is keeping me a slave. (link)
Plenty to explore – don’t forget to enjoy and deeply appreciate solving the puzzle that is one of the top mysteries of the human condition.
Cheers Vineeto