Roy's Journal

[roy]

@Vineeto

many people may feel themselves to be harmless when they are not experiencing feelings of aggression or anger against somebody. Yet they are nevertheless causing harm via their thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions, something that all human beings are prone to do unless they become fully aware of their instinctual passions before these translate into vibes and/or actions.

Thank you, that’s exactly what I meant. I’ll have to read more what is meant by vibes in this context but that’s it — I thought of this in terms of “unintentional harm” that I do and that I wish to be able to stop, because right now I can only realize it after it has happened.

@Vineeto

It was about a year into my process of actualism when I became aware of how much my outlook on the world and on people had changed in that my cloak of myopic ‘self’-centredness began to lift and I no longer saw the world only ‘my’ way and my judgments and actions no longer revolved around ‘my’ interests, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ ideals, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ aversions.

I’m hoping that, with time, I begin moving from the current process of “doing something due to conditioning → realizing it later → feeling good again” to a more effortless situation where the conditioning doesn’t exist as much to begin with. Only then I’ll be able to be both happy and harmless. It is not yet the case, I continue to very much run into the same mistakes.

@Vineeto

Consequently I have learnt to judge harmlessness by the amount of parity and consideration I apply to others whom I come in contact with, both at work and at play, and not by merely feeling myself to be harmless.

That makes perfect sense to me now… It took me quite a while to understand this possibility of being considerate of others while treating them as equal, independent and autonomous, peers, fellow human beings. Somehow the two felt incompatible in the past.

@Vineeto

Suddenly the separation I felt was gone and there was a delicious intimacy, as ‘I’ was no longer attempting to force him to fit into ‘my’ world.

Intimacy to me used to mean being exceptionally close to someone in a vulnerable/fragile way, and now it means being fully transparent without worries about what I share / say / how the other person reacts / if they will accept me or not / etc. I guess I didn’t ever had this type of real human connection in the past.

@Vineeto

until ‘I’ more and more leave centre-stage, stop resenting being here, stop being stressed, take myself less seriously, take notice of other people the way they are and start enjoying life.

This is very interesting to read as it also resembles exactly what I thought the other day. I can’t move forward in this process if I don’t stop blaming myself and I’m not my own best friend and complain about how things are. Laughing at myself and dropping different sorts of sophistication has also been very useful and freeing recently. And the realization that to become freer I already have to be happy in the first place — the happiness won’t start later on.

@Vineeto

As for “when you judge people” – ‘thou shalt not judge’ is both a Christian adage and common in Eastern spiritual teachings but doesn’t hold up in real life. Judging, i.e. to make appraisals is a necessity in everyday life – the values by which to judge, however, can be harmful or beneficial.

That makes a lot of sense, hadn’t thought of how judgment is not necessarily bad and is inevitable for evaluating situations.

@Vineeto

‘Vineeto’ also discovered in ‘her’ quest of becoming factually/ actually harmless, that it wasn’t enough to investigate and disempower the ‘bad’ emotions and their related conditioning but even more so the ‘good’ emotions. Each ‘good’ feeling has a dark twin underpinning it.

It’s very interesting that you say that because the other day I had exactly a situation in my life in which I realized that I should investigate good feelings too. I thought I wouldn’t need to care too much about what is positive, but in fact I need to investigate any disturbing feeling (positive and negative). The situation was that I happened to do something very positive both in my community and at work without even trying and without selfish motivations. It just happened that I had to handle these situations and I handled them very well. And so I was praised and with that came a great feeling of belonging and worthiness. Later however I did something stupid and turns out that it was caused by the inflated ego from earlier. Whenever I let my ego become bigger it ends up affecting my behaviors later on in a negative way. So basically I have to investigate both positive and negative feelings.

@Vineeto

Cheers Vineeto

Thanks a lot for the time you spent writing this reply! It is very helpful and this forum has become a very important resource for me thanks to many of you here.