Roy: 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.
Hi Roy,
Thank you for your feedback, and I am delighted that you understand so much of what I explained. It’s a lot to take in and even more to digest. I much appreciate your response. Just two more points I’d like to comment on.
Roy: 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.
An actual intimacy is indeed happening with everyone and everything “being fully transparent” and, of course “without worries” of any kind. This is part and parcel of not being ‘self’-centred and without any ‘self’ whatsoever, and one is therefore benevolent, equitable and considerate.
The more one is virtually happy and virtually harmless, the more intimacy with fellow human beings and the world around you is possible. When pure intent is dedicatory in place (“as an overriding/ overarching life-devotional goal which takes absolute precedence over all else”), then you can be “fully transparent without” and be more and more confidently harmless. Until this happens it is still advisable to take into account that you, and everyone else, is a feeling being with whatever this entails.
Maybe you had already implied all that when you wrote the above paragraph. I am just being careful remembering ‘Vineeto’s’ own experiences when ‘her’ confidence in having successfully dismantled some of ‘her’ social identity sometimes translated into impulsive actions, which were anything but beneficial … ‘oops’.
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.
Roy: 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. (link)
That is great discovery you made.
However, there is far more to the “negative” side of ‘good’ feelings than inflation of the ego. By calling ‘good’ feelings (such as love and compassion) “what is positive” you may have missed the issue of what ‘good’ feelings and their dark twin are. The reason for the long quote from Richard at the end of my last post was to give you some material to contemplate when you have the time and inclination. ‘Good’ feelings are just as passionate as ‘bad’ feelings, arising from the same instinctual passions, ‘me’ at the core of my being, and hence equally rotten at the core.
Richard: … Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out. (Richard, List B, No. 31, 7 Mar 1998).
Cheers Vineeto