Scout: Becoming more naive sometimes has come with sadness
When I strip away my cynicism and numbness I just see a lot of hurt and scared people. I see how the people I love struggle and are in pain. I also see that they are finite and going to die. I remember being little and the enormity of all of those things was overwhelming and it devastated me and eventually I numbed out but now I see it again and I feel it deeply.
Hi Scout,
You describe very well why it is initially difficult to allow naiveté into one’s life. All the emotional pain and sorrow you feel when opening up can be quite overwhelming and devastating. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ could only allow feeling the full extent of this sorrow when ‘she’ knew with the certainty gained from the PCE that there was an actual solution to the millennia-old ubiquitous sorrow of the human condition.
You may recall what I wrote to Kuba recently (link) –
‘VINEETO’ (to Richard): Last night serendipity provided the answer to my question to you, which had been going on in my head since I wrote to you. The experiential answer to ‘I am many and many is me’ presented itself in the form a TV program on International Humanitarian Aid Organizations and their role and accountability. For one and a half hours there was ample footage presented on human suffering and devastation in war, famine, genocide and racial ‘cleansing’ on one side and the helpless, well-intentioned, yet almost useless effort of people in the aid organizations on the other side.
The presentation was enough to make it utterly and unquestionably clear to me that there is no difference between me and the hundreds of thousands who have suffered and died and those who have, without success or effective change, tried to help – for ‘umpteen hundreds of thousands of years’. On an overwhelming instinctual level ‘I’ am ‘them’ and ‘I’ have had no solution and never will have a solution.
The devastation is enormous and the only way ‘out’ is ‘self’-sacrifice. [Emphasis added]. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, Richard, 28.9.1999).
It is nevertheless excellent that you can allow yourself to be “more naïve” which “sometimes has come with sadness”. Remember to also be appreciative of both your courage and sensitivity to humanity’s plight.
Scout: I don’t really know how to move back to feeling good other than feeling these things when they hit me. If I try to redirect my attention I feel the ignored feelings buzzing in the background, where they can remain as agitation for days to weeks if I insist on not facing them. So I give the feelings my attention and they swallow me for a little and I sob harder than I’ve sobbed in memory. And then after that they start to recede.
I don’t know if this goes against the method, it’s just kind of naturally started happening as I’ve started paying more direct attention to what’s going on in my mind and body. I know crying doesn’t change anything but it really demands to be felt, I can’t get around it. It has been making me kinder and more patient with people. But I also notice the desire to help people emerging, out of compassion. I’ve been noticing this without entertaining the fantasies too much because it seems silly to have someone who is not fully free of pain wanting to guide others out of pain. Towards what? I don’t know where I’m going, But I feel more raw than I’ve felt since childhood.
I remember from ‘Vineeto’s’ experiences that it can take a while to feel out those intensive feelings. It also gives you a bit more information how ‘you’ tick (and by extent how every feeling being ticks at the core of their being). Henry is correct that when indulging in too much sorrow, you can be swallowed up and seduced by the bitter-sweetness of sorrow – but with fascinated attention you are bound to discover the right balance.
Feeling “more raw than I’ve felt since childhood” is a good indicator that you have allowed naiveté to peek through your numbness, and years of hiding from behind those walls certainly needs getting used to. Be aware, i.e. be attentive, when this sorrow flips into compassion (=is suffering with others) because that might initially feel better but will only extend the sorrow. You can be helping others by feeling good yourself and instead be practically patient, considerate and friendly.
R: One can give unconditional love to another for twenty four hours a day – I have done this myself, years ago – and the other is still not satisfied. Initially thrilled, yes, but eventually it is not enough. Total acceptance, total appreciation, total love … that is what I provided for another, once upon a time … and it was not what she needed. She only felt that that would satisfy, that that was what would settle the gnawing ache, the gaping wound, the longing void. It was not.
Q(2): Oh yes, I know that from myself. It turns it back onto me, doesn’t it?
R: Not only does another person not have to provide you with fulfilment, the fact is they can not. Once one realises this, one is free from the other. And not only are you free from them, but you free them from your demands, your expectations that you put upon them – like your parents do.
It is a two-way thing. If, as you say, you go around the world to visit your parents to ‘pacify them’ – to fulfil their expectations – you, too, are looking for fulfilment. Which is why I asked you: ‘What is your investment?’ (Audio-taped Dialogues, Compassion Gained through Forgiveness Binds)
You observed it well – you would not know where to lead others, other than providing a living example how to live without resentment of being here, by enjoying and appreciating being alive, and thus prove wrong the ancient belief that ‘life is a vale of tears’.
What also helps is to emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable –
RICHARD: Given that people are as-they-are and that the world is as-it-is there are more than a few things which are ‘unacceptable’ (child abuse, rape, murder, torture and so on). What worked for me twenty-odd years ago, as a preliminary step, was to rephrase the question so that it makes sense (rather than vainly apply any of those unliveable ‘unconditional acceptance’ type injunctions):
• Can I emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable?
This way intelligence need not be compromised … intelligence will no longer be crippled. (Richard, List B, James2, 18 Aug 2001).
Scout: Maybe this is part of the compulsion of self-immolation, because it feels like I as an emotional entity have to choose between being numb or feeling intense and destabilizing emotional pain in response to the misery of humanity. Humanity loves its weeping martyrs but honestly from an experiential perspective, being the martyr seems like kind of a raw deal. Sure it’s pretty blissful to feel loving and compassionate and connected but it seems inextricable: if feeling connected with other people supplies the druggy good feelings, then feeling disconnected from them or rejected by them produces bad feelings. If their happiness brings good feelings, then their misery brings bad ones.
So I’m handing other people, who are often volatile and repressed and on some level unhappy, the reins to my well-being.
I don’t like living this way. (link)
Well said. You are discovering more and more about the human condition and why the old ways don’t work and never have. And now you have an alternative which works. Being naïve you can experiment with being both sensitive and sensible and appreciate the successes you have to enjoy life more than before.
Cheers Vineeto