Scout: The instruction is simple but it really is quite challenging in practice, in that the internal emotional world can be viscerally painful. I’m a pretty sensitive person prone to being easily overwhelmed (this is an unhappy and uncomfortable existence, which is why I started seeking out a better way of living in the first place). I really don’t like pain, so often when something in my psyche hurts to look at, I will run away from the challenge. However, I find it hard to return to “feeling good” without direct acknowledgment of whatever it is standing in the way of that, so trying to numb and run away from the feeling I don’t like doesn’t help me.
It’s like there’s this meta-layer of fear of my own psyche. The feelings themselves (grief, fear) can be intense, but they are often somatic and don’t last too long without the fuel of ongoing thought, and even amidst grief or fear I can watch what’s happening in my body and see where I am tensing in resistance to the feelings, which often hurts more than the feeling itself. What also often hurts more than the feeling is the anticipation that the feeling will be bad and painful, the resistance to experiencing it and the desire to escape. I can see that this dread is pointless because it just adds unnecessary pain to the necessary pain.
Hi Scout,
You discovered for yourself that “meta-layer of fear”, which I would call underlying layer of fear, prevents you to look at the painful/ sorrowful emotions. As such I would recommend again, what I wrote to you before –
Vineeto: … stop fighting your pain and stop fighting the feelings you experience. Any battle against yourself only fuels the feelings and the [somatic] pain by increasing the power of ‘you’ to make you feel bad. Personally, feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that the moment she stopped fighting the feeling (i.e. by being afraid of it), it instantly diminished.
From there, seeing the success of stopping the battle against yourself, you might be able to get to a reasonable feeling good, a little better than neutral. (link)
And
Vineeto: I understand that it is hard to get an entry into the actualism method when you have a long-habituated response to fear and pain and all other unpleasant feelings. The thing is if you want to get better, you will have to start somewhere, and your entry is to allow yourself to feel, so that you can notice how you fight this feeling … and then consciously stop resisting, fighting, complaining, rejecting it. Unless you actually do it, you can never find out if the feeling itself diminishes when you stop fighting it, or not. (link)
Scout: It takes some real work to unlearn the resistances and avoidances I’ve spent a lifetime leaning on. I can also see why it might be hard for people to do this without a clear PCE for reference; the glimpses of peace I get are incredibly nice, but the addictive, dopaminergic pleasure derived from the habits I use to escape myself is much more accessible, and offers a buzzier thrill. But it doesn’t feel real or complete in the way that the peace feels. I think it might take me some time to break my addictions but the more I observe them clearly, the more they start to fall away on their own. (link)
Indeed, it does take some time but what it really takes is action. Observing is not enough and they won’t fall away by themselves. Actualism is not the neo-buddhistic ‘noting’ which is nothing but a dissociation practice. Check out (when you are feeling good) Claudiu’s excellent description from December 2012, what detrimental effect the MCTB advice given to him by the DhO participants had on him, and how he eventually managed to extract himself from the habit of noting/ dissociation. (Richard List D, Claudiu, 18 Dec 2012).
When you observe that any exploration into suffering brings up fear, and also observe your habitual reaction of rejecting the fear, take action by deciding to stop fighting the fear (neither repressing nor expressing) – and see what happens. The more actively responsive you are to your observations of habitual resistance and actively decide to stop fighting the fear, the less time it takes to “break my addictions”. They don’t fall away on their own but you can replace the addictive behaviour with the more beneficial alternative.
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: I don’t think I can emotionally accept it, can I? I just saw this video on Instagram (child abuse warning [snipped link]). It feels very painful to watch. It makes me feel compassion and the urge to do anything to help humanity because it’s the most fucking depressing thing in the world to see an innocent child screaming out for love and begging to have its needs met. (…)
Just because you “don’t think” that this is possible, and then prove this with another feeling response (to two stories about child abuse) means that your “I don’t think” is factual. Wouldn’t you rather say you ‘don’t feel’ that this is possible? Can you think again, when you are feeling good, and make a sincere distinction between “intellectually unacceptable” and emotionally unacceptable?
Presently you merely proved to yourself that your addiction to suffering is indeed unchangeable and therefore justified. Do you recognize the trick you play with yourself? You simply changed suffering about your own pain (which is too difficult to look at because of an underlying fear) to suffering for other people’s sake, especially in situations in which you can do nothing and where your own sympathy, empathy and compassion can offer no practical assistance. It only makes you suffer on their behalf on top of suffering on your own behalf so that you can feel less ‘selfish’.
Gary: By the way, I think questioning the supposedly benevolent intentions of others under the guise of ‘concern’ and ‘sympathy’ is a sign of health, not illness.
Richard: Sometimes it is helpful to work from the etymological roots of words … and as the word ‘concern’ comes from the Latin ‘concernere’ (sift, distinguish) I would endorse it as an apt description of a sign of health, yes. But as ‘sympathy’ comes from the Greek ‘sym’ (together, alike) and ‘pathy’ (suffering, feeling) I am hard-pushed to see ‘suffering together’ or ‘feeling alike’ as a sign of health (similarly with ‘compassion’: the Latin ‘passio’ equals the Greek ‘pathos’ hence ‘together in pathos’). There is a widespread belief that suffering is good for you … whereas in my experience the only good thing about suffering is when it comes to an end.
Permanently. (Richard, List B, Gary, 22 Sep 1999).
With this change of suffering for others’ sake you now deepened/ enhanced your own suffering and thus made any changes to your addiction to suffering more unlikely. I am pointing this out so that you can begin to recognize your own tricks employed not to change (‘you’ the frightened identity, which is very inventive and cunning in order to remain in charge).
Scout: But then what do I do? Notice myself feeling sad and outraged and see how it’s ineffective? It hurts a lot to feel this way, that much is clear. My mind argues that it’s selfish to just focus on eliminating pain for myself and cut myself off from the pain of others. It really breaks my heart. I want to help the suffering stop (link)
Claudiu pointed out quite rightly –
Claudiu: Feeling sad and sorrowful leaves you in a position to not be able to do anything due to lack of outwardly-directed energy. Sorrow can naturally turn to outrage, which is a form of aggression – and then look, you yourself are contributing to the madness, using the very same passionate energy, aggression, that mother is using to threaten her helpless daughter. You may feel that aggression applied appropriately, towards the proper targets, will solve the situation – you just have to look at humanity’s long and bloody history to already know that this won’t work. (link)
To genuinely, effectively and actually “help the suffering stop” you start with yourself, the only person you can change.
An ‘unselfish’ self is still a self and there is no virtue in increasing the suffering by suffering for others while doing nothing to stop inflicting your own suffering on others (via psychic vibes for instance).
Richard: Just as there are those who water down ‘selfless’ (no self) into meaning ‘unselfish’ (a not selfish self), there are those who make ‘timeless’ (no time) mean ‘eternity’ (unlimited time).
Even dictionaries do this. (Richard, List B, No. 33h, 2 Nov 2001).
First stop fighting the fear when it arises and allow, in the experiencing of it, to get the information you need in order to get back to feeling good. When feeling good – with less emotional interference – you can think about what you have read and found sensible and apply the advice that makes sense to you. If it works to minimize your suffering, continue, if not contemplate again and identify what other triggers keep you from feeling good.
One thing is for sure, suffering on others’ behalf or feeling sorry for your own emotional pain is not working to “help the suffering stop”.
Cheers Vineeto
