VINEETO: There’s a curious thing about emotions and instinctual passions – if you want to be genuinely free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions you will have to question the positive or ‘good’ emotions first. If you want to become free of feeling insulted and blamed by others you will have to abandon seeking the praise of others, if you want to become free of the fear of losing a cherished item or job you will have to investigate the desire, affection and attachment for that item or job, and if you want to become free of the fear of the loss of ‘loved ones’ you will have to inquire into your of desire to belong and your feelings of dependency and love.
GARY: So it appears that initially the intent to be free of the negative or ‘bad’ emotions is what fuels the investigation into the instinctual passions. But one finds out relatively quickly, going back to a seminal point that Richard talks about, that one cannot be a ‘stripped down self’. I did not really understand this at first but as I continue using the method of actualism I see with increasing clarity that this is true. One cannot eliminate the negative, invidious passions without the positive, ‘loving’ emotions, and this is a major point at which one may well balk. What I have found to be true of myself, at the current stage, is that I may fondly imagine that I am free from being shackled to the influence of others, I may imagine that I am free from the attachment to the job or the praise of the supervisor, but I am not. And each one of these startling glimpses into the way ‘I’ operate leads to a greater freedom from ‘my’ habitual clinging and holding of people, places, and things. Merely wanting to be free from these things is, of course, not enough. One has to be able to experience the ‘me’ in action, see ‘me’ in all my cunningness, duplicity, and dishonesty. One needs to be neither in love with love, or embittered and disillusioned by love’s failures. One needs to see oneself for who one is, and when I use the word ‘one’ I am referring to the alien entity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body. When one really sees oneself for who one is, one is free to be what one is.
VINEETO: The closer I looked into the so-called positive feelings that I had cherished for so long, the more I discovered that love had no tangible benefits, only fleeting emotions and un-kept promises. Inevitably attachment would lead to resentment, fear and jealousy, the desire for unconditional love would lead to unconditional, as in unquestioning, dependency and the desire to appear unconditionally loving would lead to self-contempt, hypocrisy and an emotional and physical withdrawal from the so-called bad world.
So ‘disillusionment’, as in acknowledging that love has failed to bring an actual peace and harmony between human beings, is a necessary starting point as one dismantles imagination and discovers the facts.
When you say ‘one needs to see oneself for who one is’ I was reminded of this quote from Richard about seeing facts, and it has helped me a few times to overcome fear and do what was obviously the next step –
Just been slowly reading this over and over again as each time something clicks but it’s interesting how it’s all slowly revealing itself.
For the past 5 or so years I have been ignoring that I have infact been in love, not to the “normal” extent as it hasn’t been nutured but I have nevertheless allowed myself to fall in love. I’ve always known that of course there was loving feelings there but I was never able to admit to myself that I have fallen in love and dismissing it as “loving feelings” which didn’t need to be looked at. I’ve fully become entangled in it. The aim was never to fall in love but I seem to have ended up here anyways. I can begin to see it now, the authority, dependency, nurturing. It’s all because I have fallen in love.
I mean, of course merely saying I don’t want to be in love or logicall not seeing the sense in it is not enough and actually experiencing it myself, looking at it, exploring it and actually knowing fully to my bones that I don’t want it never happened. I never found out experientally that this is not the path I want to go down. It feels like a weight lifting off my shoulders finally realising and admitting this, it explains the intense bad feelings (the other side of love) whenever the good feelings of love weren’t reciprocated. I’ve been repressing, ignoring, brushing it under the rug all this time.