Hi @Jon,
It is indeed a good post, sticking to one coherent subject matter, as you say yourself at the end.
Jon: Good post. Tx. Really on point. I appreciate that. Way to stick to one coherent subject matter. lol
This is how productive thinking works. Great you remembered to pat yourself on the back.
When I first met Richard, after years of spiritual search where thinking was discouraged, I was delighted to be encouraged to use my brain again in the way it is capable of. Richard gave me one guideline – when exploring one topic to find out answers I hadn’t thought of before, he said, always come back to the ‘trunk’, the original question of inquiry. You can branch out, jump from branch to branch, but then come back to the original question. This way whatever has been discovered by the discursive way of thinking will be fed into advancing the original question. That’s how productive contemplation can work best.
Jon: Along similar lines to what Vineeto wrote to Henry regarding preferences and what Claudiu wrote some 2 days ago regarding mortality, I experienced how the real world revolves around some climax or another.
Here is what I pick out from your thought process – you “experienced how the real world revolves around some climax or another” , that you are always chasing some excitement (like most people), some valued goal, and when that is achieved, or not achieved, the excitement disappears.
Jon: But the actual world has no climaxes. The stream of benignity and benevolence doesn’t have one. Perfection can only exist without them. Climaxes need to exist outside time. We psychological entities are always in some relationship with a climax of some sort. Take that away and the feeling is freeing yet peculiar. One can say the climax is always ongoing.
This seems to be guesswork or a projected imagined quality rather than thinking, as you also say that “it seems pure intent is utterly unhuman”, which means you have not experienced either pure intent or “the stream of benignity and benevolence” or “perfection” – or at least can’t remember those qualities from when you experienced it. What is correct is that there is no emotional climax.
Jon: One of the great obstacles I have to moving closer to freedom is that those times when I’m closer than usual there is an onset of confusion and/or boredom as in what’s next, okay so what now.
That is a good insight. It’s akin to Claudiu’s reporting yesterday –
Claudiu: A major thing is seeing a deeply ingrained and conditioned habit of avoidance I have. I came to see its habitual, a fear of anything unfamiliar or not already unknown. But then I ask myself (hoving closer to actuality) is anything actually wrong happening? (link)
Now, if you asked yourself, “is anything actually wrong happening?” you might discover that it’s ok to feel confusion/ boredom … because it might well be a way for you to discover a glimpse of your childhood naïveté. Viz.:
Jon: I also like observing children. My gf has two of them. It’s delicious seeing how utterly ignorant they are and can’t help themselves but to be. It’s hilarious.
Naiveté starts with having fun for no reason at all, to allow yourself to feel confused, not being in line with adult seriousness, being coy, unsure, a bit like a fool and a bit like a happy child, and very alive. See if you can access this naïveté, and discover that it eventually allows you to like yourself and consequently like others too. You can even marvel at the fact of being alive with childlike sensuosity. Naïveté will make enjoying and appreciating very, very easy.
“Kindness” is a very poor substitute, more like a duty when you can feel naïve instead, and then moving to be naïve, and consequently feel more alive and more enjoy being alive. It doesn’t require one climax after another, which only leaves you empty after it’s finished. Being naïve opens your eyes to a world you have long forgotten … and you can, if you allow it, experience sincere intent and even allow a PCE to happen (where you can get a connection to pure intent).
Jon: But sufficient pure intent would clear that up. It seems pure intent is utterly unhuman. And climaxes or the need for them, the need for a story with a beginning and at least one climax, is human. Pure intent isn’t human. I’d say the closest human attribute it has could be described as kindness.
You say that “pure intent is utterly unhuman” because it is not in your human experience. But the word “intent” in this phrase is the feeling being’s sincere intent to bring about the purity one has experienced (if you could only remember it) at least one time in one’s life. The purity is of the actual world, the intent is from the feeling being wanting to (eventually) live in the actual world. [Correction: [Richard]: “pure intent, born out of the connection between one’s inherent naiveté and the perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe” - therefore wanting to live in the actual world is sincere intent, “pure intent” is that which “must be outside of the human condition”].
So now that you come this far in your contemplation, why not give naïveté a try. All you need to do is putting aside your pride and its counterpart humility (which everyone is inflicted with to the detriment of the human race). Here is what Richard said about naïveté –
Richard: Naiveté is so vital to freedom. This is because even the strictest application of moralistic and ethicalistic injunctions will never lead to the clean clarity of the purity of living the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. Purity is an actual condition – intrinsic to this universe – that a human being can tap into by pure intent. Pure intent can be activated with earnest attention paid to the state of naiveté. To be naïve is to be virginal, unaffected, unselfconsciously artless … in short: ingenuous. Naiveté is a much-maligned word, having the common assumption that it implies gullibility. Nevertheless, to be naïve means to be simple and unsophisticated.
Pride is derived from an intellect inured to naïve innocence; to such an intellect, to be guileless appears to be gullible, stupid. In actuality, one has to be gullible to be sophisticated, to be wise in the ways of the real world. The ‘worldly-wise’ realists are not in touch with the purity of innocence; they readily obey the peremptory decrees of the cultured sophisticates. A sample of such decrees are: ‘I didn’t come down in the last shower’, or ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’, or ‘You’ve got to be tough to survive in the real world’, or ‘It’s dog eat dog out there’ … and so on. Such people are said to have ‘lost their innocence’. Human beings have not ‘lost their innocence’ … they never had it in the first place.
Innocence is something entirely new; it has never existed in human beings before. It is an evolutionary break-through to come upon innocence. It is a mutation of the human brain. Naiveté is a necessary precursor to invoke the condition of innocence. One surely has to be naïve to contemplate the profound notion that this universe is benign, friendly. One needs to be naïve to consider that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile.
To the realist – the ‘worldly-wise’ – this appears like utter foolishness. After all, life is a ‘vale of tears’ and one must ‘make the best of a bad situation’ because one ‘can’t change human nature’; and therefore ‘you have to fight for your rights’. This derogatory advice is endlessly forthcoming; the put-down of the universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable and malicious in?
It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be impossible to be free. (Library, Topics, Naïveté)
So you see, being a fool would be the opposite of being naïve. 
Cheers Vineeto