|
(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence Living Together
SONYA: So I’ve been keeping the experience of that ‘ah ha!’
moment at the front of my mind. The seeing that everything is happening on its own accord without ‘me’ actually
deciding anything has been pretty relevant for me lately. I mostly find myself loosening the ‘reigns of control’
when I’m driving and noticing how easy everything is and how much more fun I am having when I let go a bit more. It’s
realising experientially, bit by bit that it’s actually better in every way to step back. I notice that it’s when
‘I’ pop up and start planning/ scheming is when the light/ fun flavour of the world around me dulls. It’s like I’m
seeing the world through different lenses depending on how much ‘in control’ ‘I’ am. VINEETO: Hi Sonya, This is a great discovery and one which stands you in good stead every time you remember “to step back”. Being more and more naïve makes life not only easier but so much more fun! SONYA: Just in time to walk down the aisle this weekend haha. VINEETO: Congratulations to both of you – you both have the tools, the commitment and dedication to live together in peace and harmony. SONYA (to Kuba): I do notice that I have also found it harder to hold on to being serious. There have been a few fleeting moments when ‘I’ have felt I needed to be serious and be upset about something and one look at you grinning at me in playfulness and it all just dissipates. What a waste it would be to be serious and upset when I could enjoy this moment with you. VINEETO: Hehe, it’s such fun to have a happy playmate and you already noticed and
reported that you can have this non-serious enjoyment with other people as well. SONYA: The only time we seem to argue is usually when I’m on my
period but notably a couple weeks ago when I had my period you didn’t notice at all which is a big YAY! Now to keep
it consistent. VINEETO: You might like this section from Richard’s journal, which I found while looking for something else, revelling in the delights of peaceful and harmonious companionship – (Richard’s Journal, Article Two) Enjoy, and then some more. Cheers Vineeto
SONYA: So I’ve constantly been having a few thoughts in the back of my mind that keep popping up so I thought Ill try write them down and try to figure out what’s going on with love for me. I would say largely that love is out of the picture for me. I see to an extent that love is a double edged sword and doesn’t deliver the goods. To me, it’s a heavy, serious, sickly and always made me feel icky. I would say I’ve never fallen balls deep in that kind of “romantic” love. It would “give me the ick” when someone would fall in love with me. So, when I met Kuba and he said he wasn’t interested in love that was ideal. Fast forward into our relationship, loving feelings of course began to develop for the first time. Being 19/20 and still figuring out a lot about life, this new whirl wind of feelings hit like a tonne of bricks. Kuba and I never really fed into the loving feels but they were still somewhat there for me. Of course from it arose insecurities, expectations, control etc. I found that I was losing myself to some extent, I would do things out of love and if it wasn’t reciprocated I got upset. Each time that conflict or bad feelings would come up because of love I dismissed it and brushed it under the rug. I think cause we never really talked about it and I didn’t see the sense of it to a certain extent, it never grew past a certain point but it was still there. VINEETO: Hi Sonya, You really describe well how all the feelings under the umbrella of love are actually being in the way of feeling happy and harmless, of enjoying and appreciating being alive. And then how you looked at them, and more and more discovered that it makes simply no sense to keep having the same expectations resulting in the same disappointment, because of the ‘narrative’ of love. SONYA: I did eventually manage to eliminate most of it when I realised that I was getting upset and keeping love around by relating to Kuba as my ‘boyfriend’ and being in a ‘relationship’ with him. That came with all the expectations of those roles that I put on him and myself and that included the loving feelings. I think after realising that and freeing myself from those expectations and Kuba from my expectations from him I was able to stand on my two feet a bit more and interact Kuba in a fresher way. Less expectations, more fun, light, playful. I thought the job was done. Nope I was reading “A Bit of Vineeto” today when the below clicked for me.
VINEETO: This “feeling ‘connected’” can have different flavours, and only what prevents you from enjoying and appreciating at this moment needs to be looked at this moment. If relying on Kuba makes you insecure then you already know how you can do something about it. It’s a matter of actualising your insight. When you sharpen your affective awareness and tend to each obstacle, each interference preventing you from being gay and naïve, then you will see how the strong “feeling ‘connected’” eventually weakens and disappears altogether. It’s often only a habitual way of being which you can change once you notice it. SONYA: The main crux of love was largely diminished but I am still feeling connected to him.
My feelings are still influenced by how he’s feeling. For a while I could say that I wasn’t in love with Kuba but
there was something still there that was in the way of experiencing him directly without tinted glasses and I think it’s
the feeling of being connected. I am not yet standing on my own two feet and still looking to Kuba to hold my hand. VINEETO: You also said –
You can follow the lead of your “ah ha!” moment SONYA: I’d like to say that I also feel like such a fraud being in very feminine spaces and
not believing in love, it does feel a little lonely at times but I also know I can’t go back to believing in it
after seeing it for what it is. VINEETO: That’s excellent that you know you can’t go back, and the original unfamiliarity will soon pass because you are discovering something better than “believing in love”. You can explore more and more being vitally interested, appreciate, enjoy the other’s company, be fascinated of what he or you are saying next, doing next … and explore more and more intimacy free from the burden of love. And have fun (love is really a very serious business). SONYA: For me it was seeing what someone was like when they were in love, and how someone who
cared for me but wasn’t in love with me behaved. For the latter, we were both still living our own lives but didn’t
fall into the typical ‘roles’ which meant less expectations and less resentment. In fact, there was just more
caring and less control, manipulation. I think originally there was still some scepticism into exploring what a
partnership will be like without love but I can say experientially it’s the way to go. I also had to keep in mind
that we weren’t just eliminating love but replacing it with something better and care and appreciation had to be at
the forefront. VINEETO: For someone who says she feels “a little lonely” for “not believing in love” you are quite eloquent in how many benefits the alternative way of relating has. Who knows, you might even infect others with stories of making a success of your partnership. Cheers Vineeto
CHRONO: I applied this the week prior when my partner and I had a disagreement of sorts. Basically she was upset that I had not drove her home in the morning. I woke up and asked her (admittedly reluctantly) if she wanted me to drive her but I was too hesitant in just getting up and taking her due to my tiredness. Afterwards when I asked her if something was wrong she would say no (all the while the vibe was that something was wrong). After a few days she finally explained it after some prompting. There was the usual fear within me of where even with these disagreements I start to feel ‘oh so this is the end of the relationship’. She wanted me to reciprocate or do something for her in some way to show her that I am sorry (despite me already apologizing). I immediately thought that may be what she wanted was for me to suffer as well. But I declined going down that road. I asked for her part to communicate if she was feeling less than good and say if she doesn’t feel like talking about it at the time. She first said that she felt a little better just expressing her upset. Then after some eating, she was able to reason out that I had already helped her with her move to her new apartment and that she couldn’t ask for more. Throughout this I had the temptation to feel bad along with her because it seemed callous otherwise. I did end up falling into a bout of it but I was able to clearly see its workings while it was happening. It was rather insightful when I told her that I felt like I needed to suffer and she responded with ‘I’m not sure what I can do about that’. Some part of me feels that to suffer for another is caring. Another way that this ‘put others before oneself’ manifests. It’s a deceitful tactic to being more self-absorbed. Actually I am finding that relationship itself or perhaps this “connection” with another person hinges on this way of operating. Because when I contemplate feeling good come what may in this kind of scenario, a fear of the end of the relationship comes up. But I continually find that my partner much more enjoys when I feel good. VINEETO: A fascinating process – especially as you described that “throughout this I had the temptation to feel bad along with her because it seemed callous otherwise”. You could see that “relationship itself or perhaps this “connection” with another person hinges on this way of operating”. The alternative to “relationship” and “connection” with their unwritten implicit implications is being as sincere and naïve as you can allow yourself to be. As Richard describes it in a long correspondence with Martin – (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 Mar 2016) The whole correspondence is a fount of information on the third alternative to suffering together and callousness. Cheers Vineeto
SONYA: I’m just popping this on here cause this has kinda been an ongoing issue that pops up for me quite often and I’m getting sick of it It’s gonna look a bit mental but it’s just word vomit I am trying to make sense of so any help would be appreciated. 11/07/25 – Got upset because I FELT (feeling not fact) Kuba was blaming me for not being able to take jobs on the weekend (…) He changed his mind/ job requests came in – nothing I can do about it/ I did what I could so he could decide what he wanted to do on Friday… so why do I feel blame? – VINEETO: Hi Sonya, What you report is quite a complex situation for you. Hence it might be useful to peel it like an onion. First you report there are the feelings of upset and then blame. Have you noticed how these are almost always come one right after the other, almost indistinguishable from each other. But they are two different feeling. You felt upset because your plans/ expectations were disrupted and then you find someone to blame for the ‘damage’ done. This is the usual automatic instinctive response (so don’t blame yourself), but with diligent and fascinated attentiveness to how you experience yourself each moment you can separate them out. Then, still feeling bad, you endeavour to fix the problem but whatever you do does not help you feeling good. Hence, at this point it would be best to first get back to feeling good yourself while it’s still emerging before complicating it further with reactive action. SONYA: Responsible for how he is feeling? I feel he is now annoyed so now I am no longer happy (because I feel we are connected?) I feel responsible, have a thing about being in trouble/ told off. Authority as well maybe? VINEETO: You talked about this before, that because you like to “feel connected” you therefore “feel responsible for how he is feeling” and you try to make him happy. Yet by focussing on making the other happy you overlook/ ignore how you feel. Also, you don’t know for a fact if he needs help – it is simply an automatic feeling response. Because you feel bad you infer that he is “annoyed” and respond accordingly. He could well have been “annoyed” but then that is first and foremost his own responsibility. SONYA: I feel responsible, have a thing about being in trouble/ told off. Authority as well maybe? VINEETO: I only listed the sequence of events so you can look out for the smaller triggers and in future avert the (so far) inevitable conclusion (“I feel responsible”). It’s a habitual response and you have already found one cause – you want to be responsible because it gives you a connection – it is also possibly that it is an old survival technique acquired when you needed it. But when you get a chance to sort out facts from feelings you might find that it’s no longer needed for your survival but more likely a habit which you can question and replace with something better – a naïve intimacy perhaps? SONYA: This is similar to Ian’s post in some ways but I can’t
quite get to seeing the belief for what it is. VINEETO: What Ian did and reported a few times, he recognized that nobody else is responsible for how he feels. Taking back this authority to choose which feeling he wants to be (as in I am my feelings and my feelings are me) he can then look at his beliefs if they serve him to enjoy and appreciate this moment. Viz.:
If you exchange “being a good employee” for “being a good wife” then you can perhaps acknowledge/ recognize that you make both the rules for the “good wife” and then enforce those rules on both you and him and recognize that those rules are “rooted in fear of punishment but also in desire for reward, whether that is popularity or praise or both”. See if that makes sense for you. Cheers Vineeto
KUBA: Richard wrote in his journal that it is the man’s identification with authority as the ultimate and the woman’s identification with love as the ultimate which is what stands in the way of intimacy. Indeed I can see this is the case, with authority in my case. In that there is the ‘me’ that ‘I’ assert ‘myself’ to be in relation to ‘others’ – this I can see is an immediate obstacle in the way of intimacy. VINEETO: Hi Kuba, Indeed, this is the instinctual and conditioned way – but now you chose to do it the other way, the third alternative. And intimacy is not assertive but inclusive, enticing, friendly, benevolent.
Also, this snippet from Richard’s extensive articles on ‘Peasant Mentality’
At some point you might find it useful to familiarise yourself on the topic, perhaps in instalments, because it relates to most, if not all of one’s social identity issues and thus being “a ‘someone in relation to others’”. Again, a “self-less inclination” in order to imitate the actual does away with the need for being someone, let alone asserting yourself and then it’s much easier to allow naiveté come to the fore which you had been shying away from. KUBA: I can see that in my life I invested into becoming a ‘someone in relation to others’, this is ‘my’ apparent individuality. So initially when allowing intimacy it seems as if I am giving up my very individuality, yet when I look at just what this ‘individuality’ consists of, it is based in separation. Whatever place ‘I’ have carved for ‘myself’ within the hierarchy it is actually what
reinforces ‘me’ as a separative entity and gets in the way of intimacy. And so to consider allowing intimacy it is experienced as if ‘I’ am disarming ‘myself’,
in that ‘I’ will no longer be a ‘someone in particular’ with the power and authority that this might entail. VINEETO: It’s a strange instinctual habit (though unavoidable at first) that when encountering a new possibility of being in a different, more intimate way, one first lists all the things you might loose if you do that, which when you look at those ‘losses’ closely they are not worth anything in regards to what you really want, certainly not the time to worry about it. Whereas you could nourish and foster a naïve excitement of a beneficial discovery operating – think of how young children are eager to learn about the world they find themselves in (until their enthusiasm gets more and more stifled and oppressed. This is the kind of naiveté albeit with adult sensibilities which is the next exploration, and don’t be discouraged when you feel a bit shy or foolish – it’s part of the package – as you quoted Richard in your next message. Just so there is no misunderstanding, lust is not the driver of longing for intimacy –
Cheers Vineeto
JOSEF: I always thought I would apply the actualism method and
become more and more happy and harmless in my relationship. This was kind of the end goal. But in yesterday’s PCE
it became clear to me that I could only act in my partner and I’s best interest if there is no relationship at all.
The relationship is just another part of “me” with all of its problems. During the experience I was
considering “my” parents, partner, brother, friends etc. But it just felt like “his”
(“my”) life with his emotional hang ups. “My” home (with all “my” ideas about home)
became just the place I’m living in right now.
VINEETO: Ha, I can understand this very well. Living in peace and harmony with Peter was also ‘Vineeto’s’ entry point. Here is what ‘she’ reported –
Don’t you find it amazing (worth appreciating) that you start with one worthwhile goal – to live with your partner in peace and harmony – and the more you explore to make it work, the more you discover what this all involves? Now that you know with certainty, from the PCE, that ‘I’/ ‘me’ am the problem, you slowly dismantle whenever ‘I’ and ‘my’ demands, desires, objections, beliefs, etc. get in the way of being happy and harmless and enjoying/ appreciating being here. It’s not complex because it is only ‘me’, in ‘my’ variations, which is the problem. With your preference for a “self-less inclination” you have a clear compass where you want to go. Two hints to make it easier – always get back to feeling good before investigating an obstacle, and remember to be a friend to yourself. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: This is excellent. It takes a bit of getting used to it but when you remember Richard’s quote at the end of this message it makes it all so much more obvious that taking anything serious or emotionally urgent, as per the instinctual imperative, is well and truly a waste of time. CHRONO: I am glad that you pointed this out as an instinctual urgency as framing it this way has helped a lot too. Usually I have approached it as “OCD”. As this way of being does indeed look for problems or create problems (and subsequently try to solve them). The source of which is the “angst and agitation” which I’ve mentioned earlier. I’ve been applying the “it doesn’t really matter basis” to more and more things and it has caused some more ease and enjoyment. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, Remember that it is still the case of what you said before –
And I replied that it was “in line with what Sigmund Freud classified as the aim of psychiatry: to return
patients “back to a state of as near-normal functioning as possible (and ‘normal’ is
categorised by Mr. Sigmund Freud as ‘common human unhappiness’)” The people who invented and use such labels like “OCD” to ‘diagnose’ various
aspects of the human condition can only endeavour to ameliorate the symptoms, if that, but fail to diagnose, let
alone treat, the root cause of the problem itself – the instinctual imperative common to all feeling beings. And
the cute thing is that the solution to the human condition, an actual freedom, has been “classified as a ‘severe
psychotic condition’ in the DSM-IV” by those very same professionals. I am well pleased to hear that “applying the “it doesn’t really matter basis” to more and more things […] has caused some more ease and enjoyment”. CHRONO: This past week I went camping with my partner for the holiday and I noticed that she likes things in a very organized and specific way before she can relax. Otherwise she ends up becoming anxious or antsy. And that caused some frustration on my end as I prefer to do things in a leisurely way. But I saw that that was her way of being and that’s how she deals with it. She also does not readily share how she feels when experiencing a negative feeling as she needs time to process her feelings or she just keeps them bottled inside unless I really ask her. The sour vibe that stems from this causes anxiety on my end as it triggers my urgency to “fix” it. But I’ve already stated my preference to be open about feelings and/or talk through them. And only recently did I see that I’ve been adding fuel to the fire by going along with this way of being. It has been my main obstacle to feeling good now as I feel it to the core. Perhaps all of this is the very instinctual seriousness in action. So putting this on a “it doesn’t really matter basis” has been a huge help. Richard’s quote at the end highlights that I seem to lose sight of this fact of death and thus make everything serious. VINEETO: Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ noticed early into ‘her’ investigations into male-female relationships that men have the instinctual inclination to fix a problem when presented to them, while females are more instinctually inclined to want sympathy and understanding for their emotional problems (reaffirming ‘me’) rather than solving them. The only solution actualism has to offer is dissolution, in other words to become autonomous, so that a near-actual intimacy can ensue. Here are some experiential reports –
I also found a fitting description from Devika in Richard’s Journal –
CHRONO: Also related, I saw in action how I create ripples by even wanting to share how I feel about my anxiety to her because it in turn activates some feeling for her. Even the very desire to share it is self-centric because if I’m being honest, the main reason I want to share is so that she will alleviate it through some commiseration. It does seem like the center of what a relationship is. But that never eliminates the original feeling. Only covers it up. And I realized that by trying to seek solace in this way, I end up reinforcing my way of being and also contributing to negative vibes. VINEETO: How right you are – you create/ feed/ multiply those negative feelings and their accompanying vibes by ‘sharing’ – a word highly valued in modern social circles – unless you share delight and appreciation. Cheers Vineeto
|
