I guess this will just not be an argument I can use myself. To me, that seems like a intellectual trick, to redefine a feeling as asking for something impossible when there's no need to define it as such.
Hmm, maybe I'm just perceiving my affect differently, it always seems to be asking for things now that it can't have now. Thus asking for impossible things. I don't really care if it's a trick to be honest though, it certainly has the power to make me feel better. Maybe I'll use an example.
I'm in a car, I want to get home
Affect: Go home, body, damn you, car in front of me, go faster... damn you, light, turn green...
Intellect: Actually, this body can't go home right now, stop asking it to go home, it can't, there's no reason to attempt to strain towards going home in this instant when it's obvious that going home won't happen until at least a few minutes from now.
I thought the body doesn't feel emotions, though. Only 'I' feel them? How is the body hurt by those chemicals?
"i" is just an imagined psychological phenomenon, it doesn't have senses, I don't think it is the thing feeling those feelings. It causes the body to create the chemicals which result in the body feeling the affective pain and being compelled by it though... I think.
Maybe this isn't quite the same as the argument I tried to explain, I don't know... maybe this is sort of a combination of the "body being fine without affect" and "affect asking for things that can only come in the future" right now arguments. But this is one of the ways I make affect seems silly.
That seems to be in the wrong order. Noticing that me-being is silly before noticing what that 'me' is and isn't? Surely it would have to be the other way round. Otherwise what am I taking myself to be, such that my existence is silly?
Why is me 'being' silly?
sorry I pretty much didn't even read this, I was in a big hurry when I was finishing up my reply to your last question, I probably should have just said I'd respond later instead of giving a third-assed answer (even worse than a half-assed one). As for your question of why me 'being' is silly, I guess it's just because all 'I' do is whip this anonymous body and mind into getting things to keep it surviving, that it was already able to get without that 'whipping.'
All of my supposed influence on this universe is superfluous, and furthermore none of this universe is me or mine so it's silly to care about what happens with it.
As for your question about how to realize that "I" am my feelings, I don't know really, there was no big moment where I REALIZED! or anything like that. Maybe you are in the "dark night" stage of mind, in which case I really have no experience and can't help you. Maybe you should just do vipassana or whatever and get first path and come back and try again. It really seems like after so much time and so few results that you may simply need something additional to help you get somewhere with this practice. You've thought about this stuff just as much as I have, I'm sure you're just as smart if not smarter (I can barely explain a single point I'm trying to make accurately here

) but perhaps you somehow tripped into whatever the "dark night" stage is... I really don't know much about it. Certainly though the evidence is undeniable that first path helps.
All I've ever been able to do with my abilities, first-jhana access, is basically to think about things. There is a lot of stuff on this forum that I don't understand, all I can do is 1. think rationally, 2. pay attention to certain parts of my consciousness (sensuousness), 3. contemplate facts, and just in general try to convince my 'self' that using affect to influence the universe is a misguided effort. This is all that I seem to require to become felicitous and eventually on occasions slip from felicity into PCE. If this stuff doesn't work for you, and I'm sure you've gone through every argument, contemplated every fact and tried many times to pay sensuous attention, then maybe it's time for you to try something else? I'm really just a beginner in all of this... all I've done is to poorly explain what has been better explained elsewhere in my own terms and with my own framework.
What I've basically done is to elaborate on my own method of one part of HAIETMOBA, the seeing that something is silly step, which is with rational arguments which boil down to making the points that the affect is unnecessary to achieve it's goal and that it's unnecessary to achieve it's goal at all. I'll keep going, despite everything I just wrote I really don't mind, if you think that there is some part of my rational arguments I haven't made clear, but if you understand them, and for some reason they're still not helping you to see that your moods are silly, or if you are seeing them as silly but they don't go away, then I think there are people better "qualified" for the job.
If you want to know what changed for me I think I already basically explained it, I just sort of decided that no matter how much pain this body was in, no matter what happened around it, none of that really mattered so "I" didn't need to care about it, "I" didn't need to influence it. So then my practice lost all those elements of trying to strain towards pleasure, and my life lost a lot of trying to strain towards some form of results, I was much more just happy on the path to the goal (seeing that affect was unnecessary) and often there was no goal at all (seeing that the goal was unnecessary).
oops! sorry I was so long winded...
again