| | Hello forum,
I'd like to do a practice log on here to keep track of my thoughts and progress. The core purpose of my practice is that I'm interested in "freedom" - whatever that term might mean as things change over time. (This is the word I've used for a long time to describe my goal). Right now, my main source of inspiration is the Actual Freedom Trust, so undoubtedly this thread will focus on that heavily. This will probably read a bit differently from the meditation practice logs, but I hope some other people might find it useful, no matter what your practice might be. If you see me working through an idea you've already figured out for yourself, I'd love to hear about it.
Right now I see myself in a phase of development where I'm unifying my beliefs and habits around the concept of trusting spontenaity by relying on tranquility. As I go throughout the day, I keep an eye open for negative emotional reactions, and I challenge them with logic to justify themselves. A lot of my methods have been inspired by cognitive behavioral theory. I treat even the slightest mental disturbance as an "illness" that can be remedied through full understanding.
The way I've come to see the mind is that, for it to function smoothly and without stress, all beliefs and ideas need to be unified and complementary. I believe emotional stress is a signal from the mind that two concepts are in conflict and need to be resolved. Consider anxiety - it's a signal from the mind that we MUST remember something. We must hold on to it or we'll lose track of it and then something bad will happen. The logical resolution of this conflict is to find a way to trust ourselves and genuinely believe we have the ability to encounter any situation and deal with it appropriately in real time.
One of the ways I do this is through negative visualization. When I feel like I'm grappling with anger or sadness or anxiety, I take some time to sit down with the cause and imagine myself encountering it calmly in real time. I might imagine a group of people insulting me, or myself getting into a car accident, and I practice calming my reactions to these things. As I've done this over time, I've seen that most of the things we see as specific problems are actually part of larger interrelated thought patterns that, once they are resolved, can remove whole chunks of stress from daily living.
Another way is what I was reffering to by relying on tranquility, where, as stressful situations present themselves, I allow myself to trust the spontenaity of the intellect to resolve things. When emotions appear, I can usually see their cause fairly quickly, and I allow myself to accept the concequences of any failure. I like to call this "throwing caution to the winds," or "living recklessly." It works similarly to negative visualization in that the feelings are released by removing the concept of responsibility. It seems reckless in real time because the emotions are there to remind us how we're supposed to act, but in hindsight the intellect proves itself, over and over, to be more caipable when it doesn't feel these reminders. This hindsight works directly to remove trust in emotional states and the intellect is free to function more and more without them.
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So today I was thinking through a particular situation, and I was reminded of one of the important tennants of Actualism, which is that both nurture and malice are equally harmful in interpersonal relationships. I was debating with a friend about an ethical dilema in a star trek episode (if you're interested, it was "Cogenitors" in the Enterprise series, haha), and I realized I was feeling an interesting mixture of malice towards him, since he was disagreeing with me, and the desire for him to understand, which was nurture. I realized that this mixture was often present while I was explaining things to people, so I decided to give it a bit of an examination.
Thinking back, I can see that, not only was I feeling the emotions themselves, but I was also wishing I didn't feel them, and I had created a false tension in my mind that could only be resolved by a specific situation. I had an imaginary scene that I was waiting for where he would suddenly understand what I was saying, and accept it in a deferential and grateful way. Now, the interesting part to me is that this scene has never actually played out that way for me. I can't remember a time where anyone has accepted an argument I was making at all, let alone in real time in a specific situation. Obviously the only solution would be to remove that expectation.
So I set about considering how I might disable this imaginary scene, and I felt a ping-pong effect between both nurture and malice as I tried to make my mind understand that it could trust the actual moment of discussion, rather than expecting an imagined scene at the end. The first idea it presented was to attempt to consider the wellbeing of the other person while talking. This would diffuse the malice experienced due to my perception that the other person didn't understand. The problem with this, though, is that it would still activate an urgency in the mind to teach other people my ideas, and this urgency is specifically what causes people to be defensive rather than open minded. If my aim, in having a debate with someone, is to thoughtfully explain my own ideas and find the truth - even if I'm wrong, then all urgency and expectation must be removed.
From here my mind jumped to feelings of malice. I realized I would have to "unilaterally disarm" myself because no one else could be expected to act this way, even if I had disabled my own offensive stance. This malice was also directed at my own mind for being so sensitive to conflict. Of course, both of these things are ridiculous. There is no need for defence in a PCE because there is no malice in the mind. Malice only needs malice to defend itself. If there is none in the first place, there is no need for defense.
After this my feelings were resolved. I realized that I could give myself permission to be wrong, and I could also give other people permission to be offensive towards me. The mind wants to preserve its dignity and status, but those things have little value in the search for tranquility. Most of all, I realized that the feeling that defense is needed in a conversation is absurd, and I can simply trust myself. All of these things are obvious intellectually, of course, but the realizations themselves were more visceral. I trusted I could end my thoughts about the situation because I no longer had any emotional reactions present. I might practice later with some negative visualization - as this always "cements" these understandings. |