asceticism

thumbnail
adam ,, modified 13 Years ago at 3/8/11 8:35 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 3/8/11 8:35 PM

asceticism

Posts: 105 Join Date: 2/19/11 Recent Posts
Does asceticism play any role in Actual Freedom? Logically it would seem having your desires more obvious and aggravated would allow you to more clearly see the harm they and the self causing them cause. maybe eating one meal a day sleeping less etc. would help? any thoughts?
thumbnail
#1 - 0, modified 13 Years ago at 3/8/11 11:04 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 3/8/11 11:04 PM

RE: asceticism

Posts: 104 Join Date: 8/8/10 Recent Posts
Since AF is largely predicated on your ability to maintain a state of perpetual wonder and delight, I don't know if it would help. If you have certain addictions or compulsions that trigger self-judgement, it would probably do well to watch your relationship with them closely. Ascetism in its truest sense, however, is considered overboard by most traditions, and can end up causing more tail-chasing than anything else. The point is to enjoy life more.
thumbnail
Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem, modified 13 Years ago at 3/8/11 11:21 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 3/8/11 11:21 PM

RE: asceticism

Posts: 2227 Join Date: 10/27/10 Recent Posts
adam j. hunter:
Does asceticism play any role in Actual Freedom? Logically it would seem having your desires more obvious and aggravated would allow you to more clearly see the harm they and the self causing them cause. maybe eating one meal a day sleeping less etc. would help? any thoughts?
i believe there's enough suffering in normal day to day life that you don't need to aggravate it especially.. and if you're at a point where you're lacking suffering then, good! work on feeling better and getting into PCEs
thumbnail
adam ,, modified 13 Years ago at 3/9/11 4:19 PM
Created 13 Years ago at 3/9/11 4:18 PM

RE: asceticism

Posts: 105 Join Date: 2/19/11 Recent Posts
heh, yea every time i expect myself to get irritated about something I realize that I'm not irritated, I was thinking maybe I could better access my instinctual self if its will was more activated. I still haven't achieved a PCE though so I guess I'll just go after that. But I think I will start eating just one meal a day too, somehow it just seems like it will help.

asceticism doesn't really imply any certain intensity, just some sort of denial of satisfying desire
thumbnail
Beoman Claudiu Dragon Emu Fire Golem, modified 13 Years ago at 3/15/11 10:46 AM
Created 13 Years ago at 3/15/11 10:46 AM

RE: asceticism

Posts: 2227 Join Date: 10/27/10 Recent Posts
might be relevant:
Vineeto:
I also had to realize that after I’ve been through certain intense feelings and passions there is nothing further to be learned from staying in the feeling. I used to be suspicious of Richard’s expression of ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’, ostensibly for the reason that it could be confused with repressing the feeling. But now I realized that I was also avoiding the technique itself because ‘I’ wanted to hang onto being ‘the explorer’ of deep passions whenever they occurred and I can see now that there is neither meaning nor value in ceaselessly examining an instinctual passion over and over and over again. In other words I have come to understand that no valuable insight is to be gained from deeply and repeatedly feeling fear – the most prominent of the passions for me – and this understanding has greatly helped to simply notice and label the feeling, in this case my fear of oblivion, and then get on with enjoying this moment of being alive, which is after all the point of actualism.