antireconciler
it's a nuclear device
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2007
- Messages
- 866
- MBTI Type
- Intj
- Enneagram
- 5w4
- Instinctual Variant
- so
I've thought for a long time that if I am feeling something negative, for example, I'll feel anxious and ungrounded sometimes if I think I've just said something very stupid or socially graceless to someone, that the best thing to do is to go into the feeling and just let myself feel it. This has a credible history behind it. Take for instance the Litany Against Fear:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
The idea is that if you can go deep enough into your troubles, there comes a realization that there is not actually anything there at all which threatens you. Only you remain.
The question is, when does this turn from an acceptance of one's self into an obsessive pursuance of an enemy in one's own mind albeit in the name of self-acceptance? There is a willingness to look and be lead by a guiding hand, and then there is a going off on your own crusades, so where is the difference? In other words, basically and practically, if we feel a negative emotion, if we feel a sense of personal pain and self-hurting, what are we to do? What is the correct action?
A Course in Miracles states that the answer we are to tell ourselves is this: "I need do nothing." But what does it mean to "do nothing"? The question is what is the real meaning of self-acceptance? What does it mean to just allow things to be, or to "let go", as people say? To accept the Atonement, forgiveness in our lives?
"I need do nothing" can mean a few different things. Perhaps it means "I can do whatever I want". Perhaps it means "I need do nothing about the problem I see before me". Or other things. It strikes me, though, that to really analyze the question like this and to try to break it down is to somehow miss the point. It somehow takes everything too seriously. "I need do nothing", in a way, says "it doesn't matter what you do", even though it may be very important and personal to us. Maybe that's all it means though, is that we don't have to give it so much personal attention and find our personal fears so important. We get the sense, when we are afraid or anxious or the like, that we are personally responsible for our problems and that there is something we have to do about it. We have to dig into it, say. Or we have to finally feel it completely. But always, what we are saying, is that we have not gone far enough. We say "something is beyond our reach, and we must drive yet farther, just a little farther for it" EVEN IF what we are driving for is self-forgiveness and complete self-acceptance. Notice, please, that this will to drive beyond one's reach is to say that our current reach is unacceptable. In other words, we are saying that our current selves are not acceptably suited for self-acceptance. How absurd this is! This makes no sense at all! So should we find ourselves in a situation where we feel like we just have to let ourselves feel something in order to overcome it and be at peace with it, we have already started off in the wrong direction.
The consequence is that, no, we need reach no depth, or suffer profoundly enough to get it out of our systems. I've tried to do this for so long, and it's miserable. I suffer and suffer and never is the reservoir dry! Never have I paid enough to finally see through it all. It's a bottomless pit, and when I finally see that, that's when I know I've done nothing but fall into despair. I am not healing. I am REJECTING healing.
So if we really need do nothing with our feelings of fear and anxiety, then what are we saying except that there is nothing we should try to do with them. Perhaps this simply means that there is nothing we CAN do with them. The result is only this: if we fear or despair or feel anxious, down, or negative, the best we can do is to turn away from it. Let us turn our attention away. In a way, giving something attention is a proclamation of value. What we devote attention to, we implicitly value, and of course we cannot turn from fear or anxiety while we still value it. This means but one thing: we will never turn from negativity unless we ACTIVELY do so. We have to deliberately turn away from it, deliberately stop giving it attention, which is to say, cease to value it, which is to say, change our minds and thus accept healing. We have to put some spine into it! If we want to feel better, we have to actively feel better. Many people are willing to say that we are the sole governors of what we feel, and like Epictetus says, no one can make us feel anything without our consent, but they may yet fail to realize that putting off what DOES govern our feelings into a submerged psyche or subconsciousness into which we must delve yet deeper for our salvation is JUST TO SAY that we are not the governors of our feelings after all, for look now how it is an alien force, an other and not the self at all which is the governor and dictator. We have control, but only by sacrificing a certain amount of suffering to the ruling subconscious as tribute or sacrifice. This is NOT what Epictetus is saying! This is no control at all! It is nothing but the base manipulations one expects from a slave!
Let us then, if we want to feel better, focus on what is positive and deliberately and actively change our feelings, and let us never thing that we are losing something or denying reality by turning from negativity in this way. Negativity is NOT reality, and no amount of negativity can lead you to it! No amount! TURN AWAY FROM IT, like Lot from Sodom. There is nothing there to see! Even the Litany Against Fear embraces this active element: "I must not fear."
So what of the passive element, such as "I will permit my fear to wash over me and through me"? I tell you the truth, actively turning away from fear and anxiety in this way is the only way to finally permit it to pass over you and through you. Only in your active will does fear no longer have power, and only washes over you like a dead thing no longer animated with life, indeed, no longer a part of existence. What is passive becomes active, and what is active becomes passive. If we seek positivity, we should expect to find it to be an inverse world to negativity, where everything is opposite and backward, even reason.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
The idea is that if you can go deep enough into your troubles, there comes a realization that there is not actually anything there at all which threatens you. Only you remain.
The question is, when does this turn from an acceptance of one's self into an obsessive pursuance of an enemy in one's own mind albeit in the name of self-acceptance? There is a willingness to look and be lead by a guiding hand, and then there is a going off on your own crusades, so where is the difference? In other words, basically and practically, if we feel a negative emotion, if we feel a sense of personal pain and self-hurting, what are we to do? What is the correct action?
A Course in Miracles states that the answer we are to tell ourselves is this: "I need do nothing." But what does it mean to "do nothing"? The question is what is the real meaning of self-acceptance? What does it mean to just allow things to be, or to "let go", as people say? To accept the Atonement, forgiveness in our lives?
"I need do nothing" can mean a few different things. Perhaps it means "I can do whatever I want". Perhaps it means "I need do nothing about the problem I see before me". Or other things. It strikes me, though, that to really analyze the question like this and to try to break it down is to somehow miss the point. It somehow takes everything too seriously. "I need do nothing", in a way, says "it doesn't matter what you do", even though it may be very important and personal to us. Maybe that's all it means though, is that we don't have to give it so much personal attention and find our personal fears so important. We get the sense, when we are afraid or anxious or the like, that we are personally responsible for our problems and that there is something we have to do about it. We have to dig into it, say. Or we have to finally feel it completely. But always, what we are saying, is that we have not gone far enough. We say "something is beyond our reach, and we must drive yet farther, just a little farther for it" EVEN IF what we are driving for is self-forgiveness and complete self-acceptance. Notice, please, that this will to drive beyond one's reach is to say that our current reach is unacceptable. In other words, we are saying that our current selves are not acceptably suited for self-acceptance. How absurd this is! This makes no sense at all! So should we find ourselves in a situation where we feel like we just have to let ourselves feel something in order to overcome it and be at peace with it, we have already started off in the wrong direction.
The consequence is that, no, we need reach no depth, or suffer profoundly enough to get it out of our systems. I've tried to do this for so long, and it's miserable. I suffer and suffer and never is the reservoir dry! Never have I paid enough to finally see through it all. It's a bottomless pit, and when I finally see that, that's when I know I've done nothing but fall into despair. I am not healing. I am REJECTING healing.
So if we really need do nothing with our feelings of fear and anxiety, then what are we saying except that there is nothing we should try to do with them. Perhaps this simply means that there is nothing we CAN do with them. The result is only this: if we fear or despair or feel anxious, down, or negative, the best we can do is to turn away from it. Let us turn our attention away. In a way, giving something attention is a proclamation of value. What we devote attention to, we implicitly value, and of course we cannot turn from fear or anxiety while we still value it. This means but one thing: we will never turn from negativity unless we ACTIVELY do so. We have to deliberately turn away from it, deliberately stop giving it attention, which is to say, cease to value it, which is to say, change our minds and thus accept healing. We have to put some spine into it! If we want to feel better, we have to actively feel better. Many people are willing to say that we are the sole governors of what we feel, and like Epictetus says, no one can make us feel anything without our consent, but they may yet fail to realize that putting off what DOES govern our feelings into a submerged psyche or subconsciousness into which we must delve yet deeper for our salvation is JUST TO SAY that we are not the governors of our feelings after all, for look now how it is an alien force, an other and not the self at all which is the governor and dictator. We have control, but only by sacrificing a certain amount of suffering to the ruling subconscious as tribute or sacrifice. This is NOT what Epictetus is saying! This is no control at all! It is nothing but the base manipulations one expects from a slave!
Let us then, if we want to feel better, focus on what is positive and deliberately and actively change our feelings, and let us never thing that we are losing something or denying reality by turning from negativity in this way. Negativity is NOT reality, and no amount of negativity can lead you to it! No amount! TURN AWAY FROM IT, like Lot from Sodom. There is nothing there to see! Even the Litany Against Fear embraces this active element: "I must not fear."
So what of the passive element, such as "I will permit my fear to wash over me and through me"? I tell you the truth, actively turning away from fear and anxiety in this way is the only way to finally permit it to pass over you and through you. Only in your active will does fear no longer have power, and only washes over you like a dead thing no longer animated with life, indeed, no longer a part of existence. What is passive becomes active, and what is active becomes passive. If we seek positivity, we should expect to find it to be an inverse world to negativity, where everything is opposite and backward, even reason.
