The Education of Axel Heyst

Where are you and where are you going?
AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:08 am
... it is best practice to consciously engage in practice of “honoring preferences of other.”
Do you have thoughts on how that practice manifests healthily in a recovering codependent? I'm of the view that a problem I have is that I *over*honor the preferences of other, to the exclusion of my own, to the exclusion of being able to perceive my own. Actually maybe JnG answered my question - the more I put my headspace in something analogous to "be a decent dom", the happier I *and* my partner are.

I haven't read Scanners (added to list) but I have read Renaissance Soul, which sounds similar. I liked it a lot.

ertyu
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by ertyu »

one thing i had to do was sit with it. it being the particular kind of discomfort of having my preferences. in the end, overhonoring other is safe, quiestion is, safe from what, safe why, and safe how. i do recommend sitting with this rather than intellectualizing the answer, and i suspect that you like me can get a lot of mileage out of, "well what if i did know my preferences / what if i did have preferences?" After you sort through that, ask: if I did have preferences, what would those be? Then sit with the discomfort of having your preferences. Then after you sort through that, ask, "what would it be like to have my preferences skillfully?" Dig around for the right word for "skillfully," could be functionally, could be peacefully, could be something arising out of your previous sitting. e.g. mine had an aspect of, how could I have my preferences without hurting others or while honoring others. What was holding me back in particular was that my example of masculinity, my father, was big into imposing his preferences and erasing the agency and inherent humanity of the other in the process--and then taking pleasure in feeling powerful and influential -- riding the ego trip basically. So first I needed to dig out that I don't want to be like him, and second, I needed to realize that having preferences doesn't necessarily mean being egoic or hurting people. Still not done, but this is where I am.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

It is tricky. If/when I attempt practice in alignment with sexual dichotomy theory, my personal primary difficulty with “relaxing in the feminine” is clearly expressing my preferences/feelings. For instance, I can cause annoyance with my tendency to say “Either would be fine.”, in response to “Would you prefer Thai or Italian?” , so I have to dig deeper to communicate something like, “Well, I generally enjoy both cuisines, and I like new experiences, and I haven’t tried either of those restaurants , and you’re picking up the bill and otherwise I would be eating day three cabbage soup, so I’m really okay with a coin flip or your preference in this matter.” It has been my experience that most men don’t mind my overt mooching because otherwise they are usually dealing with less easygoing types. However, getting the rep for generally being easygoing makes it more difficult when I do have a strong preference which needs expresssing. But, obviously, this is different then repressing strong preference/emotion to forward relationship. For instance, I sometimes hesitate to express “I feel bored.” because it doesn’t seem like a preference or emotion other should honor like “I feel hurt” or “I feel cold.”

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sat Apr 03, 2021 11:36 am
The medical expense is a hernia repair operation.
Please be very careful when recovering - no awkward movements, heavy lifting, or effortful pooping. Just because it has stopped hurting doesn't mean it is healed, give it many months to recover. I say this because 1. A small proportion of patients have chronic pain after this operation. and 2. I know someone who had to have the same surgery twice due to not respecting the healing process. Hope it goes well and you have a fast recovery.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sat Apr 03, 2021 11:36 am
I definitely feel like I've just been too effortful, too gripped. It's my whole "GROW DAMMIT!" attitude towards everything, that I'm pretty sure I was born with. It's extremely difficult for me to just enjoy shit. I get a real kick out of healthy hustle, but striking the right balance is difficult, and I almost always err on the side of way too much.

And it's not *clever* hustle, either, which makes me feel like an idiot. Some people hustle at startups or investing schemes or their own businesses. For my whole career, I output a startup-level hustle for the same pay as the dude in the next cubicle over - there was no potential massive upside to my hustle, I just did it because that's what I do. Did. What a fucking waste.
I really feel these paragraphs. I've spent my whole life working way too hard for other people. I like to work hard but 99% of my energy seems to have been wasted on helping family/friends get ahead (who should have been allowed to sink or swim on their own) or working for a salary. If I had ever focused my energy on things that benefitted me I'd be much further along. I don't have the answers but I suggest while you are out on the road you sit down and try to figure out what you want and what it will take to get there. When you are done wandering work on things that are to your advantage and will compound. To summarize, I'm assuming you are younger and I'm saying "don't do what I did, put yourself first." I still don't know how to do this so if you figure it out let me know. :)

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

What's the Point?

All of us around here ostensibly are on the same page that ~ERE is neat and all, but when you drill down and start getting in to specifics, we're all a bunch of individuals with our own drives, worldviews, and values, so of course ERE "means" something at least a little different to each of us.

Over the past year or so, I've come across various forumites asking the question "I'm not sure why I'd even want to go from WL 5 to 6, or 6 to 7, or whatever?" or in the Wheaton thread, JnG asking what the actual point of the table is.

The questions at first befuddled me, because "duh", but then I realized I didn't have a better articulation of why one would want to progress up the WLs than "duh", which is a sign I've got some unpacking to do and the questions are very valid.

I didn't have a well thought out argument on hand if someone were to accuse me of being a mindless ladder-climber, just replacing corporate/consumer ambition with "ERE ambition", whatever that means. In other words, if my instinctual perception that WL7 is more desirable than WL6 only boils down to a socially-programmed success and ambition drive and an ability to calculate that 7>6, then I've got a problem.

This post is my first real attempt to unpack my motivations and reasons for wanting to level up my ERE game beyond securing the basics of financial security, broad skills, and time autonomy. It's not necessarily an attempt to convince anyone else of anything, but rather an attempt to convince myself that my thought process and motivations are solid - they don't have some flaw, incorrect thinking, or unhealthy emotional baggage that's corrupting my drive.


"If it is not at first manifestly difficult, then there is no hope for it."
-I've lost the accreditation to this quote
I have an instinctual feeling that if something is easy to understand, it has little power to impact my life. Potential energy is a good metaphor here. If the delta_E between me and some other state is very low, well, energetically, we're basically at the same state. It seems to me that when it comes to matters of understanding, how much cognitive work it will take me to "get" it is an indication of the delta_E between my current state and my potential future state once I've internalized the matter of understanding. I use "how easy is this to understand?" as a proxy for delta_E.

For example, a long time ago, the idea that the sort of people I wanted to date would react favorably if I shared my feelings with them was easy to grasp. Simple, thanks internet! But it didn't change my life very much (turns out there's more to healthy relationships than just emotion-vomiting on cue). It was a tiny move in position from where I already was - delta_E was very low. On the other hand, fully internalizing the concept of sexual polarity (without making the common mistake of falling into misogyny/patronism) was a big cognitive lift for me, it took (/is taking) years. But my relationships are immeasurably better now because of this work. Big delta_E.

So I tend to be unimpressed when people claim their ideas, methods, or systems won't take much work to grok, or if I perceive that whatever they're talking about is something I basically already get. "Well then what good is it?" I think. I assume that it will at best move the needle of my life only a little bit.

I think this explains my relationship to MMM - I found his site years ago, but my reaction was essentially "don't spend much, index invest, okay that seems pretty easy, whatever." It's to my own detriment that I didn't take his advice/methods more seriously, but the way he made his ideas seem simple and easy was in a way a turnoff to me, because I unconsciously assumed there wasn't much depth there, not enough meat to be worth my time. The energetic end state of MMM wasn't very far away from my current energetic state, or so I felt. (To his credit, the delta_E between Axel_2015 and Axel_MMM would have been significant, but the way he presented it made me assume it wasn't - that I was basically doing all right by just not having a car or whatever.)

Contrast that with the ERE book, which has derivatives in the section about skill acquisition. That got my attention. Clearly there's some meat here. The potential delta_E was obviously huge. The Wheaton table was just more proof. I'm at best a WL3 (when I got here), and it goes to 8 and beyond? I'm struggling to wrap my head around L5? Alright awesome, this shit is going to take me places. I can't articulate what that place is going to look like, because it's so far away from where I'm at now, but I'm going to trust the process.

It's sort of like the idea of going for a bike ride around your neighborhood versus bikepacking to another hemisphere. If you're basically cool with where you're at, maybe you just want to "stay fit", going through the misery of biking to Patagonia is insane. But if your goal is to *become a different person* (and not out of a sense of self-hate but out of a sense of exploration, curiosity, self-love, etc), then a spin around the block just isn't going to cut it. You understand that transformation at that scale requires big effort, commitment, risk, and work.

This article from Scott Young is relevant.

Okay, but why ERE specifically?
That all hopefully explains my basic attraction to the obvious depth of ERE. But lots of things require effort to learn, what specifically about ERE captured my imagination? This is where I'm getting into more speculation, trying to figure out and articulate my own motivations as accurately as possible.

In a single phrase, I think it comes down to value alignment. ERE hit so many chords in myself, so perfectly, so simultaneously, that it didn't take much (any?) conscious work to conclude that this was something worth investing effort in to. And that obvious and instantaneous value alignment was such an intuitive thing, it explains why it can be difficult for me to articulate it, and why it's a little baffling to me when people question WHY they'd want to level up the Wheaton table. It *feels* self-evident to me, and I think that's because the explicit AND implicit values of ERE are in a creepy-aligned harmony with the values I already had when I read it. I didn't have to expend any effort to conform my worldview to get on board, I was able to jump straight in to execution and logistics.

In other words, when it came down to the philosophy and "why" of ERE, I was not sitting there going "oh, huh, I'd never thought of it like that before, I'm going to have to go on a long walk and think it over", I was going 'OH MY GOD THIS DUDE GETS IT and is articulating it in a way more precise and thorough way than I ever could, but This is clearly It right here."

If I just make a list of the values:
  • Autonomy/Agency
  • Competence/Usefulness
  • Security/Firm stance
  • Adaptability/Resilience
...It isn't very revelatory. Single words rarely are. It's the connection between them.

I desire autonomy/agency because who doesn't love freedom, but also because I'm an Explorer (in the Bartle player taxonomy). But take that and combine it with the value of competence/usefulness, and we have the idea that I require the Agency as a prerequisite to explore what areas I can most impactfuly apply my Competence at, and be a useful human being in service to others. This is both a form of creative self-expression, and an outward focus on helping other people (thanks to JnG for beating the "social skills" drum, as well as @RoamingFrancis' concept of The Renaissance Bodhisattva). The Competence/Usefulness value is deeply rooted in my understanding of the metacrises of climate change, peak resources, economic and political inequality, and ecological destruction, and wanting to do something about it or at minimum stop contributing to them. More on that in a second.

The values of security/firm stance give me a locus of power from which I can execute my usefulness - if I'm always wrapped up in worry about where I'm going to get money, food, shelter, resources, my ability to apply Usefulness in the world will be limited. Adaptability/Resilience is sort of taking the concept of Security/Firm Stance and integrating it over time - it is the ability to dynamically hold a firm stance through unfolding circumstances and changing environment. Very Boydian.

That discussion of values does an okay job of explaining the resonance of ERE, but it's only a couple layers deep. It doesn't get into the mud of my psyche, it doesn't totally explain why I've been putting a grad-school level of effort into ERE for the past 16 months. We need to go back to what I think my Competence is *for*, the metacrises, and my history with it, because that's where we get at my sense of meaning-making.

My Hobby: Staring into the Abyss
This is a good point to quote 7 from the Wheaton table thread:
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:09 am
@Ego: Good insight. I think what had me confused is that although it makes eminent sense to view 1Jacob as a measure or rough descriptor on the ERE Wheaton Scale, it may also serve as a target in a game some of us are playing in order to distract ourselves from our relatively recently acquired knowledge of the high grim likelihood that the planet is going to burn in spite of our futile efforts.

This relates to something I once learned from a wise old female INFP, which is that INFPs and INTJs and bordering types (artists and scientists on the enneagram) gain energy towards their purpose through the process of “staring into the abyss”, but ENTPs lose energy through this process.
I think the world is pretty messed up. I'm not sure if I'm a particularly sensitive person, or what, but going back to even my teenage years I perceived society as being corrupt, unfair, wretched, dysfunctional. Dysfunctional is actually probably the best word for it. I rarely assign blame to people for the messed-up-edness of the world, I don't think there are evil cabals of people scheming how to mess things up for everyone else, I just see systems that aren't serving their end goals well, and no one fixing them well enough. I perceive misaligned incentives, inequitable reward and punishment dynamics, "blind spots" (e.g. economic externalities), functions that solve one problem at the expense of another, and systems that simply accrete so much complexity that the maintenance cost exceeds the value they provide. Dysfunction drives me nuts. Dysfunction that benefits some and screws over others pisses me off. It's very difficult for me to shrug and go on with my life. I have to DO something about it (which, yes, is a potentially disastrous impulse in the naively righteous, which is something I'm very aware of, and why I have such a focus on true Competence and accurate perception, because a shotgun blast of altruistic feelings is likely to make things worse).

As a teen and early 20's, I didn't have the theory to describe how I felt in those terms. I was mostly just angry. I'd go on loosely themed internet dives and learn about fucked up government programs (mkultra, project plowshare, bikini atoll fallout, the war on black peo^H^H^H^H^H^drugs, native american sterilization and reeducation programs, the use of international fiscal policy to exert dominance over small foreign states, the origins of industrial education (e.g. purpose to create controllable factory workers), propaganda and its relationship to marketing and advertising, the list goes on. (oh right, I consumed a lot of critiques of capitalism as well, all the way from Marx to John Bellamy Foster and Murray Bookchin.) And all that was before diving in to climate change and peak oil a few years later, at 21-22. As I left high school (04), a lot of my friends were enlisting and going over to Iraq/Afghanistan (coming back a few years later with PTSD and/or alcoholism). As I left college (09), the economic prospects for a lot of peers was pretty shit.

So, that's all to say that I had a predisposition I suppose to learning about the dysfunctions of society, and then holding all of those things in my head. To the extent that I "let go" of any of those things, I think mostly just internalized a deep sense that the way the world is organized is insanely wrong. That might be the engineer mindset, to seek out problems to solve. Unlike a lot of friends, who weren't that interested in any of these topics and wanted to spend their attention on happy and/or distracting things, I felt a drive to dive in and soak it all up. Per @7's friend's insight about INTJ's drawing meaning/purpose from "staring in to the abyss", this proclivity might be a prime source of power for me.

One more relevant dynamic I is how I was raised. I was homeschooled k-12 up in a mountain pass with no one around. A big reason my parents chose to do that is because they simply figured they could do a better job at educating us than the public schools could. The arguments that schools have some structural dysfunctions, such as teaching to the lowest common denominator and over-exposure to peer-group social dynamics, convinced them to do their own thing. The result (on top of our perception as Born Again Christians that we were a religious minority in a sea of sin) was a suspicion of any large/public institution. The story I was raised with was "keep your eyes out any authority/institution that claims to have your interests at heart - it's probably kinda effed." So I did keep my eyes out for that, and I did see dysfunctional, untrustworthy institutions everywhere.

To summarize, by the time I was in my early 20's, I had
  • a built-in general distrust of society's systems,
  • I'd spent an ungodly amount of time learning about the messy back-room dysfunctions and atrocities of most of the institutions I had any relationship to, and
  • I was pretty sure that due to climate change, peak oil/everything, and ecological destruction, the whole clattering mess was in the process of hurling itself off a cliff.
That left a pretty big question mark of how *I* out to behave. I've written my story out before - I got a career in sustainability, but I was pretty primed to question "wait, what is mainstream sustainability *for*? Because if the whole point of this sustainability business is to preserve our current arrangement of institutions, I'm not down with that."

I got to a point where I'd exhausted all of the options that mainstream society put on the menu for "how to respond to a world in crisis". As JMG says,
jmg wrote:Social elites that are secure in their power make a point of providing their members with a range of venues for ineffective dissidence. It’s a way to let them blow off steam and feel better about their status as cogs in the machinery of power.

(That essay is gold and relevant to most ERE's, by the way)

I found myself frustrated, having beat my head against the wall for over a decade trying to figure out my place in the world, trying to figure out what to do with this drive to help, or at least to not hurt, others, that was being diffused or questioned at every turn.

Point is, I was pretty primed for the allegory of the Cave to make intuitive sense to me. I knew the shadows were shadows, and I knew the shadowmasters were a bunch of assholes I wanted nothing to do with, for a long time. I just didn't really know how to crawl out of the cave myself.

I keep thinking of that picture that Jacob's DW painted:
Image

I feel like I spent a solid decade plus being that figure on hands and knees in the dark tunnel, bumping around the stalactites and stepping in bat poop, sometimes getting turned around and getting a bit closer to the fire and the shadows before going "NOPE, fuck that shit, I'd rather wander these dark caverns forever than go back to that".

And then there's ERE, like a guide with a headlamp coming up on me going "um, you know the way out's that way, right? It's like, right over there. Two lefts, go straight through the three-way, and you're out."

Even just writing this out is emotionally powerful for me. Wandering in the dark alone for a decade will do that to you.

---

After all those words, I'm not sure if I've convinced myself that my relationship to ERE is 100% healthy. But it feels hopeful. It feels like something that is moving me off of the plateau that I was stuck at.

Hristo Botev
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Hristo Botev »

Interesting read @AH; thanks for sharing.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Excellent post!

Since you are also into sexual dichotomy theory, I would note that the ERE values which you listed that don’t appeal to me are almost exactly those which are in alignment with Adult Masculine Energy. The whole point of my forum name is that my original purpose in joining this forum ( prior to becoming more knowledgeable about climate change, etc) was to “grow-up” my masculine energy beyond approximately age 12 where it seems to be stuck towards greater independent functioning and goal achievement.

Stasher
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Stasher »

My total approach to ERE and why I have gravitated back towards the concepts discussed is summarized as simplicity. I dread over complicating things and then the stress/anxiety that our current societal norms manifest. Living a simpler life, focusing on being outdoors, lower my cost of living, develop self reliance and basically be a good steward of the land that I occupy in all I do has seemed to serve me well.

I really enjoyed what you have shared but my advice would be to let the wind blow as it may, make yourself lighter (ecological/economic footprint) and see where it takes you. Basically don't burden yourself with too much analysis.

All the best ~ Cheers

rref
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by rref »

...
Last edited by rref on Sat Dec 18, 2021 2:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Stasher wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 5:20 pm
Basically don't burden yourself with too much analysis.
I appreciate your comment, and it is very much aligned with some of the personal work I'm doing right now (letting go of being overly goal-oriented, and unpacking my normal mode of deferring happiness until after achieving something, etc).

But can you articulate the difference between a well-examined life, and an overly analyzed one? I can see the difference in results (serenity vs. anxiety, love vs. fear), but the difference in execution sometimes eludes me.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

rref wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:51 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBT78iOacIk
Ha, touche. Beau is a special, special man, though. AND, he's already done his "become a different person" adventures by e.g. paddling round south africa and such.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:46 pm
...I would note that the ERE values which you listed that don’t appeal to me are almost exactly those which are in alignment with Adult Masculine Energy.
Ah! Enneagram. I was wondering. Do you have thoughts on ERE values which are aligned with adult feminine energy?

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Gilberto de Piento wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:20 am
I really feel these paragraphs. I've spent my whole life working way too hard for other people. I like to work hard but 99% of my energy seems to have been wasted on helping family/friends get ahead (who should have been allowed to sink or swim on their own) or working for a salary. If I had ever focused my energy on things that benefitted me I'd be much further along. I don't have the answers but I suggest while you are out on the road you sit down and try to figure out what you want and what it will take to get there. When you are done wandering work on things that are to your advantage and will compound. To summarize, I'm assuming you are younger and I'm saying "don't do what I did, put yourself first." I still don't know how to do this so if you figure it out let me know. :)
I think my previous unconscious assumption of how the world works is this:
Work hard > achieve things > be successful > feel worthy of love
This is a grasping, fear-driven perspective, and that last step is always receding in front of me.

I think the trick is to flip it:
feel worthy of love > work hard because I am powered by love and simply feel like it, and that's a power that burns clean and hot > achieve things for myself and for other people as a side effect > the word "successful" is meaningless.

ertyu
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by ertyu »

About goal orientation, I say don't force yourself to change that for now. If you feel compelled to grow intensively and deliberately, do so. Letting go of this happens on its own, when you realize that your drive has already gotten you where you wanted to go and is no longer necessary 'cause you're there. I had this thought after reading what Alphaville said about doing morning pages for years: at one point, the exercise outlived its usefulness so he let it go.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@ertyu - how I'm thinking about it is this: I feel compelled to grow intensively and deliberately by letting go of inessential goals/projects/initiatives, in order to create space and time in my life for the pursuit of flipping "feel worthy of love" to the front of my stack rather than the end.

In other words: I aim to collapse as many goal orientations as I can, so that I can work on internalizing "I am enough" in the absence of achievement. If I can convince myself that I am Enough even if I'm not hustling after Goal X, Y, and Z, then I'll be able to approach my life with abundance (I'm worthy of love and have everything I need: let's play and make cool stuff with people!) rather than scarcity (I'm unhappy and unworthy. Maybe if I work hard on projects people will like me and I'll feel worthy of love?).

Stasher
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Stasher »

AxelHeyst... I think your final comment just above is where you now get it, love it... "I am enough"

and then in the comment above it "its ok to let it go"

ertyu
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by ertyu »

i really like this approach. for me, too, ERE ultimately isn't about skills or tools or engineering a system or having a spreadsheet or anything technical really. It's a matter of nailing down the psychology, and once that is nailed down, the rest will follow. I agree that it is wise to flip the psychological to the front of the stack. It will naturally then inform all else.

would be curious to follow how you fare and how you choose to pursue those key goals. i personally have trouble seeing them as something i am in control of. i don't really see how i can internalize that i am worthy of love, for instance, when i wasn't and am not loved. Deep down I don't believe there is anything I can do to get myself loved - partially because i believe one deserves love intrinsically and inherently, and one is either loved or one isn't, and i am one of the people who isn't because such is life, nothing i can do. it now occurs to me that i may be generalizing how nothing i can every do or be or accomplish will get me loved by my parents. Subconscious cottoned on that nothing will work in the family and extended to reality at large. Hn, have to go ponder. Thanks for this occasion to advance own introspection.

Scott 2
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Scott 2 »

@AxelHeyst - Have you found a pattern of spirituality that works for you? I think that is how most people solve the problem you describe.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

To kind of speak to both Ertyu and Scott's question: it's interesting because my parents are amazing, I kinda won the parent lottery. I've always felt loved by them.

BUT, they also raised me very religious, and I think I heavily and unhealthily internalized the notion of original sin ('all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god'). I spent the first 20 years of my life thinking that I, and also all humans, *deserved* to spend the rest of eternity suffering in a pit of burning shit, because, basically, all humans are scumbags (that's a slight paraphrasing of the scriptures, of course). The doctrine of Grace, in my mind for two decades, was "You're a worthless piece of shit. But God is awesome, loves you, and will let you in to heaven anyways if you believe XYZ." The doctrine is SUPPOSED to make you feel loved by God even though you're no good, but I got hung up on the first part and maybe had some doubts as to the second part. I missed a key fundamental there, in other words, and it damaged me.

Was I just predisposed to internalize that kind of idea, and would have turned out the same with a different religious or spiritual experience? Or is it indeed fair to blame the religious environment I was in (and the fact that I actually, like, read the books and paid attention during sermons, unlike most of my friends)? Probably some mixture of the two. I was angry at my old religion for a while, but now I don't care, and in fact am able to go back and read the actual scriptures free from the interpretation I was raised with with more mature vision.

So, no, I haven't found a pattern of spirituality that works for me, not really. I have been attracted to the idea that the universe is not teleological, which is maybe a way of saying "the question of worth is meaningless", which felt better than "I'm a worthless piece of shit".

A small thing I'm finding traction with is gratitude. I did "gratitude journaling" for a while without 'getting it' at all, and then a month or so ago I realized that the point was to notice that you're capable of being happy about something now, rather than in the future. Instead of obsessing over the final product of a build, I "forced" myself to celebrate the act of cutting, measuring, sawing, and notice how lovely it is to be doing it. And then when I finished some small part, I forced myself to spend time celebrating it, and enjoying just observing it, rather than letting my attention immediately go to what I haven't accomplished yet.

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