Made some progress on my Nurgelian mission to find suffering.1
Two nights ago, I accidentally used an unusually high dose of nicotine and felt some genuine nausea for an hour or so. My automatic reaction to any kind of bodyload is still “I DON’T CARE IF THE SON OF MAN IS RETURNING IN GLORY, LIE DOWN AND SHUT UP UNTIL THIS IS OVER, I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS”. (Yes, full caps. It’s that strong.) So I thought, perfect!, exactly the kind of aversion I wanted! I had already jumped at any kind of meh-ness throughout the day, any flinching away from plans (of which there are many), but those were all too weak and short-lived to really focus on.
I thought, if I’m right and there’s no inherently bad experience, then I should be willing to permanently experience this state of nausea, and that any aversive thoughts popping up were just confused, and could be dealt with like any false/unhelpful beliefs. So I lied down (to avoid having to vomit, which I was almost about to, and which would’ve ended the nausea instantly), munched on some chicken and cuddled up to the nausea. “Hi there! I like you! Let’s be friends!” and so on. And that worked again, and I was still smiling all the way. Hurm.
But that short “MAKE IT STOP” reaction when it set in was still.. unpleasant? I can’t quite tell. It was very faint and over in an instant. The actual nausea that followed it was enjoyable and at least as fun to explore as legacy code. (I kid. It was more fun.) But this instant thought was promising, an actual candidate for dukkha. I’ll have to figure out a way to make that happen more often.
Gotta dig out my old depression again. Finally it’s good for something!
A HPMOR quote:
[Dumbledore:] My own great foe was Grindelwald, and him I understood very well indeed. Grindelwald was my dark mirror, the man I could so easily have been, had I given in to the temptation to believe that I was a good person, and therefore always in the right. For the greater good, that was his slogan; and he truly believed it himself, even as he tore at all Europe like a wounded animal. And him, I defeated in the end.
I like Dumbledore.
Another cuddling. Woke up with a nasty headache because I accidentally ran out of caffeine, played Stalker all night and slept for maybe 2 hours.
Refused to deny the headache or accept it as “bad”. Cuddled up to it, liked it, got ever more confused. There’s clearly strong aversion going on, but it’s like aversion itself has lost its badness. It’s just.. pushing, sometimes more, sometimes less effectively, but just pushing all the same.
It’s as if I like aversion now. I have no idea how I’m ever going to get anything done again ever.
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Some people have the weirdest problems, amirite?↩
I appreciate the bluntness because that was my first reaction too. :)
Some part: "Hey rest-of-muflax, I suspect suffering is gone. I have noticed that on se..."
Rest: "Oh shut up! That's ridiculous! There may be some specific situations that were once painful but aren't anymore, but just because you've discovered somewhat of a masochistic streak, doesn't mean there are no intrinsically bad experiences anymore! Look, I'm gonna demonstrate it to you. I'm gonna cause some pain and then you'll see that it's bad."
(Takes a deliberately very uncomfortable, but not permanently damaging position. Pain occurs.)
Some part: "So we're all experiencing this, right? I'm not just dissociating it away or something crazy like that?"
Rest: "Nope. That's pain alright. Quite intense, in fact."
Some part: "And it's not just me who's stopped caring, right?"
Rest: "No, it's really.. gone? There's pain, like always, but it's not.. bad? Well fuck."
Then the obvious escalations and search for exceptions. So far, haven't found any. (Including the "ah it's because it's self-caused and under control that it's not bad; it wouldn't work for involuntary pain", which is not true, as demonstrated by the nausea.)
Dissociation of some kind would be my best guess if I wouldn't actually experience the "suffering" anymore, if it had *entirely* gone, or if the aversion had gone, or if it had changed its experiential texture. None of these things have occured. The experience is, as far as I can tell, as it always was. It just isn't bad. I can't recall how it was ever bad.
The only trace of badness I can find is in the symbols I use to think about it. Those symbols are, however, mistaken. I therefore strongly suspect they were always mistaken, and that there wasn't any badness to begin with - I just mistakenly believed a false thought. It happens.
Good point about the self-immolation. I'd like to point out a certain characteristic, though.
I'm sure that if you set me on fire, I'd still go through a lot of stress. I have never tried to regulate down my stress response, even though I know how to do it. (Just see no point because I'm not going through particularly stressful experiences.)
However, that doesn't mean the stress is bad. (Compare to horror movies and muscle exhaustion, for example.) Roughly, there are three components in an experience that need to be disentangled: 1) the raw experience (the suchness) 2) the symbol and 3) the causal links.
What seems to have happened is that 1) and 2) no longer get confused for each other. The raw experience of pain is there, and the same, and not bad. The causal links are also still there, like a stress response, screams under a lot of pain, etc., but each of those are themselves just bundles and can be observed the same way. (And the response can be reprogrammed, if this is desired. I'm just paying attention right now, not changing anything.)
The only thing that even references badness is the symbol. But... it's just a symbol. It may contain truth, but when it makes statements about the raw experience, and I can *check* the raw experience and not just take the symbols word for it, and these properties aren't there... well, then the symbol is mistaken. This is what happens in the case of "suffering". (For every example I've checked so far.)
(I can also put myself in an entirely non-symbolic mode in which not even the reference to suffering comes up, but that's a bit trickier to do. All my confusion about where "badness" has gone is about ordinary, unmodified experiences.)
I'm currently hunting down meta-symbols, and cuddling up to boredom, one of the worst experiences, if my old notes are to be believed. (Then I'll figure out what to do about the causal links, and what "no suffering" implies. Unless I find it again.)
Also, the "drowning" idea might be useful. I'll see if I can cause some strong panic reaction, maybe through water-boarding myself, without killing myself in the process. Maybe the intensity is just too low, and I've become more resilient than I used to be.