02-01 Suppression of children’s wishes
If you are asked to name, without thinking, the main difficulty in raising children, I think that most likely you will say: “disobedience,” “restlessness”, “whims”. Yes. Children are a constant source of problems for their parents due to the fact that they are filled with desires. They always want everything, and most of all – not what their parents would prefer. And that’s a problem. But it is a problem, first of all, for so-called civilized world, where there is a well-established conveyor belt of life for each and every person at any age. In fact, the life of every civilized man is scheduled with extreme detail, and any deviation from the schedule is accompanied with stress, anxiety and other negative emotions (NE). People adapt quickly. Unfortunately, they have adapted to this form of slavery too – partly voluntary and partly involuntary. But children cannot quickly adapt to it and need a lot of time and a lot of violence to turn them step by step into a docile mass of people walking in the direction pointed out by adults. Of course, in different countries the amount and rigor of this violence vary greatly. Moreover, it seems to me that albeit very slow and gradually, with setbacks and reactions, but nevertheless the humanity is moving towards an understanding that a child is not just a pet belonging to its parents, but above all a personality, the suppression of whom is totally unacceptable no matter which good purpose underlies this suppression.
I do not deny the necessity of violence in assistance to children’s development – in very rare cases. It is impossible not to use violence when a child reaches for the exposed electrical wiring or mindlessly leans over the ledge of the roof. Afterwards you can explain to him the danger of electricity or a fall from a roof, install special safety sockets and fencing, but at the moment there’s no time – the child must be stopped, you must divert his attention, prevent him from realizing his wish, i.e. use violence.
Generally speaking, violence differs. We all understand the difference between two types of violence – the violence pursuing self-interests by suppressing the interests of another person (robbery, rape, etc.), and violence to help another person, protect him from something that allegedly threatens him. They differ in motivation, and this difference is so fundamental that I cannot name them both with the same term “violence”. I will name the second type of violence as “care”.
The problem is, however, that too often the care is so annoying, so paranoid and so extensive that it turns into total suppression of the child’s personality, and the fact that it is done for good purposes does not change anything. And since the child’s wishes are her “motor”, in order to grow an obedient person who voluntarily and even gratefully accepts such a paranoid, destroying care, the first thing you need is to destroy all her wishes. You have to make the child hate her own wishes, be ashamed of her wishes, have fear to her wishes. This process begins in early childhood – from the very first moment when the child’s wishes begin to appear. I, again, don’t state that this implantation of psychopathic, negative attitude to wishes always means violence. Very often it is motivated by paranoid concern, but I emphasize – this does not change the result of such influence on the child. This result is very destructive.
You were a child once, too. You, too, were an object of this paranoid care and from early childhood you minute by minute, day by day, year by year, were taught to treat your desires as something “indecent”, “bad”, “shameful”, “disturbing”, “wrong.” A lot of words have been invented and implemented to substitute the word “wish”, which have a strong negative connotation: “whim”, “fancy”, “quirk”, “caprice”, “self-will”. Child’s wishes are described with derogatory words: “foolish desire”, “far-fetched need”, “what maggot bites you?”, “where the hell are you going?”. The term “to fulfill wishes” is replaced by “indulge”, “not care about others”; the term “to want something” – “to have problems”, “to be obsessed with.” A person, who does not want to suppress his wishes and seeks to implement them, is branded as “selfish”, “egotist”, “heartless.” If you are passionate about something, you will be called “stubborn”, “freak”, “weirdo” or even labeled as “maniac” – allegedly as a joke, but under the guise of jokes people often express their real attitude. In this case it is a very negative attitude, as the word “maniac” by an “odd coincidence” is usually referred to exceptionally dangerous criminals, murderers, rapists. In order to consolidate disdainful and even aggressive attitude towards someone’s own wishes, respective beliefs are created and drummed into heads. As a result, a person who has some wishes is interpreted by others and even by herself, as a person who “has problems” or “is not all right”. It is believed that when a person is “all right” he has no bright wishes. This is far from being a complete list of words and expressions abusive to wishes, which are huge in number and variety.
Depending on the tendencies prevailing in the society, some forms of strong wishes are recognized as “useful”. In this case people, whose wishes currently fall into the trend, enjoy respect, support and approval, but as soon as the fashion changes, or the person shows other wishes, he immediately falls again into the category of eccentrics and “people with problems”. This leads to the fact that the man, whose joyful wishes (JWs) get in a very narrow track allowed by the society, begins to suppress all his other wishes and mechanically spur the “right” one that quickly becomes an obligation, a joyless and mechanical action.
If you learned to suppress your JWs, experience them secretly, feeling shame, guilt, fear, it often results in latent or explicit aggression, hatred towards your surroundings and often to yourself.
02-02 Joyful wishes (JWs) and mechanical wishes (MWs)
There is a misconception which plays, without exaggeration, a tragic, catastrophic role in human life for thousands of years. This misconception is that people do not, for some strange reason, understand that there are two non-overlapping types of desires. They are opposite to each other, they are absolutely incompatible with each other. To call both of these simply “wishes”, means roughly the same as to call “food” both rat poison and delicious cake. This confusion of terms has the same catastrophic consequences (see Chapter “Emotions”).
- Joyful wishes (JWs) are those accompanied by anticipation.
- Mechanical wishes (MWs) are those not accompanied by anticipation and which are brought about by various beliefs and fears.
When people realize JWs they feel not only anticipation but often some enlightened perceptions (EPs) resonating with it: enthusiasm, joy, sympathy etc. They experience richness, fullness of their lives at a steady high or growing level. In these moments, they feel happier, livelier. The wishes arise and strengthen to assist people to whom they feel sympathy.
When people realize MWs, they experience growing boredom, laziness, dullness. Negative emotions are accumulated, negative background (NB) is amplified. Life richness falls down to zero. In these moments they feel more miserable, lifeless, with increased aggression and/or self-pity. Destructive wishes occur and intensify towards other people, and towards themselves.
A huge, giant difference.
It is impossible to define “wish”, as the definition will reduce it to something already known, but the wish is not reducible to anything else – neither to emotions, nor thoughts, nor sensations. A minimally attentive person can easily discern that there are wishes and there are accompanying emotions and thoughts, and these are fundamentally different kinds of perceptions.
How do I know that I want something? I know this by the wish to reinforce an existing perception. For example, if I visualize a picture of the forest, imagine the smell of the forest, the bodily sensations of walking through the forest, if there is also pleasure and the desire to intensify these perceptions, I discern also a desire to go to the forest and I come to the conclusion that I want to go into the forest.
If I imagine a picture of cheese, feel taste of cheese, experience pleasure and the desire to strengthen it, I do notice a desire to eat cheese and make a conclusion that I want to eat a piece of cheese.
Interestingly, when we say “I have imagined the taste of cheese,” at this very moment we are already experiencing the taste, though faint and vague. It seems strange but it is true. It is no surprise that I may not see the tree but imagine it, but what is “to imagine”? That means to have a visual perception of the tree – this perception is vague, unstable, but it is nothing but visual perception.
Thus we can make an amazing conclusion: when I want something I don’t want something absent, but something that I already perceive, though I want it in a more clear, stable and strong form. It turns out that “wish” is always “the wish to reinforce the existing perceptions”.
Let us consider in more detail the driving factors behind the emergence of MWs:
a) groundless believes, which include verbal constructions like “must go there”, “should do so”, “would be good to do so”, “unfair not to do that”, “I am expected to do that” and so on. You have no anticipation but only obsessive thought “I must” or “it’s fair”, “it’s right thing to do” and you go and start it still experiencing growing dissatisfaction and fatigue, but you support yourself with dogmatic thoughts like “It’s good I am doing it, it’s the right thing to do”, “it would be bad if I didn’t do it”. However, the reasoning why it is “good” or “bad” boils down to cyclic repetition of dogmatic moral judgments.
b) negative emotions – anger, fear, boredom, etc.
c) mechanical habits. For example, coming home from work you usually turn on the TV, and even if you have no interest to the news, you still watch them amid increasing boredom, grayness, fatigue.
d) other mechanical wishes.
Quotation from Gurdjieff: “Man is an arena of struggle and competition of the most different desires. They all call themselves I. That is, they consider themselves masters and non wants to recognize another. Each of them is caliph for an hour, does what he likes regardless of everything, and, later on, the others have to pay for it. And there is no order among them whatever. Whoever gets the upper hand is master. He whips everyone on all sides and takes heed of nothing. But the next moment another seizes the whip and beats him. And so it goes on all one’s life. Imagine a country where everyone can be king for five minutes and do during these five minutes just what he likes with the whole kingdom. That is our life.”
Experiencing and realization of MWs are inevitably accompanied by increasing misery, i.e. unpleasant states, feeling unwell and, eventually, when you experience them for long – diseases, depressions, increased aggressiveness and dullness, disappearance of interests and wishes to assist people that you sympathize. Experiencing and realization of JWs are inevitably accompanied by growing pleasure of life, increasing life richness, the number of interests and their strength, manifestation of a variety of EPs, growing desire to assist people that you sympathize. It is a law of nature.
Interestingly, the person, who fulfills MWs, enjoys neither the process of their realization nor their outcomes. And vice versa – the person, who realizes JWs, feels pleasure from the process itself of their experiencing and realization even in the case (!) if he eventually fails to implement a JW for one reason or another.
02-03 Derogatory attitude towards JWs
The habit to treat your JWs with contempt, the habit to suppress them manifests itself in different ways. Here are a few typical examples:
*) “follow through”. If someone wants to stop doing something and switch to another activity, they might not do that guided by dogmatic judgments like “I have to bring it to the end”, “to stop halfway is a sign of weakness”. This will result in gradual lessening of pleasure from realization of a JW, down to indifference and, worse, unpleasant weariness and disgust. You should never suppress your wish to stop some activity like that, unless the termination of activity leads to dangerous consequences, which are quite rare cases. Yet, in these cases your awareness of the danger will increase your desire to continue the work, while in usual cases people do not stop their work because of dogmatic motives, from indifference to their wishes.
The JW which you continue to realize after you wanted to stop is thus replaced by the mechanical wish. In our speech it is reflected when we say “overeat” or “overwalk”.
What to do when your desires are weak and constantly changing? This way you’ll never follow through anything! First, you never win anything if compel yourself to do something through to the end because doing this poisons you severely, and inevitably weakens your JWs; you feel apathy and unpleasant tiredness that can become chronic. In addition, very many tasks may be completed in steps, when you make breaks in your work. But if it turns out that your wishes really weaken too fast, it would be the height of folly to suppress them further, forcing yourself to continue when you don’t want it. JWs strengthen, multiply and amplify if not suppressed. You need patience to let them emerge, grow and flourish because you suppressed them for so many years – so now you have to be patient and watch carefully to ensure that you do something as much as you want, whenever possible.
In addition, you need to remember that NEs also contribute to suppression and even destruction of JWs, while EPs help to revive and strengthen them.
Of course, sometimes we have to do something nesessary, such as earning your living. But first, you can and must look for more interesting job. Second, the anticipation of earning money itself can increase your desire to work. Third, you can optimize your working process so to find an opportunity to enjoy some accompanying activities interesting to you. You should never give in to monotony and boredom. For example, there is almost no such work where you cannot memorize one foreign word in an hour or exercise your muscles with a carpal expander. Such “trifles” in the implementation of JWs can make great changes in your life. Never disregard any JWs, never repress even the slightest of them.
*) “putting off wishes till later”. When you notice a JW you say to yourself: “right now this is embarrassing, improper, not good, I’ll do it later”. But “later” never comes, because the JW is suppressed and disappears or at least greatly weakens. Perfectionism, the wish to “thoroughly prepare” can also hamper the immediate realisation of a JW, as there is fear of failure or dogmatic beliefs about how it is correct or incorrect to implement the JW. As a result, people never dare to start implementing the JW, they feel disappointed, guilty and boost up their defeatist attitude.
02-04 What to do if you don't want anything?
What to do if you don’t feel like doing anything? That’s my advice: just don’t do anything. The worst thing you can do is start doing something out of anxiety that people often feel in a state of apathy. It will just make your condition worse. Do nothing and wait. Try to distinguish – maybe there still is something you want to do right now? Maybe you still have at least a slight anticipation? Maybe you just unwittingly suppress your desires out of dogmatic belief in their “insignificance”, “wrongness”? People often have such attitude to the desires like to just lie and do nothing, or watch an entertaining movie, or read an entertaining, “light” book, etc.
In the process of doing nothing JWs are more likely to arise than if you occupy yourself with some unpleasant, boring activity. Even if you don’t have any JWs right now, when doing nothing you may start to feel anticipation of JWs to arise, which is already halfway to their manifestation.
02-05 Selection of wishes
When I use the term “selection of wishes” I refer to the process consisting of three stages:
a) the distinction of the wishes manifested in this moment
b) identifying them as MW or JW
c) elimination of MW and cultivation of JW
Of course, you will need some practice to start easily determine whether you are experiencing a joyful wish or a mechanical one.
Suppose you want to learn a Korean word. Stop yourself and try to discern whether you have anticipation or not? Maybe you just have a perfectionist desire? A stupid desire to “fulfill the plan” even despite the fact that you don’t want to do that?
Such discernment of MW and JW certainly takes time, especially at first, but the result will give you such a revitalizing effect that any doubts about the necessity to stop as often as possible before realization of a wish and think about its nature, gradually disappear. The very process of wishes selection quickly becomes a pleasant, interesting and even intriguing action.
02-06 Desire to implement a joyful wish
Practicing selection of wishes, you can come across one interesting discovery, having found such a wish among your perceptions that previously you did not distinguish and did not even know about its existence. This is “the wish to implement JW”.
In general, this is quite typical, when, as a result of distinguishing of existing perceptions, you suddenly discover some new perception the existence of which you couldn’t guess. Sometimes it becomes clear that this perception was manifested before in a weak form, and sometimes it happens that this perception is completely new, unfamiliar to you until this moment. After being distinguished this perception can now be amplified if it is pleasant, actively being included in your mental life, as a result of which a new perception can arise again. This is an extremely interesting process. You are not a static set of perceptions but a dynamic creature in whom something new is born, which gives you the new knowledge, new interests, leads to new research. If you have distinguished some unpleasant perception, then now it becomes possible to eliminate it, removing its toxic effect.
And the distinguishing the wish to implement JW is such a discovery which considerably enriches your mental life. Now, having experienced the JW, you cannot rush immediately to its implementation, and make and extend the pause before the implementation enjoying the experience of the wish to implement it. Anticipating the implementation of JW is very pleasant, firstly, because the bright anticipation is very pleasant to experience, like any other bright EP. Secondly, during this pause before the implementation the JW itself may be a little bit more accurately defined, cleared of mechanical impurities that will allow getting maximum pleasure while its implementing.
For example, if, following the onset of sexual desire, its immediate realization follows without experiencing it intently then most likely this desire will be realized in some familiar form. At the same time, when experiencing anticipation from the future realization of this desire, you can find certain preferences, new sexual fantasies. In this way the evolution of the sexual desire and the related sensations and other perceptions take place – I call it ‘the development of sexuality”. An increasingly wide range of sexual desires, erotic experiences, sexual sensations become available, new shades of already known and sometimes previously unknown EP appear, your body becomes more sensual, more and more of its parts become erogenous zones, the depth and diversity of the sensations, the saturation, the fullness of your life are growing.
The automatism of the immediate implementation of the JW leads to another unpleasant consequence: when you feel the wish, you already know in advance what will happen next, from which the anticipation dicreases sharply, the commonness comes leading to the extinction of wishes. We can say that the “railing” which takes place in the implementation of JW is one of the forms of their weakening.
Do not hurry, pause before rushing to implement JW. Stop, distinguish – what exactly you want now, how exactly, what kind of anticipation do you have. Sometimes it even happens that the process of experiencing JW is more attractive than its implementation! In this case, the force of wish to implement the JW does not outweigh the wish to experience this JW without implementation, and the implementation is postponed, and sometimes even does not happen at all, so that the anticipation becomes very intense – an absolutely unthinkable phenomenon in the MW world.
In the process of distinguishing your wishes you can also discover “JW to experience some JW“ which is pleasant in itself and has a stimulating effect on the appearance of new JW.
Another pair of wishes that, after being distinguished, become independent players in the arena of your mental life, increase its diversity and depth, it is “the wish to strengthen JW” and “the wish to weaken JW”. The former plays a huge role in the cultivation of JW, while the latter is often used to conduct JW studies and related regularities.
02-07 Perfect behavior, gaining experience
Let us introduce the term “impeccable behaviour”: these are the actions that result from the following the JW and only them, and thus, are accompanied by anticipation throughout their entire duration.
You can simply implement the JW, enjoying the process itself and anticipating the result, and you can also observe the phenomena, perceptions and their sets (i.e. states) that arise at the same time, capture interesting observations, advance certain assumptions, hypotheses, check them. Such a study of the process of JW implementation I call “the practice of accompanying the JW implementation”.
Sometimes accompaniment arises spontaneously but you can do it intentionally as well, when the corresponding JW arises.
It is the practice of accompanying that leads to what can be called “gaining experience”. When gaining experience, the following happens:
*) there is a rational clarity in what regularities exist, i.e. what perceptions arise as a result of a certain behaviour, how they are interrelated and so on.
*) there is clarity about which perceptions are desired and which ones are not desired for you personally – in general and in different situations
*) there arises the ability to adequately interpret the behaviour of other people, put forward assumptions based on the mechanisms known to you, the regularities linking the perceptions
*) the ability to predict the development of events arises and grows stronger, and, accordingly, your ability to plan more effectively, to carry out targeted actions more efficiently to achieve the desired result is enhanced.
All this is almost completely inaccessible to people who don’t practice selection of perceptions. This may seem strange, as we see many examples that even people who have no idea about selection of perceptions are able to conduct their business more or less efficiently, communicate with people and achieve their goals. Of course, this is true. But when you compare yourself-in-the-present with yourself-in-the-past when you didn’t practice selection, you see a huge, gigantic difference in how much your abilities in gaining experience and applying it have changed.
Mankind in the process of its evolution gradually develops certain approaches to effective behaviour under certain conditions. These approaches can be learned by mechanically adopting them, and this, of course, provides the minimum effectiveness sufficient for survival. But to create and remember the rules for billions of different situations is impossible, therefore such people blindly memorizing the rules remain extremely helpless and incapable of adaptation, of creative development. The most common logical thinking is able to supplement and develop the knowledge and skills acquired. And yet, bare logic is not enough simply because one can apply logic only to already distinct objects and the laws that connect them, whereas an ordinary person does not even try to distinguish his or her perceptions.
An excellent illustration of how insignificant is the experience acquired throughout life is the old people. If during life the experience would have accumulated, then the old people on average would represent the most adequate, most wise social stratum. Experience shows the opposite – the communication with the elderly is often tedious, uninteresting and unproductive. Of course, some people get smart and develop even in old age, we know such examples, but it’s still too infrequent. The majority, on the contrary, become very stupid and dull, and it happens the more noticeably, the more a person experiences NE, suppresses his or her JW during his or her life, and eventually he or she loses the interest to think, cognize, change him or herself.
The most intense experience is accumulated as a result of a fulfilling life that arises from an impeccable behaviour or the one close to it.
02-08 Direct elimination of mechanical wishes
At some point you can discern that you are experiencing MW now and implementing it. For example, you put things in order in your room and suddenly you realize that you continue to do this not because there is a foretaste of cleanliness and order but because there is destructive, blind confidence expressed by the dogmatic thought “if you start, you have to finish it”.
At this moment you can feel the wish to stop the implementation of this MW but its strength may be insufficient – you seem to stick in the mechanical activity, drowning in painful thoughts of “I’ll finish soon, there’s not much to do left” as if you are enveloped in the fog of indecision and stupor. With this problem you already encountered when eliminating NE, when it did not turn out to be strong enough to want to break out of them, to overcome the painful sense of ownership in their attitude.
MW can be eliminated in exactly the same way as NE are eliminated – by direct effort – by stopping experiencing them and beginning to expect the appearance of JW or recalling the experience of any of them. The more JW you have, the easier it is to do it.
As a result of the analysis of dogmatic thoughts supporting a certain MW, as a result of the distinguishing of wishes, attempts to pull yourself out of the conveyor of these mechanical actions, efforts to eliminate MW and NE, cultivate EP and JW, this particular MW gradually weakens to the point that you will begin to manage almost every time not to stick in its implementation, but immediately to eliminate by direct effort and search for JW. I say in this case that the stage of “half-life of this MW” has been reached.
02-09 Desire for impressions
There is the term “wish for impressions”. What is it? We know that you can get impressions from everything – from music, books, sex, walking, talking, tasty food, events, news and other things. In the list of everything that people want to get “impressions” from there are not only pleasant and sympathetic phenomena but also unpleasant and unsympathetic – people try to get impressions of death, suffering, disasters, other people’s stupidity, pity and other NE. For example, if there are a lot of NE in the process of watching a movie, it is more likely that a person recognizes this film as being “interesting”.
In general, when there is a person’s mental reaction to a phenomenon, he says that he gets an impression.
Often this term is used in a negative context and “getting impressions”, “striving only for impressions” means “spending your time in a wrong way”. I do not agree with this and believe that it is the opposite: man’s wish for impressions is his wish to make his mental life more diverse, even if this is partly achieved through the experiencing NE. As a person accumulates experience of getting impressions, he will gradually choose more pleasant, more interesting ones. If, on the other hand, he uses selection of perceptions, then this process will go faster.
I always feel the wish to assist a person whom I like in getting any impressions – even those who are personally indifferent to me and even unpleasant. It is just her life, not mine, and if she wants what she wants, the only way to live a fulfilling life is to get what she wants, which leads to new wishes, to some changes in the person’s worldview.
In some cases, being aware of all above, I do not want to assist in the implementation of some people’s wishes and sometimes even want to hinder them. This happens in those cases when the realization of these wishes is, in my opinion, a threat to phenomena, people, principles which I consider sympathetic. I prefer that such a person finds for himself another way to gain life experience.
02-10 Fears related to searching for JW
I met such a reaction of people to my offer to look for JW: “but if I want something terrible, and what should I do then?”
In fact, the emergence of “terrible wishes” is neither a rarity nor a problem. A person with suppressed JW often has a kind of “phantom” wishes. For example, the suppression of own sexual desires results in that the suppressed sexuality begins to literally break out, including in strange forms. There may be fantasies about rape, for example. And then a person grabs his head and begins to condemn him or herself, to consider him or herself a pervert, an aggressor, a scum. But all this is in vain, since if he were a rapist, if sadism, mockery and infliction of pain were acceptable for him, then he would be absolutely calm about such desires. These so-called “phantom wishes” are the reaction of the world of your wishes which you ruthlessly suppress. And if suddenly there are some pictures about rape in your imagination, some other destructive and aggressive wishes – do not make tragedy out of it. Just capture your position of unacceptability of the implementation of such wishes and look for your JW further. Do not be afraid that you suddenly become an amok who will rush to kill and rape – this is an ordinary scarecrow of those who are afraid of freedom. To search for close people, be friends, feel sympathy, cooperate, do something interesting together, assist nice people – in fact, this is what the person is eager for who is looking for his or her JW.
If, however, the phantom wishes are stable, then what the heck. Be aware of their existence, be aware that this indicates a very strong degree of your suppression of your JW in the past, of course, do not implement such wishes (you almost certainly will not want to, and if you want – still do not implement) and begin the implementation of such JW which obviously and unconditionally are interesting and enjoyable to you.
02-11 Technology of implementation of JW
I would like to formulate several rules for the search and implementation of JW.
The first problem faced by a person who wants to seek and realize their JW is the lack of clarity in what one really wants. Dozens of years she suppressed the JW, so I do not see anything surprising in that they ceased or almost ceased to manifest. The first step to implementing JW is to learn how to experience them, learn how to pay attention to them, not to suppress them, preferably to record them in written so that they do not quickly eliminate. You can divide the JW into different areas – related to sex, traveling, communication, learning and so on. If you make a common list of what JW you experienced in the recent (or maybe distant) past and see it from time to time, then you may find that many of them appear only when you think about them in such a way, you remind yourself that such JW in general happen to you. Thus, it is possible to formulate
Rule 1: record JW in written, group them into lists, look through them. Do not despise the so-called “shallow” wishes. In the world of wishes, “shallow” or “big” is estimated according to the intensity of anticipation and associated EP, so if you have an anticipation for 7 to see a primitive comedy, then this is a big wish, and if there is an anticipation for 1 becoming president, then this is a shallow, feeble wish.
Rule 2: if you want something but you are not sure that the consequences of this will be favourable, then compare all the information available to you on the basis of which you can draw arguments “for” and “against” the wish implementation. After the analysis of the situation is carried out, ask yourself the question again: “and what do I want now”, and act accordingly.
It may seem that even a comprehensive analysis of the available information is not a guarantee that you will not miss something and, therefore, make a mistake. And this is absolutely true. Moreover – you are sure to miss something. But the fact is that in 99% of all the other decisions that you make, including important ones, you don’t even do nearly anything about it, and, therefore, you act much more risky. Of course, your risk is largely offset by the fact that most often you ride on rails – as it is customary, and yet this risk is much greater than the one you are exposed to, following the JW after a thorough analysis of available information and reasonable assumptions. In the end, we are not sappers and the mistakes that we are making in a multitude anyway as a rule do not lead to very unpleasant consequences. But the mistakes made in analyzing the situation and following the JW lead to the emergence of experience, while riding on rails does not teach you anything that in fact is a real danger.
Rule 3: the decision you make does not become “sacred”, does not turn into an idol. At any time, your wishes may change – in connection with a change in the situation or in connection with the experience gained during the JW implementation (and this can happen in a second), or due to a change in your opinion on some issue, or even simply for no apparent reason. Follow JW, do not be afraid to do what you want right now. Let yourself look not serious or frivolous and so on from the side. Follow JW, as this is the only way to live an interesting life.
Rule 4: sometimes, in the process of realizing the JW, you want to stop and ask yourself again if you want to continue, or there may be other wishes. But sometimes, getting carried away, you can miss the moment when the JW is already changing and you are still riding the old track. Therefore, it is reasonable to make a pause from time to time in the process of realizing the JW. Do not rush forward like a rusty bulldozer without brakes. You can always stop and ask yourself – “what exactly JW do I have at the moment”. JW often change their form or even completely change in the course of its implementation, including even when the result is still far from the end.
Rule 5: at least sometimes it is advisable to write down your experiments on JW implementation. When you make records, you get the material for analysis, on the one hand, and you can notice something that has let out of attention before.
02-12 Competition of JW
It is terribly interesting to find and realize your JW but the most interesting thing begins when as a result of such work on selection of wishes there are more and more of them.
As the number of JW increases, states of apathy, boredom, dullness, and “nothing happens” are less likely to occur. For example, over the past fifteen years, since I began to summarize my observations and experiments and create selection, I’ve probably been bored for only a few minutes. JW grow very fast – faster than mushrooming. And at some point you finally find yourself in a situation where competition of JW begins. There are 24 hours in a day and there are much more JW that require time for their implementation and gradually there become more and more of them.
Of course, with the help of optimizing your time, delegating authority and so on you can try to manage to implement of large number of wishes into one day but any optimization has a limit and the time comes when you realize that there are such JW and there are more and more of them, which you cannot implement. Moreover – you will never be able to do this. For example, I am very interested in the idea of creating an interesting textbook of mathematics, physics, genetics that from the very beginning would take you as far as you want, I would like to make it easy to read and understand. But it takes a lot of time and I know that I will never be able to implement this project by myself. Also I cannot travel to Mars or Enceladus.
It seems that such situations should bring suffering but this is not true for three reasons.
- A significant part of the wishes can be realized by someone else’s hands. For example, I really like the idea of building a chain of hotels, villas, restaurants and apartments in developed countries with a unique concept invented by me. This idea can be realized almost without my participation – by the hands of the hired managers and builders.
- A huge number of JW can be implemented by other people. For example, I am sure that sooner or later there will be people interested in mathematics, physics, genetics and other sciences who will realize the idea of writing a “textbook of everything” where different sciences are presented consistently and clearly.
- Instead of those JW that I do not have the time or opportunity to implement, I implement those that are accompanied by the maximum anticipation, so in fact my life is fulfilled as much as possible, even though I cannot implement many JW.
The competition of JW can initially lead to chaotic behaviour accompanied by a slightly feverish state to a kind of “leapfrog of JW” in which they change so often that they lack stability, as a result of which the desired results are not achieved. But in the end this state of affairs is boring, you get ahold of yourself and reconcile with the fact that many JW can’t be implemented and choose those that attract the most. In fact, there is a new JW among your perceptions that was not there before – the “JW regulator” – JW to stop leapfrogging, to eliminate the feverish state at which you try to do too many things after which order comes and the flow of things becomes laminar, the chaos disappears.
02-13 Cyclones
From the whole spectrum of various JW we distinguish those that have the following three qualities:
- its intensity is higher than 5-6 (on a 10-point scale)
- its local resistance to interference from other perceptions, as well as the length of the period during which it is so intensely manifested, are exceptionally high in comparison with other JW.
- anticipation that is by definition for any JW sometimes increases so much that it causes a cascade of resonances with other EP such as aspiration, perseverance, a sense of mystery, call, etc.
I call this JW “cyclone”. The cyclones are accompanied, naturally, by frequent and bright EP.
One of the characteristic features of cyclones is that they, , can lead to a striking phenomenon from time to time due to the duration and brightness of the experience of the JW and EP: the appearance of specific, completely unusual and very pleasant bodily sensations.
We are well aware that NE lead a person to a rapid deterioration of health, to diseases, to the destruction of the body. So it turns out that the reverse is also true: the experience of JW and EP also directly affect the person’s well-being: her state of health improves, her alertness, vigor, endurance, freshness appears, there is surprising resistance to diseases, often a feeling of pleasure in different parts of the body. Moreover, from time to time, completely new sensations are awakened in you that you have never experienced before and all of them have an amazing property of resonance with pleasure, with delight. I called such sensations the term “physical experiences” (PE) or “enlightened sensations” (ES) and I will describe them in the corresponding section.
I call the direction of the cyclone the “single goal”. If I desperately want to explore the feeling of mystery for a long time, then this research is, by definition, a single goal for me in this period of time.
02-14 Hypercompensation of wishes
When a person, over the years having suppressed her wishes, begins to embark on their implementation, the phenomenon of hypercompensation inevitably arises. Grappling up to computer toys or sex, such a person begins to exhaust himself with the realization of these wishes which were suppressed for so long. I think that this phenomenon is inevitable and it cannot be avoided. You can only be prepared for the fact that it will arise and try to slow down often asking yourself the question ”do I really want this now” continuing to look for other JW.
One way or another, there is nothing catastrophic in this. After a certain period of time during which there is hypercompensation, the implementation of wishes enters into a comfortable stage of the gradual evolution of a person’s mental life.
02-15 Changing slowly is normal
It is not so easy to move your life from the well-trodden rails. At the very beginning, when you just start working on emotions, wishes and so on, when you start to change your lifestyle to a more pleasant one, your social circle to a more interesting one, the changes are slow and this can cause anxiety – because one life is not enough! But, firstly, the carrot does not grow faster if it is dragged up beyond the tops, and secondly, in the process of perceptions selection the critical level of the need for changes gradually accumulates, after which events can sometimes begin to unfold simply at a dizzying speed.
It is normal to change slowly. Starting to move towards freedom from NE and MW, towards JW and EP you gradually accumulate the inertia of this movement, the eventfulness of your life gradually increases and this means that you have got moments of evolutionary breakthroughs and the further gradual increase in pleasure, saturation, the fullness of life ahead of you.
02-16 Catalogue of joyful wishes
We will put together those varieties of joyful wishes which the person practicing selection of perceptions face and that are of particular interest.
“Joyful wish” is a wish accompanied by anticipation. For the sake of simplicity, in the future, we will simply speak of “wish” omitting the word “joyful”.
“Induced wish” is a wish that was once experienced as joyous but now is not experienced as joyful.
“Elementary wishes” are any wishes that do not include any of the following list: the wish to experience EP, the wish to experience “enlightened confidence” (EC) (see the chapter on confidence), the wish to experience an illuminated background (IB), the wish to experience ES, the wish to experience the JW, the wish to explore all this.
“Enlightened wishes” are wishes to experience EP or EC or EB or PE or JW.
“Higher wishes” are wishes to explore EP or EC or EB or PE or JW.
“Moles” are wishes the implementation of which depends almost exclusively on my efforts (for example, the wish to learn a foreign language).
“Swifts” are wishes the realization of which depends not only and maybe not so much on my efforts as on the circumstances (for example, the wish for new interesting people to appear).
“Elephant” is the wish to strengthen the experienced JW.
“Otter” is the wish to calmly “swim” in the existing EB, ES, EP.
“The First Factor of Evolution” is the wish to start experiencing EP.
“The Second Factor of Evolution” is the wish to strengthen and prolong the EP experienced. It may seem paradoxical but the second factor of evolution manifests itself at first as a very weak wish. The fact is that when there is an EP, ES, EB then the person begins to feel completely happy, perfectly satisfied – because the eventfulness of his or her life instantly amazingly grows. Hence the relaxation that leads to a rapid dissipation of enlightened states and only after the fact you understand that the second factor of evolution was too weak, and it would be cool to support it and not blur in contentment. This understanding gradually leads to the fact that the wish to strengthen, fix the second factor of evolution during experiencing EP, ES, EB is singled out as a separate perception.
“Evohusky” is a wish to strengthen, fix the second factor of evolution during experiencing EP, ES, EB: (“evolution” + “husky” – association with the dog that runs around and bites you by the ass).
“Dachshund” is a wish to explore EP, EC, EB, ES and JW. (The Dachshund rushes and sniffs the game).
“Octopus” is the wish to hold back the JW implementation.
Why might you want to suspend JW implementation?
- to enjoy the anticipation and wish to experience more concomitant EP
- not to face a situation when your JW were imperceptibly partially replaced by MW. At first you can do something with enthusiasm and if you are not used to it it is quite difficult to notice the moment when MW type “well it is necessary to finish” begins to push in and strengthen. If you go far enough in this direction, an unpleasant poisoning will occur.
- To give yourself time to digest and stabilize gained life experience, so that some interesting thoughts, attractive states may appear spontaneously. The brilliant physicist (including the ability to choose brilliant students) Rutherford asked a student who wanted to become his post-graduate student: “What are you doing in the morning?” – “I’m working”. “What are you doing in the day?” – “I’m working”. “What are you doing in the evening?”- “I’m working”. “And when do you think??”. That man did not become a post-graduate student of Rutherford.
- To allow other JW to manifest which in reality would be more pleasant to experience and implement than those that are being implemented now but there is simply “no room for them”, as if they have nowhere to push in if all your attention is occupied with the implementation of current JW. Pausing the implementation of current JW, as if in a new way you put them on the launch pad and check – which of them are more attractive now.
The suspension of JW implementation may be of different duration. You can, for example, go to the bathroom for half an hour, just flopping around there, or watching a movie, reading a book, and you can go out for five minutes to warm up with a barbell, and you can distract from the current business for just ten seconds and quickly check if there are any other, more attractive JW at the moment.
“St. Bernard” is a wish to assist nice people.
“Vulture” is the wish to explore the mechanisms of darkened perceptions in order to more effectively eliminate them.
“Cat’s Meat” is a wish to strengthen and extend the experienced ES.
“Squirrel” is the wish to sort out the list of previously expressed wishes in order to identify that one which will become dominant at the moment.
“Ferret” is the wish to track down – if there is any kind of NB or active blind confidence now that can hinder the manifestation of EB, EP, ES. Hunt it down and kill it.
A typical mistake of those who are interested in Selection is that they mistakenly believe that they want to eliminate NE and NB more than to experience them. Their rare thoughts on this subject they identify with the mere wish and as a result they live completely immersed in the NB while being confident that they “try” to eliminate NE and NB.
In fact, control over NB and the joyful readiness to immediately eliminate it lead at once to the manifestation of a variety of EP, including ES – there can be pleasure in the chest-heart-throat, “pre-orgasmic ball” behind the neck, hardness in the head, etc.
In order for the Ferret to manifest more often and intensively, it is expedient to generate clarity and confidence in the fact that experiencing NB is an extremely destructive phenomenon, continuous poisoning oneself. Recently, the number of scientific studies, which confirm this clarity, has increased. It is advisable to get acquainted with the results of such studies so that the confidence in the NB poisoning effect will be more strengthened. For example:
“A group of zoologists from the University of Duke conducted an experiment in which the status of the monkey in the pack decreased significantly (they had to experience more stress: they were not allowed to eat in peace, they often received pokes and cuffs, etc.). After a status change, blood samples were taken from each monkey for genetic analysis. Among more than 6,000 genes responsible for immunity, significant changes occurred in the activity of 987. The authors assert that according to the profile of genetic activity, they could predict the social status of the animal with an 80-percent accuracy. At the same time, the activity of immune genes responsible for the inflammatory reaction, with a decrease in status, increased on average by a factor of two. Immunity protects against infections but its constant hyperactivity wears out the body, weakens it. If the monkey moved back up the social ladder, the immunity calmed down. In other words, the genes reacted sensitively and accurately to the changes in the social environment”.
Thus, every time when NB and NE manifest in you, destructive changes are launched and maintained at the genetic level.
“Albatross” is the wish of storm, of decisive transformation. It is the wish to take decisive steps towards an irreversible change in perceptions in some area, to apply all the possible perseverance and determination to it. The wish to break out can first be object-free and then the object can be found by searching JW resonating with the urge to break through.
“Seagull” is the wish to strengthen the wish for storm (a seagull rushes, yells and pecks in the albatross’ ass).
“Phalanx” is the wish to move forward step by step – albeit slowly but inevitably – for example, to eliminate some NE or to make certain enlightened confidence habitual, layer EB one after another, train in experiencing EP, accumulating “age” of staying in them, training body, etc. (Association with the ancient Roman fighting unit – phalanx).
“Pelican” is the wish to cut off the chaotic distractions that arise during experiencing or investigation of enlightened states. Association with a pelican who walks and loudly clicks with his huge beak cutting off the chaotic distractions.
“Bird Secretary” – during experiencing or research of the enlightened conditions, a variety of JW may arise and often arise, gemmate. It is very pleasant and interesting to experience them and yet one may not want to be distracted from the main thing, from the most interesting at the moment, and then this wish to stop these gemmating JW manifests.
“Weaver” is the wish to compact the enlightened state being experienced.
“Raven” is the wish to use the thoughts that resonate with the enlightened state being experienced.
“Magpie” is the wish to use images that resonate with the enlightened state being experienced (association with the fact that a magpie carries all sorts of shiny pieces to its nest).
“Crocodile” is the wish to limit the implementation of a particular JW. When a person begins to identify and implement JW, he or she falls into the phase of the “primary implementation” characterized by a wide range of emerging wishes, their mutual pushing off (“JW competition”) and sprawling beyond pleasure (“hypercompensation of wishes”), at which you stop experiencing pleasure in JW implementation but you still experience a kind of feverish state in which you want to “eat” and even “overeat” by the realization of wishes. You can draw an analogy with a man who, having survived a severe famine, now begins to grab any food available to him. As fatigue accumulates from such hypercompensation, the “Crocodile” – the wish to set some limits for the implementation of one or another wish – arises and intensifies. For example, you make the decision that you will only be learning the Japanese words for an hour a day, after which you stop the implementation of this wish. A “Bitten Wish” is a wish the limit of which has already been chosen (for example, today). As the Crocodile manages the realization of certain JW, there may be different consequences. One of these consequences can be a feeling of dissatisfaction from the suppression of implementation accompanied by an anticipation of continuing the implementation. In this case, you can decide to change the selected limit. This process is called “the calibration of the Crocodile”. For some wishes it is easy enough to determine their limit and you want to change it quite rarely, while it does not work for others. As you get used to closely monitor the quality of the experienced JW and quickly switch from one to another without sticking into hypercompensation, the use of the Crocodile becomes unnecessary.
“Evacuator”. A good boxer is characterized not so much by the force of the blow (because you can send an opponent into the knockout even with not a very strong but accurate blow), as by flexible tactics and ability to hold a blow, that is, to withstand a missed blow and continue the fight. In Selection the ability to “hold a blow” is also an extremely important skill. When you are in a good mood, you are energetic and happy, it is easy to live – to seek and implement JW, to experience EP, to conduct research, to accumulate fragments, etc. The problem, however, is that people have the periods of this good mood extremely rarely. Therefore, it is important to have a skill, being in a bad state, to get out of there, persistently and resolutely creating pleasant states, destroying blind assurances and negative backgrounds that determine your unpleasant condition. The wish to get out of the decay states is called the “Evacuator”. The Evacuator can appear during both unpleasant and pleasant times (anticipating that when and if an unpleasant condition comes, then you will make an effort to stop it). It is interesting that if the skill to make efforts and get out of unpleasant states is sufficiently developed, there may even be a foretaste that you may be in a bad state (anticipation, of course, does not refer to the unpleasant states themselves but to the pleasant efforts made in it). Of course, such anticipation only reduces the probability of getting into an unpleasant state and getting stuck in it.
“Skunk” is the wish to strengthen the Evacuator (the skunk rushes behind the Evacuator and intensively stinks so that it does not linger).
“Owl” is the wish to actualize the list of joyful wishes. At the same time, a recapitulation of all what are you doing – is this really what you want? Do you act like this because of the JW presence or have you been moving along the rails for long time suppressing other wishes? Association with a clever owl that easily distinguishes even in total darkness.
“Beaver’s Meat” is the wish not to swim away in theorizing but to conduct experiments in order to gain new knowledge, a new experience. Association with a beaver who is engaged in substantive construction.
“Hummingbird” is a wish to dive in theorizing, in free constructions of hypotheses, even if they are very little grounded. Association with a small bird that freely rushes and flits among beautiful flowers.
We also introduce several procedural terms:
“Fork of Wishes” is a state in which the implementation of wishes is suspended under the influence of the Octopus and in which there are simultaneously several wishes of about the same intensity.
“Blackout” is the falling out of EP or EB in the everyday routine, dullness.
“JW localization” – by analogy with the EP localization – is a distinction – what JW is there now. The JW localization, as well as the EP localization, is a way to start experiencing any JW in general, as if luring them.
Distinguishing these and many other JW, giving them names, starting watching them – this is a very important step that allows you to move from a chaotic stage in self-development to a professional, systematic way to implement your JW, to achieve a bright, interesting, fulfilling life.