Grace’s scale of different ways of being

http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-intimacy.htm

RICHARD: In the same way that Excellence Experiences (EE’s) were a notable feature of feeling-being ‘Richard’s virtual freedom experiencing circa March-September 1981, although of course not named as such back then, so too did intimacy experiences (IE’s) play a similarly significant role even though increasingly overshadowed by the insistent emergence of love – and, especially, Love Agapé – in the later months due to a marked lack of precedence and, thus, of any praxeological 1 publications (nowadays made freely available on The Actual Freedom Trust web site) on the distinction betwixt the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté and the affectional intimacy of romance lore and legend.

Just as the term ‘excellence experience’ came from feeling-being ‘Grace’ – who was exacting in evaluating ‘her’ differing ways of being a ‘self’ so as to not illude herself that ‘she’ was more progressive than was really the case – so too did the expression ‘different-way-of-being’. What gradually became more and more apparent was that a prevailing feature of ‘her’ differing ways of being was the degree of intimacy involved.

The gradations of ‘her’ scale were, basically, good, very good, great, excellent, and perfect – whereby, in regards to intimacy, ‘good’ related to togetherness (which pertains to being and acting in concert with another); ‘very good’ related to closeness (where personal boundaries expand to include the other); ‘great’ related to sweetness (delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other) 2 ; ‘excellent’ related to richness (a near-absence of agency; with the [sophisticate] doer abeyant, and the [naïve] beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian); and ‘perfect’ related to magicality (neither beer nor doer extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails) – all of which correlate to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself 3 to an actual innocence.

  • Togetherness (‘good’) is the companionship of being and doing things together – be it shopping, cooking, dining, communicating, copulating, sharing, travelling, and so on – and pertains to the willingness to be and act in concert with another in the regular connubial/ conjugal way of feeling intimate.
  • Closeness (‘very good’) comes about due to feeling sufficiently safe/ feeling secure enough, emotionally, to intuitively enable an inclusive-of-the-other expansion of viscerally-determined personal boundaries; this is a normal type of intimacy wherein the regular way of feeling intimate is intensified and/or deepened.
  • Sweetness (‘great’) is when closeness entrées a joyous delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other (it is at the onset of this stage that a bifurcation manifests whereby the instinctual tendency/ temptation is to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy due to the ‘self’-centric attractiveness of feeling affectionate).
  • Richness (‘excellent’) happens upon sweetness segueing into a near-absence of agency; with the controlling doer abeyant, and a naïve beer ascendant, being the experiencing of what is happening is inherently cornucopian (a.k.a. an Excellence Experience).
  • Magicality (‘perfect’) is whence neither beer nor doer be extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails (a.k.a. a Pure Consciousness Experience).
Footnotes
1.
[Dictionary Definition]: ‘praxeology (n.): the study of human conduct; (adj.): praxeological. [1900-05; from Greek āxe- (taken as singular of âxis, ‘deed, act, action’; praxis, ‘practice, practical application as distinguished from theory’) + -o- + -logy; perhaps via. French éologie].’ ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).
2.
[Richard]: What did not get included in this third paragraph, regarding feeling-being ‘Grace’ and her rigorous gradations, was ‘her’ oft-repeated observation – regarding the onset of the third stage, on that range of naïveness, where ‘her’ gradation of ‘great’ related to sweetness – about a bifurcation manifesting where the instinctual tendency/ temptation was to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate) as contrasted to a conscious choice being required so as to somehow have that sweetness then segue into a naïve intimacy via what ‘she’ described as ‘richness’ and graded as ‘excellent’.
3.
[Richard]: To be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as ‘me’), which is to be the closest one can to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not), one is both likeable and liking for herewith lies tenderness, sweetness and togetherness, closeness whereupon moment-to-moment experiencing is of traipsing through the world about in a state of wide-eyed wonder and amazement as if a child again (guileless, artless, ingenuous, innocuous) – yet with adult sensibilities whereby the distinction betwixt being naïve and being [[Gullibility|gullible is readily separable – simply marvelling at the sheer magnificence of this oh-so-material universe’s absoluteness and unabashedly delighting in its boundless beneficence, its limitless largesse, with a blitheness and a gaiety such that the likelihood of the magical fairy-tale-like nature of this paradisaical terraqueous globe becoming ever-so-sweetly apparent, as an experiential actuality, is almost always imminent.
Links to this page
  • Extended Intimacy

    [Editor’s note: “Extended Intimacy” is Srid’s terminology – derived from Richard Dawkins’ concept “Extended Phenotype”, so as to highlight the fact that intimacy, that is usually reserved for one’s … umm … “intimate partners” (marital, romantic, sexual, etc.), can in fact be extended (albeit taking the other bifurcation at the third stage) to any and all persons – to precisely refer to what is being quoted here, and is not a term utilized by the Actual Freedom Trust. This page is to be read immediately following Grace’s scale of different ways of being for context.]

  • Being the doing of what is happening

    SRID: the opposite of feeling vulnerable is that one becomes interested in people and events happening right now. during the day we first met grace, i remember using the expression of ‘doing of what is happening’ to richard upon noticing that there was ‘less of me’ as i was, for most part, simply being the felicitous interaction happening on the house boat. closer to the end of the trip i also confirmed that this is the direction to take in order to get to out-from-control/ different-way-of-being.

  • Autonomy

    My experience is that autonomy leads to neither isolation nor ostracization as I feared it would at some stage, but if it is pursued diligently and persistently it leads to an actual intimacy and ease with all of my fellow human beings – and I, once again, experienced the peace on earth that already, always exists.