Increase Joy and Pleasure Through Increased Sensitivity and Receptivity

[TheJourney]

You want your mind and perceptual-body to become very sensitive and receptive. The aim of much of your work, then, should be to increase sensitivity and receptivity. This will increase your intelligence, increase your ability to experience pleasure, and increase your ability to abide joyfully in your own presence. How is this to be done? Put out the unquenchable flame of desire that burns within you, causing you to run to and fro in pursuit of habitual thought-patterns that you believe will bring about fulfillment, but instead keep you running the same circle which you have been running for eternity, which serves only to add fuel to the fire that is causing your sense of unease and incompleteness.

As you lose the pull towards external actions and objects, you can lose the urge to stick to one logical story about reality and your life, and you can see how your mind freely and naturally flows, without you getting in the way by translating your natural mind-stream in terms of accumulated notions of being realistic, right, or good. You can see the relationship between your ideas/desires and reality, and how effort is not required on your part for things to flow how they are supposed to. It is freeing to know that you do not have to do something the moment it pops into your head. It is, in fact, more fulfilling to wait, allow anticipation to naturally build, and engage when it is more natural. This will make your actions more enjoyable.

As you become more comfortable in your presence of non-doing, your body will also adjust, and begin to notice more subtle sensations. You will start finding more and more fulfillment, joy, and pleasure in very subtle things, that really require no effort on your part. This is your mind and body becoming more sensitive and receptive! This will continue increasing the more you abide in your non-activity based presence. This will greatly increase the pleasure, joy, and fulfillment you find in the actions and interactions you do partake in. As you see how all of this works, you will see the foolishness of running around for everything, making the pull of the external reality disappear more and more, which will aid your progress further.

[ChrisGinsburg]

Originally Posted by TheJourney

You want your mind and perceptual-body to become very sensitive and receptive.

I had trouble getting past your opening sentence to be honest. Are you trying to hypnotize me!

[wstein]

Uhh, you started in the middle. Your flowery prose is much like your avatar image, circular and symbolic but not very helpful.

Perhaps you should indicate how to ‘increase sensitivity and receptivity’.

[TheJourney]

Originally Posted by wstein

Uhh, you started in the middle. Your flowery prose is much like your avatar image, circular and symbolic but not very helpful.

Perhaps you should indicate how to ‘increase sensitivity and receptivity’.

...Did you...read the thread?

[SkylightMT]

Originally Posted by TheJourney

...Did you...read the thread?

Well, you're supposed to put out the flame of inquenchable desire or something. Quit striving, quit wanting, quit doing anything but being. Is how I read it.

But how do you do that?

[wstein]

Originally Posted by TheJourney

...Did you...read the thread?

yup, the whole thing, more than once
You tell what happens, not how to cause it.

[TheJourney]

Well, non-doing isn't something that you do, so it's not really a process. The best way I can try to explain it pragmatically is using principles of energy and attraction/repulsion. In a state of being, non-doing, you build up presence, which increases your magnetism. Generally, people do things on a whim. There isn't much benefit to doing it, and it is just something to do because you want to do something. Only take action when you can feel the energy pulsing through you, and you feel an attraction that is much easier to act on then to ignore. That is action that is worth doing. That could be seen as the distinction between action and activity. Activity is done just because you want to do something. Action is a spontaneous doing based on your natural flow, which you almost cannot help but do. As you try to work with these principles, as time goes on you will begin to feel this attraction and repulsion more and more both physically and mentally. The more you do this, the easier it becomes to be in the flow. You simply don't follow any path which contains resistance or repulsion. You act based on attraction. There is no need to force any thoughts or actions, because that attraction is the universal flow working through you, and it knows much better than your limited perspective. This becomes easier and easier the more you do it, because you can feel it more and more.