The Ontological War

It’s very common for people who are increasing their degrees of realself to take a step forward, learn something new, and then use that new knowledge to examine other aspects of their lives. Ann does this in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and these post about her will do the same.

Going back to the time when Ann and Graham were in the café, she says she wants to tell him “something personal”:

Ann: I think that, um … I think that people place far too much importance on it. And I think that stuff about women wantin’ it just as bad as men is crap. I think they want it, I just don’t think they want it for the reason men think they do.

I’m getting confused. Do you understand what I’m …?

Graham: Yeah.

Ann had started increasing her degree of realself before she met Graham, and that means when she talks to him she is somewhere between her socialself and her realself ontologically. By being in the transitional state between these two selves, she is also, inevitably, between socialself sex and realself sex in both her experiencing and her understanding of each of them.

As people become more their realself, they want to be that self more in their relationship with someone they love. They also want their sex life to be more realself-to-realself because they know that that is what sex truly is: it is isn’t just genital activity of “going through the motions,” but a sensuous blending of being and bodies.

Ann isn’t yet at the degree of realself where she is conscious of the importance of the realself in one’s sex life, but she is definitely at the degree of realself where she senses that sex as socialself sex is “overrated.”

She gets “confused” when she explains her thoughts about sex because she is aware that socialself-to-socialself sex is not very enjoyable and it’s not how sex should be. But at the same time she is not conscious of either the socialself’s or the realself’s existence, and that lack of understanding makes it impossible for her to explain accurately what she is feeling.

In the back of her mind, however, Ann has started thinking about having realself sex. Even though she doesn’t consciously know that the realself exists, or what a realself-to-realself relationship is, or what realself-to-realself sex is, she is moving forward in their direction.

In broader terms, the awareness that sex is “overrated” can represent a beginning understanding of the reason couples can have a good sexual relationship for the first two or three years of their marriage, but after that they have sex less and less until they have it only infrequently. They start their marriage with the unconscious belief that it might develop into some kind of realself-to-realself relationship, and that underlying belief makes the sex good. But once one of the couple slowly becomes more his or her socialself with the other, the sex changes to socialself sex, and that change is followed by a lack of ontological and sexual interest and desire by the other person.

All the posts in this series are listed in the All the Series’ Posts page.

In Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Ann is talking with her therapist, and she mentions that her husband has not been having as much sex with her as in the past. She continues:

Ann: I mean, I’m sure he probably wishes that I would initiate things once in a while, and I would, except for it just never occurs to me, and … well, the few times I have felt like it I was by myself.

Therapist: Did you do anything?

Ann: What do you mean?

Therapist: Did you masturbate?

Ann: Oh! Oh. Oh. God, no. No. Mm-mm.

Therapist: I take it from your response that you never masturbate.

Ann: Well … I tried once. It just seems so stupid!

Two ontological thoughts on Ann’s embarrassment:

• Sex is a realself event, and so she was embarrassed about admitting to having masturbated because it meant she was being her realself when she did it and, to a lesser degree, when she admits to it and talks about it. She puts her hands over her face to cover or conceal her realself, which feels exposed.
• Additionally, by admitting to masturbating she felt as if she were caught being her realself in the socialself world, and we all learn early in our lives that we are not suppose to do that.

A common socialself world misconception about all of this is that some people are confident about their sexuality, and they can discuss their masturbating without getting embarrassed. But what these people don’t realize is that Ann’s embarrassment wasn’t caused strictly by her admitting to masturbating, but by her being more her realself while she was doing it and later talking about it.

It’s not hard to give the impression of confidence when one talks about one’s sex life as one’s socialself, but once people reach the degree of realself Ann was in, they too will feel embarrassed discussing their sex lives, since everyone in the beginning Transition feels embarrassed about being more his or her realself.

The answer to all of this embarrassment, of course, is not to strive to become more “confident,” but to become more one’s realself. Becoming more “confident” now almost always means becoming more confident as one’s socialself, when instead what people really need to do is to become more their realself, thus making them more confident in being it with others.

All the posts in this series are listed in the All the Series’ Posts page.

Quite a few people think sex is “just biological,” or “just physical,” or even “just chemical.” But as men and women increase their degrees of realself, they see that sex is actually linked inextricably to the realself.

Why is this? The main reason is probably that even though we can become alienated ontologically—we can fool ourselves into thinking we are who we aren’t and we aren’t who we are—we probably can’t fool our sexual nature because it is connected with the core of who we truly are, our realselves.

Most people are being mostly their socialselves, and so one might think that expressions of sex as a realself event would be rare. But one needs to keep in mind that everyone has a realself, and so when men and women have sex their realselves, to whatever degree they are being it, enters into and influences their sexual lives.

Future posts will examine in detail many of the connections between sex and the realself, but for now here is a quick overview of a few ontological areas where sex is a realself event:

• The link between sex and the realself means that sex often represents an increase in degree of realself, and so the people who on some level fear, reject, or even hate that increase will also fear, reject, or even hate sex.
• This fear, rejection, and hate is seen in religious and social conservatives preoccupation with sex: gays, gay marriage, contraceptives, abortion, and so on. It’s not sex they dislike the most, but actually the increase in degree of realself that sex represents.
• Sex and the realself can be thought of as two ends of a spectrum, and so even for those who are fully conscious of the realself, it’s hard to tell in some cases where sex ends and ontology begins and where ontology ends and sex begins.
• Men and women have both sexual desires and ontological desires, and sometimes, maybe even often, men and women have sex to satisfy their ontological desires or, but to a lesser extent, they use their ontological emotions to enhance their sexual desires.
• The pleasures of sex are partly the pleasures of becoming more one’s realself with another person, whether the people involved are conscious of this or not.
• The ontological component in sexuality covers the full range of sexuality, from its best to its worst: one man may want a sensuous blending of beings and bodies with his wife and another man shoots his girlfriend who is leaving him, later telling authorities “if I can’t have her, no one will have her” or “now I will be the only man she’s ever had sex with and we will be together for ever.”
• Intense sexual jealousy, in all its various forms, is mostly if not almost entirely an ontological emotion.

There’s no question about it: we will never understand sex until we understand realself ontology.

A minor note about the term: in realself ontology sex is described as a realself event rather than something such as a realself phenomena in order to encompass a lot of non-physical sexuality, such as what have in the past been thought of as strictly sexual fantasies or sexual desires.

At this stage of their relationship, most people might not think a deep connection is developing between Ann and Graham in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. After all, she tells her therapist Graham is “interesting,” and that isn’t much to go on when considering the ontological depth of the relationship between two people.

But there were two incidents that indicate their relationship is becoming more ontological, meaning it is moving beyond the very common socialself-to-socialself relationship and is developing into a relationship between their realselves.

In the café Graham told Ann she was self-conscious, and she said

Ann: Me? Me? You think I’m self-conscious?

Graham: Well … I’ve been watching you. I watch you eat, you know, I watch you speak, watch you move, and I see somebody who is extremely aware of people looking at you.

Initially, it might seem creepy to have someone closely watching everything a person does. And for socialself-to-socialself relationships, this may be true. But when relationships start becoming ontological, the people involved understand that this heightened “tuning in” to another person is more an expression of one person’s realself getting closer to another person’s realself, and it is not seen as a violation of what might be thought of as a person’s sphere of privacy. Ann undoubtedly took Graham’s actions in this way—she wasn’t upset by them.

Late that night, Graham was sleeping on a couch (Ann and John don’t have a guest room?), and Ann got up, went to him, and knelt beside him, looking at him. She didn’t say anything or wake him; she just looked at him for a little while and then went back to bed. (As it turns out, Graham was actually awake, but he didn’t let Ann know.)

What’s happening to Ann is that Graham is reaching her realself, and unconsciously she is responding to him and his realself from her own realself. She goes to him in the middle of the night because she is becoming aware of ontological thoughts and feelings; she knows they are important, powerful, and good; but she doesn’t know what to make of them. At the ontological state she is passing through, Graham represents something much bigger and deeper in her life, but she doesn’t understand what that something is, other than being drawn to it.

She may think that a part of her may love Graham in some way or that a part of her may be attracted to him sexually. But she is also aware that the feelings she has for him are, before everything else, something beyond sexual and something beyond what is usually thought of as love.

In the café Ann and Graham were engaged in what might be called “ontological flirting”: two people who are aware of the realself in each other enjoying the pleasure of being that self with someone they like. But when Ann looks at Graham in the middle of the night, she is unconsciously taking her first steps forward as an adult woman in developing a conscious, realself-to-realself relationship with a man.

In the past, almost all the people who started increasing their degrees of realself did not know that the realself, realself-to-realself relationships, and realself life exist. These people were drawn forward by their wakening realselves, but consciously they didn’t have any idea what was ahead of them ontologically.

Ann, in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, was in this ontological state in the days after she talked with Graham in the café. Before she met him she had told her therapist she wasn’t very happy about one of her husband’s college friends coming to visit. But later, after she has met Graham, she talks about him with her therapist:

Therapist: Did you confront John about the visitor?

Ann: The visitor?

Therapist: The friend of John’s that was staying at your house.

Ann: Graham.

Therapist: Graham.

Ann: Yeah. I mean … no. That actually turned out to be interesting. You know, I was expecting him to be just like John. You know, cos they went to school together and everything. You know, talking about getting drunk together and secret handshakes and … He turned out to be really this … character. He’s kind of arty. But OK.

Therapist: Is he still at your house?

Ann: No. No. No. He’s gone.

Even though consciously she didn’t understand what was taking place ontologically, in the café Ann got caught up in the pleasure of talking with someone with whom she could have more of a realself-to-realself relationship than she was having within anyone else, and that made her conversation with Graham exciting and enjoyable. He was being his realself somewhat with her, and by his doing that she was able to be more of her realself with him.

Ann is sensitive enough to her realself to think that her relationship with Graham is “interesting.” And after he finds a residence of his own, she has a chance to think about him, the type of man he is, and the kind of relationship she might have with him. One of the main reasons she thinks he is interesting is that on some level she is beginning to move from the spontaneous and unexamined realself-to-realself relationship she had with him in the café to a deeper, more considered, and more conscious realself-to-realself relationship with him.

At a future time Ann tells Graham, “You’ve had an effect on my life,” (which will be the subject of another post) and the effect he has on her is in his showing her that she has and can be a deeper self within her, and she can also have the deeper and more intimate relationships that come with that self.

It may be obvious, but in case it isn’t the main reason for this blog is to help make humankind less alienated ontologically and eventually to end our ontological alienation completely.

In working toward that goal, The Ontological War is concerned with two main groups. The first group is made up of ontological sensitive people, and the posts written for them focus on explaining everything having to do with increasing one’s degree of realself. And if these posts are looked at even closer, one will see that half of this blog is actually directed at those ontologically sensitive people who want to, or will want to, become increasing realself people.

The second group is made up of decreasing realself people, and the posts for them explain the great harm their promotion of alienated life causes all of us and explain the reasons for their having made the worst of all ontological decisions: the rejection of their realselves and realself life.

Of course, by having these two ontologically opposite audiences, there will be a wide range in the types of posts. The posts for ontologically sensitive people will include those such as in the Sex, Lies, and Videotape series. These posts will be directed mainly at increasing one’s degree of realself by showing the thoughts and emotions of others who are at various degrees of realself and then explaining why those who continue moving forward make the decisions they do.

The posts for decreasing realself people, on the other hand, will explain why they are alienated and why they made their decisions to turn around in the Transition and become more alienated rather than more who they truly are. The posts for this group will include those such as in the Jesus Is My Bitch! series, the Prof. L. Bernard Budlong Award series, and the Help! The World Is Too Big For Me! series. Besides explaining why the ontological states of decreasing realself people are alienated, a secondary purpose for these post will be to make it very difficult in the future for anyone to happily be a decreasing realself person.

In realself ontology terms, the Transition is the ontological path or road from one’s socialself to one’s realself.

Most of the time when increasing realself ideas are explained here they will be described as if people who are increasing their degrees of realself take an ontological step forward, then another, and another until they finally reach their realselves and the realself world.

But this isn’t how people actually increase their degrees of realself.

Instead, people step forward three, four, or more ontological steps, reach an elevated degree of realself that becomes too painful in some way, and then step back a step or two. By stepping back, these people return to a lower ontological state that is familiar and comfortable. Then, once they have rested and gotten used to and understand better the elevated degree of realself ahead of them, they again go forward several or more steps.

And when people again increase their degrees of realself after having rested at a lower ontological state, the previous “elevated degree of realself” that before was too painful for them now becomes just another step on their way to their realselves, and they go several or more steps beyond it before they again reach an elevated degree of realself that is, temporarily, “too much” for them.

Increasing realself people do this ebbing and flowing throughout their ontological journey, but their doing this doesn’t mean they are erratic, unstable, or inconsistent. This ontological ebbing and flowing is a normal part of our becoming who in the past we always thought was wrong but now realize is the best we will ever be; it takes time for us to adjust to this new understanding of who we really are; and we need to recognize these changes for what they are.

Elevated degrees of realself can become too painful for many reasons. To give just a few examples, on reaching an elevated degree of realself increasing realself people may feel:

• too “lost,” which is caused by their not understanding the elevated degree of realself well enough yet ontologically
• too neurotic, anxious, or depressed, all of which are caused by their becoming more what the alienated world around them, the socialself world, says is wrong but they believe is right
• too exposed ontologically, which is caused by their being more their realselves than they’ve ever been it before
• or too different, which can be caused by their not getting along with family and friends as well as they did before when they were being more their socialselves

What’s important about all of this is for people who are increasing their degrees of realself to understand what’s going on, so that when they step back to lower degrees of realself they realize that all they are doing is resting and adjusting to their recently acquired greater understanding of themselves and of life: their stepping back is not a true reversal in either their ontological direction or commitment.

Ann in Sex, Lies, and Videotape ebbed and flowed in her feelings about herself and in her feelings about Graham. More on her ontological ebbing and flowing will be in future posts.

In Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Ann and Graham are talking in a café, and Ann tells Graham “something personal”:

Ann: I think that, um … I think that sex is overrated. I think that people place far too much importance on it. And I think that stuff about women wantin’ it just as bad as men is crap. I think they want it, I just don’t think they want it for the reason men think they do.

I’m getting confused.

Ann is starting to think of sex in new way. Many people consider it to be just a physical or biological drive and activity, and maybe in the past Ann accepted that definition of it. But now she is starting to sense that sex should be something else, something more. Sex as strictly a physical act is becoming “overrated” for her because once one begins to get a sense of one’s realself and of realself-to-realself relationships, socialself sex starts losing its appeal.

Ann, however, is still in the beginning Transition, and so she says “I’m getting confused.” It takes a while to figure all this ontological stuff out.

The conversation continues. Graham says that he was in therapy, it didn’t work for him, and

Graham: So I just formed my own theory that you should never take advice from someone that doesn’t know you intimately.

Ann: Well, I know my therapist intimately.

Graham: You’ve had sex with your therapist?

Ann: No! No. No.

Graham: Oh, no, I’m sorry. That’s what I meant. Somebody you’ve had sex with.

Ann: Oh.

…

Ann: So, let me see. You said, um … you said that I should never take advice from someone that I haven’t had sex with, right?

Graham: Basically.

Ann: Right. And, uh, we haven’t had sex. Right?

Graham: No.

Ann: So I guess from your own advice, I shouldn’t take your advice.

Graham: I wouldn’t.

Ann: You wouldn’t? OK.

Most of the conversations ontologically sensitive people have with others stop at the surface of the people they are talking to because that is where the self, the socialself, the other people are being is located. Occasionally, though, an ontologically sensitive person will meet another ontologically sensitive person, and the conversation may move almost immediately to deeper levels within each of them.

This appears to be happening with Ann and Graham. Graham is at a deeper degree of realself, and he communicates from that deeper level. But for Ann, talking more from who she is sensing she truly is and talking on a deeper ontological level to another person, and to a man, is something new.

Her relationship with Graham started innocently enough: Graham used to be her husband’s good friend, and Graham has dinner at Ann’s house and stays there a few nights. All of this made it possible for her to become aware of Graham in a realself way, without her ever feeling pushed or pulled in that direction by anyone.

Without really thinking about it, she finds herself talking to someone and developing a deeper ontological relationship without her really being aware that that is what the relationship is developing into.

And she does like her developing friendship with Graham, as shown by her giggling when she says “And, uh, we haven’t had sex. Right?”

So at this stage of her ontological life, on the one hand Ann says sex is “overrated,” and on the other hand she laughs with pleasure and deepening friendship when she says to Graham “we haven’t had sex. Right?”

I started this blog mostly to explain the battle between those who think we should become more our realselves and those who think we should reject that self, but I’ve come to realize that I also need to spend more time explaining what the basic ontological terms mean.

To digress for a moment, I live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, just above where the oaks of the valley change to the pines, firs, and cedars of the mountains. After living here for about 5 years, I thought I knew all the native trees, and I told neighbors that madrones trees didn’t grow in our vicinity. But then someone showed me a madrone tree, and in the next two weeks I saw probably half a dozen madrones in the five-mile trip into town. They’d always been there, I just didn’t see them.

My becoming conscious of madrone trees parallels somewhat my becoming conscious of my realself.

I had spent between two and three years looking into myself when, one afternoon when I was living in Pacific Grove, California, I suddenly and consciously saw my realself within me. It was as if a door had opened, when a second earlier I hadn’t known a door was even there or that there was anything behind it. Prior to that moment, I had always thought that I was moving forward toward my somewhat nebulous center.

In the two months after that moment, I realized that my becoming conscious of my realself had also revealed a framework into which many of my earlier thoughts fell into place:

• From the moment I first saw my realself I knew it was who I truly am.
• By consciously seeing my realself, I then knew that my previous thoughts about how the self I had been being wasn’t truly me were true. Later, I would call that other self my “socialself” and the self I saw within me my “realself.”
• By consciously knowing that my realself and my socialself existed, I was then able to see that each of these selves had its own ontological world, and so all my thoughts such as “the day-to-day world doesn’t feel 100% real to me” and “sometimes I get a much greater sense of what human existence should be like” fell into place.
• Looking back, I think the reason I didn’t become conscious of my realself until that moment is that I had to become my realself to a certain degree before I could consciously become it, since my seeing my realself within me wasn’t just a matter of my seeing it within me, but the beginning of my consciously becoming it. If I had seen my realself within me when I was being much more my socialself, I wouldn’t have known what to make of my realself because I wouldn’t have known anything about what it feels, thinks, and understands.
• Like the madrone trees, before I became conscious of my realself I didn’t see the realself anywhere in life, but after that insightful moment I started seeing expressions of it more and more.

For those who are not yet conscious of their realselves, two other things can be learned from all of this:

• If men and women want to become conscious of their realselves, they will each have to spend the time increasing their own degrees of realself; no one will ever be able to explain it well enough to them, as their socialselves, for them see it within themselves. Other people can help them forward ontologically, but everyone has to walk every step of the ontological journey by himself or herself.
• It is important to become conscious of one’s realself, but realself ontology has never been about racing forward as fast as one can to open the greatest Door Prize in the world; instead, it has always been about slowly and consistently becoming more who one truly is.

Perhaps what we can also learn from madrone trees is that the more we become aware of our realselves, the more we become aware that the realself is the center around which all human existence revolves.

When talking to socialself people and decreasing realself people, the increasing realself person gets the sense that the conversation with them stops at the surface of their skin, and the person senses this because ontologically that is where the self of socialself people and decreasing realself people is located. But in talking with increasing realself people one gets the definite sense that one is talking to a self that is deeper within them, because that is where the self they are being is located.

Realself life and everything that goes with it is better than socialself life in countless ways, and one of these ways is that realself-to-realself relationships give increasing realself people an opportunity to be more their realselves with someone, which they want, enjoy, and need.

A good example of this developing relationship is in Sex, Lies, and Videotape when, after knowing Graham for only about a day, Ann asks him a question while they are in a café:

Ann: Can I tell you something personal?

Graham: It’s up to you. Can I tell you something personal?

Ann: Yeah. Yeah.

Graham: Well, you gotta go first.

Ann: OK.

…

Ann: So, are you gonna tell me something personal?

Graham: Do you want me to?

Ann: Yeah. Yeah, I do. I don’t want it to be something gross, about some scar. I want it to be something really personal, about yourself.

Graham: All right. OK.

Ann enthusiastically says “yeah” four times when Graham asks if he can tell her something “personal,” and the question immediately comes to mind, why was she so enthusiastic? She sounds almost like a naïve teenager who has never before talked to anyone in a personal way.

She knows from experience that she can’t have a “personal” talk with her husband. But even though she has known Graham for only a day, she senses that maybe she can be “personal” with him.

Ontologically, there is a big differences between the “personal” talk from one’s socialself and the “personal” talk from one’s realself. LBJ lifted up his shirt and showed his appendectomy scar to the world, and for some people doing that would be considered personal. But this isn’t the kind of personal that Ann and Graham both have in mind. They use the word “personal,” but they really mean something more in the lines of “Can I be more my realself with you?”

Ann has had the growing sense that she wants to and needs to talk to someone in a “really personal” way, and she thinks that maybe she has finally met someone with whom she can have that relationship—someone she can to talk to in a way other than in the usual, on-the-surface, socialself way. She knows she can’t do that with her husband or sister, and even though she probably talks to her therapist in more of a “personal” way, the relationship she has with him isn’t the same as having a realself-to-realself relationship with someone one likes, is attracted to, and maybe even loves.