Immersion in Reality

Prerequisites for Happiness

The human condition is difficult. Happiness does not just happen. Nor can you chase after it in the abstract. It is like anything deeply important i.e. anything that is an ultimate value-PH6L7—friendship, wealth, peace, growth, efficiency, knowledge, success, freedom, love—you only experience it as a by-product of relevant activity. (Remember: We are here to do!) In the case of happiness, that activity is constructed around one, or more usually two, of the Primal Quests, one on each diagonal.

The diagonals of the Primal QuestTET reveal the two components necessary for genuine happiness. They have been named:

• Immersion in Reality: To maintain sanity and self-restraint. See below.
• Equilibrium in Reality: To bear misfortune and suffering. See next topic.
  

Immersion

The Immersion set of Quests lies on the diagonal running from upper left to bottom right. In order, they are:
Obedience ↔ Salvation ↔ Creation-in-Flow ↔ Creation-Courage.

This set of Quests is described as immersive because their operation demands that you must actively interact with external realities (psychosocial and empirical) and experience yourself as part of them. Do this properly and you stay sane. However, the resultant meshing of your self and the world about you is never fully under your control, and self-restraint is required for safety.

Reality is Unmanageable: So Why Immerse?

Reality may be messy and unknowable. But the more you disconnect &/or avoid what is psychosocially and empirically real, the more difficulties you will cause yourself &/or others. That is guaranteed. If you are unconnected with reality for a prolonged period, you lose touch. You start creating a solipsistic world to live in, and keep people at a distance. Probably you will inadvertently hurt or harm others around you, and surely fail to help them.

Remember that Quest action is not ordinary action that can be satisfied by a pre-specified result and then forgotten about. The challenging goal in this set of Quests is «how to become a part of reality in a way that delivers sanity and self-restraint». The answer seems to be experiential: partial identification. The three Quests each offer a different possibility for your identification.

Obedience provides immersion through identificationwith a role within an institution, enabling you to follow its rules and procedures, explicitly or implicitly.
More:

The Quest does not «require» obedience: that would be too easy. It assumes you are possessed by a wholehearted willingness to obey. That is why choice of role or institution is part of the Quest. In that way, obedience is not a burden but a release.

Salvation requires immersion via a humane attitude leading to an identification with someone suffering or vulnerable and in grave danger.
More:

The Quest demands that you get personally involved in providing practical assistance. This means finding a way to help that is both socially viable and acceptable to the person in need. For those not on this Quest, seeing suffering usually generates persecutory anxiety, due to the pain associated with automatic but transient empathic identification. Actions like ignoring, minimizing, donating, and forgetting are used to relieve that pain.

Creation demands identificationwith a challenge: i.e. an idea, proposition or conception.
More:

This Quest generates the most detailed and variable form of immersion because there are so many possibilities. Especially, in its extreme form, effort is required to endure rejections, to confront seemingly intractable obstacles and to overcome failures. In its milder form, suitable full-time work should usually offer sufficient opportunities.

Changes Moving Along the Diagonal

The diagonal contains Quests that range from «high detachment + low transcendence» to «low detachment + high transcendence».

Going down the diagonal, these Primal Quests involve ever greater transcendence from current reality (X-axis) and require ever less self-detachment (Y-axis). As a result, they progressively:

• demand greater and more imaginative personal efforts;
• permit more diverse and unpredictable social interactions;
• provide for a freer, idiosyncratic and more open existence.
  

Going up the diagonal, the Primal Quests allow ever more detachment from self (Y-axis), and ever less transcendence of reality (X-axis). As a result, they progressively:

• focus on social context and get widely understood;
• limit and circumscribe required efforts;
• become more certain and less demanding.

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• Now: see the Equilibrium diagonal.
• Then: consider distinctive features of each quadrant.

Originally posted: 27-Jul-2012