Ontological Losses and Gains Description and ToC

Ontological Losses and Gains will be the second book in the Being and Life Series (publication date: to be decided), but information is included here to give readers of Being and Life a sense of the full range that ontological emotions and ideas encompass.

Ontological Losses and Gains examines many of the losses and gains people experience as they increase their degrees of realself. As men and women move forward through the beginning states of Transition they slowly lose their socialself identity and their sense of socialself. At the same time—even though most of these people aren’t yet aware of it—they are also becoming more their realselves and are starting to think of themselves as their realselves.

For people who are able to move beyond the beginning Transition, their ontological lives slowly change from focusing on their socialselves to focusing on their realselves. For instance, two of the questions a person at these stages or states asks are What is it like to first become conscious of one’s realself? and What are the last few steps of the Transition like? Additionally, religion can represent a range of ontological states and degrees of realself, and the understandings and motivations at the foundation of these states are examined. And finally, since being all one’s realself is the only natural state of humans, ontological growth is shown to be ontological maturity. Becoming all one’s realself and developing realself-to-realself relationships is how adult men and women ultimately want to live their lives, and how they were born to live their lives.

Chapter 1: Losing One’s Self and Losing One’s Being
  Losing One’s (Social)Self
  Losing One’s (Real)Self
  Choosing One’s Body or One’s Being

Chapter 2: Finding One’s Self and Finding One’s Being
  Finding One’s Realself
  Moments of Considerably Increased Degrees of Being
  The Loss of Ego Boundary and the Loss of Self
  Learning the Roles of One’s Society
  Being-to-Being Connections

Chapter 3: Ontological Fusion
  The Last Transitional Step
  Ontological Merging and Fusion
  Ontological Fusion and the Loss of Self
  “Forget Yourself.”

Chapter 4: Ontological Losses
  The Loss of Socialself Life
  “I Have Utterly Lost All Will-Power.”
  Decreasing Realself People

Chapter 5: The Realself, the Decreasing Realself, and Religion
  The Realself and Realself Life as Religion
  Religion and Ontological Wholeness
  Classic Ontological Metaphors
  “Rotten to the Core”
  Out of the Hearts of Men and Women
  Surrendering One’s Realself
  Vortices, Landslides, and Imaginary Islands
  Wide Is the Gate and Broad Is the Way to Realself Life
  Holy Wars
  Ontological Failure and Decreasing Realself Alienation as Religion

Chapter 6: “No Life in Sight” in “an Unreal World”
  Depersonalization and Derealization
  A Spectator of Realself Life
  “It’s Most Terrifying to Realize the Doctor Can’t See the Real You.”

Chapter 8: Increasing Realself Young Adulthood
The Years Between Fifteen and Thirty
The Ontological Gap

Chapter 9: Ontological Maturity, Fusion, and Unwholesome Morasses
  “Something Limitless, Unbounded, ‘Oceanic’”
  “The Fantasy of Infantile Fusion”
  Having One’s Realself Emotions Become “Vaguer”
  “He Would Pull You After Himself into Some Unwholesome Morass.”

Chapter 10: “I Am Conscious of a Perfectly Definite Loss.”
  Nostalgia for Realself Life
  Innocent Children
  “You . . . Couldn’t See the Real Me Which Was Still a Little Girl.”
  Mature Understandings of Being and Life

Ontological Losses and Gains

Description and Table of Contents