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This isn't a perfect mechanism but it's a commonly used threat, especially in families. The threat to withhold love. It is disastrous however when you can just buy anti-loneliness off the shelf via social media or live streaming anything.

Instead of "learning the lesson" when you get tired of fucking yourself you and others can fuck yourself(metaphysically) in endlessly interesting and novel ways. There's an illusion of progress.

The more novel the weapons against "Death" (here manifested as the Specter of abandonment and betrayal) the more one feels closer to "immortality". Progress is made towards infinity step by step.

The Specter interestingly enough IS immortal, or becomes immortal when its original source dies. If you can't talk to your dead parents or friends who initially created the specter then there's no way to dispel it.

The alternative to "You've got to learn your lesson by realizing how much you're the one who's always fucking yourself." is a message of love. The Fucking to Loving transmutation is the equivalent of changing base metals to gold. It is the holy grail of transformation.

The difficult thing about this is that it's not something that be taught. It's not a scientific transformation. There's no formula or recipe. Imagine: "What do I do on a first date?" "How do I kiss someone?" etc...

If you have to be told what specific steps to do, then you're not doing it right. There is nothing that 'you' can do to get out of 'your' own way.

It's very tempting to try and create the "I'm the problem" feeling in someone else by saying "You're the problem." But this literal message never works. Instead say "I'm the problem" and maybe... they'll echo it back.

This is one of the cases where "Original Sin" is a useful idea because you can always truthfully say "I'm the problem" in some sincere form.