Acceptance

Actualism
23

Again, not really. That is turning actualism into a bunch of rules.

As a general principle, sure, why strive for a whole heap of stuff? That generally is a whole heap of work.

And yes, as an actualist it would seem sensible to me if I had 10k floating around with nothing to do, I would probably arrange a trip to meet some other actualists, which I think we’re I am at now, would be very beneficial.

Giving it to my neighbour on some moral rule is silly.

However, going into your scenario, is this neighbour a good friend? Is there mutual benefit in the relationship? Then yes, maybe that would be a good idea. But blindly giving people money because they have a need greater than yours is clearly a failed idea. Religion tried it, atheist communists tried it, and it doesn’t work.

It’s not that it’s against Actualism, or for it. It’s the motivation for it.

For some context, the various world religions all venerate giving to the poor. Each one of them promises some sort of heavenly rewards for this action.

So in effect, people give because they want the rewards.

Buying a stairway to heaven.

24

The desire to buy a staircase to heaven or the desire to buy a trip for an exotic vacation or the desire to pay for a prostitute are essentially same, no?

If one engages in any of them, they are giving expression to their desire, no?

That is different from enjoying oneself, which is actualism, no?

25

Sure, there is plenty of corruption from the top to the bottom, and suffering all the way through it. However, to your point of emulating “fellowship regard”, you are indeed pasting your pre-existing religious ideas over Actualism.

I was a master at this, and you are certainly doing it now.

Let’s get to the point; the way we can bring down the entire corrupt, rotten to the core ‘system’ is via psychic self-immolation.

It’s not that you wouldn’t have a very grateful and happy neighbour. Go for it Kiman! You would have a friend for life.

What you will not get out of that transaction is any actualism “brownie points”.

There is no actualist god who will see your good deeds and reward you. No rebirth into a more actually free realm.

In the scenario, you will have saved a neighbours sight, and gained potentially a very loyal friend.

That’s all. Nothing to sneeze at, but not actualism related at all.

26

@Kiman

Apologies for being blunt. I would like to be more helpful than that.

It seems, like me, you had a very moral upbringing, probably a religious one. Correct me if I am assuming wrongly.

It’s very easy from that past, infact, probably inevitable, to really struggle with what Actualism is about.

Indeed, the AFT is specifically written for the “spiritual seeker” rather than “religious survivors” or “scientific atheists”.

Because of that particular framing, with that audience mind, it doesn’t address the transition from traditional religion to actualism. It addresses the transition from aspiring for “enlightenment” to actualism.

That is of course because it’s main 3 authors, were either enlightened, or aspiring towards enlightenment.

For the Hindus carefully observing their beliefs, or the Christians (who mostly think enlightenment is an ancient myth) there is nothing to designed on the site to really get through to religious people.

As many in the world will say these days “I am not religious, but I am spiritual”.

This is the culture in Australia. Most will say the above, in some manner or another.

So, what to do about this?

The religious person is mostly concerned with the state of the world at large. Religion, all types, generally believe that if everyone converted to that particular religion, the world would be at peace.

My Hindu friend says “it’s not a religion, but a way of life” then goes on to essentially say that if everyone was Hindu we would all be harmless.

India has had 5000 years to prove that.

Buddhism 2500 years

Christianity, 2000 years

Islam 1300 years.

No peace.

So the universal belief in morality, and specifically the morality of one’s own religion, had seen to be ineffective in all cases.

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27

Coming to actualism, it is natural that as a ex religious person, we are looking for the rules.

We want the rules.
And we want to know how to convert people. Or at least, we believe that if everyone was an actualist, the world would be at peace.

If everyone was actually free yes! But actualist? No, that is just a convient label for those interested in actualism.

28

So to be even more helpful, and for the sake of any others from a religious past, here are the rules!

Rule 1.

Make a commitment, as solid as giving your life to Christ, if not even more so, to this statement;

"I am committed to feeling good, each moment again, for the rest of my life, come what may"

Handy hint: start with a very “low bar” for feeling good. Just a regular “I am good, Larry, how are you?” level is fine. If this doesn’t exist in your life, then change your life and circumstances until it does.

Rule 2.

Buy yourself a journal. Or get an app for writing. Get a voice recorder app on your phone

Rule 3

Open the journal, and voice recorder, and start working out what is in the way of feeling good right now, in this moment.

Go for a walk. Enjoy a swim, but each moment there is only ever Rule 1 playing in your mind.

Rule 4.

Enjoy your success. Remember it. If you did it once, you can do it again. Just like converting to a religion, that commitment is already done. Never doubt it because you feel bad. Feeling bad is par for the course until one gets the hang of it.

Rule 5

Read the AFT daily, as if the world depends on your success.

Rule 6.

Take every opportunity to have as much fun as possible whilst not harming others.

Rule 7

Look after yourself. It’s all over when you are dead, so stay as healthy as possible.

Rule 8

To be advised. The author is still trying to master these. I anticipate there will be ten rules, you know, for reasons. :rofl::yum:

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29

This works better if you give an actual specific situation that actually happened in your life, like a literal time you were making this choice, without embellishments. Because then we can talk about something substantial.

Again you are misapplying the “emotionally accept but intellectually don’t accept”. It refers to something else. It doesn’t refer to what you’re going through now regarding expressing a desire. So it’s just confusing things. Maybe better to set this phrase aside for now.

That’s because …

Simplifying it by removing the misapplied jargon, you’re essentially saying that you have a desire and you’re finding that expressing the desire is not leading to any progress regarding to becoming free.

And… of course it won’t! Is it a surprise? Expressing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions doesn’t lead to experiencing less of them, it leads to experiencing more of them.

The idea is to minimize the good and bad emotions. And you do it by neither expressing nor suppressing them. But that you’re doing is expressing them.

So the question for you is, is it sensible for you to continuously feed this desire, thereby continuing to miss out on enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive?

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30

Just a thought, and a potential point of investigation, from what I’ve read.

It’s possible that you are feeling guilty about your desires (perceived as negative) and now want to compensate or balance that out via expressing nurture/compassion (perceived as positive), thus “putting the others before you” and playing the spiritual game of antidotes. In that case, you may be just trying to shift from one emotion to another, and doing so within a moral/spiritual framework.

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31

That’s true. There’s some guilt both about my state and not moving forward. The latter more. Most people who work although they don’t need to work have ulterior motives that they sweep under the rug. They might say they absolutely love their work. The litmus test is whether they would continue to work with a quarter of the pay they get now or even less.
The only thing that’s interesting and challenging in my work is maximizing profit. If I don’t do that, it’s utterly boring. When the desire presents itself, it’s utterly visible to me. How do I proceed with acceptance? Emotionally accepting it and intellectually not accepting hasn’t helped me move forward. It is just equivalent to surrendering(to the desire expressing itself) unless I progress in consistently feeling good. I can’t feel good when the desire repeatedly occurs. The desire will be there as long as I work. I don’t want to work at all.

32

Hi @Kiman

I assume it is literally your job to maximise profit, no?

The businesses I work for expect this.

Perhaps, it’s useful to take a much larger view of the economy than what you talked about previously. I mean, where does all the energy come from? I am talking about inputs into it. A lot of it is free from the sun. One could say it’s all ultimately from the sun. Without going into a huge economic essay, nature is always “profitable”. Each part “exploits” an “energy gradient”. Different life forms all are processing energy from a source, then producing something, which is often the source for another life form.

So, companies are formed to maximise the use of the energy available. The final product is magnitudes cheaper for the consumer than if they tried to build it themselves.

Like the phone I am thumb typing on. Even with immortality, and a spare billion years, I couldn’t have made this. It was precisely the cooperation of people, formed into companies, which generates profit, which more often than not, gets invested in the next technology.

So while there are obvious abuses, “profit” isn’t the enemy.

So when you say to use desire to create profit to alleviate boredom, you could also look at simply enjoying making profits while feeling good.

Obviously I have no idea of the nature of your work, but assuming it legal, then there is only your beliefs around “profit” in this scenario.

The last bit is very much the starting point. I really really struggled to find a situation that suited me. I can’t claim any insights or freedom, just that years of gaining skills and experience, and sorting through the other dramas, have resulted in a more naturally enjoyable work life.

It’s an area for me that needs a lot of examination, but not now, as it’s not causing any drop in feeling good (beyond the normal stuff I am always going through, which isn’t work related).

33

@Kiman

One of my recent discoveries, which was on every page of the AFT but I ignored it is “blind nature”.

‘Our’ nature, is 'blind nature '.

When one considers how sensible the system of profit is, with cooperation and symbiosis being the main driver of life flourishing around us, the question of why “things are unfair”, becomes a question of “is anyone in control?”

Well, no. There is no one in control.

So just like mice populations exploding in an unguarded wheat silo, there is nothing stopping the obscene wealth hoarding of some people as you mentioned before.

The illusion that “someone is in control” creates the idea that one could appeal to that control, and stop the abuse. The most popular “someone in control” these days is “the people”, as in “democratic government”.

The mice plague could have been prevented by the farmer being more vigilant. However human systems are the equivalent of the mice also being the farmer!

Who is in control?

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34

Are you saying that you’ve accepted you have this desire of maximizing profit, you don’t feel good when you have this desire, you want to do something about it (ie you haven’t resigned yourself to it) but you don’t know how to proceed? ie you don’t see how to actually do something about it?

35

Yes, that’s right! And there’s also some challenge and suspense in it along with the desire, creating a modest adrenaline rise and giving a dopamine hit.

My interest in watching sports has drastically come down because it’s the same which negatively effects feelings good. But I am unable to replicate the same in this case.

36

Well it sounds fun in its own way… until it isn’t :smile:

I think you’ve set the ground correctly for being able to actually change it. Now comes the tricky part …

In my experience the only thing that ever actually worked for resolving desire , or maybe we can say addiction , such that it doesn’t come again , is finally having had enough of it all.

Once you’ve had enough it’s actually really easy to stop. You just don’t do the thing anymore whenever the temptation comes up. And within a few days it’s basically gone. There is an adjustment period at first where it feels like you’ll be really bored or resentful for the rest of your life (haha), but if you stick with it that goes away and you see that actually on the “other side” of the desire is enjoyment. Which you already know but it’s hard to see in that boredom period.

It’ll be a bit trickier with work because you still have to do the work (or maybe not in your case). But you can still do the job in a way without the desirous or addictive patterns.

But that’s gonna be easy enough to figure out. Really the core of it is the “having had enough” part. Once you’ve really had enough then you stop. That’s the choice of it. But until then you will keep doing it because you want to :smile:

Accepting that you want to (instead of castigating yourself about it) but maintaining an understanding that it’s not ideal , are excellent steps to be able to get to that point though!

Also even after all this it might simply come back again in a few days Or weeks or months. Then repeat same process :smile:

My 2 cents. I don’t know if there are other ways but this is how it’s been in my experience, unless I’m not remembering something else right now.

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37

It’s been the same for me with regards to any particularly sticky patterns. Sometimes I wonder if there is a way to speed up the whole ‘getting sick of it’ thing. But I guess the thing is that you have to genuinely have had enough and how could I speed this up if I’m still desiring the thing. It seems the same with giving up of any of the tried and true ways, I keep trying to walk down that same path and observe that each time I get to a dead end until I’m ready to try something different.

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38

Sorry if this has been covered but can you explain why this is an issue. If dopamine hits are pleasant, why would anyone focus on eliminating them while other unpleasant issues are still around? A broad and immediate happy and harmlessness can be better ascertained after a pleasant dopamine hit than it’s opposite. Heck even striving for said dopamine hit is a better condition for a happy and harmless perspective than being mired in resentment is.

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39

They reinforce “me” because they occur as a result of sense of lack and the relief from the tension preceding their occurrence. Desire culminates in pleasure for the same reason.

40

49 posts were merged into an existing topic: Investigation

41

Seeing that the subject of investigation has been extended a lot, I moved the relevant messages to Investigation, that Kiman himself had created.
Please continue here with posts related to Acceptance.

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42

Thanks @Miguel

I was also wondering if @Kiman would benefit more from starting his own journal.

That way @Kiman you will have a record to reread.

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