I don’t want to bury Vineeto’s post as I happened to post just minutes after^^^
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Hey @scout , I have vaguely read your posts - I say vaguely because my reading was no doubt not as scrupulous as Kuba’s and Claudiu’s!
I haven’t weighed in because personally I’m not interested in debating those topics. In fact I am somewhat of an anti-anti-group-think-group-thinker myself 
… I kid but it’s true that this was somewhat my archetypical identity when approaching actualism.
I came into this group a few years ago and I was “shaking up” the discussions in the same way you are now. I’m not going to debate you and I’d even say I partially agree with some of the things you’ve said to various degrees. I emphasise some.
I’m an atheist, historically somewhat of a scientific rationalist - as an aside there are others in this group including other actually free people who do not agree with Richard’s views on climate change or smoking or whatever else.
So the idea that you can kind of round us all up as having the same traits and ideas and such doesn’t quite wash. There are “basically” actually free (if you are familiar with this distinction) people who disagree vehemently with Richard on some points.
No one thinks Richard is a “God” and he did not claim to be one either. He was very black and white and prescriptive about his views on things and there probably is a bit of a desire to emulate him in other ways (mimicking his writing style, defending his views by default) in the pursuit of actual freedom. That’s quite normal feeling being behavior though no?
What Richard is putting forth is so radical, so new, that indeed you sort of do perhaps need to get in his shoes any way you can to have the same flavor of experience as he. He fully embodied the state of “naivete” and professed to experience himself of having the mental age of about a 14 year old (with the intellect/maturity of an adult of course).
As for the kind of “rationality” of this, actualism defies rationality in my opinion - at least on an experiential level…you can’t think your way to actual freedom, which is why being intellectual à la Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or (insert your intellectual idols here) doesn’t save you from the human condition. Obviously as an explanatory philosophy, it makes perfect sense - do you agree?
Anyway I’m just mentioning that stuff by the by as those were my thoughts on your posts, previously uncommented on because I wasn’t concerned to convert you in any way. No one else wants to convert you either I don’t think but I understand what you feel it’s a bit dogmatic at times.
One other thing I’ll mention is that I’ve personally met with both fully Actually Free people (Richard and Vineeto) on many occasions, as well as some of the basic actually free people (Geoffrey, Craig, Srinath). Happy to tell you a bit more about my findings in dealing them if you want - but in short, I’ve never been let down by my interactions with actually free people. It’s very quickly evident that they are intelligent, down-to-earth people who have no trace of the instinctual passions - as you’d want them to be. But better you verify this for yourself rather than hear it from me.
Overall, I’m interested in what you wrote here:
Being affectively attentive is very painful and exhausting. If I do not suppress or indulge sometimes it still takes literally hours for even neutrality to emerge, and it is pretty fleeting before the next wave of feelings arise. I am agitated and exhausted and in physical pain pretty often, and inviting even more pain by not dissociating when stuff comes up feels like a rough prospect. I recurrently fall back to numbing, because the effort of paying attention to the pain in the way I need to in order for it to pass and not puppet my reactions is daunting and slow to pay dividends.
My first thought on this is that it’s similar to what I experienced applying the method for a long time. I have absolutely struggled with it, and it made me feel way worse - I really got stuck and totally burnt myself out as my diary can attest to. I had and still have problems with some of this psychosomatic stuff, and when you say numbing I assume you mean some form of maladaptive coping mechanism which I also struggled with (for me it was sex and porn).
My second thought is, do you think you would be quite so intellectually argumentative about actualism and the trappings of this group and its followers if you were having success with it? I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t if that were the case.
So rather than worry about personal opinions of Richard and the views or the behavior of others, which is quite secondary, why not stay with your difficulties in relation to the much more important task of freeing yourself of the instinctual passions.
Because it’s either that, or it’s simply not possible to free oneself of the instinctual passions, right? (Assuming that means no feelings not even “divine anger” which the enlightenment people have).
And that’s something that could be causing some resentment for you about actualism. It’s not easy, you didn’t ask to find out about it, on some level you do kind of “believe” in it, so you’re stuck with it - but now it seems like you might not achieve it which is also potentially scary (the notion of a wasted life, not living up to Richard etc etc and of course the very real feelings which continue to plague you).
Am I getting close to the mark on any of that? That was the case for me at least.
You’d at least have to say, you aren’t happy in the human condition; which is why you are looking around at other alternatives. The feelings are indeed causing you a lot of pain and suffering, and those feelings were obviously not put there by actualism or the method. The bad feelings you are experiencing are also perhaps putting some significant pressure on you to choose “the right alternative”, which in turn is perhaps turning your (fear-fuelled) intellectualism on with laser like focus. “Is it enlightenment I need? Or actualism? Anything but this!”
I’m not going to try to sell you on actualism versus anything else, but I can share some points about what has been helping me get past this if you want.
My diary hopefully partially achieves this hopefully but I can also speak more specifically to my own and your own situation if you want.
The advice @Vineeto just gave is excellent - and far be it from me to improve upon it.
The only thing I would emphasise additionally is that actualism is about feeling good, enjoying and appreciating - and if that’s not occurring it’s usually because something (‘you’ in some psychoemotional form) is preventing it. If so, what? This exploration needs to be done naively btw, it’s more about “feeling things out” intuitively and with a desire to be innocent rather than simply tagging problems.
You may be inclined to think that whatever you are experiencing is so entrenched, so demonstrably rigid and unmoving etc that getting back to feeling good is impossible but that’s an illusion created by the feelings themselves.
There may also be metapsychological processes that are additionally scuppering your ability to get back to feeling good. For me it’s typically things like black and white thinking, perfectionism, being very judgmental of myself and not at all friendly, feeling shame at the nature of the feelings and the behaviors they lead to, going the other way (panicking, feeling oneself lost etc), escaping/numbing (in whatever form), intellectualism (trying to invent other ways to do it that wouldn’t require feeling good, resenting Richard and actualism itself etc).
Also it sounds generally like you are quite strung out and somewhat burnt out. I have the reputation of being a bit intense and that can also be exhausting if you have the same habits. Do you find you are less and less able to rest and relax as you continue with the method? And if so, what is it that is preventing you from resting and relaxing, besides feelings? Do you feel you must achieve actual freedom immediately, or that you are not good enough until you achieve X?
My advice on all that is to wait till you feel good next (if it occurs just naturally sometime and not as a “choice” in the moment that’s totally fine). Then feel into what it feels like to feel good, and from there trace back to what it was that wasn’t letting you feel good before. What was the belief that was blocking you?
Given you talk about numbing and not being able to stop suffering (which is quite normal for a feeling being like you and me), there is a great passage on the “addiction to suffering” on the website.
It won’t be the case that you apply the method and just stop suffering for ever more. That’s why it’s about creating the habit of getting back to feeling good and tracing back to seeing when felicity ended and why. It’s about incremental progress and using naïveté, friendliness with yourself, sincerity with yourself, investigation etc to facilitate that.
And you can use this forum too. I am more personal and confessional than most on here and that helps me personally, as someone who doesn’t have many people in “real life” to discuss things with.
Lastly - this is just my opinion - but are you eating enough, getting outdoors, exercising a bit, not overworking etc etc? Actualism needs enough space and time and wellness for you to be able to explore the human condition in peace, without being way too busy or sick or under pressure.