You know, currently, I am of the opinion that all human beings everywhere are obsessing about something or another. Often petty, sometimes grandiose. But that mechanism of obsession is currently active in each of us. So how do we switch from obsessing about our ourselves to obsessing about something actual? Well there are some easily verifiable facts with us at all times. We are alive. And it is always now. Verify those things over and over again. Make sure that that is indeed true. Apply those facts of the matter to everything you are thinking about. Insert those key facts into every conversation you are having with yourself. Become aware that those facts always seem to be unequivocally true. And relevant. Don’t just tell yourself and expect or even demand results. Verify for yourself over and over again. Wind yourself up! Make yourself bonkers that such a simple thing is so relevant.
@JonnyPitt I like it.
I will give it a go. Slam that question down like a map to the promised land on the hood of an old Honda.
Am I alive? What time is now? (Russian phrasing, lol)
Hey. I didn’t want to imply for you to wind yourself up emotionally. Or be bonkers emotionally. I meant psychologically. Run the questions over and over and over and over in your head like an actor might obsessively run his lines as he prepares for an audition. And answer them genuinely each in turn. That’s what I meant. Not to go manic but to run the script in your head obsessively.
Understood. 
In case anyone gets upset at me I want to say this is no different than HAIETMOBA?. The focus is just on the moment as opposed to the feelings, because, it’s counter-productive to get obsessed about one’s own feelings. Because feelings aren’t actual. But it is highly-productive to get obsessed about this moment. This moment is a fact! And a highly relevant one.
I understand. This makes sense to me.
Infact, any mini experience i ever had as a new age Buddhist had something to do with being here now. Time.
If your memories if what Richard said are correct, then he was on to something.
There is the drama we have to have, then there is being alive right now.
Who has bandied about self-immolation in this manner? I haven’t seen anything I would characterize like this.
As in, why continue to be “some old guy with undisturbed poetic ability to fuck up, and otherwise write about it forever” – instead of being happy and harmless, naive, likable and liking, etc., enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive – as that is both enjoyable and is what will allow self-immolation to occur – and thus not wasting one’s opportunity.
As in, one might have missed opportunity in the past – but the past is the past, it’s no longer actual. Just because one missed it in the past does not mean that one has to continue missing it now.
This is simply a statement of fact - that self-immolation would be significant. And contemplating and reflecting on it being a wonderful thing may very well lead to naivete coming back and erasing the “old guy with undisturbed poetic ability to fuck up”.
And this is a pointed reminder to feeling-being Andrew that actual freedom is not guaranteed to occur. If we do not actively do it, it won’t happen. And it is very possible to pass away without doing it, as happened to Alan. Will Andrew let that happen? Will Jon? Will Claudiu? 
. I wish now that there was an actualist called William so I could write “Will Will?”
There are only two answers to the question of, say, “Will Claudiu?” of course – either I self-immolate in which case the answer is “no”, or I die before that happens in which case the answer is “yes”. Either way when it happens it will be now, as it is always now.
But I was not suggesting that “one can do it on a whim”, and certainly not “with little to no awareness of what they’re doing” – from everything I can see it requires completely and full awareness of what is doing. Rather I was offering prompts and queries that can lead someone to direct their contemplations in a propitious direction.
I read them like: Just do it! Wouldn’t doing it be great! C’mon, dust yourself off - You can do it!
@claudiu I think William has a great chance.
@JonnyPitt There certainly needs to be an improvement to how the actualism method is adapted to each individual.
Or, better said, i have to adapt the method in a way it works. As you are doing with the current time awareness focus.
It may not seem so, but this forum format is really helpful to me.
Having a thread i can vent in, whilst still being in the mix of actually improving my life, is gold.
Today’s tears were very overdue.
I’m quite surprised the AFT uses that phrase. There is no other time than now so how can current time awareness be anything other than a delusion: Is there such a thing as past-time awareness? It’s only now. It’s always been now. So being fascinated with that is definitely not current time awareness. Yet Richard and Vineeto both use that phrase. I don’t get it.
I think they initially used a lot of generic phrases like that, then went away from them because people took them to be saying the same things as newage mindfulness etc.
Even the word “now” is famously “owned” by ekhart Toll (spelling)
As the difference between being “some old guy with undisturbed poetic ability to fuck up, and otherwise write about it forever” and being “happy and harmless, naive, likable and liking, etc., enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive” is indeed ultimately just a choice, then yes, anyone can certainly “Just do it!” 
It really is that simple. And you can obviously see it is that simple when being naive. So the task for you is how to rekindle this naivete that you apparently have lost touch with - else why react the way you did to me being naive?
For my part I always interpreted the emphasis/subject of the sentence to be the awareness: to be aware of/about the current time.
So while there is no
such a thing as past-time awareness
(except interpreted as an event that happened in the past) now one indeed can be unaware of the now.
@Andrew it is really startling to me the enormity of the trauma that you have experienced. I don’t know you very well, but it does seem like despite this you’ve managed better than others who may have had a similar experience. In what way would you say actualism helped with that?
I am more circumspect these days about interfering with peoples own processes towards actual freedom. Everyone is different and someone who has experienced profound trauma in life at an early age may perhaps need tao take a different route to others who have had no such experience. Potentially one might need to build ones ‘self’ up and demarcate it before eradicating it.
Maybe there does need to be a process of mourning, of taking stock. I don’t really know. I know I did a fair bit of this myself as a feeling being and yet I experienced nothing near the level of hardship that you did. At some point when the time was ripe and I found that I had to dry my tears, stop getting enthralled in the drama of feeling and go once more into purity, seeing/feeling myself as a total being warts and all, neither sentimentalising it nor dismissing it. This wasn’t necessarily a ‘one and done’ thing though, I often went back and forth between purity and being deeply enthralled by the feeling being that I was, until of course at some point I stayed permanently with purity.
I think “I” have played this type of linguistic/philosophical games long enough, so… OK
The distinctions are made so you and me and anyone else doesn’t confuse being fascinated with a readily available and verifiable fact with a sustained effort to be more present aka living in the now or staying in the present or living in the moment. The keywords in the former are fascination and fact. The key difference is that with fascination there need not be a sustained effort. The fascination does all the work.
This does bring up the issue of obsession. To get to fascination one must become obsessed. Ime anyways and I think it’s in line with the AFT. Correct me if I’m wrong, please. To become obsessed, some sustained effort is required. Does that sustained effort differ in the sustained effort needed for living in the now? Yes it does. The former is the scientific verification of an empirical piece of data i.e. that it is indeed now. One obsesses over that verification process to get to fascination. In the latter, it’s all just effort to stay present, which divides the mind, because one can’t stay present all the time without disassociation. If i’m thinking about the past or future, I can’t stay present without disassociation. Correct me if I’m wrong. Otoh, if I have a general fascination that it’s always now then I can think of the past or future without any need to disassociate. Furthermore and very importantly, it has become pretty clear, due to the constant verification process, it’s already now so one realizes that feeling one way or another about a past event is silly (since it’s already now) or a possible future event (since it will be now.) Do you see why it’s not such a bad idea to make these distinctions?
Thanks for the reply.
How has actualism helped?
Well, I can’t A/B test what the last decade would have been without being interested in actualism, so I can only factually say, i am still alive! Which, for my family, is an accomplishment.
There are key points / decisions which definitely would have been different, if i hadn’t known about actualism.
Leaving my ex wife. Although this sounds bad, leaving that marriage was a very positive thing. Hugely traumatic, but the outcome has been that I learnt a whole encyclopaedia of experience and information about how things are ‘really’ working.
Regarding building up a self, I agree with this.
I felt myself to be less than nothing, which actually had a lot of narcissistic compensation and highly co-dependent compensation built into me.
I survived in a weird twilight between being extremely egotistical, and pathetically dependent.
The choices i made over the last decade, were shaped by actualism, without being inspired by it. I wasn’t successful with actualism, but i still belonged to something. Still had something to make sense of things.
I think believing, in anything that offers some hope, is generally what keeps people alive. Or, at least me.
On the subject of people who have had little trauma in life, I actually can’t easily think of anyone I know!
Which leads to the question ; if the majority have had a traumatic life, then there is definitely something in between where they (all the other me’s) are, and being naive enough to succeed with actualism.
The data now is piling up. The success rate of actualism is very low.
As a veteran of 3 world religions, and actualism, i can say with some authority that it does actualism no favours to use the same reasoning that the other 3 do to justify their lack of success ; that is, people aren’t trying hard enough.
People are trying as hard as they can.
We know why the religions don’t work. They were never ‘designed’ to bring individual peace and happiness.
However, why isn’t actualism working? It is designed for this purpose.
Richard said he had never talked with someone like me. (The mix of extreme pentacostal Christianity, and whatever else made me who i am). I am not surprised.
The best they (Richard and Vineeto) was to tell me off. Richard put on a stern face and seemed agitated, told me off for quite a while. Vineeto even made a statement that i was a “mummy’s boy”. In the end, they gave me an ultimatum ; decide to feel good, or they would not see me again.
I don’t blame them for trying. What else can be tried? 43 years of whatever ‘I’ am hadn’t budged. Though it was if course around 8 months after my brother died in my arms.
The point being, i am relatively unscathed compared to many. Or at least it seems to me. Or maybe it’s just that “birds of a feather” find each other, so i attract damaged people.
My sample group is biased by me.
Though, i doubt it. The stats on child abuse, rapes, bashings, and all the forms of mental abuse are clear.