Andrew

@Srinath @geoffrey

What was your Vietnam?

@Andrew what do you mean? :slightly_smiling_face:

@Srinath

What was the moment / experience (if anything) that set you on the path towards radical change?

Or said otherwise ;

Is there one period of time, or experience which turned on the required determination to change yourself radically?

Oh that lol. I don’t think it was a single experience or event. Just lots of different ones where ‘I’ realised that life as a feeling being sucked. PCE’s brought that into even sharper relief and showed me a way out. Even so feeling being is quite moreish to put it mildly and I just kept falling back into its embrace. So it was a bit of a roller coaster of intensifying and then flagging motivation. I suppose Craig and especially Geoffrey becoming free was what finally kicked me into gear for the last time, because suddenly actual freedom seemed tangible and within reach.

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@Srinath It’s so weird to talk with you now.

Once you were someone objecting to some opinion Vineeto had, and i was censoring the forum, and now you are, apparently, “there”. Where ever that is.

Now Alan is dead.

Still pissed at him actually. Really wish i could tell him “i told you so”.

I guess that is me now. Some whipper snapper can get pissed at me for wasting my opportunity.

Somehow I have missed the draft.

46 is coming up in a few months. How. The Fuck. :joy:

It’s all fading to black. The romance of doing something of significance, a vague memory.

Chatting with some woman on Tinder tonight. Why? I don’t even have a sex drive anymore.

Just watching the shadow of myself passing the time. Too much white wine. Or maybe not enough.

There is something about to change though. A gift that nature in its brutality forgot to shut down. I don’t give a fuck anymore. Maybe, just maybe, i will be genuine for once. No pretending to be nice because i am too weak to call it all for what it is.

I piss in a toilet owned by someone else. I pay for this privilege. What a travesty. A life of hard graft, to piss in a rented fucking toilet.

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That Srinath is no more :laughing: . But there is an actual Srinath now.

That Alan is also no more… but actual Alan never became fully apparent. Will actual Andrew ever do so?

Well, it wasn’t his doing. The universe ended him, as it will all of us. We don’t ultimately have much say in the matter.

Why waste your opportunity?

You may have missed it before, but do you need to keep missing it now?

It’s simple - by continuing to breathe, procure water and food to drink and shelter above your head (whether you built it yourself like humans would have had to do thousands of years ago, or handed some people pieces of paper or transferred digital bits here and there, to let you stay in an already-built one, doesn’t much matter – different times call for different ways of doing things) - you thus continued living. And will do so until the universe ends you.

Self-immolating to allow actual Andrew to become apparent, would certainly be significant. There may be no romance to it, but it’s certainly a wonderful thing isn’t it?

What about a desire for intimacy with a fellow human being?

As time doesn’t actually move… what exactly is going on with the “watching the shadow of myself passing the time”? Who is doing the watching and what is really ‘passing’?

Blind nature has no intention one way or another, no underlying intelligence directing it. It doesn’t remember or forget to do anything. Rather it is just that the phenotypes we observe today are of those genes that produced phenotypes that were most successful at replicating themselves. There is nothing else to it.

Is life really that hard? You didn’t have to build the toilet and the house/apartment you live in, or pay anyone else to do it. Someone else built it for you. And you don’t have to hunt for food or procure clean water… other people all do that for you. In exchange you do things for other people. Life certainly seems easier than it was thousands or hundreds of years ago.

Is life really a vale of tears?

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@claudiu

Cheers for that.

As usual I think the crux is indeed;

That gives me something solid to think about.

You are of course correct on all points. I seem to have settled into a version of some old guy with undisturbed poetic ability to fuck up, and otherwise write about it forever.

Going back to actually doing intelligent things; I have not really put in sensible efforts to have that intimacy in my life.

I am dead scared of it really. Which is why it’s such a solid thing to work on/ consider.

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What do you wish you had told him?

What I told him many times; he did not get that crying for the world wasn’t what would get him there. That he did not have the time he thought he did. He would insist that he was somehow just as likely to die as me.

@claudiu Quick note sir. Self-immolation is bandied about here as if one can do it on a whim with little to no awareness of what they’re doing.

I object to putting the cart before the horse. An ongoing fascination has to be occurring first. I don’t want to be dogmatic here. Maybe Grace self-immolated more-or-less on a whim. Had I been fascinated with this moment when I had the chance to meet her; I’d have asked a million questions and found out. But for all practical purposes don’t you think fascination is the thing we should be focusing on; especially fascination with this only moment? I don’t want to be exclusionary. Maybe tapping into pure intent and holding on to the golden clew works`just as well or better. Maybe sensing peace on earth and becoming fascinated with that is just as helpful. Maybe being fascinated that other people are totally autonomous and independent from you works just as well. Maybe a fascination with being here works too. But I do know Richard was pretty keen on time. After he walked me from point A to point C on the boat and having me verify what time it was at each point and then asking me at the end “where is (feeling x) now?” And after having answered “there’s no room for it.” He practically jumped out of his seat and exclaimed to Vineeto: “I always knew time was the key.” Moreover, he point blank writes:

Before applying the actualism method – the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – it is essential for success to grasp the fact that this very moment which is happening now is your only moment of being alive.

That is the very first sentence under the scroll of the 3rd article in the AFT.
This Moment Of Being Alive It’s deemed important enough to have a special automatic display about the same subject. This Moment Of Being Alive

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I went from Christian to New Age to Buddhist to Actualist without a Vietnam.

(I am referring to Richard’s experience of wanting to radically change himself after seeing that no one was in control in Vietnam. Insert much longer story here)

The whole time I never really had that moment of being myself. Always trying to do this “thing”. Whether is was save the world, or myself, there never was a break from innocently belief to radical change.

All of this Actualism is just an extension of believing I was never good enough.

(this is a journal, no need to rescue, or comment, or whatever).

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I can see how many suffer in this world.

I never really saw myself as one of them. I wasn’t important enough to matter in that way. It was never for me I was trying ( the normal sense). Of course, i would agree that it was all for ‘me’.

But… How would i know?

Just a man child. A pawn. A trained monkey. A naked ape dressed in religious shame.

My father was a broken man. Very broken. Adopted a 3, Raped at 12. In jail by 19. I found out a couple of years ago, he had cheated on my mother the whole time he was married. By the time i was 17 he was dying of cancer. Needless to say, we (us 4 sons) were all abused sexually at some point, to various levels.

I and my 3 brothers (2 now dead) were just a way he and my virginal mother tried to be someone.

They had no business bringing me into the world.

They had nothing of value to offer.

I am crying hard right now.

How would I ever had a chance?

@JonnyPitt. Looking good mate. If there was a button to psychically self-immolate, i would slam that button down like a vodka and lime. Unfortunately, there is that bit in between that you eloquently outline. How does one actually want to do this?

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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.

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@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.

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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. :+1:

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.

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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? :smiley: . 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.