Beer and Doer

Actualism
21

It’s clear that in ‘out-from-control’ ‘Being’ is still present as there is still a self extant. It’s just a question of what its role is. Perhaps it could be described as ‘allowing’ pure intent / benevolence to operate. (As Vineeto says, “gave myself permission to allow the universe to pull me forward”)

For me personally, it doesn’t matter too much yet as I’m currently just preoccupied with increasing connection to pure intent, I’m not yet to a place where that option of allowing it full rein exists

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Richard:

“…the virtual freedom being referred to in ‘Richard’s Journal’ is, of course, the full-blown experiencing of it: an out-from-being-control and, thus, different way of being nowadays known as an ongoing excellence experience (EE). This ongoing excellence experience is what the methodological aspect of a virtual freedom – a persistent and diligent application of the actualism method – can morph into whenever that current-time awareness method has been applied to a sufficiency for that to occur/ have happen.”

It is strange, he does describe himself as having passed through virtual freedom in 1981, while also describing that stage as being driven by Love Agape:

Richard:

“Ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In the blissful state I manifested and became Love Agapé which led to an emanation of Divine Compassion for all living beings who were suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were ignorant of the Divine Order of things … for an Absolute had been revealed to me in that Love and Compassion – it was that Love Agapé and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being well-prepared to usher in this new age of peace and prosperity to all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’ coming into existence … a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind!”

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How fast this topic has grown! (I was away for only a little while! :smiley:)

:laughing:
TRUE!

Fortunately for me and for @bub, @Srinath had already split the topic :+1:

At least as far as I managed to read everyone’s later contributions (I’m not done yet) and my own notes on the subject, re-reading the quotes made them clearer now. By the way, all of you have provided quotes that (I think) I had not read before.

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Wow, fascinating stuff and a bit of a rabbit hole! I think these ‘things’ - doer, ego, beer, soul, being, thinker etc. - are somewhat nebulous structures of the psyche or elements of subjectivity that are hard to rigorously define and demarcate.

I actually met Richard and Vineeto a few months ago. There was some divergence of opinion between them about what the ego was exactly and whether aspects of it could remain in some form in a basically free person on a cognitive level alongside social identity. To my mind these individual perspectives and doubts are a plus when we are talking about something so shadowy – vs. say trying to rigidly systematise this stuff. Besides I think it’s too early in the game for that.

Another thing to mention is that Richard said he had a lot of doubts and confusion about his experience of actual freedom when it first happened and initially tried to frame it in spiritual terms. This made his basic freedom period quite confusing, so I can well imagine that his virtual freedom was as well. Hindsight and experience gave him clarity and showed him that where he was, was somewhere else i.e. actuality.

No doubt the theoretical framework for how human subjectivity is structured and how actual freedom comes about could be modified, expanded and added to such that it is more satisfying and consistent – without watering it down or turning it into spirituality. That might even be essential if actual freedom is to travel farther and wider - who knows.

A rough working knowledge that gets the actualist to where he/she wants to go is probably going to be the sweet spot for most people. But probably there are the more scholarly, studious and obsessional among us who would want the kinks ironed out. Fair enough, horses for courses - as long as it aids rather than distracts from practice.

I think fuzzily ego ≈ thinker ≈ doer …. and beer ≈ being ≈ soul worked for me. But I’ve never really identified with those words 100%. They didn’t adequately capture my experience. Probably feeling being ‘me’ and ego ‘I’ came close. As a feeling being ‘I’ was a maelstrom of selfy feelings and thoughts some that felt more intense and primordial than others. There was a texture and weight to them. Occasionally the thick/heavy aspect of me would separate out in EE’s or EE like experiences, which I conceived as the difference between ego and being or sometimes as social identity and being. Sometimes it did feel like the doer had taken a back-seat letting the beer just hanging out in all his trashy splendour without any shame. But the PCE continually beckoned. It does make sense that the beer is predominant when out-from-control. It feels like you’re just left with the core ‘you’ without the bells and whistles and that something big is imminent. When I became actually free an entire stratum of subjective experience which was thick, gunky, dark and heavy i.e. emotion, feeling – vanished never to return. But over time the light, airy thing that was – guardian, social identity or perhaps even cognitive ego remnants or whatever – descended on me like a protective blanket. It was comforting to have something between myself and raw, all-out infinitude. Something to stop me from drifting off far far away from humanity like some helium balloon disappearing into space. The blanket soon became quite restrictive and I had to progressively shed more and more of it to a point where now I feel quite light. But there is more to come I know. Some final thing or things that need to be let go of.

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25

With this in mind there is really no reason whatsoever not to self-immolate :grin:

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That’s some fascinating stuff @Srinath as always I really enjoyed reading your post. Even though the basic freedom stuff does not apply to me specifically I always find it allows me to contemplate about the nature of actuality, perhaps because of a genuine curiousity as to what your experience is like and then of course this curiosity can lead me to finding out for myself :grin:

I am also intrigued if there was any other interesting bits from your visit with Richard and Vineeto that might be worth sharing?

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This bit especially peaked my interest, I’ve been on a holiday the past week and I’ve found myself easily able to slip into a place where this thick, gunky aspect is virtually gone, it’s been virtually gone the majority of the day today and so now I’m contemplating on why not commit to banishing it forever.

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Ok here we go.

My first reaction, when some notification appeared that my name had been uttered, was:

WhO dIsTuRbS My sLuMbEr? (:joy:)

That joy had me sit, and write the following:

For I had been exploring the unknown continent, its golden cities and living clouds, for weeks, without a word. When some letter found its way to me, its ink faded from the sea voyage, enquiring about matters so home-bound as to appear foreign: a quarrel about definitions, from the Royal Society of leathery armchairs, asking for my judgment. My ruling.

Please differentiate! they ask. Please settle our quarrel!

We wish to classify, exactly, those birds we’ve never seen!

So the golden city and the living clouds laughed and danced and sang:

"Won’t they open the windows? Won’t they bathe in the stream?

Won’t they take off their clothes, and swim through the sea?"

But… ok… I didn’t post this. (:joy:)

Then time passed.

Some now of an hour ago, within rocks trees birds and the wind, a thought occurred: Srinath might have posted something awesome.

O accuracy! He had!

Deer members of the Society, let me say that I agree with M. Srinath’s post. I’ll go a bit further and remind the Society that whatever words and classifications and carefully designed system you come up with for the edification of brains, those words you extract from books are descriptions, descriptions of experiences.

There is a bird here, in the unknown continent, you have never seen. I might say it’s like a parrot, but also like a crow, I might say it sings like a seagull, and dances like a sparrow. So you dig in the Society’s library, and you find Richard’s descriptions of his travels, but he talks not so much a bird, but more of a monkey, a monkey which is like a lion but also like a mouse.

What are you to make of this?

The Society gathers, and discuss. The Society’s confused. The Society wants to know, prior to setting foot on any boat, whether it’s a bird or a monkey that lives there, on the unknown continent.

Wouldn’t you rather see for yourself?..

And the answer comes:
“How could we set foot on any boat before it is established, in absolute and certain terms, how many masts should a proper boat have? And what color its sails? How could we leave the Society’s walls before a map is drawn, an exact and perfect map with words attached to it like statues to temples? How are we to take even a step without having in our minds the picture of every rock, tree, bird, and wind we might encounter on the way?”

How indeed. :wink:

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Meanwhile the Society continues to ignore the travel reports that made their way back, e.g. “So I got in my dinghy and started paddling… … …”

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30

@geoffrey’s reply reminds me of this :grin: but why not ? Both make sense…although Buddha’s was 180 degree opposite sense :laughing:

The Buddha discouraged speculation about the nature of nirvana and emphasized instead the need to strive for its attainment. Those who asked speculative questions about nirvana he compared to a man wounded by poisoned arrow who, rather than pulling the arrow out, persists in asking for irrelevant information about the man who fired it, such as his name and clan, how far away he was standing, and so forth.

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Indeed it is the same :grin: just because some aspects of accomplishing something experientially are the same (i.e. actually do it vs. just think about fixin’ to be ready to start planning about how to start doing it at some point maybe) doesn’t mean the things being accomplished are the same. And its not like we “aren’t allowed” to say such things…

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I will have you know my armchair is faux suede.

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@henryyyyyyyyyy @claudiu

This has come down from the mountain, and is again echoing the most relevant description of pure intent.

Edit: I didn’t mean to repost the whole thing, but the quote system has done it anyway.

Edit 2: It fixed itself.

Edit 3: oh, I didn’t know clicking on a quote will expand the whole context.

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@geoffrey

So, from what I gather, there are golden monkeys with wings like birds, or is it birds that look like monkeys? In which case, are they a type of bat?

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35

“Doer and beer” I see as a maybe useful description of what happens in an EE, and especially in that ongoing EE that is the experience of out-from-control. The ascendency of the beer. Because that’s what it’s like. Although let me quickly qualify this by saying that, in my report and my answers to the questions that followed its publication, I stated I wasn’t sure that the experience ‘I’ had, in that last week, could properly be labelled ‘out-from-control’. Since then I have come to accept that it might as well, seeing that if not, then I simply don’t know what out-from-control is, having then never experienced it.

More generally, about words such as ego soul being I me etc.:

Actualism is experiential. Words are roadsigns, only rightfully put there once it is known where the road leads. They don’t “capture the experience” and expecting them to do so is already expecting too much. There is an experience, and that’s it. It might just happen that, if a description of the experience is in order, some word might fit it better than some other.

Now about what I really like in Srinath’s post:

There are words there (bolded for convenience) that could be said to be more evocative, more properly descriptive, and ultimately useful (as descriptions), compared to words like ego, soul, etc.

This is not a condemnation of the use of such words as ego and soul, especially for the purpose of communication (to people without experiential referent), or explanation (to satisfy intellectual needs for systems).

Anyway all actualist reports, all actually free people’s words are only meant, in the end, as elements for the prima facie case people might need to make prior to allowing themselves to act on their own experience.

Then there is the lodestone, the lighthouse, the flame.
Then the voyage is under way.

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I remember a decade ago, @claudiu coined the term “nebulous blob”.

I, from my faux suede armchair, vote for the resurrection of this term to henceforth replace “soul” in the Royal Society’s contemplating of the number of mast, monkeys, and golden things required to upgrade to a genuine Chesterfield armchair.

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I liked this btw :smile: for what is worth I would encourage such posts :grin:

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That reminds me of a joke I once never heard.

What does an animal that is both a parrot and a crow, a seagull and a sparrow, a monkey and a lion, all at the same time, smell like?

A rat.

:laughing:

Get it?

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I am also currently loading my armchair onto my dinghy, and would also vote for such reading materials.

For to say, it would be silly not to post such.

40

I retrofitted my armchair with fins so I can just ride it directly

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