Bubs b2wf journal

Journals
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I think that’s a great move, I’ve read Richard’s journal so many times now and still every time I read it something else clicks. It definitely takes a long time to truly digest what it is that he is getting at.

The problem is that the spiritual viewpoint is so deeply entrenched into the current human worldview that it is almost impossible to grasp that a totally different alternative exists. As ridiculous as it sounds at first actualism is that completely different alternative. The current human understanding is fundamentally based on the belief in the metaphysical, in one way or another.

This is something that can get quite fun eventually, to see just how deeply the spiritual viewpoint permeates, into morality, science, nutrition etc.

Peter’s journal is probably the more easily digestible one at first and has more of a ‘down to earth feel’ to it I guess haha. I have always liked Peter’s writings for this reason, they seemed straightforward and pragmatic when Richards writings still seemed like the ramblings of a mad man lol.

In terms of how beliefs are seen as BS, this is something that I used to struggle with accepting. This is because the default mode we are conditioned to use is trading one belief for another (more truer) belief. So at first it seems like you are looking at these beliefs but you do not see an alternative, so what exactly is being done? But what you might find eventually is that this looking is indeed doing something, it is applying attentiveness to the inner world (without having a pre-designed answer ready). Then eventually and sometimes completely unexpectedly the fact is seen with utter confidence, this causes the belief to dissolve. There is always this incredible sense of discovery and freedom that comes with this. Because now there is genuine certainty whereas before there was the shuttling between belief and insecurity.

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That is how it’s done :grin: you question them and this questioning leads to seeing that they are BS, because they don’t hold up under questioning.

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Not sure I understand. Are you saying that it feels deep and intuitively known for you personally? Or is this generally what it gives everybody/most people?

Don’t know how good this analogy is but it makes some sense to me. Think of it like a crime show on a TV screen. Adavita and certain forms of Buddhism, would zoom into the screen pixellating it until it was the blinking of the RGB lights on the LCD display and conclude it did not exist. Actualism would force you to come to terms with the fictional reality of the crime show and its real effects on you – eventually allowing you to pull the plug on TV and cancel the show. Whereas with normal life you might just watch the TV show uncritically thinking of it as a real thing.

And in actualism the illusion is only eliminated after self-immolation, when the feeling being is no longer present.

For advaita, it gets worse than that actually :grin: Claudiu can correct me, but I don’t think Richard would accord it the status of true enlightenment, which he would define as ego death without soul/feeling-being death. Actual freedom is the death of both ego and soul/feeling-being death.

Might not surprise you, but these sorts of questions come up a LOT. Richard and others have answered and re-answered them numerous times in some eye-watering detail. You can check it out if you have the patience for it, by just doing a Google site search on the AFT and looking for words like ‘advaita’ ‘enlightenment’ etc.

I did give myself a headache reading through a lot of this when I first came upon actualism, ultimately though I used the following MO. 1) Aim to find out what actualism/actual freedom is on its own terms without getting side-tracked or irritated by the claims. 2) Keep the claims that can’t be swallowed to the side for now e.g. for me it was that Richard was the first person to become actually free, this stuff about AF surpassing the wisdom of thousands of years, all the ego death and soul death stuff which was beyond my pay-grade to verify 3) Start practicing the actualism method, while simultaneously trying to understand it more and more.

Good or at least close enough.

It’s getting late here. I’m going to have to reply to the rest of your post later. Hoping @claudiu you can help out. You’re good at this stuff!

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Wow that is an awesome one! @Andrew I think this is the perfect answer to that ‘dichotomy’ in the other thread we had if you remember?

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Yeah, I like it. I was already a fan of the metaphor of a movie theatre. This TV one is different, in that one is pulling the plug on the TV. The movie one, I just walked out of.

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I thought I’d expand a bit since I do remember being similarly confused of “but HOW do I do it ??”

There’s a few key components:

What ‘Belief’ Means in this Context

“Belief” is a bit of an overloaded English word. Consider these sentences:

  1. I believe in God.
    1b. I believe that God exists.
    1c. God exists.
  2. John is 30 years old or so, I believe.
  3. I believe I saw Carrie when I went to the store last week

Each one is slightly different.

#1 represents a belief in this actualist context sense - as “an emotion-backed thought” or “something you fervently wish to be true”. Note that obviously you don’t have to use the word ‘belief’ in the sentence to be stating a belief (1c is equivalent to 1 and 1b).

#2 is not an emotion-backed thought per se. It’s somebody assessing the facts (what the person looks like, what they know about them) combined with their life experience (what people of this age range look like and how their life situations tend to be) and making a guess or opinion as to what the case is.

#3 is also not an emotion-backed thought. It’s somebody making a best guess of what they think is the case based on possibly faulty memory.

Also consider:

  1. [regarding a business plan] I believe this plan will make our company profitable.
  2. [regarding a business plan] I believe this plan will make our company profitable.

These two are literally the same words but I wanted to distinguish that one can be a ‘belief’ (as an emotion-backed thought) and one not. #4 is a business that the planners have a lot of experience in, they’ve done it before, they know the ins and outs, and they make a decision based on what they think will work. This is a best-guess assessment, not an emotion-backed thought.

But #5 is where they really feel that if they keep advertising them chicken hot dog turkey chocolate burgers in the NY Times then it’ll work cause thats how their grandpappy did it and by God it’s gonna work this time too! This is just an emotion-backed thought that they believe will work without a particularly good reason so except emotional ones.

The basic distinction of all this is between “considering everything, this is what I think is the case” vs “I feel it, really feel it that this is right, it doesn’t matter what you say”.

These often get conflated into the same thing – but they are different beasts entirely. The dismantling of beliefs in actualism in particular deals with the latter, the “emotion-backed thought”. The rest of this piece will use the word ‘belief’ in this sense.

Sticking to the Facts

The essential way to dismantle a belief is to look at what the actual facts are. If you know what the facts are, you don’t need to believe that it’s the case – you simply know that it is.

Example: there is a device screen in front of you. You don’t have to believe there is a screen in front of you. You know it as a fact because you see it, it’s apparent via that sensory input. But you never see God in this sensory way – so you have to believe in God, since there are no facts that let you know of His/Her/Its existence (this is why you gotta have faith – and it’s even extolled as a virtue).

If you suddenly felt really strongly that there was a person standing behind you watching you — then you would just have to turn around and see there is no person. The fact (nothing behind your shoulder) dispels the belief (there is a person there). And if you do see a person then the fact (there is a person there) renders the belief redundant.

Essentially if you always start only from what you 100% actually know to be a fact, and you only follow chains of reasoning that are valid and only use those facts as their rational basis, then you will always be in fact-land and not in belief-land.

What is a Fact?

This raises the question of, what is a fact? It’s generally undisputed what a fact is. That’s why the Trumpian “alternative fact” was automatically seen to be ridiculous – because there is no ‘alternative’ to a fact. There are facts, and there are thing that aren’t facts.

Facts are things that are actually the case. Either something is currently the case, or something was the case in the past. (Etymology helps us here – the word “fact” comes from “Latin factum [… meaning …] “a thing done,” noun use of neuter of factus, past participle of facere “to do”” (source). It literally means “something that has actually happened”. ).

There can’t be any facts about the future because it didn’t happen yet. You don’t actually know the sun will rise tomorrow morning. You can assume it will (actually that the earth will rotate it into view again :wink:) because it happens so reliably, but something catastrophic could happen to the Sun, or the earth, or more likely than that you might get run over by a car and never see tomorrow. Although if that were to happen the sun would still rise, you just wouldn’t see it :smile: .

How do you know if something is the case now? Essentially you know it by your own experience of it, i.e. your senses. You see this, you sense this with touch, you hear this, etc. You know the fan is on cause you hear it whirring.

How do you know if something was the case in the past? With memory of having experienced it yourself. Then there are those things you didn’t personally witness. For this you rely on other people. You generally accept that people are talking about things that are the case. But when it comes to dismantling a belief it pays to be extremely stringent about what you accept to be the case, since people can make up all sorts of things to prop up their beliefs.

Also note that just because you can be mistaken about what is a fact (e.g. you think the fan is on in the living room but actually that whirring is some other thing making a noise from elsewhere) doesn’t change what a fact is. It just means you can be mistaken about what the facts are. But this doesn’t mean you believe the wrong thing – you just need to be presented with or find evidence that the thing you thought was a fact, wasn’t, and your understanding automatically adjusts.

Very Few Facts on the Ground

The initially tricky bit is that you will come to find with most things that there are very few actual facts. 99% of the time people are just spewing beliefs about this or that. Essentially 100% of political conversations are like this. People will spout rhetoric and fling statistics around – but statistics can be tricky and aren’t necessarily factual, or they can present facts in a misleading way.

“Republicans are destroying this country” or the equivalent “Democrats are destroying this country” … how do you even go about demonstrating that? First you’d have to come up with how to tangibly measure “destroying a country”, then you’d have to show that the actions “Democrats” take are leading to that. But what are “Democrats”? There are a myriad of people that can fall under that category, and they’re all doing different things. You have to totally revise the statement to even begin to evaluate whether it’s factual.

So you might pick a particular topic like: “interfering with the democratic electoral process”. Ok, and what are the ways that might be done? Let’s say “making it harder for people to vote”. Ok what specifically? Let’s say “requiring ID to vote”. And how would they do it? By passing a law to that effect. And are all Repulicans/all Democrats everywhere supporting? Well… no

So you’re left with something like “some Republicans/Democrats in the state of X voted for a bill that would require ID to vote”. This is something that is either a fact or it isn’t. But also notice how impossible it is to get emotionally worked up about whether this is True or False. You can argue vehemently and get heated about whether “Republicans/Democrats are destroying the country”… but there’s no arguing about whether this particular ballot measure was voted on and by whom. (You can argue about whether this ‘intereres with the electoral process’ though … so that then is the next piece of the belief to look into.)

Basically with any of these far-reaching type of beliefs you’ll see that it’s impossible to make such a simple, blanket assessment. It all comes down to finding the individual pieces of fact and then building up an assessment or understanding of that – at which point the belief is simply redundant and is therefore dismantled.

Sincerity

Sincerity is another key component here. You have to actually be scrupulous with what you know to be a fact and what you don’t. If you lie to yourself about it then you have no shot of dismantling beliefs.

This can be especially tricky with beliefs about yourself. “I always am responsible and take care of things.” Ok, is it really always? What about that time you did X Y or Z? etc…

Or “for a relationship to be good I need my partner to do A, B and C”. Ok do you really ‘need’ them to do it? What if they don’t? What specifically in you is triggered if they don’t do A, B, C? Is it worth letting that take away from enjoying and appreciating?

Naivete

Another crucial thing is the simple naivete to realize “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Basically any belief you take, you need this aspect of “It doesn’t really have to be that way”. Like why does it have to be this particular way? It could be some other way couldn’t it? Do I really need X? Am I really like Y? Do I have to be? Is it set in stone? Let’s find out…

Experience Tends to Dismantle Beliefs

One thing I and others have noticed is the more experience you have in an area, the fewer beliefs you tend to have about it. When you really know the ins and outs of a particular thing, you actually have a factual and experiential underpinning for making assessments. You don’t have to believe if X or Y is the best way to do it. You can evaluate both with their merits, and further, you know when you don’t know. This means you know when you need to go figure out more facts about it.

Whereas when you have no experience it’s easy to just have a feeling of which one ‘should be’ more or less right, and then believe in it fervently. Notice that in this case you’re in a far worse position to actually evaluate it. So you’re simply more likely to be wrong, but to believe more strongly in it than the person with experience… this should indicate a problem with the process of ‘believing’ in and of itself.

It’s OK to not “Know”

This seeing through of beliefs can be a bitter pill to swallow. Basically you will come to see you don’t know even half of the things you thought you knew (probably 80%+) and that your whole life you’ve been latching onto beliefs that you picked up from other people.

You will come to see that this is ok and you don’t actually lose anything by recognizing this. It’s already the case that you have no idea – now you just allow yourself to see it.

And in the meantime you can still keep doing the things you normally do on a provisional basis, until you figure out something better. So doesn’t impact your ability to function.

All this leads to a remarkable skill and ability to actually figure out anything you want to figure out, by methodically applying your mind to it.

Replace Beliefs with Facts & Opinions/Assessments

So basically you’ll end up dismantling your beliefs, one by one, and you’ll be left just with indisputable facts, and things that you don’t know are the case but you think they are the case because of X, Y and Z.

This will severely diminish your capacity to get into fiery debates :grin: . But if you ever feel like one you could still throw it all out the window and go for the jugular. However if and when you do, pay attention to the dissonant feeling afterwards, that you weren’t strictly sincere and didn’t strictly stick to the facts and look at what mayhem that caused… it will be your friend for avoiding another bout of it next time!

Not sure if this helps elucidate how to dismantle beliefs – let me know your thoughts!

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Sure helped me!

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Basically from what I understand, Advaita is where you ‘see’ that that which you experience as ‘ego’ is ‘false’. But ‘ego’ remains (i.e. those things that were called ‘ego’ before still happen), it’s just ‘seen’ as ‘false’.

This is a paltry imitation of Full Enlightenment which is where the ‘ego’ itself disappears entirely, such that there is only Soul (i.e. the Absolute).

Richard experienced the Full Enlightenment so his writings about Enlightenment are referring to this.

With actual freedom, both ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ disappear entirely, and you see that they were an illusion all along.

With ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ still remaining - or with just ‘soul’ remaining in Full Enlightenment - the illusion is still being experienced and felt to be existing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think the illusion is real – if it’s still happening, it’s still happening.

For a simple way to put it: If you feel angry you can pretend you’re not angry, but that doesn’t make you not angry…

What does “invalid” mean? An experience can’t be “invalid” per se. It’s either experienced or not. It’s something that is happening for a person.

But the conclusions drawn from this experience can be valid or invalid.

To conclude the ‘ego’ is ‘false’ but still be experiencing it, and conclude that this is all there is to be done about this human condition, is what is invalid. There is much more that can be done.

The ‘felt-being’ (i.e. soul/Soul) indeed doesn’t go until actual freedom (self-immolation).

But it can temporarily disappear in a PCE, and then you will see for yourself what it’s all about. Until then you have to take it as a supposition :slight_smile: .

Basically the real value of these convos is for you to allow yourself to have a PCE, at which point you take it from there, unravelling pure intent from that PCE like a golden [1] clew [2] [3], and following that golden clew as a lodestone or guiding light.

Roughly speaking, yes. It isn’t exact though. For example in an Excellence Experience (EE), the ‘doer’ is abeyant and the ‘beer’ is ascendant, which might seem to therefore logically mean that there is no ‘ego’ present and it’s all ‘Soul’ and therefore an Enlightenment experience. But it’s something else entirely.

Probably because in an EE the ‘beer’ is ascendant but all of it, in a sincere and naive and felicitous way, as opposed to just the ‘good’ parts of Love & Compassion that are expressed in the Enlightenment-type experience (or alternatively Peace or Silence etc…)

Hmmm think of it more like ‘beer’ or ‘soul’ is who you feel yourself to be at the very core of yourself. It is ‘you’ at ‘your’ essence. Everything else ‘you’ are – be it ‘ego’ or ‘feelings’ or ‘doer’ – is constructed out of this raw material and shaped via various feelings, moods, emotions, passions, etc.

When normally going about it ‘you’ experience ‘yourself’ as the ‘doer’ of things, the little man in the center of ‘your’ head, receiving input through ‘your’ eyes and ‘your’ ears, commanding ‘your’ arms and legs to move this way and that, directing ‘your’ thoughts, etc. ‘You’ are this controlling entity in ‘your’ head.

But really this ‘you’ is just the tip of the iceberg:

image
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Underlying this ‘you’ is the vastness of the ‘soul’ or ‘beer’ which is who ‘you’ are at ‘your’ core. Much like the iceberg, the ‘doer’ isn’t actually separate from the ‘beer’ – one is made from the other. It only is apparently separate (like the water-line in the image above). But really it’s all the same substance.

However it feels like you aren’t – the controller ‘doer’ feels like ‘he’ possesses feelings or that feelings happen to him, without recognizing that ‘he’ is those feelings.

Seeing that you are all at once the whole iceberg is one of the keys to success with actualism. This is essential to be able to be sincere.

In an EE you basically are allowing yourself to be this whole iceberg, and your experience of yourself now is as of being this whole iceberg instead of just the tip of it. I don’t experience it like ‘ego’ vanishing per se (in the way all of ‘me’ vanishes in a PCE), more like ‘ego’ takes a back-seat. It’s like ‘I’ take a back-seat but then as soon as ‘I’ do ‘I’ now experience myself as this all of ‘me’ that is there already, so the sense of who ‘I’ am shifts. But it’s almost imperceptible at first which is really funny.

Well it’s not that the ‘doer’ has power over ‘you’. That’s adding a 3rd layer of splitting on top of the picture:

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It’s more that ‘you’ (the person reading these words right now) are this ‘ego’/doer. That’s what ‘you’ refers to in this context – the ‘you’ that ‘you’ are thinking yourself to be.

It’s hard to ‘get rid of this’ you because it is you :smile: . ‘You’ can’t really get rid of ‘yourself’. You have to acknowledge your felt-to-be-real existence and then allow yourself (as that illusion) to take the back-seat.

It’s more that it doesn’t actually rid of this ‘doer’. From what I understand it’s that you “realize” that this ‘doer’ is ‘false’. But ‘you’ still are the ‘doer’. You just experience yourself as ‘false’ (?) I don’t have an experiential understanding of this so I may be missing the mark.

I have experience with Dharma Overground-style Vipassana tho (originating from Mahasi noting). The idea with this is that I would experience these things that make up the ‘self’ or ‘ego’ as impermanent, not-me, and dukkha (suffering/unsatisfying). And thereby I came to experience this ‘self’ as not having ‘intrinsic substance’ or ‘empty’. Which I believe might be similar to what the goal of Advaita is.

But my experience – and report from Daniel Ingram who said he went all the way as far as this regard goes – is, with how I’d put it in actualist terms, that ‘I’ was still the ‘doer’, still present as ‘ego’, I just experienced myself in an dissociated way as “not really being that ego” because “there is not really a ‘me’”. So I was the cloud floating above the iceberg instead haha.

It’s “valid” and “better” and more “effective” because the “doer” actually disappears, while with Advaita it doesn’t.

It’s like when I’m angry, Advaita would be “I’m not really angry even though angry feelings keep happening and even though these angry feelings are a “thought/felt reality with tremendous power””, while with actualism it would be “I actually am angry; let me see the reasons why…” and then once you see why, you’re actually not angry anymore, then you say “I’m not angry” and the anger is actually gone.

It’s more a question of what “there” is. The “there” of Advaita is a different “there” than that of actualism:

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Advaita will get you to Advaita’s end goal, but this is different than the end goal of actualism. It’s up to you to decide which you want for yourself.

Again depends what “valid” means? It will be an experience as reported by those succeeding with Advaita. But it would be incorrect (i.e. not a fact) to say that this is the same as actual freedom. They’re just two different experiences. Which you want… is up to you :slight_smile:

The ‘present moment’ that you are ‘stepping into’ is not the “this moment” of actualism. The ‘present moment’ you refer to is just another illusion. A PCE will show you what the “this moment” of actualism refers to.

Note that until you have such a PCE, the term “this moment” will forever be a phrase without a referent [4]. It is just important for success to recognize that the referent of ‘present moment’ – the experiences you have had that you use the phrase ‘present moment’ to refer to – are not the referent of “this moment”, i.e. not the experience of “this moment” as in a PCE.

See Bubs b2wf journal - #18 by claudiu :smiley: .

Cheers hope that helps!
Claudiu

  1. i.e. pure, actual, unadulterated by ‘self’ or ‘Self’ or ‘ego’ or ‘soul’ or ‘Soul’ ↩︎

  2. The “ball of thread” meaning of clew (from Middle English clewe and ultimately from Old English cliewen ) has been with us since before the 12th century. In Greek mythology, Ariadne gave a ball of thread to Theseus so that he could use it to find his way out of her father’s labyrinth. This, and similar tales, gave rise to the use of clew for anything that could guide a person through a difficult place. This use led, in turn, to the meaning “a piece of evidence that leads one toward the solution of a problem.” [source]

    ↩︎

  3. See also: Frequently Asked Questions – Where does Pure Intent Come from? . ↩︎

  4. referent: “the thing in the world that a word or phrase denotes or stands for.” ↩︎

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@bub

Though I was going to respect your instructions not to reply or post anything to you, I thought you may be interested that you featured briefly in the mushroom trip I had today.

“Bub” was me, and I was “bub”. Which I already knew in theory, it was cool to experience it.

Whilst I was pleased to see you engage for more than a week, I was also aware that I was justifying my blunt “welcome” by this fact.

What you can’t be aware of, and what I reacted to in my own fashion is that in the decade I have been interested in actualism, I have seen dozens of people far more psychically talented than myself come and go.

My “un-welcome, welcome” was both a reaction to “here’s another one” and attempt at creating a hook to keep you around.

I thought today that it was silly to justify the previous reaction with the later good intentions.

When I say I have witnessed dozens, I can actually count from memory three. It feels like a lot more though.

So, welcome. I am glad you have stuck around. :wink:

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Peter’s journal is probably the more easily digestible one at first and has more of a ‘down to earth feel’ to it I guess haha. I have always liked Peter’s writings for this reason, they seemed straightforward and pragmatic when Richards writings still seemed like the ramblings of a mad man lol.

Easy interesting read. But light on practical technique. Claudiu’s posts here have been incredibly helpful.

I have a feeling I should just keep reading Peter’s and then Richard’s journal and allow the dots to connect in the background. Opening up a whole new world for me. And I find I’m solidly buying into it (despite the stick I give Srinath) because it makes so much intuitive sense.

Then eventually and sometimes completely unexpectedly the fact is seen with utter confidence, this causes the belief to dissolve. There is always this incredible sense of discovery and freedom that comes with this. Because now there is genuine certainty whereas before there was the shuttling between belief and insecurity.

Sign me up. I’ll have to practice with a couple of beliefs. Probably do it in here for feedback. Despite Claudiu’s post, still struggling to grasp it.

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Don’t know how good this analogy is but it makes some sense to me. Think of it like a crime show on a TV screen. Adavita and certain forms of Buddhism, would zoom into the screen pixellating it until it was the blinking of the RGB lights on the LCD display and conclude it did not exist. Actualism would force you to come to terms with the fictional reality of the crime show and its real effects on you – eventually allowing you to pull the plug on TV and cancel the show. Whereas with normal life you might just watch the TV show uncritically thinking of it as a real thing.

And in actualism the illusion is only eliminated after self-immolation, when the feeling being is no longer present.

For advaita, it gets worse than that actually :grin: Claudiu can correct me, but I don’t think Richard would accord it the status of true enlightenment, which he would define as ego death without soul/feeling-being death. Actual freedom is the death of both ego and soul/feeling-being death.

Might not surprise you, but these sorts of questions come up a LOT. Richard and others have answered and re-answered them numerous times in some eye-watering detail. You can check it out if you have the patience for it, by just doing a Google site search on the AFT and looking for words like ‘advaita’ ‘enlightenment’ etc.

Its just that hundreds of thousands of people over the years have gotten to the post ego non dual realisation, and with Actualism it’s four basically free, and two actually free.

Fair play Actualism goes a step further and dissolves ego (even if I can throw in - we dont even know what awareness is, and we’re conflating this to the soul, and saying that AF targets dissolving this abstract entity. OR on the one hand saying feeling being gone, feelings gone, BUT oh wait, social identity still there but its okay because prison doors are open and i can just walk out). But like you say below, beyond my pay grade.

But at least Advaita dissolves the ego (dont like the term because you cant dissolve something that wasnt there) and with Actualism I’ll have to wait till full self immolation to even get to ego+soul/feeling being which appears to happen all at once. Bit of an all or nothing (plus social identity feelings ;)).

I guess what I’m saying is, let me do my non dual and ego dissolution work whilst I get my actualism learnings done along the way. AF Practice slotted in fairly quick too.

I did give myself a headache reading through a lot of this when I first came upon actualism, ultimately though I used the following MO. 1) Aim to find out what actualism/actual freedom is on its own terms without getting side-tracked or irritated by the claims. 2) Keep the claims that can’t be swallowed to the side for now e.g. for me it was that Richard was the first person to become actually free, this stuff about AF surpassing the wisdom of thousands of years, all the ego death and soul death stuff which was beyond my pay-grade to verify 3) Start practicing the actualism method, while simultaneously trying to understand it more and more.

  1. Aiming to find out, but I’ll bring my doubts up which people have been gracious enough to clarify (including you).
  2. Nothing that I’m finding hard to swallow. Trust in feeling being death through self immolation. Trust in PCE’s. Trust in chronic low grade PCE post self immolation.
  3. I’ll start practising. Fucken PCE’s intimidate me.

Basically put doubts aside and learn and practice Bub sounds like sound advice!

It’s getting late here. I’m going to have to reply to the rest of your post later.

No need to. All been clarified.

Hoping @claudiu you can help out. You’re good at this stuff!
Indeed he is. Did an absolutely standard job clearing a lot of stuff for me.

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Essentially if you always start only from what you 100% actually know to be a fact, and you only follow chains of reasoning that are valid and only use those facts as their rational basis, then you will always be in fact-land and not in belief-land.

This has been very useful Claudiu - I’ll have to practice with a couple of beliefs so I know if I’m getting it right (or not!).

Basically start from first principles and work from there.

Sincerity is another key component here. You have to actually be scrupulous with what you know to be a fact and what you don’t. If you lie to yourself about it then you have no shot of dismantling beliefs.

This can be especially tricky with beliefs about yourself. “I always am responsible and take care of things.” Ok, is it really always? What about that time you did X Y or Z? etc…

lol

important point taken

Naivete

Experience Tends to Dismantle Beliefs

It’s OK to not “Know”

You will come to see that this is ok and you don’t actually lose anything by recognizing this. It’s already the case that you have no idea – now you just allow yourself to see it.

And in the meantime you can still keep doing the things you normally do on a provisional basis, until you figure out something better. So doesn’t impact your ability to function.

All this leads to a remarkable skill and ability to actually figure out anything you want to figure out, by methodically applying your mind to it.

I guess this is exactly what I need to do with my is there free will and control idea, even if there is no Me, at least whatever I am feels like it has control (I know I’m completely wrong here) and keep working with that provisionally until I get to the solidly felt factual state that whatever I am doesnt have control.

pay attention to the dissonant feeling afterwards, that you weren’t strictly sincere and didn’t strictly stick to the facts and look at what mayhem that caused… it will be your friend for avoiding another bout of it next time!

Not sure this has happened to me. Or at least havent consciously noted it. So I must just be more vigilant.

Not sure if this helps elucidate how to dismantle beliefs – let me know your thoughts!

The proof of the pudding will be in the dismantling - will give it a shot and see how it goes.

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I’ve been feeling like I’m on the right track, but absolutely and totally lost.

Questioning basic assumptions such as free will or control.

I heard Rupert Spira speak and him saying that believing in a Doer means free will is implicit, BUT dont do the normal advaita teaching of not truly believing in the lack of a doer, and then say no free will or control and feel powerless and paralysed as a result.

Claudiu’s words about accept a belief provisionally until you make progress with truly dismantling it was helpful.

So I thought let me accept I have free will and control.

I was neuroticising about not cooking and realised it was just overwhelming to cook 1 kilo each of spinach, fish, beef and mutton.

I threw them all out. No biggie. No idea what I was beating myself up so much over not cooking them.

Today I thought let me have at it again, and am now going to cook a kilo of spinach, beef, mutton and if I feel its going well, I’ll cook a kilo of fish as well. Fuck you, no free will and control.

BUT also to remember not to change my life around - life is perfect as it is, with people as they are.

Just step out in a normal grown up way to meal prep for the week, or check parking tickets have been paid. Dont reinvent the wheel(house).

XXXXXXX

Posting in Kub’s journal about my neuroticism, and irritablity being two of the biggest issues I have.

My irritability comes along once or twice in a month, you might have seen it targeted at Andrew at the end of my introductory post thread. I’m not counting irritability in my responses to Srinath because its how I communicate with him in a weird old friends male bonding manner.

The neuroticism is about wanting to get things right, not feeling good enough, feeling insecure, and I’ve noticed this mindset only comes when I’m using porn and beating off above a certain frequency.

You guys asked for honesty here, and here it is.

So if I could distill all my troubles into as compact a box as I can…

It’s stepping into avoidance (my recent no free will and control story, wu wei previously, or ejaculation killing my drive, or too much emotional discomfort, or postponing things for later) and background stress adding up because of that, this spilling out into a self critical neurotic self flagellation - a fixing, wanting, desiring, get things right change this set of conditions of my life to a more preferred set of conditions.
Doing 90 things right, but being overly self critical over the 10 things I didnt get right.

And this is what made me think gets in the way of happiness, and feeling good, and so I posted recently about ruthlessly addressing these. And Claudiu very sensibly pointed out the pitfalls of my approach i.e. neurotic fixing wanting to change one perfect set of conditions for another.

I guess I’d like to find the balance between the normal adult responsible way of solving issues vs it turning into a neurotic, continually fixing search.

The message that’s come to my mind repeatedly over the years has been do some meditation to rein in the monkey mind, uplevel mood and focus; exercise for the body; and 1 or at the most 2 high priority jobs a day (pretty much 100% of my work stuff gets done on time (because I see theres just no choice there), its just personal stuff I avoid).

Meditation makes me feel goooood. 20 minutes a day to start with.
Exercise makes me feel goooood. 1 hour 3-4 times a week.
Both of the above make me neuroticise a lot less, and deal with things in a matrix slow motion mode.
1-2 jobs high priority personal jobs a day. Avoidance of backlog is the single biggest stressor.

Stop me if I’m getting something wrong here.
I feel that’s pretty much bare minimum. With maximum ROI. Tim Ferris’ minimum (super) effective dose.

All three are routes to feel fucken fantastic, and enjoy and appreciate this present moment of being alive, and they are done at fixed times during the day or week, so the habit is set and I dont have to repeatedly get pulled out of the present moment.

Claudiu, and Andrew will reply to your most recent posts once I’ve cooked my spinach, beef and mutton!
And also a set of beliefs that are hampering me that I would like to look into dismantling.

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Basically from what I understand, Advaita is where you ‘see’ that that which you experience as ‘ego’ is ‘false’. But ‘ego’ remains (i.e. those things that were called ‘ego’ before still happen), it’s just ‘seen’ as ‘false’.

This is a paltry imitation of Full Enlightenment which is where the ‘ego’ itself disappears entirely, such that there is only Soul (i.e. the Absolute).

Richard experienced the Full Enlightenment so his writings about Enlightenment are referring to this.

This is where I’m looking to get - that felt and known sense of no ego, demonstrably evidenced as a felt loss of ‘centre’.

With ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ still remaining - or with just ‘soul’ remaining in Full Enlightenment - the illusion is still being experienced and felt to be existing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think the illusion is real – if it’s still happening, it’s still happening.

For a simple way to put it: If you feel angry you can pretend you’re not angry, but that doesn’t make you not angry…

The beginnings of Bub actualling challenging the good Claudiu…

With enlightenment, it feels like there are steps, impersonality i.e. losing the felt sense of self, non duality and finally emptiness.

With AF, it feels like the steps come all at once at the end with self immolation i.e. ego death, soul death. Along the way EEs, PCE’s, belief dismantling (i.e. seeing through delusions) keep us entertained but also in a seeking energy with a chronic dissatisfaction underneath it all thats not addressed because we’re enjoying and appreciating the present moment.

If there’s no felt centre, I can still get feelings (I’m not sure how the soul or awareness has a range of feelings when advaita says just one feeling, but I’m playing along that getting rid of soul gets rid of feeling being despite social identity feelings still cropping up) and these could be from soul or social idenity, but I’m okay. My goal is to just lose centre. Convincingly. If I still have feelings after, I can deal with it.

Apart from my occasional neuroticism, when i say I have a problem free life, its doesnt feel like lying to myself - it’s just getting 100% of my work jobs done, and addressing issues in my personal life as and when they crop up. With doing bare minimum and having systems in place for the chop wood and carry water parts of life like meal prep, laundry, house cleaning etc.

What I’m saying is, I dont have the revulsion towards negative feelings a lot of people on the spiritual path have. Loss of centre, and that would feel like job done. Famous last words and probably cue more seeking i.e. EE’s, PCE’s and self immolation ahoy!

but seriously, I’m hoping to be content with loss of centre. I know people here will go, but but, PCE’s kingdom of heaven versus the ugly business of human feelings.

Loss of centre seems like a decent goal, just like 15% bodyfat is more than enough, fuck the six pack.

To conclude the ‘ego’ is ‘false’ but still be experiencing it, and conclude that this is all there is to be done about this human condition, is what is invalid. There is much more that can be done.

:100:

Dont feel I need the much more for now - then what the fuck am I doing on an AF forum you might ask - AF makes a whole lot of sense to me, and has already been supremely valuable to me across the board.

Basically the real value of these convos is for you to allow yourself to have a PCE, at which point you take it from there, unravelling pure intent from that PCE like a golden [^1] clew [^2] [^4], and following that golden clew as a lodestone or guiding light.

Aargh, PCE’s intimidate me man. I’m sure I’ve had a ton of PCE’s before, like most of the population and it’s not just limited to AF peeps. But I’m not sure I will have them now - feels like I’ve made it too big in my head.

I’ll read up about PCE’s on here, speak to Srinath, and try them.

I’ve been trying to get into them at home, or when out, but not making much progress

Hmmm think of it more like ‘beer’ or ‘soul’ is who you feel yourself to be at the very core of yourself. It is ‘you’ at ‘your’ essence. Everything else ‘you’ are – be it ‘ego’ or ‘feelings’ or ‘doer’ – is constructed out of this raw material and shaped via various feelings, moods, emotions, passions, etc.

When normally going about it ‘you’ experience ‘yourself’ as the ‘doer’ of things, the little man in the center of ‘your’ head, receiving input through ‘your’ eyes and ‘your’ ears, commanding ‘your’ arms and legs to move this way and that, directing ‘your’ thoughts, etc. ‘You’ are this controlling entity in ‘your’ head.

But really this ‘you’ is just the tip of the iceberg:

image
image500×759 91.7 KB

Underlying this ‘you’ is the vastness of the ‘soul’ or ‘beer’ which is who ‘you’ are at ‘your’ core. Much like the iceberg, the ‘doer’ isn’t actually separate from the ‘beer’ – one is made from the other. It only is apparently separate (like the water-line in the image above). But really it’s all the same substance.

However it feels like you aren’t – the controller ‘doer’ feels like ‘he’ possesses feelings or that feelings happen to him, without recognizing that ‘he’ is those feelings.

Seeing that you are all at once the whole iceberg is one of the keys to success with actualism. This is essential to be able to be sincere.

In an EE you basically are allowing yourself to be this whole iceberg, and your experience of yourself now is as of being this whole iceberg instead of just the tip of it. I don’t experience it like ‘ego’ vanishing per se (in the way all of ‘me’ vanishes in a PCE), more like ‘ego’ takes a back-seat. It’s like ‘I’ take a back-seat but then as soon as ‘I’ do ‘I’ now experience myself as this all of ‘me’ that is there already, so the sense of who ‘I’ am shifts. But it’s almost imperceptible at first which is really funny.

Thanks - fascinating and very practically useful. Filled in a fair few blanks with AF for me.

It’s hard to ‘get rid of this’ you because it is you :smile: . ‘You’ can’t really get rid of ‘yourself’. You have to acknowledge your felt-to-be-real existence and then allow yourself (as that illusion) to take the back-seat.

Still looking to get to loss of centre and felt/known convincing loss of ego self as short to medium term goal.

But my experience – and report from Daniel Ingram who said he went all the way as far as this regard goes – is, with how I’d put it in actualist terms, that ‘I’ was still the ‘doer’, still present as ‘ego’, I just experienced myself in an dissociated way as “not really being that ego” because “there is not really a ‘me’”. So I was the cloud floating above the iceberg instead haha.

That a real fucken dick softener.

If even the great Daniel Ingram didnt feel the loss of centre, and still felt like ‘doer’ presenting as 'ego, then is this loss of centre just an occasional realisation and not a felt constant one? Aargh.

It’s like when I’m angry, Advaita would be “I’m not really angry even though angry feelings keep happening and even though these angry feelings are a “thought/felt reality with tremendous power””, while with actualism it would be “I actually am angry; let me see the reasons why…” and then once you see why, you’re actually not angry anymore, then you say “I’m not angry” and the anger is actually gone.

AF sounds like the more sensible path whilst the advaita way here seems like a spiritual bypassing.

Advaita will get you to Advaita’s end goal, but this is different than the end goal of actualism. It’s up to you to decide which you want for yourself.

Which you want… is up to you :slight_smile:

Convincing loss of doer and felt sense of center.

The ‘present moment’ that you are ‘stepping into’ is not the “this moment” of actualism. The ‘present moment’ you refer to is just another illusion. A PCE will show you what the “this moment” of actualism refers to.

Okay, another huge clarification that I got way way wrong.

Really what the message is saying is having a fucken PCE bub, lets talk more after that - there is much magic to be had.

Cheers hope that helps!
Claudiu

Helps tremendously. Indebted for having your input.

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@bub Do you remember any PCEs or any potential candidate experiences from the past?

Sometimes it is that sense of ‘I know there is more to life than this, it’s not supposed to be as it is’ which is a long lost memory of a PCE.

It can be fun to try pinpoint a memory of an experience where life was simply perfect beyond any ‘human’ understanding, complete beyond description.

This is why the AF peeps will always go - ‘nah but a PCE is better’ :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I remember reading Richard’s journal and pondering on why he was ready to abandon full blown enlightenment for actual freedom.

It seemed weird because in enlightenment was everything that the self wants - immortality, bliss, power, authority, love, worship etc. It seems to fulfil ‘my’ deepest desires.

And yet Richard was pushing for a condition that would abolish all of those things, in fact it would abolish ‘him’. Why on earth would he do that?

I understand the reason now and it is intrinsic to the difference between the real and the actual. This is that thing which has to be experienced directly because the magnitude of it is not properly grasped otherwise.

There is a jump which happens when ‘I’ go into abeyance, because along with ‘me’ so too goes the ‘real world’. Now all of a sudden there is the direct experience of the factuality of things.

I guess a metaphor would be spending one’s entire life in a coma living a dreamed up existence. Then all of a sudden waking up and for the first time in one’s life taking a stroll through the local park and actually smelling the freshly cut grass, actually feeling the rays of sunshine warming up the skin, the sounds of people all around, feeling like a big baby going by in the world of people things and events, experiencing everything so naked of any psychic interference.

This experience is in stark contrast to the dream world of projections which one would have spent their entire life in. Enlightenment, no matter how glorious is still situated in the world of projections, therefore actual freedom/PCE always trumps.

It brings a satisfaction that is unparalleled and once locked onto it just cannot be denied.

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@bub Do you remember any PCEs or any potential candidate experiences from the past?

I remember Richard or Peter saying that most people would have had PCE’s in their lives.

So it’s not something that only the AF peeps have access to.

I’ve had tons of drugs, crazy sexual experiences, spectacularly beautiful times with friends, mad times like being flogged, pierced with hundreds of needles, placed in a cage and electrocuted. Also a ton of everyday beautiful experiences - where Ive just sat crying at how magical life is. Sometimes continously shaking with sobs with how amazing life was.

This is why the AF peeps will always go - ‘nah but a PCE is better’ :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Fair play. I guess I got to give it a good shot.

I remember reading Richard’s journal and pondering on why he was ready to abandon full blown enlightenment for actual freedom.

It seemed weird because in enlightenment was everything that the self wants - immortality, bliss, power, authority, love, worship etc. It seems to fulfil ‘my’ deepest desires.

Dont care for any of that. Just want to accept the Isness of things, the world as it is, people as they are, the minimal amount of suffering in my life, and the end of seeking. At most, fewer of the rare neurotic phases and more tranquilo times.

The end of seeking. That’s where I’d like to be.

And I dont even want full blown enlightenment, just that first solid step of KNOWING and FEELING there is no egoic self and the subsequent loss of centre.

There’s a pretty good chance I’ll get there in the next couple of months. With self immolation, I’ll probably be chasing it for years. Even Srinath is still researching enlightenment like all get out, thinking there are further boundaries to be crossed.

I guess a metaphor would be spending one’s entire life in a coma living a dreamed up existence. Then all of a sudden waking up and for the first time in one’s life taking a stroll through the local park and actually smelling the freshly cut grass, actually feeling the rays of sunshine warming up the skin, the sounds of people all around, feeling like a big baby going by in the world of people things and events, experiencing everything so naked of any psychic interference.

Enjoyed reading this metaphor/analogy.

This experience is in stark contrast to the dream world of projections which one would have spent their entire life in. Enlightenment, no matter how glorious is still situated in the world of projections, therefore actual freedom/PCE always trumps.

It brings a satisfaction that is unparalleled and once locked onto it just cannot be denied.

I’ve had people on here tell me, listen bub, the end of suffering and feeling good i.e. PCE level good all the fucken time! Why wouldnt anyone sign up for this!

I went to Burning Man (with Srinath) - had a great time, but went once, and wouldnt go there again.

I have a drink, or a joint, I’ll feel great. But havent had either in years.

Its like a (super high maintainence) hot girl everyone else wants to fuck, and are surprised why I dont want to put the work in. Who I’ll keep chasing for yonks.

But I just want the plain jane who takes it up the bum every so often.

I’m not like the Buddha who fucken ran from everything, and wanted to even run away from the repeated cycles of birth and death, just wanting to get the fuck away from it all.

I’ve seen Srinath and Geoffrey fucken hate their feeing being selves and with every waking thought being how they’d like to get rid of it. Sure, maybe it is well worth it. But it just doesnt give me wood. Sure things might change. But for now, its just the end of seeking, loss of center and I’m a supremely happy occasionally transiently suffering bunny.

But anyways, the lesson coming through repeatedly is - fucken give the PCE’s a shot, champ and then we can talk.

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Bubby, a couple of things…

Bit of a technicality here. Theres 10 people who are actually free (far as I remember), out of which 2 people are fully free. The rest are basically free. Both are actually free. Yeah, might not seem a lot but the cohort of actualists is tiny. While self-immolation might seem like a distant lofty goal, its ultimately pretty straightforward and easy – it happens in an instant. And until then you have an idea of what self-immolation would be like via a PCE. Plus in between PCEs and EEs you are going on quite a cracking, super-fascinating journey that has you becoming happier and world becoming more magical and alive. That’s my little plug :grin:

Re: enlightenment, my interest in it is more academic. I was working on it quite a bit a few months ago when I was trying to write our wiki on it, but it was a lot of work and I’ve had to set it aside. Not super unimportant, thought I’d clarify though…

You seem to have a lot of paradigmatic balls up in the air e.g. advaita, wu wei, personal growth, actualism etc. I know this sort of thing is pretty commonplace in modern spiritual practice and maybe how you tend to like to do things, but I just think actualism tends to work best as a solo practice. And it’s tricky even then. Might be good to consider putting actualism on the back-burner until you’ve explored advaita throughly. It will be hard to have PCE’s if you’re being pulled in all these different directions. Also with the kind of mix you’re doing there wouldn’t be anyone on here who could guide or advise you because of the high noise:signal ratio.

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Bit of a technicality here. Theres 10 people who are actually free (far as I remember), out of which 2 people are fully free. The rest are basically free. Both are actually free. Yeah, might not seem a lot but the cohort of actualists is tiny

Fair play.

. While self-immolation might seem like a distant lofty goal, its ultimately pretty straightforward and easy – it happens in an instant.

Once we defeat that boss or complete a level, it seems easy and we can do it repeatedly.

But like they say, there’s no such thing as an overnight success. It was those decades of cumulative work that added up.

Also brings my point up that ego and awareness loss both happen late down the line with self immolation.

And until then you have an idea of what self-immolation would be like via a PCE. Plus in between PCEs and EEs you are going on quite a cracking, super-fascinating journey that has you becoming happier and world becoming more magical and alive. That’s my little plug :grin:

You’ve always seen me as living in a wildly magical world! And alive responding to my very thoughts, desires, beliefs and even healing needs.

But sure, I can see PCE life as definitely being more magical and alive.

Re: enlightenment, my interest in it is more academic. I was working on it quite a bit a few months ago when I was trying to write our wiki on it, but it was a lot of work and I’ve had to set it aside. Not super unimportant, thought I’d clarify though…

Still seeing that seeking (and even contracted) energy - unless its my projections.

Maybe the AF guys, like the solid enlightenment seekings guys, and the buddha have been miserable fuggers (like you used to be ‘ray of sunshine’). I’ve felt pretty good life of the party as a baseline despite whatever the fuck was happening in my life. You’ve seen how people check in on me even if I zone out for a couple of minutes at a party.

I was really surprised how you felt so thrilled at hitting a jhana early on in your practice, and thought the same when you had your first PCE looking at bathroom tiles if I remember correctly.

So yeah, feeling good and escaping suffering like all get out isnt a priority - I remember having a discussion with your years ago - I’d feel terrible if feelling happy was a priority, its doing the right things that happiness is a happy side effect.

Its losing that contracted energy, just being happy with people as they are, and the world as it is.

Dont even mind living with the occasional neurotic phase.

Just want to see the reality of things i.e. losing that felt sense of self and centre.

You seem to have a lot of paradigmatic balls up in the air e.g. advaita, wu wei, personal growth, actualism etc. I know this sort of thing is pretty commonplace in modern spiritual practice and maybe how you tend to like to do things, but I just think actualism tends to work best as a solo practice. And it’s tricky even then. Might be good to consider puttotheing actualism on the back-burner until you’ve explored advaita throughly. It will be hard to have PCE’s if you’re being pulled in all these different directions. Also with the kind of mix you’re doing there wouldn’t be anyone on here who could guide or advise you because of the high noise:signal ratio.

Might help considering what stance you take in the future with other would be actualists.

On the one hand, the simpleactualism site says come to the forum, we’re a nice bunch (and you all are, including Andrew) and on the other hand it’s no AF for you, not even PCE’s until you drop everything else.

But fair play, you’ve always given me solid solid advice and sometimes I’ve taken years to listen to some of it, but once I did, they’ve always been game changers. But hey, better late than never.

My plan with AF was to read Peter’s and Richards books, read everything on the simpleactualism website, and get into PCE’s. And journal lessons and doubts on here. But will put them all aside.

So, sir, yes, sir. I’ll be away from the forum and might come back in a few months if I’m ready to give PCE’s a go AND have emptied my cup (famous last words!).

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