A family member has begotten an offspring a few years back, and I met them for the first time today.
Walking around a bit later, I marveled at the wondrous complexity of the universe we find ourself in. This small creature was amazingly alive, curious, engaged, intelligent, absorbing of all around them – a wondrous bundle of immeasurable complexity, alive and aware of being alive, and joyously living and enjoying the process of learning how to take advantage of the propitious circumstance they find themselves in of being alive on this lustrously verdant and bountiful planet.
And whence came this miracle? Out of nothing more than the vegetables, eggs, meat, and other foodstuffs eaten, water drank, air breathed, and sunlight absorbed by their two progenitors, who effortlessly imbibed it all, the male using it to generate spermatozoa, the female using it to develop her already-existing ovums, which on one destinal day fortuitously joined to form this new organism.
The purity of the actual universe is truly mirificient. At the time many years ago in Richard’s living room/kitchen, I experienced it as an unimaginable purity and richness. When I experienced the ambrosial magicality on the plane ride many days ago, with its quality of immaculate sweetness, I could see experientially that it was the same thing I was experiencing despite all the intervening years — merely much more stable and with an expanded appreciation of it together with a more refined vocabulary with which to voice it!
I experienced it in a new way a few days ago at a restaurant after consciously again deciding to put all my energy into allowing the purity as much as possible — it was like a potent and tangible refreshing/cooling breeze, a substantial stream of purity that flowed into my consciousness, clarifying and rendering pure everywhere it flowed.
The key now seems consistency — consistently, constantly and continuously apply the appropriate amount of (maximal) energy and commitment to allow this purity to become apparent as much as possible, and genuinely and sincerely engage with any objections or resistance as they arise!
Great post @claudiu, it made me rememorate that same magical flavour, which also seems more and more accessible for me lately, a lot of the time it’s like a ‘why not’, as in why not allow this perfection and purity each moment again, it’s all that genuinely exists anyways, it’s all around already.
I like how you phrase the commitment also, deciding to devote all of one’s conscious energy to allowing perfection and purity - I think that’s as good as it gets in terms of succinct instructions.
This is the bit that reminded me of the short PCE I had on a plane back from France some months ago now. How looking out the window the entire world all of a sudden became a magical fairytale, and those are the only words that seem to fit, it’s actually like that, and the whole universe is like that.
So this is what ‘I’ have to continue getting in touch with and continue allowing, this is what eventually dissolves ‘me’ and this is all that is left when ‘I’ am gone, how wonderful!
So there seems to be no fear of self immolation when I consider this, what better alternative could there be? ‘I’ dissapear and paradise is what this body immediately lands in.
There is just this big ‘why not’ in front of me now, and I can’t really come up with a single reason why not. Perhaps something along the lines of ‘it’s too good to be true’, some version of ‘I don’t deserve it’. But it’s not just for me, it’s for all of mankind.
There must be some specific objection, else it would have happened by now — it’s just a matter of patiently finding it !
On the plane ride I just got off of today, I was able to see that it’s a fact that it’s not really up to me how things go or turn out in the universe. I have some degree of influence but ultimately the universe will do what it does. That is, as a fact I’m not really in control anyway!
Allowing myself to see and accept and appreciate this, has led to me being able to let go of the controls, as I wasn’t in control anyway. If I’m not wrong then I’m now experiencing out-from-control virtual freedom proper. After a bumpy takeoff (metaphorically for me, not literally for the plane ), I am delighting in and increasingly enjoying that agency is now in the hands of the universe and not of ‘me’ anymore. We shall see how it goes
Yes I am doing exactly that, patiently finding it is a good way of putting it. Right now it’s like - dip into excellence, then realise I pulled back, find what it was that made me pull back, get back to excellence.
And it seems each time it’s a slightly different objection but they all seem to centre around the same themes which ultimately relate to remaining in control, or as you say continuing to believe that ‘I’ am in control / not acknowledging the fact that ‘I’ am not actually in control.
It’s a funny one because this burden that Vineeto wrote about is strongly related to this, as in ‘I’ feel that life is a burden which ‘I’ must carry and yet ‘I’ insist on remaining in control, which means ‘I’ am forcing ‘myself’ to carry said burden.
So it’s all kind of perverse lol but I can see that there are just certain areas which are too dear to ‘me’ still, where ‘I’ am not ready to relinquish control, and yet those things dear to ‘me’ are self imposed burdens, the relinquishing of these burdens is exactly that… How twisted that ‘I’ actually hold onto them instead.
It’s like ‘I’ am tightly clasping onto this thorny bush and ‘I’ am unwilling to allow releasing it, feeling that this would somehow be dangerous, and yet it is ‘me’ clasping on which is the burden itself.
Time for an update! In short: it is going swimmingly
I am definitely experiencing a different way of ‘being’. I’m currently becoming accustomed to and acclimatizing to this new way of experiencing being alive.
The most amazing and wondrous aspect about it is… nothing is ever going “wrong”. Especially at the beginning, I experienced alarm and worry or fear that I was doing the wrong thing, or on the wrong path – and I was fully experiencing them as emotions as they otherwise would be (hence I know I’m not in an emotion-suppressing ASC). However, when I contemplated on what exactly is wrong, or what is going wrong, what facts about being alive would lead to this fear being substantial or credible? I couldn’t find anything.
It is like Vineeto described here (emphasis added):
What really sealed the deal of confirming I’m on the right path was a PCE I had whilst taking a shower. I saw that the anxiety and fear about whether I’m on the right path, was no different to any other emotional issue that I have had – it was ultimately ‘me’ mucking things up. And I saw that there was no weirdness or ASC quality of what I was experiencing, because all of that would have gone away in the PCE, and I didn’t notice anything disappearing like that which would bring it in stark contrast.
Instead, I experienced it during the PCE as if the regular gap between ‘me’ and actuality was smaller than before – I distinctly recall at the time that the difference was smaller, as in, I was by default closer to the actual world.
It is like Richard wrote here (emphasis added):
I am truly astounded as to what is happening because it isn’t like I imagined it would be. This is obvious in hindsight – just as you can’t know what a PCE is like before having or remembering a clear one, you can’t know what being out-from-control is like. What I would say now is that a large part of the uncertainty at the beginning stemmed from me having an idea or picture in mind of what actually walking the next steps towards actual freedom would be like. And thus, implicitly, of course I was trying to walk that (imagined) path. But being out-from-control, I see now that it is rather about allowing it to happen in the way that it does happen, and accepting that. In other words, the key is control, and continuing to allow myself to be out from under it – which I do gladly and with great vitality, endorsement, and appreciation.
The quality that stands out the most is an almost complete lack of concern (as in, a carefreeness) about anything outside of what is happening here and now. My mind, thoughts, and emotions, simply don’t drift towards those things they usually would. In other words it is perfectly easy to simply and thus contentedly be here.
And yet, I am perfectly able to take care of all of the things I used to. It’s not like I have become forgetful. And the things that do need doing, I do and follow up on. But the ones that don’t, it is simply obvious and sensible not to really expend any energy on them.
Interestingly, I realize that this is completely different to how I was before, but the experience of it is that it really isn’t that different. How delightful .
When I do find myself in a habitual thought or feeling patterns, and I catch myself doing it, now it’s almost like I am just ‘pretending’ to still do those things. It is very easy to cease and continue on the good/carefree path.
I am much more easily able to appreciate things and especially other people. Watching my partner puzzling over where to place some new decorative tiles she purchased – I see that she is doing it out of caring, a caring that our home looks nice and is a pleasant place to be – how wonderful! When I attended a dinner which entailed a singer with a three-piece band in the local style – glancing upon the singer’s face as she prepared and then launched into a heartful singing, I deeply appreciated how involved and invested she was, and indeed how much she cared, to put all of her practice and training to use and focus it all in this moment so she could deliver a performance the audience would like!
The purity I experience now is of a much finer quality than I was experiencing before, yet I can tell experientially that it is the same purity, just experienced more directly. It seems the more intense feeling of it was due to it being filtered through my experiencing of it, which there is less of now. So at first glance it seems like it is “less” than before, but as I contemplate and allow it I actually see that it is “more”, more refined that is! It has the delightful quality of anhedonic pleasure as I previously experienced it in PCEs that there is no “cap” to it, it can never be “too much”.
The other amazing thing is that this purity is always there, whether I am more consciously experiencing of it or less. There is a remarkable stability, a permanence to it. And I can see that me attempting to go into it further is not the way to go. My efforts prior to being out-from-control were more about getting me to commit and go into that direction, but now my efforts are more along the lines of allowing myself to go further into that purity, as I see that the way forward will not be of my doing, but rather the doing of that purity.
This way of being is remarkably stable yet dynamic at the same time. I do not need to maintain it in the way that I had to maintain feeling good/great/excellent or a connection to pure intent before. The default has shifted. At the same time, I get the sense that if I slack hard enough for long enough I could still fall out of it and back into my old ways, hence the “allowing myself to continue” is an active engagement, not a back-seat approach.
Interestingly much of what I’m experiencing now I would have thought would be only happening once actually free. I can only conclude that actual freedom will be even more magnificent and wonderful than I previously thought it might be .
To sum: it is wonderful, truly wonderful, and I invite any and all actualists to join me and go out-from-control themselves so as to enable themselves to reach their destinies sooner rather than later (@Kub933 I’m looking at you!!)
As for any advice for how to have someone do it: I actually don’t really know. All I can say is that for myself, the key was realizing that ultimately I’m already not in control anyway. The universe ultimately dictates what will happen, I can only really pretend to greater or lesser degrees what my say in it is. Hence it is safe to allow the controls to be let go of, as you do not have that control anyway. It can seem scary at first, but, truly wonderful once one gets used to it!
I take it by the length of your post that this must be the genuine thing! I’m glad that you are writing more as it’s helping me get off my backside too. The past few days ‘I’ have definitely regained control, before it was phasing in and out of long periods of excellence where perfection and purity was right on my doorstep. The last few days though there has been some big changes in terms of ‘in the marketplace’ type stuff. I am in talks about purchasing a BJJ/MMA gym and taking over the works, at the same time changing my current working situation etc.
It seems the complexity of this situation has made ‘me’ go back to the ‘grumpy old me’ as a MO. It is not so much that I experience any intense emotional upheavals but rather it is as if now ‘I’ as the doer have found so many things that ‘I’ apparently need to control and account for. Really most of the time though ‘I’ am just going around in circles in my head and not actually doing anything productive anyways, when the next obvious thing is knocking at the door I simply do what is sensible. But certainly this is a ‘good excuse’ if there ever was one.
I can see now that the way forward is certainly not do be doing any more investigation, in the sense of trying to intellectualise this whole thing and make sense of it, the thing to do is action, and funnily enough the action, the doing of it, is as you say, the realisation that ‘I’ am not in control anyways.
It seems I have never been very good at going first, but I am very good at going second! As I have way too much FOMO to hang back when you are blasting forward haha. So I am dusting off those cobwebs again but also with an intent to square in on this ‘perfect excuse’ that I have used to go stagnant again.
You most certainly can, as that is what happened to Irene and almost happened to Vineeto:
VINEETO: …When ‘Vineeto’ got out-from-under-control after many ‘ums and ahs’ it was delicious but a few days later ‘she’ fell out of it and accepted this as a matter of course. But Richard didn’t. When ‘she’ told him about it, he said jokingly something to the effect of “stand in the corner until you are back into out-from-under-control”!
I think that Vineeto and Irene were at a disadvantage because no one had gentrified the path yet. But you now know that it’s safe, so in that regard it should be easier to lean into the actual world and trust that it’s safe to stay there.
As for any advice for how to have someone do it: I actually don’t really know…
Well…
I saw that the anxiety and fear about whether I’m on the right path, was no different to any other emotional issue that I have had – it was ultimately ‘me’ mucking things up\
and
as in you had an idea of how a virtual freedom should play out and were trying to execute that idea which was none other than an imagination like you mention below:
and finally
All seem like really great advice for someone who wants to approach or remain out-from-control. And knowing that one can slip backwards is useful too. Just keep pressing that button
It’s wonderful reading this, I appreciate the eloquence & detail you’ve been able to describe as well!
There’s something familiar to it in my recent experiencing, purity has been seemingly ever-more accessible and objections are falling away with an ease that didn’t exist before.
The main doubt I have about whether what I am experiencing can be called out-from-control virtual freedom is due to the following:
RICHARD: It is more than a trifle odd for someone who self-describes, publicly, on the same day as this recording (i.e., 22 Jan 2016 in Message № 21740) as being ‘out from control’ as per actualism lingo – as well as writing of having an ‘extensive experience’ of pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s), of having an ‘extensive knowledge’ of the actual freedom writings, of having ‘spoken extensively’ with Richard, and of being thus ‘well prepared’ for the ‘Intimate Ambience Experiment’ which these recordings are a product of – to not have a current-time awareness of how they are experiencing this moment of being alive, each moment again, when the primary descriptors of being out-from-control is that it is of the nature of either an ongoing, and thus constantly dynamic, excellence experience (EE) or a similarly dynamic intimacy experience (IE).
In other words, someone genuinely out-from-control is constantly (i.e., consistently) ‘feeling excellent’, come-what-may, by the very nature of what that term refers to[emphasis added] [source]
That is, I wouldn’t say I am consistently feeling excellent per se, as I have been feeling much fear which is not pleasant by the nature of what fear is.
But then again, a panic attack and “sitting on a huge mountain of dread with his hands in his pocket whistling a tune” do not sound pleasant either, yet these happened for two particular out-from-control feeling-beings:
VINEETO: Many weird and whacky, as well as magical and wonderful events happened, which I won’t relate here because they were only relevant for the first two pioneers of the direct route to an actual freedom. What I can say, however is that being-out-from control, living on the actual freedom side of the wall of fear, enabled an ever-increasing apperceptive attentiveness that allowed me to breeze through one of the most intense panic attacks I ever experienced. Richard has described one of those panic attacks during his own out-from-control period as experiencing himself as if ‘sitting on a huge mountain of dread with his hands in his pocket whistling a tune’.
I fully concur with his description as far as my own experience of this particular panic attack was concerned. Despite the physical contractions and the racing of panicky thoughts there was an overall (ah No. 3, here is that word again!) background awareness, aka apperceptive attentiveness, that all is well and that the material universe is indeed utterly benign.
[source]
What is certainly true is that despite feeling often-intense fear, I would say there is indeed a background awareness of the purity of the universe, which informs me that everything is actually entirely well in the world. During the midst of it at one point I was able to step back such that I was closer to that/was more that background awareness and see that essentially the process that is happening is me working through the various conditionings and objections that remain.
What is also true is that whenever I consciously decide to “rememorate the PCE”, easily and effortlessly I am experiencing that purity more. It is like I figured out how to swim from here to there and I can very easily swim over to there now.
So it is sort of amusing, I’ll feel like I feel bad and that I must be a fraud because I feel such fear about what is happening, and then the next minute I feel fantastic and that everything is well in the world and there is no real issue at hand.
I write all this to describe my experience accurately so as to not mislead or present misconceptions about what I’m experiencing.
What is definitely true is that I have certainly become obsessed with continuing this process. I am essentially spending all my conscious efforts on it.
What is also interesting is that the content of my objections have nothing to do with the particulars of my life anymore. Any such objections actually get resolved really quickly. Like for example, I felt deflated and disappointed that we missed a boat (literally) for a boat tour, we were rushing to do it and I thought we had made it but my partner didn’t see a few missed calls and they gave our seats away to someone else. My partner apologized and I said it’s ok, I just felt deflated and disappointed because we were rushing to do it and I thought we had made it, and we hugged and there was no lingering resentment, annoyance or issue whatsoever, just completely resolved issue with no aftermath (and no hesitation to voice (and not vent) what I was feeling!).
What is very strange is that my objections currently essentially amount to it being impossible that the universe can really be so perfect and that there really can be nothing wrong. Like, really, the universe is already perfect? Nothing is wrong? I don’t have to do anything but allow this perfection? That’s it? Somehow I am having these wild reactions that things are too perfect. It is really bizarre, but I suppose a lifetime of conditioning will lead to bizarre things. So I simultaneously feel like I have more to go than I thought, but also that there is really not much left.
I have this analogy in my head of a frightful dog that enjoys hugging but is too fearful. So, they would enjoy cuddling with their human, but when their human cuddles them they become uncomfortable and afraid and dart away. It is a matter for that animal to realize it is safe to cuddle and it’s ok for them to enjoy it, and then it would be better for them as there is no actual danger and they do actually like cuddling. So too with me and the universe
Thank you, Claudiu, for spearheading this third wave of actualists riding the tide of purity that has magically become more accessible. I appreciate all the reports, and please continue to keep us updated!
Ah possibly figured out the disconnect here. I was reading “constantly (i.e., consistently)” to mean 24/7, every second of the day, 100% of the time. But “consistently feeling excellent” doesn’t necessarily mean every single second, but rather, on a consistent basis. So there is no contradiction.
Given the below I am more confident that I continue to qualify
I think a good sign also is if I just drop any worrying about the proper term for what I am experiencing and just figure that whatever it is, how do I go forward from here? I see that nothing really changes. So I don’t sense that I am making an effort to try to shoehorn definitions so I can say that I qualify for this or that. The only thing that really matters is going forward and, of course, achieving the goal!
This is interesting, what you describe is exactly in line with what I have been experiencing for a while now, in varying degrees.
It’s like I will enter this ‘mode’ where I phase in and out of excellence for a few days, when in this mode it seems effortless to allow perfection as soon as I orient myself towards it, but then it’s not 24/7, because even when in that mode I will retreat back into normal for a few hours, when back in normal mode there is very clearly something missing, even when things are ok, that dynamic/magical aspect is not present.
But then when back to excellence, I also find that the only objection I can reduce it all down to is that I am resisting perfection.
It’s an interesting one, how to proceed from this place. Whether it is simply about acclimatising oneself to perfection more and more. I suppose even when squarely back to normal this might be an opportunity to review some of the last objections that ‘I’ have as an identity.
The way I experienced it is like a yo-yo, with ‘me’ as the yo-yo. ‘I’ swing from one side which is squarely in the old paradigm, where ‘I’ as the ‘doer’ am in control etc, then all of a sudden ‘I’ swing to the other side where now the ‘doer’ is out of the way and the ‘beer’ exists in a completely new paradigm.
This new paradigm is dynamic and perfection saturates ‘my’ experience, but still there are other ‘issues’ at hand. Namely overcoming this inherent resistance to allowing perfection more and more, and also remaining in that place indefinitely.
Interesting! Reading what you write here helps to clarify things for me actually. I would say I can relate to what you write here as how I had been experiencing things before the June 23rd plane ride, but the difference now is that the dynamical/magical aspect is never absent any more.
Also before there would be a certain amount of striving or reaching for that and some effort (in hindsight) needed to be experiencing the magical aspect, but now it’s not like that anymore, it’s like there is a backdrop of purity that is actually at the root of everything.
Vineeto’s advice to me on June 15th, which she published on the AFT by now, was:
What I had realized at the time is that more effort was needed – allowing it to happen is not a lackluster approach.
What seems to have really done the trick in terms of shifting to this new way of being, the most immediate cause, was seeing that I wasn’t in control in the first place anyway. It is tempting to say this latter realization is what did the trick but it is more likely that all of the above contributed to it.
It really has been a bigger shift and adjustment than I thought it would be. I thought it would just be an EE but more easy or smooth in a way. But the implications and ramifications of what it means are bigger than I realized and it seems like it takes some getting used to.
What a wonderful discussion for us to be having here! It is truly a wonderful time to be alive. I wouldn’t trade being alive now for any other time.
Nice! It looks like you are indeed paving the way, at least for the next wave of us Actualists. I like what you wrote that allowing it is not a lacklustre approach, this is really key.
Also the realisation that you were never in control to begin with, I have been contemplating a lot on this, I think this is also key.
@claudiu I am glad you could see past your moralistic application of a observation by Richard about Alan whom had consistently misappropriated Actualist term to describe his previous bi-polar inspired enlightenment.
There has never been someone more particular about Richards words and the translation of them into what one could action than you.
I am very glad to read that you have made such progress.
Morality and religion are the life blood of our identity. Imagining that Richard was talking about you, and not Alan, is one of the hallmarks of religion.
I found your message a bit odd. I of course knew that in the January 24, 2016 message I quoted, Richard was talking about Alan’s state of being on January 24, 2016, and not Claudiu’s state of being seven-and-a-half years later on July 1st, 2024.
The way of being known as “out-from-control” is of course something that is possible in human consciousness in general, and thus its qualities and descriptors will not differ due to which particular person is being evaluated as whether they are out-from-control.
As such, I was taking a descriptor that Richard gave of a quality of being out-from-control – namely that “someone genuinely out-from-control is constantly (i.e., consistently) ‘feeling excellent’, come-what-may, by the very nature of what that term refers to” and seeing if it applied to me, so as to make my evaluation of my own current state of being.
I can’t think of a less moralistic approach than this – looking at precise definitions and terms and objectively (and consistently) applying them to see if they hold.
The key, of course, was that “constantly” has a different (although related) meaning than “consistently”. Funnily enough, I realized this due to a conversation I had where I joked to my partner that we needed a “constant gardener”. And my partner pointed out that we need a “consistent gardener”, i.e. not one there 24/7 (our garden is not so big as to require that level of attention), but rather one that comes on a regular basis (which need not be one of being there 24/7). I initially demurred on the vocabularistic distinction but then came to see that she had a point.
Put that together with other common descriptors of virtual freedom such as the following and the picture coalesces:
RICHARD: If one is not happy and harmless now, then one has something to look at to discover why not … and one keeps on looking until one is back on track. Being ‘on track’ means a general sense of well-being … a grumpy person has no chance whatsoever of becoming free. Once one has established this base, one up-levels the ‘feeling happy and harmless’ experience to ‘feeling the sheer perfection of being alive here and now’. It is possible to experience this for ninety-nine percent of the time … and the other one percent provides very little trouble. I call this a virtual freedom.
[source]
That is, it is not that one is virtually free 99% of the time, then stops being virtually free 1% of the time, then resumes being virtually free once that 1% is over – rather, one is virtually free, which entails a mere ~1% of disruption.
Combine all that with the reasonable understanding that there may be more issues at the start while one is adapting to and adjusting the new way of being, and it all makes perfect sense.
The ongoing experience of it is what brings me a continuing confidence. It is really very different than normal. I have experienced old issues which used to bring me great consternation, and initially it feels like I am experiencing them at the same level of intensity, yet then I realize there there is no “teeth” to it anymore, there is no deep, core worry anymore – and I’m able to easily keep my hands in my pocket and work my way through it, sometimes as it’s happening and sometimes after the fact.
It is truly wonderful, and I whole-heartedly recommend it!
), I am delighting in and increasingly enjoying that agency is now in the hands of the universe and not of ‘me’ anymore. We shall see how it goes 
