Claudiu's Journal

Journals
166

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.

167

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 :slight_smile:

1 Like
168

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.

2 Likes
169

Life is funny :smile:

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 :grin:

Cheers,
Claudiu

3 Likes
170

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!

2 Likes
171

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 :grin:

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!

1 Like
172

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.

173

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.

Cheers,
Claudiu

4 Likes
174

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.

1 Like
175

@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.

176

Hi Andrew,

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!

Cheers,
Claudiu

2 Likes
177

Journal Entry

On July 2nd I had quite the initially-disorienting experiential realization.

I was sitting at my desk at work, allowing the purity of actuality to manifest in all its wondrous magicality, and as I got further into it, I perceived more and more the core of ‘me’, and as it went deeper, I saw that at ‘my’ very core was… a core and essential “hopelessness”!

An utter hopelessness that nothing will ever truly work out, an intrinsic fatalism, a woven-in defeatism.

I was shocked to find it there, and together with seeing it there I also saw that it was simply not needed anymore – and this became rapidly disorienting as I experienced that part of myself unraveling. I experienced it like this core hopelessness was tying ‘me’ together, and now ‘I’ had split off into these four or five separate fragments with nothing tying them together anymore.

This brought an intense fear – it seems part and parcel of this process of dismantling myself is fear – and so I put my foot down so as to not proceed further until the ramifications of this were sorted out. There was an undercurrent of fear for a while and I was very aware it was because of what I saw there.

The wonderful thing is that now I am able to be aware that this core hopelessness has utterly lost its power! I can perceive the palpable absence of it. If I do catch myself generally worrying about something, I can now see that there is ultimately no reason to worry – because what is actually at the ‘root’ of everything is that palpable purity and benevolent existence, not a hopeless defeatism.

Looking at it now I would say the hopelessness was due to ‘me’ accurately feeling that there is no way ‘I’ can ever be whole or complete. There is no way for ‘me’, staying as ‘me’, to be completely fulfilled and satisfying. If there were no alternative (i.e. actual freedom) then hopelessness would be the proper response. However now that I not only know there is, but have also committed to having it happen for me sooner rather than later, there is no longer any need for such a hopelessness.

Combine the above with another realization on that same day that being happy and harmless is not a burden, as in something I have to do on top of my normal duties and requirements, but rather something I get to do as a bonus when all my basic needs of survival have been met (and they are very readily and easily met), which bonus derives directly from the purity of actuality – and the reader can get a sense of just how delightful things are turning out to be.

Cheers,
Claudiu

6 Likes
178

So in other words the universe has been playing this tune from “oblivion” all this while and not some hopeless grunge rock ? :smiley:

179

This has also been my experience with some of the last dramas which have been tying ‘me’ together. They are still there to some degree but somehow they have lost their sting. For example this morning with it being Monday I woke up with some of that familiar feeling of resentment around work. But there was 2 important differences. One was that I have already committed to no longer going back to ‘normal’ and the second was that this drama was merely a shadow of its former self because of the perfection and purity that is accessible all around.

It’s like the perfection and purity, once committed to, makes the rest ‘my’ dramas redundant. So it seems then it is a case of allowing ‘myself’ to continue being unraveled in this way.

1 Like
180

Actually it’s interesting to contemplate what it means to go back to ‘normal’. I can experientially tell the difference very easily, it is very clear that when back to ‘normal’ I am in some kind of a ‘cell’ of ‘my’ own making, the very structure of the ‘cell’ is what creates the unbearable feeling of separation that epitomises being a ‘self’.
But when allowing perfection and purity it’s as if those boundaries of the ‘cell’ have disappeared and now ‘I’ am still here, situated still in the ‘centre’ but all around is perfection and purity. Which means that ‘I’ am being actively worked on by this perfection and purity, like ‘I’ have allowed it to peek through into ‘my’ core.

When I consider this it makes sense to me what an out from control virtual freedom is about, it is the abeyance of the ‘doer’ (that very ‘cell’) and now the ‘beer’ (the remaining ‘centre’) is left freely exposed for the perfection and purity to dynamically do it’s thing.

4 Likes
181

Yea! Sounds like what my experience of it is too.

So all you have to do is – not go back to normal :grin:

It is very freeing in a way. Before, I would need to maintain an EE to some degree, and in a sense there was sort of a restriction of just what I could look at, as the EE would fade if I rocked the boat too much.

But now the boat is stable and it seems like I can freely explore anything and everything with this reliable rock-solid foundation of purity that remains unshakeable regardless. Thus I can freely explore the depths of ‘me’ without any fear or concern that the out-from-controlness will fade.

That being said I can see there is a way ‘back’ to normal if ‘I’ really wanted, and I continuously re-affirm remaining the way I am now, this new way of being, as it is better than anything that came before and I (sincerely) think to myself that I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

3 Likes
182

Tuesday (July 9th) while falling asleep, I experienced an oddity that I wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed like some sort of a shift, and I quickly confirmed it wasn’t actual freedom. But nothing in particular seemed different as I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, as I went throughout the day, it seemed that the magicality wasn’t consistently there any longer. I’ve become increasingly sure that this is the case, and the best I can do is pin-point it to that weird July 9th shift-like feeling while falling asleep Tuesday.

Interestingly it is not like all is lost. The purity and magicality is actually readily available still! I’m experiencing it again as I’m writing this now. I’ve been feeling again like I’m an impostor or a fraud, but upon reflection, from June 23rd to July 9th my experience of being alive really was very different. And it’s like I’m not really fully back to ‘normal’ yet, which is great.

Actually what seems to happen is I want to avoid admitting something is off, but then when I finally do, together with that the magicality comes back. This is really driving home the point, especially as I write this now, that sincerity is the key!

What is also different (as in not quite ‘normal’) is that I see that nothing has to happen in the external world for me to get back to feeling good. I wrote the following to Vineeto last night:

Today the realization has been that it simply doesn’t make any sense to feel bad – about anything, ever. What, really, is the point? It actually has no point at all. There is no “there” which feeling bad gets one to. It does not bear any fruit. It never delivers any of any desired goods. The most that can happen is you become illuded that you are accomplishing something, which when you snap out of it you realize you aren’t actually. It’s really a remarkable construct!! The only thing really holding it together is a belief that “it has to be this way” (well, I guess it’s something other than that as I still sit here not free yet :)). I suppose what I mean is that its only justification is ever itself only, it is only justified with reference to itself. Or better: ‘I’ am only justified with reference to ‘myself’. Or better: I am only justified with reference to myself (as I sit here not in a PCE :))

The most perverse aspect of it all is the utter resistance to seeing this, and the nursing of sorrow and malice to one’s very core and bosom, willfully fueling it and expressing it and imposing it on others – all when not only does it not have to be this way, but utter purity and perfection lies all around, that one can literally be swimming in!

It’s like there is no “stickiness” to ‘me’ anymore. In the past if I felt bad it always (or often) felt like an insurmountable obstacle, like the feeling-badness is some external force that is tangible and can’t simply be addressed directly. But now I straightforwardly see that it is entirely a choice, and not only that but there is no “consequences” as in “punishment” by some external or universal divine entity, for feeling bad! It’s not a morally bad thing to feel bad, there is nothing that it is other than what it is, namely, feeling bad, and that is something that I can simply choose not to do anymore by realizing it is silly!

It is really wonderful writing this, there’s this joyous and wondrous delight in doing so! Now the full flavor of that magicality is back and it’s a simple matter to see the way forward again.

I would say now the reason I stopped is due to not having fully processed the ‘unravelling’ of me at my core. I know now more than I did before, experientially, that I will have to disappear in my entirety. The prospect is fearful. However, I have the tools to go forward now – tapping into that magicality, and, seeing that it is safe experiencing it as I do, and once fully established then going forward, further, bit by bit.

Truly it is a joy to be alive!

2 Likes
183

On July 17th, at some time during the day, I noticed that the new way of being out-from-control was happening again. It has been consistent since then, just like before :slight_smile:

In hindsight it happened shortly after I was able to see that actual freedom was indeed as flawless and perfect and peerless as I thought it was. This allowed me to fully endorse my journey towards attaining that myself, and within a few hours I was out-from-control again.

The sheer level of refined purity, sweetness, intimacy and delight that is possible is quite astounding. And the degree to which I am seeing ever-more core details about the very structure of ‘me’, is greater than ever before.

It can be quite alarming to actually experience a powerful affective current movement as being just that, a movement that does not originate or end anywhere, but which can clearly curl in on itself so as to form what appears to be a cohesive entity (aka a ‘self’), yet is nothing but an illusion borne out of that movement itself. But the ongoing purity serving as a backdrop, allows me to not become distraught and panicky as a result.

I cannot recommend it enough. It appears to be the perfect staging ground to becoming actually free. What Vineeto wrote recently led me to realize this (emphasis added):

That is, I see now that the “like this” that I am living (further described as “the delicious, dynamic experience infused with ever increasing pure intent and experiences of sweetness”, which I can fully confirm from my own experience), is essentially a preview (albeit partial) of what actual freedom will be like.

As Richard wrote on February 1st, 2012 (curly-brackets added):

In other words, to be actually free is to be that pure intent, thus the purity and sweetness and deliciousness that are the way I am currently experiencing pure intent, is a preview of what existence will be when actually free.

I never considered that there was some continuity of the sort, I thought it was still there will be some big unknown leap at the end. And of course there is (I won’t know what it’s really like until I do it), but the gap seems to be smaller than I thought, based on that “live like this forever” from Vineeto’s recent report.

Earlier today another oddity occurred that I think was the same oddity that knocked me out of it last time. I was also half-dozing off and it’s like a weird blip after which it seemed like ‘something in the center’ was gone, but it was the same as before, clearly not actually free, and it seemed to affect the out-from-controlness somewhat.

I’ve come up with a tentative conclusion: that it is a “fruition” as I used to experience in my meditative days. There was some brief after-effect that seemed like a sense of euphoria or jubilation, which happened in both cases, and I remember happening after “fruitions” in the past. This serves as yet further evidence that meditative/spiritual paths are not only unhelpful for pursuing actual freedom but actively detrimental.

This time around I used a conscious willpower to not fall out of the out-from-controlness this time around, and I am happy to say I did not!

6 Likes
184

Exciting man, can’t wait til you cross the line… love hearing about the adventure, it’s motivating me to prioritise enjoyment and appreciation.

1 Like
185

Claudiu: Earlier today another oddity occurred that I think was the same oddity that knocked me out of it last time. I was also half-dozing off and it’s like a weird blip after which it seemed like ‘something in the center’ was gone, but it was the same as before, clearly not actually free, and it seemed to affect the out-from-controlness somewhat.
I’ve come up with a tentative conclusion: that it is a “fruition” as I used to experience in my meditative days. There was some brief after-effect that seemed like a sense of euphoria or jubilation, which happened in both cases, and I remember happening after “fruitions” in the past. This serves as yet further evidence that meditative/spiritual paths are not only unhelpful for pursuing actual freedom but actively detrimental.
This time around I used a conscious willpower to not fall out of the out-from-controlness this time around, and I am happy to say I did not!

Hi @Claudiu,
I am delighted to read that your meticulous and successful extraction from the Buddhistic Dharma-Overground practice has had such beneficial results, just at the moment when the beginning of an altered state of consciousness (“fruition”) was about to veer you off from the ongoing actualism process (being out-from-control).
I still vaguely remember one ASC ‘Vineeto’ experienced in ‘her’ early actualism years, which lasted for 2.5 days, brought on by prematurely going for extinction where the ‘self’ flipped from a too fearful emotion to its opposite. It is recorded here (V – Exploring Death & Altered States of Consciousness).
You did exceedingly well “to not fall out of the out-from-controlness”.
It is truly wonderful.
Cheers Vineeto

3 Likes