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