Josef asked:
Before answering your specific query, I will answer the general question of “What to do next?”, regardless of the specifics.
My answer to that general question would be: do everything that is humanly possible to enjoy and appreciate being alive as much as you possibly can.
When you do find yourself enjoying being alive, to whatever degree or in whatever form – whether it is a basic feeling good / generally being in a good mood, or having fun doing a particular activity or socializing with a particular group of people, or having an EE or an IE or a PCE – then consciously and deliberately contemplate on the quality of this enjoyment. Is it not wonderful? Is it not delicious in the very experiencing of it? This appreciation of the enjoyment is vital as it is easy to forget just how much better enjoying being alive is when one is enjoying being alive, because all those past slights and hurts have by then already evaporated. This conscious appreciation of it will drive home the point that it is so much better to do so and thus provide the requisite sincerity and intent to go further.
From there you can then make the decision to make enjoying and appreciating being alive your life’s purpose.
Once this dedication has been established, you will then see that any questions about what to do or try next become simple, straightforward, and matter-of-fact, that are easily resolvable via experimentation. In other words, you have your goal – to enjoy and appreciate being alive. You decide to try an approach and then try it. Then you can reflect on whether it worked. If it did, you keep doing it – if it didn’t, then you try something else.
This will eventually allow you to answer and question about any specifics, such as, should I go “deep into investigation?” or should I “us[e] investigation as a tool at all?”. You merely try it and see whether it works, and more detailed than that: does it work all the time? Maybe it only works in certain circumstances or certain situations, etc. You are ultimately the best person to determine what to do as you are the only one that is with yourself 24/7, that knows your most intimate thoughts and feelings, and thus you are uniquely equipped to put in the requisite energy to answer this and any other questions about your psyche.
I answered your query that-a-way first to highlight the “wide and wondrous” nature of the way of being alive that has come to be known as “the actualism method”. Now, to the specific query:
I would say, keeping the above in mind, that the nature of the relation between these two things – establishing a connection to the purity of actuality, which connection is termed “pure intent”, and using investigation as a tool – is not one of precedence, such as do A first and then B.
Rather, I would say that allowing pure intent to flourish is more akin to an overarching goal-plus-way-of-being-alive, intimately and intrinsically tied to enjoying and appreciating being alive. For the actualist that does not yet know the flavor of this magical ingredient, they would be well-advised to, when feeling particularly great / enjoying and appreciating being alive to a particularly delectable degree, contemplate, look out for and find that purity, so that they can establish a connection to it sooner, rather than later – as that connection makes everything that has come before far easier and allows one to go far further than otherwise. The gold standard, the most sure-fire way to do this, is of course to have a PCE and firmly plant a flag in that experience, unraveling that golden clew as the PCE fades off, such as to allow one to rememorate it later and re-establish that connection if it has been lost. That being said, it is now the case that having or remembering a clear PCE is no longer required to establish this connection.
Thus for the actualist that already experientially knows and is familiar with this magical ingredient, the obvious thing to do seems to be to rememorate the PCE / rememorate that purity, as it should be easy to do so. And if it isn’t, then I direct them to the advice above, to rinse and repeat until it is.
Now as to investigation – rather than this being an overarching goal-plus-way-of-being-alive, it is rather a tool to get there. If one has lost one’s connection to the purity, and can easily get it back – then it is sensible to just do that first, before investigating, as it will make investigating easier. But if one cannot easily get it back, or has never gotten it in the first place, what is one to do?
The answer is the same as that which I started with: “do everything that is humanly possible to enjoy and appreciate being alive as much as you possibly can”. And then, from there, “when feeling particularly great / enjoying and appreciating being alive to a particularly delectable degree, contemplate, look out for and find that purity […]”.
What role does investigation play in that? Essentially the same role it plays as when one does have that connection established, namely: as a tool to facilitate consistently enjoying and appreciating being alive.
In other words: if it works for you, if you find that investigating does help you on your way towards actualizing that goal of enjoying & appreciating & from there establishing pure intent, then it certainly makes sense to do it. If it doesn’t work, if you find yourself spinning around in circles and not getting anywhere with it, then it would seem sensible to take a step back and take another approach.
Also rather than thinking of it as an overall “do it or don’t do it in all cases”, in my experience it’s more of a case-by-case basis, or a matter of where one is already at. If I am feeling upset or paranoid or terrible, “investigating” is usually nothing of the sort, rather, in hindsight I would really be fueling my upset/paranoia/terribleness with thinking that went around in circles, rather than fruitfully getting to the bottom of it. It does tend to work much better when already feeling good. But this is my experience, it may differ for different people.
Personally, I have found investigation to be most impactful when I find myself noticing a pattern that I get up to, which brings up a curiosity as to why do I do that particular pattern of behavior/thinking/feeling? Once that curiosity is in place, together with a motivation (to improve my quality of being alive by getting to the bottom of it), investigating tends to be rather effective.
Cheers,
Claudiu