@elgin
I don’t think I’ve welcomed you to the forum yet. So… welcome! And thank you for the quality of your contributions here.
About your missed ‘opportunity’…
Usually people underestimate the ‘pull’ that is necessary to self-immolate, they read something like “you have to want it like you’ve never wanted anything in your life before” and figure that what is needed is a tremendous ‘push’. So they go for it with all the will they can muster, all tense and with furrowed eyebrows, trying everything they can think of, thinking that they just need one second of success, one opportunity at the psychic gun trigger, one tremendous act of will… and either nothing happens, or most usually an ASC. ‘I’ was, for a long time, a big culprit of that attitude. I described it as running towards a wall and hitting my head, again, and again… I just had to run faster, I thought, hit the wall harder, and the wall would break. “You think I can’t do it eh, watch me!”
It seems that you’re not committing that mistake. Your description of the ‘pull’ sounds good to me. It might very well be that you’ve indeed had a ‘window’ there. But it might be that you’re underestimating the ‘push’ that is needed. Let me be clear, I’m not talking about some ‘act of will’ of the “tense and with furrowed eyebrows” kind, I’m talking about the “wanting it 100%”, the “going for it”, the “not giving up until it’s done”. In the same spirit of ‘daring’ that must have been present in your actualism for you to reach such a point.
In Craig’s report, you might remember he had decided to self-immolate during his lunch break, that day. But the lunch break was coming to an end, and it hadn’t happened. He came back to his office. How easily could he have been pondering what was ‘missing’, what he had done wrong, how easily he could have given up, content (and somewhat relieved) to have been ‘close’. But he wasn’t ready to give up. So he went for it with all he had, again, right there on his office chair. And it happened.
In my report, you might remember that at one point, in the wood, I saw the ‘veil’. There was an ‘opportunity’ there (and I seem to remember that Richard talks about such missed ‘opportunities’ of that kind). But there was “last second resistance” and the window closed. After, while coming back home, there was a gentle slope I could have taken, a quite definite tendency appeared to ponder on the missed opportunity, to start making theories on what was missing, to put things to rest until ‘next time’, with some relief. But I wasn’t giving up. I definitely wasn’t giving up. And it’s at that point that what might be called the activation of altruism came into play, and that it happened.
To be clear, the ‘pull’ is absolutely fundamental. People’s tendency (‘their’ tendency) to underestimate it is why it definitely has to be overemphasized. There has to be a connexion to pure intent of such a 'bandwidth" that the actual has to be right there, plain obvious and resplendent. But then it has to be allowed. It’s not just about waiting for it to do its thing. One might think that, of course, one wants it 100%, that it’s a given, and just sit and wait for that something ‘outside’ to do its thing - but there is in that attitude a hope that it won’t, a contentment with getting close (“am I not a good actualist, look how close that was!”) that you might see as quite obvious, if you look for it with sincerity.
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) preventing the simple / obvious choice.