FEELING GOOD ! The What, How, Where, When, etc. of It?

Actualism
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Let me take this all down a notch or two. If I may.

Richard has said that he has never written intending his words to be pulled apart in an academic way. So nothing I am saying is accusing him (or you) of lying.

In fact, it’s precisely the opposite. I take it to be an accurate report of how Richard (and you) experience yourselves.

My point was, and is, that if one isn’t experiencing the “choice” as described, not to worry! It’s enough to keep sharing on here, to keep reading, to keep trying in whatever manner works. My opinion that choice doesn’t actually exist, is an academic one. I often would describe things I do as a choice.

The point, and perhaps I was too subtle, is this;

If one can’t choose, that’s ok. Keep going anyway, absorbing the advice here, reading the AFT, otherwise building up the level of available information.

If choice is an actual thing, great! If not, so what?

The point of actualism isn’t to start believing statements about whether choice is a thing, but rather to start doing whatever one can to avail themselves of what is described.

I remember very clearly how in person Richard was perplexed by me continuing to feel bad, when moments before I had felt good. He had no issues with “telling me off”, I can assure you I spent the next twelve hours doing everything I could to live up to that challenge. Somehow, I did manage it.

However, can you see that it is casually linked? Should I tell myself off everyday to somehow recreate that moment?

There is something combative about implying that I am calling Richard a liar. I am not. I regard it as perfectly accurate description of his experience. Indeed, I can often describe my own experience in this way.
" I chose to read carefully and I chose to put it in action."

However, my account would be conforming to a nomenclature.

I don’t experience life like this. I experience is more like “stumbling forward” and somehow discovering something new at my feet, which is all shiny and novel.

I don’t choose for you or Kuba, or Henry of Miguel, or anybody else to post. Neither is it experienced as a choice to read it. I don’t experience it as a choice to action it.

What I can credit to reading more carefully is the embarrassing feeling I had re-reading my journal a few months back.

However, I am glad you are adamant that choice is actually happening. It’s not my intention to change your mind. It was my intention to otherwise “disarm” Rick’s objections.

I know Rick quite well, having spent many hours on the phone. My posts are expressly about how I experience what could be called “choice”.

There are a few points which I could otherwise discuss, but the main thing is that there is no accusations of anyone “lying” in what my opinion is.

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I went on a bit too much;

The point is, if Rick’s objection is that he can’t choose, then my solution is to stop trying to do something that isn’t working, and start finding what does.

The very fact Rick (and others) will read these words is, in my opinion, enough.

Post more. Open Up. Read more.

If, at some point in the journey, as @claudiu reports, everything is a choice, great!

In the meantime, post more, read more.

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This has got me eager to go down a rabbit hole now… :joy: Maybe I will start another thread.

But my reply above has made me think about how ‘choice’ is experienced for a ‘self’.

Because the fundamental issue is that ‘me’ being forever separated means that ‘I’ continually pervert the clear seeing of what’s what. What ‘I’ find is that whatever ‘I’ call ‘choice’ ‘I’ am always a step behind or a step in front due to the fact that ‘I’ am an illusion and ‘I’ am forever separated.

This becomes a little clearer when we think about what Geoffrey mentions in one of the zoom videos, that ‘he sees himself doing things’ or that ‘things are being done’ and yet at the same time he is making a choice to do those things is he not? And yet the doing and the choosing are no longer experienced through a lens of separation, for a ‘self’ however they are.

That separative lens of ‘self’ prevents the clear seeing of what it means to choose something to begin with. Although I am not sure if it is a ego/soul kinda divide or if as long as ‘I’ am a ‘self’ there will be some form of separation in terms of how these things are experienced. Because it seems that when in an EE for example, the doer is in abeyance and the beer is now operant, this experience is the closest approximation to choice being the same as the doing (that a ‘self’ can experience).

Like I said in the previous post that is a whole other avenue to go down lol but certainly very fascinating and somewhat relevant.

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I will comment a bit more on Claudiu’s use of Newton as an example.

Newton never discovered what gravity is. Or force for that matter.

He described how it behaves.

To this day, no one that I have watched or read can tell me what gravity is.

Newton was not lying. His formula of the square of the distance ( or whatever it is) works to put men on the moon and probes to other planets.

It describes the actions of gravity with incredible precision.

However, there is nothing in Newton’s work that could answer the question that bugged Einstein and others; what is gravity? Some mysterious force like magnetism?

So an accurate description of “choice” working in this way or that, hardly says what “choice” is.

Indeed, the metaphor of gravity is useful. It really doesn’t matter if one believes in it or not. Or specifically, believes it to be one thing or another.

It will work exactly the same.

It seems to me to be somewhat convolutional to argue a point that one must go from there being seemingly “no choice” to there being “choice” to in the end, “no choice”. :rofl:

Whatever is actually happening, is happening.

Again, in case some further reinforcement is required;

My experience is the more one posts and reads the better things become.

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I see – I was assuming that you considered the people who wrote the AFT site to be fully knowledgable on the topic. Therefore if there actually is no choice, they would know it, and the writing about there being a choice would be a convenient deception.

I see now that you just meant that they are mistaken. They think there is choice, and they wrote that, but actually they are wrong and there is no choice (according to you).

In which case I am happy to rewrite my paragraph as:

:wink:

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Although the time I have available at the moment is just enough to read all of you and I can’t meet Rick’s request…

…I am writing briefly to say that if the posts keep dealing with choice and decision making in general, maybe they should be moved to

Freedom is the absence of choice vs autonomy

…solving @Kub933 doubt on the matter:

You already did it! :smiley:

BUT I take this opportunity to quote with little effort these words of @Srinath from that topic, which might be helpful:

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150

Hmm, I think that my point is being lost here because I have an opinion about the nature of what is described as “choice”.

I don’t think “free will” is an actual thing. I think a “will” can be “freed” from the feeling being reality though. That isn’t the same thing. So we can talk about what a “will” is instead perhaps?

So I am clear, are you saying that it was important at some point before you thought you had a choice to investigate whether you had a choice?

If so, then that’s a significant thing for anyone to consider.

Or are you are saying that you are some point discovered you had a choice (without specifically investigating if you did or not)?

In which case I don’t think it’s a significant thing to consider.

It easy for me to read into your posts a combative tone, but it has always been your style to be direct.

You have already made it abundantly clear that in your experience matches up directly with Richard’s.

To otherwise mirror what I am reading as a challenge from you, can I ask when you plan on announcing you have become actually free?

From the tone, I can only assume is it without a doubt immanent. Surely with your experience matching so closely with Richard’s we have days at most to wait!

I find your posts to be needlessly combative about what is a more academic point.

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To save this being a drawn out affair, I do know what is possibly is going on as far as Rick’s objection to “choice”.

I however will leave it up to him whether he wishes to discuss that.

What you are seeing as an attack on Richard and Actualism isn’t that at all, at least not if what I have privately discussed with Rick is indeed the issue.

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Hmm so I think you’re saying your point is that if you don’t see it as a choice how to feel each moment again then it’s ok, do what you can keep exploring trying things etc. i don’t disagree with this. You are where you are, you gotta figure out what you can to go from there.

This is separate from whether it is possible to ever make the choice. You said you don’t think it really is a choice. I was just saying that luckily the AFT isn’t wrong about this and it really is a choice. At first I used the phrase “all a lie” which I think is what triggered the combatitiveness, but I wasn’t necessarily saying you were accusing Richard of lying. It could be all a lie because he is mistaken, for example.

Is it combative to point out that you disagree with what’s written on the AFT site? I don’t think so per se. It’s of course silly to just believe it. But also silly to avoid the fact that you disagree. There’s no moral judgement here though of you “should” agree.

Or you are saying you don’t disagree but you’re using the word “choice” differently than the normal sense?

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This morning while I was waking up it became apparent that this type of splitting was occurring. I ‘wanted’ to wake up, in the sense that I wanted to go to work and earn some money, but there was no doubt that I also wanted to stay in bed and sleep in for hours. In this situation I was aware of that occurring, but it’s the same me wanting to sleep in even if I never become aware of it, and just sleep in.

It’s convenient to claim that it’s factors outside of me, but no one and nothing else is moving my arms and legs for me or completely causing me to feel certain ways. In the end it’s just me. Who else could it be? There is no one else in this body than me.

It reminds me of something that occurred to me some years ago… there’s a colloquialism, “that’s not like you” / “you aren’t acting like yourself,” but isn’t everything you do by definition you? It’s just that it doesn’t align with the idea you have of yourself. The idea isn’t updated with the latest activity.

In the same way, everything we do really is us. This flesh and blood body, and then this psyche dreaming away. Any feeling is up to the psyche… no one else than me. No one else than yourself.

For what it’s worth –

RICHARD: ‘Tis not a [quote] ‘premise’ [endquote] that one can choose to be as happy (and as harmless) as is humanly possibly each moment again – it is experientially evident that it be possible – and the main thrust of the actualism method is to be [affectively] aware of the quality of such felicity and innocuity, via enjoyment and appreciation of simply being so delightfully alive at this very moment (the only moment which is dynamic), inasmuch the slightest diminishment thereof is unavoidably noticed as to occasion an immediate attendance to whatever caused that diminution[] and thus resume being happy (and harmless) forthwith.

It all depends upon whether one is going to continue to be a victim of one’s moods or a victor – or, in the jargon, whether one is going to take charge of one’s life, in this regard, or not – and, yes, that too is a choice.

Your felicity and innocuity, or lack thereof, is in your hands and your hands alone.

Richard is of the opinion that not seeing/experiencing the choice is up to being entrenched in victim mentality, and that choosing to take charge of one’s life is the solution.

For my part I can remember a specific day, long before actualism, when I decided to take charge of my own life, and it quickly became apparent how many of the psychological models were built on not having a choice at all - they were all convenient excuses I could use to describe how helpless I was, and how everything in the world had conspired to make me the miserable person I was. Having determined to become non-miserable, it was time to throw all the models in the trash heap. I didn’t know at the time, but that determination / choice is actually pretty simple. But I had to completely want it for it to be made.

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154

One more thing just thought of. I think all the actually free people and people with success with actualism report something along the lines of “if i could do it anybody can!”

Everybody intuitively feels less-than, that i can’t do it, I’m not well suited , missing some magic Ingredient etc. but that’s the whole point. This doesn’t disqualify you from success with actualism! It is rather because you are that way, that actualism makes sense to pursue. If you were already perfect nothing would need doing :smile:

So don’t feel disqualified …

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I went to bed last night with the thought, “what does Rick need, what does Claudiu need, what do I need”.

The answer was clear enough; freedom!

I could have been better that saying the statement “choice doesn’t actually exist”, because what is being called “choice” does exist.

It’s the nature of “choice” and how one arrives at “choice” which to me is the natural outworking of various factors.

Gravity exists. Clearly. It’s to this day still quite a mystery exactly how, although I haven’t been actively seeking the latest research on it.

Choice exists. It’s the nature of how one gets to this experience which I am thinking about.

To me, I have spent no time lately, apart from the science threads here thinking about choice (and quite a bit a time decades ago) I am quite happy to use the word to describe the moments is usually is used in. Because it wasn’t bothering me.

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I think it is worth saying that one can be accurately describing one’s experience, but be wrong about exactly how it works.

In many cases, it simply doesn’t matter how it works, the description is enough to put advice into practice.

Benjamin Franklin’s “discovery” of electricity is a classic case.

He accurately described the results of various experiments. So much so, development of electrical circuits used his descriptions to this day in “domestic grade” electronics.

However, he was dead wrong on the “how”.

The electrical DC current flows in the opposite direction to what he said it did. The charge is moving from the “negative” to the “positive”.

The cool thing is, a circuit will still work, as long as you keep all the “flows” consistent.

In “commercial/industrial grade” electronics, the circuits are labelled correctly. The labels are switched.

In modern quantum terms, there are no individual electrons, but an energy potential which travels both directions like a vibrating string. AC circuits are even more strange.

It’s actually not a bad metaphor for the way i view “choice” working. The impetus is not being generated via some act of will from a ‘being’. A change of mind, an action, can be experienced as a “choice” and can be treated/described exactly like that. In addition, it can be understood that there are a myriad of factors that that “choice” can be attributed too. To the point, there was no “free will”.

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I’d say it’s useful to get to a point where you can make a choice about how to feel, would you agree?

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I do agree. Just as it is useful to switch on a light and the light goes on.

However, I think it’s better not to be hung up on a point too. I am talking from experience.

I would object on many points for many years.

Blind Nature being the stand out. However, it wasn’t by academics that I got there.

What I was looking for was validation from others that it was OK to explore in a way I saw fit, but more than that, I was looking for a moment in which that thought could even occur to me.

So rebellion against an idea, was me being something of a adolescent seeker.

The issues of life really had nothing much to do with whatever objections I had.

Indeed, I am glad we have had the discussions here, as with all these topics something always happens.

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I think Geoffrey had something to say about how all his arguments with other actualists weren’t about the subject itself, they were for him

Edit: it was Srinath

I thought about all the arguments that I had with the actually free pioneers in the past, all the arguments with other actualists and realised that conflict is my very nature. The main reason I was arguing about various things was for myself. I gave not a hoot about the issues themselves. I was locked in the paradigm of belief, because I needed to be reassured and backed up. Both belief and disbelief had to be discarded.

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Yes!

Validation.

If I could time travel back to the yahoo list, when I first was objecting to being “rotten to the core”, my advice to myself would be “sure! Skip it, what is actually going on in your life right now!”

The issues that are really going on are not “macro”, it’s always very “micro”. The personal circumstances and feelings around different situations which are happening.

I remember very clearly that Richard in person was very quick to align with the objection and redirect it.

I said something about “I was brought up to save the world”, with zero hesitation, he said “you can save the world!”.

He was intent on getting through to me. The incident of him “telling me off” had context too.

He said nothing like that when I was talking about my brother who had died earlier in the year. His response was “It normal to grieve, it takes time”.

When Vineeto “threw her hands in the air” and gave up discussing something with me, he turned to her and said something like “It’s fine! I have been doing this for 25 years!” as she got up and walked away.

What’s the point? The specific feelings that generate an objection are there for reasons which often have nothing to do with the objection.

Remove the objection, and keep talking!

The “telling off” episode was specifically because he could see I was blindly (in his words), “Yes and Amen’ing” what Vineeto was saying.

So, are we to blindly agree?

Edit: that is not the question I want to end on.

Rather, putting aside the entire topic of choice, what is actually bugging @rick ?

What is going on in one’s life is the “meat and potatoes” of things actually affecting one’s “lot in life”.

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“I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” that’s amazing.

Yeah it can be slippery business having discussions with feeling-beings, we can’t even really trust ourselves to be completely sincere. Very strange. As always, it goes back to prioritizing what the vibe is ahead of anything. And of course one can only account for one’s own self.

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What I have come to appreciate about Richard is he never gives up on anyone. Even those trolls who had attacked him for 13 years, he would patiently pull apart the lies, and aliases and put it all back on the list for everyone to read.

To the best of his ability and growing experience, each objection was carefully explained, sometimes even pulled apart in no uncertain terms.

I actually liked @claudiu posting in the manner he did. A robust counter is great! Got me thinking harder at least.

There is an old proverb; “wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses”.

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Except here friends aren’t to be trusted either… to become free is something else entirely