And just like that - one of the central pillars, one of the load bearing walls propping up the entire construct gets chucked for being inconvenient. For being an obstacle, for getting in the way of that which matters more. It’s bold, heretical, iconoclastic. Audacious. Something there of the actualist spirit.
RICK:Yeah, so far nothing has worked. RICHARD: And that realisation (that despite the best attempts of many and various peoples over many and various millenniums, to bring about peace and harmony by many and various means, so far nothing has worked) is of vital importance as it efficaciously clears the work-bench of all accumulated detritus in one fell-swoop so that one can start afresh. Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 50
Well said. And then it’s a trip to see, to witness in real time, how even this redundant “me” along with this immediate experience currently unfolding in whatever variety of flavor or form is likewise the result of various factors lining up. And it will continue until those various factors line up no more. And that is all.
There is no need to worry, or be hopeful, or anything like working oneself up into some lather of desire. That is just ‘me’ doing what ‘I’ to best; arrogating experience. Desiring will happen, wanting will happen, even a lot of wanting will happen.
The moments happen, via all the factors, which will include moments of really wanting answers, really wanting chocolate yoghurt, really wanting it to all just end, really wanting for it to be Tuesday (because I will be with a great woman I met), really wanting to just chill out, really wanting to go to the gym. Really wanting to be somewhere else. Really wanting to understand actualism, myself, what the heck is going on!
There seems to be a threshold where what one may say one wants hasn’t been reached, and the actual doing (or “changing one’s mind”).
In which case, the cognitive dissonance of saying one wants something, and the actions not happening (if it were possible to start with), is replaced with the knowledge that if the factors line up, it’s going to happen.
Fortunately, as you pointed out Rick, we already have a desire to be happy. So, the process isn’t about the replacement of desire, but the gradual and sometimes sudden discovery that that happiness is free and available.
In the “automatic decision model” the very reading of these words has the potential to propel the individual into that happiness.
Richard talks about “reading with both eyes open” & “reading with one’s whole being”.
That is also automatic. The information that it is possible to do, can be a factor. For me, it wasn’t. I couldn’t deliberately “read with my whole being”.
However, that is an apt description of what happened when I read the posts by Josef, Henry and Kuba. There was the immediate and automatic influence of the words describing an action which I knew was possible (from experience). The mental and physical actions happened then and there.
I put the phone down. I sat with my eyes closed. I felt down into the feeling and thoughts about the topic. I felt and thought about the accumulated experience. The reality changed.
Wowww of all the things to cherry pick and reply to. And even ignoring the next sentences of how people explicitly give reasons for not wanting to feel good all the time.
It would have been more accurate to say “Hmmmm it more says that people say that they want it but [when you dig further they give reasons indicating they do not want it].”, . I could expand on the nuances of all this, but as you are dead-set on “disproving” actualism in general and Richard in particular, I don’t think this will change anything for you.
Incidentally do you ever wonder why this is your approach to actualism? Maybe because if actualism has been ”correct” all along you will have to admit to have been acting in an “incomprehensibly ludicrous, absurd, preposterous, unconscionable, inconceivable, outrageous” manner your whole life, and even more so after being exposed to actualism after which you can no longer claim ignorance?
I wouldn’t even put it that way. I do not and have never experienced a choice to feel either good or bad (desire: yes; choice: no). It is experientially evident that that option to decide does not arise for me. In my experience, feeling good or bad is just something that happens. Conditions and circumstances dictate the entire range of my affective state. Not saying the experience of a choice does not occur for others. It just does not occur for me, personally. Maybe one day it will. Maybe it won’t. How about yourself? Do you experience the ability to choose to be either happy or unhappy?
Yes I definitely do. Sometimes it requires a bit of digging and sincerity to want to feel good before that choice comes up as an option, though. It’s normal for bad feelings to occur & feel that I’m controlled by them, generally only once I’ve done a bit of investigation does it become apparent that there’s a choice I can make.
I think part of the choosing is deciding to even do that investigation too, it’s not necessarily a zero-sum game of 1-step deciding to feel good or deciding to self-immolate, there are all those other times when I’ve decided to investigate something, or decided to read on the AFT, which have contributed to a moment of being able to decide to feel good. And then there are all the misunderstandings about the sincere way vs. mistaken ways to feel good which can throw things off regardless of if initial desire is there or not
I think a big part of this is a moment where pure intent / memory reminds me that I don’t have to keep on going on whatever emotion I’m feeling. It happens pretty quickly now but there have been times in the past where it would take a long time. And I didn’t know it was even an option to ‘choose’ until after I had adulthood PCEs
Interesting. Would you say that the activity of digging and investigation and sincerity in order to want to feel good (so that the choice can eventually appear) is initiated by an underlying or fundamental want to feel good? Or would you say it is something else that prompts the initiation of those activities?
I also find those activities conducive, on occasion, to feeling good or feeling better. In my case, it does not cause a choice to arise. If I’m lucky, if the stars align and so on, feeling good or feeling better eventuates. Sometimes it just takes time for a period of feeling bad to pass. Like if I charlie horsed a limb or hit my funny bone, it will take a bit of time for the nerves to settle down.
But much like a charlie horse or hitting my funny bone, I do not experience feeling bad as a choice to feel bad. Do you experience feeling bad as a choice or preference? As in, “Oh, I think I’ll go ahead and feel awful today.”
Yeah I think it is an underlying want to feel good. I can understand clearly enough the general benefit of feeling good, and the senselessness of not feeling good, that it’s always there as a basic understanding.
That’s interesting that you don’t experience it as a choice. Are there other areas of your life where you feel like you have a choice? Is it just emotions that you don’t feel you have a choice? Where does your decision to investigate come from?
It’s nothing as conscious as that, but I think since it’s ‘me’ that is feeling bad, then I must be wanting to feel bad as a response to whatever situation. That part of me is clearly invested in feeling that way, because I’m doing it. It’s especially obvious when an investigation is not making much progress… that subconscious part of me is clearly very much wanting to feel bad. Or loving, whatever. It seems important somehow to me that I feel that way. And then the job of awareness & investigation is to take that apart and figure out where the holes in that view are.
A worldview/reality is like a default choosing. I’m choosing to have that worldview as opposed to seeing things another way. I always have the opportunity to do things differently. It just takes work sometimes
Yes, of course. I have the capacity to make the conscious choice to type the letter “Q” right now, for instance. I experience an ability to decide whether or not to lift my left hand right now. I can also whistle on command or opt to hold my breath for several seconds, etc.
(Although truth be told, the more I reflect at this moment on the nature of these decisions, and as I begin paying close attention to what is occurring while the decision making process unfolds such as to materialize this letter “Q” on the screen, for example, the weirder things become. I begin now to perceive and experience a distinct and unsettling inability to direct these decision making processes. Whether that be to initiate it, sustain it, or terminate it. There occurs this familiar event, this familiar thing, called a “decision,” but there is no one directing the process. It’s just materializing in a space that can be observed, but is being directed and shaped by forces that don’t appear to be at all under my individual control. To use an analogy, a very close analogy, witnessing this is as if I am simultaneously both the performer and the audience of an event. And then I snap out of it, like I just did now, and the appearance of choice resumes its familiar tone and shape, and I, as a decision maker, resume my post as if I had never left it.)
It is sometimes more practical for me not to think about it, else … well, I was going to say that things don’t get done. But they do. It’s just that, things get done in a less predictable manner. And the outcomes are less predictable. And I feel a bit safer, generally, with the predictable.
So yes, I experiences choices in my life. Emotions and passions are just not one of them.
Emotions and passions have always been more to me like physical sensations that are responding/reacting involuntarily to stimuli. When I bite into a burger, I can’t choose how it tastes. When I touch ice, I can’t choose to feel heat. When I see a sweet-bodied little floozy at the grocery store, I can’t choose not to desire her. It just happens regardless whether I want it to or not.
I’m just observing in good faith, Henry, for whatever it is worth, that you don’t seem as confident about whether or not you actually want to feel bad. You say “I think since . . .” and “I must be . . .” as if you are more speculating or deducing the fact, rather than firmly knowing it from experience. If the magic genie offered to grant you everlasting peace and happiness or everlasting agony and misery, would you really be so conflicted?
I am where I am, I can’t say I have all this pinned down perfectly. But I am interested in putting it together and seeing where it gets me. This choice business is interesting.
The self is a phantasm, whenever I’m looked at closely I slip away. And yet I keep believing in myself. And the phantom continues.
Since only ‘I’ can end ‘myself,’ and it’s a phantom seeming to engage in this familiar event, then we use what we have - what we are - until it’s gone.
My experience as well is that the initial moment of feeling occurs involuntarily. In my experience when the choosing occurs is in the next moment, when I’ve become aware that I am feeling a certain way. I know that it’s possible to feel otherwise, regardless the initial trigger. I can choose to continue feeling however about it, or I can choose to drop it.
I’ve also grappled with plenty of attempts to drop something, later finding that I wasn’t quite sincere enough in my wanting.
Gradually, the moment of awareness and thus choosing can happen quicker & quicker, until the emotion doesn’t happen at all. I’ve already decided.
And at some point even the ‘chooser’ goes away, which is something Richard describes. When the facts are clear enough, there is no choice anymore.
But until that point arrives, we’re stuck being this being who apparently (to us) is deciding things.
That seems to me the whole point. An apparent choice is available. Whether it is actually a choice, I think not.
However, for the sake of simplicity, it’s easy enough to call things a choice.
I think the main issue is whether one can make large changes of mood and feeling via will.
That has never been my experience. The trick is what Richard talks about with noticing the tiny shifts in mood. If these are ignored, then a bigger shift inevitably happens. Then a monumental tsunami of bad feelings is looming on the psychic horizon.
This reminds me of the success I have had in focusing on the feelings in thinking.
It’s really not difficult at all to notice the feeling tone of a line of thinking. There isn’t anything in one’s guts churning over, or some wave of hormones, or stirring of desire. Just the subtle “tone”.
The irritation in a thought. The hope in a thought. The resentment in a thought. Very subtle as far as feelings go. I mean if we have a scale from uncontrollable grief through to sublime euphoric bliss, the feelings attached the normal thinking are barely a blip on the scale.
So if a choice does exist, I would say it exists in the cerebral process. Once something is going full throttle in the limbic system, I doubt any choice is available.
Richard would agree. Why? He has described it. “Whistling on top of Mt Doom”.
Isn’t that a description of choice in one’s thinking vs the lack of choice in one’s soul?
My opinion is choice in general is an illusion. But colloquially, it’s far more descriptive of what one can do in the thinking self.
Luckily actualism is not all a lie and it actually is a choice! It would be devious indeed if all the reports and descriptions on the AFT were convenient lies to cover up what was actually the case, for the “sake of simplicity”.
But of course I understand why it doesn’t seem like a choice because it didn’t seem like a choice many years ago for me, either.
And it’s not just the choosing what you do after the initial feeling that is a choice – the initial feeling was also a choice.
I think the reason it doesn’t seem like a choice is because the normal way of experiencing being alive is ‘me’ as ego/thinker that’s sitting in the center of my head, controlling ‘my’ arms, listening through ‘my’ ears, etc. Feelings happen to this ‘me’, as ego — and this is actually accurate! Because ‘me’ as just the ego part is not my feelings — ‘me’ as ‘soul’, which comes before/is more fundamental than the ego, is what is the feelings.
The trick is that it is not ‘me’ as ego’s choice, how to feel – it is ‘me’ as soul’s choice. To the ego I have no control over it at all – the feelings just happen to ‘me’, and now ‘I’ have to deal with them. The guy cut me off in line, now there is this anger arising, now I feel like I wanna punch him, but I have to not do it cause then people get mad at me or I’ll get in trouble… and then ‘me’ as ego has to suppress it.
Or I see the floozy at the grocery store, now I feel this burnin’ in my loins, my heart rate quickens, I wanna go over and talk to her and do a lot more than that actually, but now I have to keep it in my pants, deal with these sensations, not get in trouble w/ my spouse etc.
So if you stay at this level of being the ego then indeed there is no choosing how you feel. You just have to work around it, avoid situations where unwanted feelings are triggered, etc…
But then maybe you can start to see that when you feel a feeling, that some part of you actually wants it… protest as you may, when you see that floozy you maybe really wanna do those things to her you imagine you do… you certainly ain’t feeling that way cause someone else wants to do those things to her.
The insight is seeing that I am my feelings and my feelings are me. It’s not just that I am this ego/thinker… on a more fundamental level, I am those feelings, I am the feeler/the soul, with the ego something ‘on top’ of this. And this isn’t a premise or belief or a construct or a narrative or a worldview, it’s actually the case! It’s the way ‘I’ in specific and feeling-beings in general are ‘set up’.
And if you stay at that level of being the feelings… you will see it is actually and straightforwardly a choice how you feel. It’s not a trick or a deception or a convenient simplification, it’s straightforwardly what is the case. Even though it doesn’t seem that way now! When you finally do get the experience of seeing things at this level then you look back and see it was the case all along, it has been my choice all along – it’s just that I didn’t see it that way.
To use Newton again, Newton saw that an object keeps moving until something else acts upon it. This is totally contrary to everyday experience. “But everything I see always stops, sooner or later, if nothing happens to it.” It is easy to think there’s some intrinsic ‘stopping’ that is how objects move, or falling, etc. But Newton was right – it’s just that there are usually confounding factors like air resistance, friction, gravity, etc. So it’s initially hard to see that objects keep moving until acted upon. But then once you get it, you look back and see it has always been the case.
Now in terms of the initial feeling being involuntary – indeed it is to ‘me’ as ego, but the other thing is to ‘me’ as soul, it is often simply a habit. Do you choose to brush your teeth every night? Well, you don’t really think about it, you just do it cause you always do it. Much of life is like this, because things are much easier that way. You don’t have to make the decision every night to brush your teeth – you just coast on the habits formed from the decisions in the past. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t your choice to brush your teeth this night. Of course it is. It just might take more energy than not brushing your teeth, cause you have to think about it, decide not do to it, etc. So just because something is habitual doesn’t mean it isn’t a choice.
Likewise with say seeing sweet-bodied members of the female sex. It might be a habit to intensely scope them out and desire them until it’s hard to bear it anymore. This will mean there is a habitual (not involuntary) desiring of them whenever one sees them. It may take effort to break the habit. But it doesn’t mean it’s not a choice. It’s just a choice that ‘I’ as soul have made, many times in the past, and now it’s a habit, and now it will take some effort to break the habit. But it’s still a choice
A certain way to make sure you never change though is to never question the default enough to see that it is a choice…
Yes what a brilliant summary, this was exactly what I was thinking too, it is fundamentally down to the split as you mention @claudiu
It is also what I have been chipping away at lately, no longer splitting away where 1 part is intellectually trying to control the other as this does not work. Experiencing ‘myself’ at the core is seeing that it is ‘me’ that is behind it all.
I think it might be useful to contemplate the fact that all the socialisation and conditioning, everything that ‘I’ experienced prior to actualism developed a habit of doing exactly that - splitting and controlling. So that in itself is a huge habit to become aware of and progressively stop. Often that means the first thing ‘I’ have to do is simply become aware of and observe all these things that ‘I’ am habitually driven to ‘be’. To really see this is to equally see that those habitual emotional reactions are indeed silly and so the choice to feel good happens of it’s own accord as a result of the seeing. Yet who is it that is deciding to walk down a different path as a result of the seeing - ‘me’. Not just the ‘ego’ but ‘me’ as a whole, then the choice is equal to the doing, it happens now which can give the impression of no choice ever being made but that’s a whole other discussion I guess
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.
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!
This has got me eager to go down a rabbit hole now… 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.
