Felix's Diary

Journals
139

By far the biggest difficult I’ve had with actualism is the part that is the most important - feeling good. It’s quite a weird instruction to give someone “just feel good”. Makes it sound very simple and then in practice, it seems nigh on impossible.

You can do so much towards actualism without the feeling good part. You can really spin your wheels and live in total confusion - warping your experience and dismantling identity without a stable feeling good for it to all make sense and validate itself as a method. I’ve never given up though, which I think is important. I have experienced so much failure and yet always been awake or open to how I might be going wrong. It has helped so much having actually free people to look to as evidence that it’s possible.

Lately, feeling good is becoming like pressing a button on an oxygen tank. It has taken a damn long time to find any sort of button, but yet here it is, for anyone to find. It’s coming in waves, sometimes feeling good is dripping through, sometimes it’s like a flood. It’s so simple and yet it was so confusing to know what to do.

Feeling good does not come from my environment. In fact there is almost no correlation! I have learnt that lesson well and truly. You can feel good trapped on a plane or feel bad on a tropical island. You can feel good when a waitress scowls at you or feel bad whilst cuddling someone. What makes the difference to experience is if I’m pressing this hidden button in the psyche, which is a genuine emotional appreciation for this moment in time, no matter what is happening. It’s a hard button to find because you only experience the positive effects once you’ve pressed it. And furthermore, it’s not an actual button - that’s just a metaphor. The more you give to it, the more it gives back. But you have to make the first move rather than stand on your own tail.

So you can be sitting there feeling bad, and wanting to feel good, and just get absolutely nowhere. And maybe even get yourself feeling worse. It has taken a lot of determination to go through that, at times, gruelling and desperate process of figuring out what to do. Also, my way of doing things has been intense and cut-throat. Just basically giving up on family, friends, social life, exercise etc as crutches. Dismantling identity when I didn’t feel good yet. Basically going all in, in the hope that intensity would make the process work - but guess what - it didn’t, it just made me stressed and panicked all the time. I don’t recommend my approach but it’s just what I did, based on how I’ve “achieved” other things.

You really need to have a stable feeling good to make the process carefree, easy, fun and frankly, for the process to even work. Otherwise you might just get lost in being attentive, being rational/logical, being detached/repressed, and all the while having to deal with new feelings of despair, loneliness, fatigue, confusion etc etc, as well as the malicious and sorrowful behaviours those feelings create. All the while berating oneself for not figuring it out.

I think oxygen is an apt metaphor for feeling good. Once you have it you realise how little you had before - it’s so benevolent - like a restorative balsam. A lifetime of upset healed at once, and with enough left over for everybody to have. It’s a very simple thing and once it’s accessible it makes you realise how bizarre it is that people don’t feel good already. And how long one has spent not feeling good in the past. It really need not be the case!

It’s so simple.

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140

Very interesting and helpful read Felix.

One of my main issues in the past was that when not feeling good I was searching for ways to feel good. I was searching for “objective” reasons to feel good. It sometimes felt as persuading myself into feeling good. Sometimes it worked, but more then often it didn’t.

I was coming from the direction of why I didn’t feel good, why wasn’t I able to feel good, what was I missing, what is my limitation? etc. A major insight for me was that I discovered that I just didn’t want to feel good. Plain and simple. No excuses, no theories, no rational explanation etc. I just didn’t want to. Before that I had millions of explanations why I couldn’t feel good. The answer is that I can feel good, very easily if I want to, but I don’t want to. That insight saved me a lot of time in analysing “myself” before feeling good.

The second thing I want to mention is in relation to your oxygen switch. There was a time where I thought happiness, feeling good, felicity is an outside factor and I had to somehow introduce it to me, induce it into me, open myself up to it etc. For me that was pure intent. But later on I realized that this is just plain wrong. Pure intent is merely an orientation thing to me, but that “energy” is indeed inside of me. How could it be inside of me where I was corrupt to my very core? Well, it just is. I couldn’t understand the importance of felicity which Richard stressed so much. This word didn’t do anything to me. It was when I experianced it first hand from my very inside that it made sense. It is a quality of the self, an inside quality. I looked for the meaning of the word in the German language. Here it translates as “happy/lucky soul”. This is very much how it feels to me. It is me who is happy, not some outside factor. And this me being happy is the very diminishing of my bubble. And here I can just enjoy and appreciate what is on offer.

I wonder if you or anyone can relate to that.
That switch I can’t activate at my own will at all times however. I at least have to feel “okay” to skip the messy part and go directly into felicity and thus enjoy and appreciate this moment of beeing alive.

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141

Yes, and when that happens it’s because “I” get something in return… It is useful to try to observe what it is.

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Can you say more about this please, Miguel ?

BTW, Felix and Elgin that was very helpful, appreciate you sharing such valuable experiences.

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Felix, is that example of what “not to do” ,i.e. doing all these things without feeling good first ?

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Oh, something like what I described in Miguel (but you’ve already read it, @FrankN)

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Hey Elgin :slight_smile: By the way do we know each other or are you new to the forum? I don’t recognise the name.

I have had similar experiences to you - always supposedly wanting to feel good and never managing it - it just seemed impossible. I went more and more into my head about it, analysing things and reading and trying a million things as if this were some impossibly complicated mental landscape. The problem I think lay in my blindspot, and the blindspot of all people: the basic resentment of being alive.

I think there is a way to be really enthusiastic about actualism and really supposedly dedicated to it, without addressing the basic resentment (and thus getting nowhere fast). In that case the goal of being happy and harmless has been integrated into the social identity, yet emotionally the basic resentment still stands - hidden in the blindspot. So the person will say “I really want to feel good each moment again, but I just can’t manage to do it!” This was the case for me and I pushed myself to the brink of frustration as a result, and eventually had to admit total failure. My ambition was endless yet I could not get even close to being able to say I felt good.

Eventually I have come to locate “the basic resentment for being here” for myself, which was so much more impactful than simply reading it from Richard. Acknowledging the basic resentment is the moment when all the excuses (external reasons for why one feels bad, and imagined hopes for what will make one feel good) can be seen for that they are. I mean, even actualism can be used as a kind of escape - a hope for something better, in “another world”. That’s the exact opposite of wanting to be here - in fact it actively feeds resentment.

The actualism method really is about feeling good, wanting to be here, having fun etc. It’s no wonder identities like myself, who function psychologically in the exact opposite way, will find crafty ways to contort the simplicity of the actualism method.

The most important actualism quote for me, besides the method itself, has been the following:

Peter: As for ‘one’s grip one the method’, the main difficulty with the method is its simplicity and straightforwardness – denial and obscuration being the main tricks a social/instinctual identity employs in order to evade exposure.

That one gripped me :smiley:!

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I think this is an interesting point and it’s something I have thought about lots before. The way I am currently seeing it is that these dead-ends are somewhat inevitable and also in the long run they are useful.

It seems like Richard was able to jump right into a proper application of the method but he was a pioneer, he saw that the PCE demonstrated what he wanted to live and he went for it boots and all, and sincerely too.

I wonder how different it is for us being more like ‘followers’ in a sense. As in we find the AFT one way or another, and after a life-time of living in the real world where nothing is genuine, we habitually approach Actualism with the same mindset of merely looking to ‘tick some boxes’ and expecting a reward, and of course we soon find that Actualism does not work like that. This seeing in itself can be huge because it shows that Actualism is 180 degrees opposite to where I have been heading my whole life.

On top of that the identity plays the various ploys in order to remain unchanged so it seems like those periods of ‘getting it wrong’ can be a very necessary and useful precursor to finally finding that which is genuine. I personally see this sorta winding path as par for the course. Because at the beginning, when all I know and all I am is duplicity, how else could I interpret this new paradigm of Actualism?

Yet after each dead-end, my fundamental nature is demonstrated over and over, which allows me to start orienting myself in a direction which is genuine. Then with each experience of purity I orient myself more away from duplicity and more towards living that which is genuine.

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Totally agree! I have thought about this lately myself a bit too. Richard’s experience as someone who discovered this organically, and ours as “followers” who happened to find the website, is very different - in fact every person who encounters actualism is different in terms of the starting point.

However, the human condition is not different. So the interest in actualism, if it leads to genuine exploration of oneself, will then reveal the same fundamental problem at the core of human experience. And hopefully with a PCE demonstrate there is an alternative.

Ultimately the test is of being happy and harmless - that’s what has hooked me from the start. Richard claims and demonstrates that it’s possible to become happy and harmless, and to even live the perfection of the PCE, and then challenges us to do discover the same possibility. For someone like me that challenge was just irresistible. What’s the alternative? To not be happy and harmless? To suffer?

He got me :smile:

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148

I’m quiet new to this forum. I stumbled over it just a few months ago and signed in. I’m practicing actualism since around 2017/18 and before that I was into spirituality.
Nice to “meet” you Felix :slight_smile:

I can see me doing this from time to time. It sometimes feels like a someone is pushing, while the other one is standing on the breaks. It can still get confusing at times.

I inquired about resentment of being born, of being alive a few times in the past, but you brought up something quiet interesting: It’s so obvious, but still…the resentment of being “here”.
I don’t resent being alive, nor do I resent being born, but I sometimes resent being “here”. To still “have to do” this actualism-stuff, whereas I could be gone for good. So what I actually want is to be “there” = actually free. Which is…

Super helpful to point that out Felix. I’m most certainly “guilty” of doing this. I will look into this.

I agree. The most prominent points will pop up along the way for everybody I think.
Then there are individual cases which are very interesting to me. Sometimes I read things on this forum where I wonder what the problem is: “But, but that one is easy. I figured that one out within minutes a long time ago!” But a few minutes later I’m like: “How did he/she manage to overcome that issue so easily while I’m still struggling with it?” That’s what I really like about this forum.

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149

Last night I had an experience of starting to go into a peak experience directly from my ordinary state.

This is one of the few times this has ever happened.

I’ve found that even though lately I’m feeling good more often, I’ve had a lot of trouble with my nervous system. It’s like I’m always getting these little jolts of panic and such - and still having the urge to distract myself a lot.

But last night was different, I was feeling restless in bed and so I sat up and turned the lights on. I just sat there, still, refusing to move (psychologically speaking) and things started to change a lot. It’s like I went into that fear and it dissipated. I started to lose my feeling of personhood, and it became so much easier to be here. It was 2am so I had to go back to sleep but it was a revelation.

It showed me that there is no one here in this body. I am wondering if a lot of my day to day stress and fear is related to protecting myself from this fact. It’s like either I maintain this slight anxiety all the time, or I won’t be here. I think subconsciously I’ve been maintaining myself out of a fear reaction to the PCE.

There was an utter safety and relaxation that came about - showing me clearly just how unsafe I feel in the real world. Somehow the barrier between the two “worlds” just seems a lot less concrete - and going into abeyance looks a lot less impossible (which is the way I usually see it, as something that only happens under exceptional circumstances and with a lot of luck). The barrier to the actual world is only me - there is no “magic” barrier otherwise preventing me.

Based on this experience I can see there is a way to stop maintaining myself now, which has been hidden up until now.

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"It’s like either I maintain this slight anxiety all the time, or I won’t be here. "

Totally relate to this one haha…It’s actually so opposite - the actual world is the safe place, but since “I” have been forever living in the real world, it feels safer just because of it’s familiarity

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Thanks for sharing this Felix. I experienced something similar ( there is no one here in this body )
for a few moments a couple of months ago, and it felt wonderful and wonderful lol . But I had forgotten
about it until you mentioned it here. So I can rememorate this experience and relate to conclusions that
you have come up with. This was fantastic! :appreciation: And it make applying the method much more
meaningful and inviting for me.

152

In the resentment thread the other day, I talked about the importance of biting into this moment - in terms of an intention to actively enjoy. I’ve thought, talked and believed a lot about “active enjoyment”, including on this forum where I have advocated for others to attempt the same. Me and my theories :sweat_smile:.

I’ve started to seriously question these notions, as they just haven’t been bringing stable enough results. I manage to be relatively okay mood-wise generally (way better than one year ago for sure), and yet there is an underlying-dissatisfied-feeling-based self-questioning all the time: what am I not doing right, what do I have to do, why isn’t this working better, what piece is missing in terms of progress, am I sincere enough? am I naive enough? Why isn’t this working? etc etc etc. It brings to mind a desperate rat in a maze - hardly the picture of relaxation and ease.

So I’m starting to reflect, particularly looking at ways in which I might actually be putting a spoke between my own wheels with my conceptualisation and application of (…my conceptualisation of…) the method. Is my way of following the method actually keeping myself in the picture all the time, and in a non-felicitous way? Giving rise to the ambitious yet somewhat anxious actualist, who has a plan to execute an imagined ideal of feeling good each moment again, hoping so hard to control and achieve that, whilst never quite managing it?

I’ve been paying much more attention to how I currently feel exactly as it is (whether bored, irritated etc) instead of where I hope to arrive at (whether feeling good, happy, harmless etc); so current-time focused rather than chasing something beyond me. Often when I tune in to how I feel, I notice that in the previous moment I’ve been distracting myself or pushing the feelings away, rather than doing anything to adjust my experience. This is making me realise, there has been a lot of “fake it till I make it” in my process. I’ve been reluctant at times to acknowledge feelings and moods as they currently are, without immediately pushing ahead to try and feel good instead (often with not much success). I write positive posts here when feeling good, hoping that I’ve found “the secret”, but generally it does not last.

Since questioning my previous approach, and becoming more earnest in terms of how I feel in any given moment, I’ve been finding a new type of awareness taking place at times. It’s more open and less controlled compared to what I was doing before, yet the results are far better.

Things start to change from a feeling-based experience, to instead becoming about this exact moment of being alive, in a very HAIETMOBA way. I’ve asked HAEITMOBA for a long time now; but only in this way is it proving to be noticeably effective. The result is that the feelings drop or fade away, and I start to come to my senses in a way that’s effortlessly pleasurable (in contrast to previous failed attempts at sensuosity, which were neither effortless nor pleasurable). It’s like being on a different channel - yes there is felicity but it is more like a “third type of feeling”, as @geoffrey previously referenced, rather than regular feeling good. It’s hard to describe but there’s less sense of my felt presence than in regular feeling good.

Right now I can feel the sun on my skin, the wind blowing on my face and in my hair, and my fingers tapping the keyboard as I write. Cars are going past, leaves are rustling - in the distance there is the sound of plates being clattered in a local cafe. It’s fresh, and instantaneously continuous - and the burden of how I was feeling earlier is out of the way. It’s like the beginning of letting the moment live me, or the beginning of becoming the senses - there is a naïveté associated which seems more like a state of experience than a feeling per se. I’m not doing anything extra to elicit the ongoing sensuous pleasure. I notice my ability to express myself and formulate cogent sentences is much better, which was a noticeable feature of a previous peak experience.

It’s all so enjoyable to be here, even though I’m not “trying” to enjoy at all. The pleasure component arises of its own accord, expressing itself in each moment of sensuous experience. It’s unprovoked by any strategy, concerted effort or cognitive intervention on my part, either. There is a peripheral aspect to it, which does not endorse a strong sense of my own importance in the experience, despite the fact it’s out of the norm.

This is really changing my perspective or map of things - contrary to what I have believed in the past, there is no need to ‘prop up’ or feed this “feeling good” as a feeling state - how I have been tiring myself out trying to do that….This is a passive enjoyment if anything, extremely passive in fact - arrived at by deactivation of my typical feeling states. It’s anhedonic. Happening to me, but not from me or because of me.

I feel a light, unprovoked felicity within myself - an ease of being in this moment and the pleasant relaxation that it brings. This feels more like it…

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This is how the post had to be in content and form?

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Yes, thank you! By the way, not demanding this as a feature, but would it make sense to add a brief line of quoting when replying?

For example it took me ages to see you were replying to the earlier post and not my latest post. Just an idea

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Yes, it would, but Discourse included the feature of being able to click on this arrow-icon to display the post that has been replied to:

image

Also, it is the way to know that a post has been replied within a thread (using the Replay button of the post vs. the blue Replay button of the topic, at the bottom of the page).
But let’s try it and tell me if it serves the purpose you were looking for.

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Ok cool. Yeah I think the main problem is that people probably assume the reply is to the previous post - not questioning that it could be a reply to any post in the same thread. I reckon a one line lead-in quote would be cool if you want to try that.

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As a matter of fact, it is a problem of the so called flat thread vs. hierarchical thread forums.
You can read the reasons why Discourse adopted the former in Understanding and Using Discourse's Flat Threading - Meta - Rubin Observatory LSST Community forum.

So yes: I suppose at least one line quote would make those kind of replies easier to read.

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Hey Felix, thanks again for sharing your ongoing experiences with Actualism Application.
I can relate so well with so many of your statements, and this gives me a very reassuring
feeling about the process itself, and more importantly, it shows me the way forward and is
highly highly motivational for me. And, Felix, by writing so well and in such detail and honest way,
you are being the student and the coach at the same time not only for yourself but for the
others as well. Your efforts are much appreciated :appreciation:

So to recap on what your wrote:
1.) You acknowledge how you feel at the moment ( from moment to moment )
and this thins out the feeling state ( i.e. “me” )
which then leads to a felicitous 3rd kind of way feeling good
which can be enjoyed and appreciated on an ongoing basis !
Maybe you found the Wide and Wonderous Road :smile:

p.s. Can geoffrey or Srinath comment on this approach please!