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 
.
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…