I’ve been focusing on PCE walks for ages - but what about just feeling good at the most basic level. That is a better goal, because without feeling good a PCE isn’t going to happen. Right now I’m on a “PCE walk” and I feel good, and that’s already an achievement I can pat myself on the back for.
I’ve not been giving myself the stability (through feeling good) to then be able to explore further without getting lost. Feeling good is the rope to follow .
The door to feeling good is back open!
After the last PCE, it’s almost like I crumpled up like a dying spider once I came back. Seriously. Like I started clawing my nails so deep into being that I could not figure out what was happening.
Something really just hit me about feeling good yesterday - I can’t remember the wording Richard uses - something about experentially drawing a line under feeling good or something like that (can anyone remember the quote? 
- pinning it to the mast or something? Haha ). This was somehow very deep, like a deep “realisation” that feeling good really is the answer.
It’s like this whole portal has opened up now. Everything that seemed impossible yesterday seems possible today. I had an EE type experience earlier this morning and there is a great excitement within me now - like I can see feeling good in the world around me. Im no longer projecting my usual feelings. Im just open as anything, and letting the senses sense.
I cannot control this. Nothing that has happened so far has been under my control. I feel so drawn to feeling good I’m like a moth to a flame. Everything just looks amazing.
These crazy tangents are liking exploring the landscape of awareness, deep sea diving.
I am spotting a lot more in my inner workings that maybe I never gave much attention to before. The current time awareness still with affect in play throws up some weirdness too at times.
As I said, I noticed like two me’s having a conversation at times, but also there is just the one me, narrating, like I am David Attenborough, narrating my life. “And now the homosapien is tapping on the keyboard, and now he is trying to explain how this narrator works in himself to convey the absurdity of his own inner dialogue. Oh and his nose is itchy, he is going to scratch it.” I don’t quite talk in the third person, but it is still absurd. Like I have to mentally articulate and log everything that I do, observe or realise.
If your two selves start arguing heatedly and yelling at each other to shut up as it happened to me, I can try to locate and introduce you one of my old psychiatrists. But until then you are fine. 
Now I want to know more lol.
How sweet of you lol. I will keep that in mind 
I am hoping my days of needing mental health help are over lol.
This post isn’t designed to sound cryptic or anything, though I imagine maybe it would.
I want to make a few notes:
getting out of the way is the only way to feel good. I have experimented a thousand ways and it is the only thing that works. There is only one way to feel good in my opinion, a way that ‘I’ am extremely reluctant to choose.
only that sincerity or that understanding^, of my own suffering, is what seems to allow me to penetrate beneath the usual feeling of being. Practising self awareness etc as I’ve practised for millions of hours does not do the trick. Awareness is not enough - and neither is simply wanting to feel good - because there in that there is no admitting of one’s own nature. Whereas actually truly going into oneself, into the cause of suffering, becomes the door to actually getting out of the way. Only then does it become clear what it means to be naive.
I am starting to truly explore this route because I’ve come to see that there is literally no other way. It’s not my “burnout” and it’s not my personality and it’s not ADHD and it’s not my life situation that’s the problem. The problem goes so deeply to the core of my own functioning that it’s the last thing I am willing to see. But by exploring every dead-end eventually it seems to open up a new possibility
i go through a kind of process to arrive at this seeing, which is what seems to unlock this hidden mechanism. The sincerity/key thing finally makes sense.
The progression starts with my typical everyday suffering and then eventually leads to a deeper psychological journey.
Something like:
suffering → distraction → desperation → awareness → sincerity > single-minded determination → innocence → wonder
^^^^
This approach is what allows a seeing into ‘me’ - to actually see those ripples which are otherwise completely hidden. Surface-level awareness, no matter how diligently and persistently practised, will not result in “being the key*“
*without which the actualism method is extremely difficult and in vain
Not sure what I was smoking when I wrote the above sorry 
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I’ve had some kind of reckoning week with actualism. Sincerity has catapulted me into a deep determination to feel good. I’m suddenly way more…factual about things. It’s much easier to feel good.
By being factual I can look clearly at the nature of my experience. I can see that I am my feelings, and by looking over and over I can see clearly, without any personal judgement, that all there ever is in me is resentment in some form or other. And I can see there is only one person who can fix this. It all looks so doable, and so commonsensical…
I’m no longer scared to look - and no longer scared to feel. I can feel myself fully, without dissociation. And I’ve stopped judging myself as a failure every time I don’t feel good. Let’s just be factual about what we feel. How about that?
This morning I determined that the human condition would just keep pulling itself back in. That nothing else will work except for me to choose to change, and choose to feel good each moment again.
I’ve committed to that. I’ve thrown off the swaddling clothes of resentment and cynicism that I was so wrapped up in. I feel good. The world looks colourful and bright, music sounds amazing - I don’t feel in control. I feel naive; like I can genuinely trust this universe to take care of things.
Also - for once I don’t find fault with what is written on the actualism website. How could it be clearer?
Of course the human condition will pull actualist concepts into itself, into its misery - and make it something to be bored with, frustrated with, defeated by.
I’ve struggled with all of this stuff. Nothing has created a turnaround like being completely sincere about how I feel and going from there. By finally giving up on blaming others, or situations, my body or even my personality or upbringing, for how I feel - then it becomes obvious that the problem is truly me at my core.
It’s very freeing to stop blaming external factors for how I feel. If how I feel is not the fault of external things, then it means I am also not reliant on situations or people in order to feel good either. Then suddenly it’s in my hands, in this moment, and I’m not a victim of the HC any longer.
Im finding a big component of feeling good over a sustained period of time (e.g an entire day) is the sensuosity part. This is important if I don’t want to have a high of “feeling good” that goes away again. It has to be sustainable.
Once Im in a decent mood, by tuning in to my environment (including what I feel) I can start to take pleasure in what is happening in the physical world as a sensory experience. Personally I remind myself of PCEs or of Richard saying the universe is perfect and not built for humans to suffer - just helps avoid falling back into helplessness.
At first everything looks and seems normal but as I start to tune in to what is happening, away from the usual neuroses of life, then I can start to appreciate more. Once a bit of enjoyment is there it makes it easier to appreciate. R&V once told me appreciating the initial enjoyment (and each feeding into the other) is what allows a PCE to happen.
Rn I can feel the enjoyment of being here building, but it’s really sustainable - not like a high that I’m anxious will go away. It’s quite still and serene, because I’m not making waves affectively any more.
—-
Speaking of anxiety - something thing to watch out for is if HAIETMOBA causes anxiety (which I know realise has been the case for me in the past). Is your first impulse to feel guilty or afraid that there’s a feeling there? Or like you already failed because you feel?
Well you didn’t haha. In fact the opposite. You have to be willing to clearly acknowledge how you feel. You can’t steer yourself in an affective sense if you don’t have your hands on the wheel to begin with. Feeling what you feel without too much judgement is so important.
Ah nice I realise this is what I have been doing recently when I was driving. Enjoying and appreciating feeling good, and it builds on itself.
It’s like having a delicious meal, there is the experience of the taste buds being stimulated, the colours, textures etc and then on top of that there is the enjoyment and appreciation of the sheer fun of getting to do the thing!
It is like I am savouring the fact that I am feeling good and this savouring is the very enjoyment and appreciation.
Actually I really like this metaphor, to want to savour something is to want to enjoy and appreciate every bit of it!
Although gotta watch out for shades of gratitude or desperation seeping in.
Tip of the day:
When you feel good - you want to keep it going. This is key. Enjoy and appreciate each moment again.
It’s much easier to keep feeling good (by enjoying and appreciating) than to get back to feeling good after being triggered. Much much easier.
If you feel bad about something, realise how it feels - how detrimental it is. Next time you feel good, look back at what it was that you were triggered by. Are you really going to let yourself “go there” again?.
The thing is that when an emotion triggers you, it’s because you thought it was justified at that point. Once you feel good it’s easy to see that was just a powerful illusion.
Once you are feeling good and can see that negative feeling/belief pairing wasn’t justified or valuable - in fact it was detrimental - decide that you’ll never let it happen again.
Feeling bad happens when you think it’s justified to feel bad - and so you are willing to give up enjoying and appreciating in order to let that belief speak.
I’m writing a lot, but things are progressing so well I’m inspired to write and share.
I feel so good that I’m just crying with feeling good right now. You can cry and feel good at the same time haha. It’s such a relief I can feel myself just healing and healing every moment of the day . Also it’s so easy and simple to apply the method 
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I honestly can’t even understand what I’ve done the last few years. How did I make it so hard when it literally isn’t. I think my main issue was running away from the brutal emotions I was feeling - it felt like stress was going to kill me - and as a result not being in a calm enough state of mind to get appreciation up and running even in a gentle/mild way. Gentle/mild appreciation is enough!
The key thing is to be in a half decent mood already, and then decide that you will appreciate this moment and keep that going. It’s like an ongoing endorsement of this moment - being mindful of the fact that certain triggers might cause you to deviate - don’t let them. It’s up to you and no one else if you decide to stop appreciating this moment.
I think you have to want it with all your life, to not feel bad. That takes the sincerity to understand the human condition in yourself, without judgement, obfuscation or hubris. Maybe it takes pain and suffering and the “drama you had to have” to get to a point of realising that how you feel is the definition of your experience of life.
I wish I could find words that were different to the website!!! I’ve always wanted to kind of disprove the website and find the “real” secret of making the method work. And here it is working in me exactly as advertised.
There are two things that dawned on my last weekend.
being alive is its own thing.
being conscious is it own thing.
The later requires the former, and the former doesn’t require the later.
That is, as my FWB friend said when I talked about it; perhaps consciousness is a by-product of intelligence.
Which means it’s actually a free ticket.
The drama is a reflection of natural processes, which when no one is conscious of them, cause no suffering.
The conscious awareness of natural processes somewhere along the way involved itself and incorporated a ‘self’.
Never required.
A vestige, of a by-product.
Is this relating to stuff Ive said in my diary? Can’t say I follow the point you are making there Andrew
This reminds me of Richard mentioning to Vineeto in the DVD - “It’s that easy and it’s that difficult”, although he is talking about self immolation but I’ve found it similar with applying the method.
Similarly Peter mentions in the virtual freedom DVD that looking back now he doesn’t understand what all that resistance to feeling good was all about! Yet when the drama was playing out it was all so very substantial.
I find it funny sometimes, yesterday for example I found myself swimming in purity one minute, where it’s all so easy and from there thinking ‘how could this ever be difficult’, then a few seconds later momentarily drifting back into some drama and somehow forgetting all that I was experiencing just a moment ago haha. In that instance seeing the shift was enough to get me back towards enjoyment and appreciation but it’s a funny thing that happens. I always think this shuttling from the depths of ‘being’ to purity is like this dementia like condition - of continually re-discovering that all is well after all.
This has been my experience for almost one week now. Due to me not being able to compartmentalize well, the strong connection to pure intent has weakened. But I still have a weak connection. The signal still comes through. And as long as maintain that connection, I notice the shifts early and go back to enjoying and appreciating (at a minimum) quite easily. Personally, I go back by pressing the button to reconnect, waiting for the connection to take hold and then get back to E&A.
Right now I’m in a state of much deeper awareness like I remember from one particular EE/PCE.
I can feel that awareness-wise I’m finally ‘on top’ of me (almost no dissociation) - whereas usually it’s always an attempt to control myself against the very strong power of feelings. It’s like I’ve been actively running away from this state.
I feel more calm and stable right now than I’ve done in a long time.
It’s so weird because from here I can say - wow this isn’t so hard - why have I always been running from feelings? It’s so nice when everything gets this still - especially my brain.
Usually my brain is like a torture machine lol. And following the actualism method has felt like having to control or battle this BEAST, and lose time and time again.
I actually think I do have a problem with the actualism method. I actually want to take back whatever I may have preached about the actualism method.
Of course - I feel good now - and it makes sense to keep this going. But this state is particularly naive and there is a high degree of awareness going on - to facilitate that feeling good.
I think at this point telling regular people to feel good each moment again is setting them up to fail basically. Maybe that’s the point - by having this impossible goal the feeling being eventually has to acknowledge that it’s impossible without really going deep on naïveté and awareness.
A lot of it depends on where that person is at, which aspects of the actualism website they have latched on to in particular, how they interpret actualist nomenclature and what psychological difficulties they come up against.
I’m not saying the AFT info is poor or advice/coaching from AF people doesn’t help - but I feel like there must be better ways to get people to understand what one has to do. Of course there may be idiosyncrasies about my own psychology/personality and/or my approach/interpretation of actualism that come into that. Cunningness may also come into play -
I’ll see how it looks retrospectively, later.
For example I’ve always tried to just enjoy and appreciate - but have definitely not put enough attention on being my feelings (and developing apperceptive awareness) to facilitate that. Now that I think back to one PCE in particular (the ‘bubbles in my coke’ one) - it’s so obvious this is what I had to do. Repeat that.
Ultimately - at this point I trust my own intuition - and see that the only progress I can make is on my own. This has taken my application of actualism from an ongoing failure to align with ideals and behavioural standards, to finding a way that works personally and makes me more deeply motivated to change.
Post script:
The key thing seems to be that it goes from a surface-level application of the method (which is no match for the instincts of this body), to something that becomes much more fundamental and changing at a deeper level of experience.
It could be that my ambition, determination and drive (plus survival instinct and whatever else) have kept me on that surface-level - as if this were a rational exercise and becoming free was just a real-world goal to achieve. Ultimately that has just put me up against my feelings time and time again - only to lose. Whereas it’s become clear enough now that that has not worked, and that failure is giving me the courage and motivation to go deeper and discover the solution to the human condition for myself - not because I read it from a website or someone told me to do it.
It seems that that more fundamental awareness suddenly opens doors that were tightly closed before and clarifies what actualism is conveying.
I found this part particularly interesting, could you expand on what it’s like to be your feelings and how it differs from what you were doing before?
Before, it felt like it was me against my feelings - having to employ this method of feeling good come what may DESPITE the fact that the never ending cycle of feelings and instincts would continue. As if I had to do all this work to keep getting back on track, all the whole feeling guilty about my inability to stay on the wagon. This phase lasting 3-4 years has been very painful. Maybe on the other side it will look like I was resisting pure intent. From this side it looks like I just didn’t know what to do.
By being my feelings - I stop making an enemy of these feelings. I integrate them, I absorb them. Then they are not powerful at all.
What I’d recommend is just going somewhere and sitting down, and seeing what comes up. This will likely be painful - especially if you wisely choose not to distract yourself. Aren’t we all just distracting ourselves all the time? So don’t do that - face the initial uncomfortableness of it. What I find is that by doing so, those feelings start to yield. It will no longer feel like you are being run by your feelings - it will be clean and like you are on top of your feelings. Allowing myself to be fully aware of feelings without opposing them. This should result in feeling good, without trying to feel good as an active method. Needless to say the point here is to be aware of feelings which are operating (unlike mindfulness). And because it feels good to be aware ongoing, with all these resistances simply folding, you can then also trust awareness, ongoing, to steer experience.
My problem with the current communication of the method is that it purports that “feeling good” each moment again IS the method essentially - rather than a result* of the method (which is awareness/attentiveness based). I disagree with this ”actualism lite” presentation of actualism - like something you just do on the train on the way to work. Everyone wants to feel good each moment again, and a commitment to have that be the case won’t work at all, in my opinion. In fact for me that only exacerbated my stress and anxiety - because my strong desire to feel good was constantly at odds with what I was experiencing. Whenever I felt happy or good by coincidence, I’d latch on to that as being a successful application of the method - write a post even lol - but I could not maintain that.
The reason I think “feel good each moment again”* as a method in itself doesn’t work is because it easily becomes an attempt to control how you feel - which is a losing battle. It doesn’t point to the penetrative and centralised awareness which actually does remove the barriers to feeing good.
I know there are other aspects of actualism that do point to what I’m talking about - being your feelings, awareness/attentiveness, naïveté etc - but the feeling good thing is touted as being the central method that overrides everything else (including asking HAIETMOBA). There may be reasons why it’s presented in this way - differentiating actualism from spirituality for example - nevertheless I think it’s counterproductive for those who are trying to do this.
It feels so so good to have the feelings and instincts out of the way. I think there needs to be more practical talk about how that’s actually done - rather than saying it’s just about sincerity or wanting to feel good (which I personally don’t agree with).
To me trying to do virtual freedom in daily life means you are never being deeply aware enough as you need to be to make this work. Of course once you have that awareness operating and feeling good is truly WORKING, you can apply it each moment again. Doing nothing is a great litmus test for whether you are feeling good or not.
Hope that helps!
*I’ve made one edit to this like a week later