I’ve started embarking on the “PCE walk” again - I think it’s been years since I was going that route emphatically.
I’m in a different position now, so it was a really interesting experience.
I’m going to start at the end, how I’m feeling now, and work back.
I’m currently experiencing a sensuous anonymity - much less in the way than my daily self. Awareness is dipping a lot deeper now, showing that the “shell” of me is wayyyyy more empty than I thought before.
My current “day to day” state is somewhat like - “ok I’m doing all the right things, im not chastising myself, im not pushing on experience, im not escaping, im not dissociating” - but still there is this sense of existential being mucking things up. A murkiness of fluctuating mood states that is definitely not as much attached to real world states anymore, but is nonetheless lurking there. It could also be caused by overactive mindfulness sort of dragging down my affective mood as well.
This was the fodder for my walk, to try to work out this discrepancy. Affective awareness was my main tool, simply noticing the kind of undulating feelings I was experiencing as I went along, as well as the mental chatter that accompanied them.
There was at first a sense of alienation - as if by even being on the walk I was leaving behind the “warmth” of humanity, the ostensibly protective tribe in which my social identity keeps its safe place. There was some …fear, or at least “coldness/alienation” type feeling. And it was literally cold and dark. I simply allowed these feelings and made no effort to change them .
At some points certain shifts happened. For example as I looked at houses, it was as if they took on a totally new aspect. Whereas suburbia usually blends together into a kind of television show backdrop that’s ignored, at this time it was only the one large house or two in my purview that was of interest. The houses seemed enormous, cars as well - and there was a creeping fairy tale like / toy village quality to my visual observations of people going about their evenings.
At times on the walk, the potential trade between selfhood and sensuous perfection made itself somewhat evident. This happened when I was trying the absolute least, such as when I took a break to pee. During that, as I observed the scene around, it was as if the light from a lamp post was penetrating my eye so absolutely that felt notions of me ebbed away. It was as if death was there - sensory death haha.
At other times, I had to make some effort to not get “caught” in the same mindsets that I used to generate on these walks - such as going into intensity, or having anxiety/fear take over etc. These were mostly easily dispatched though there is still a niggle of anxiety that sits in the background of these walks, cautious to properly
let go of the reins into utmost delight, wide eyed wonder etc. It’s like I still expect 1. for PCEs to be a serious activity, rather than something properly fun and freeing and 2. that the world is dangerous, and the actualist path is serious, requiring my effort to navigate it all.
I am just continuing to investigate, noticing these flavours that are coming through and attempting to penetrate the stygian nature of the psyche.
Through stillness and allowing myself to step out of social identity to a degree I can certainly see aspects of my usual identity (ones that look like “authenticity” from a real world perspective) instead las something ungenuine once stepped outside of.
All of that being said after I came back it was as if I was suddenly more still than ever before. Where I usually experience a practically unchanging background restleness, now I was starting to almost collapse into sensuous anonymity and stillness - as if going catatonic virtually.
One thing that came up was somewhat intuitively in one of the deeper micro moments was realising that actual freedom really is about death of the self. That’s how deep it goes - not rearranging deck chairs, but actual subverting the very nature of personhood itself.