@Felix Hi Felix, where are you! I have missed your posts and your journal entrees! May be you are doing so well, that you don’t want to interrupt your progression? Let us know either way, when you feel like dropping a line. 
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Hey
(@FrankN I got so sick of my own BS that I stopped writing hahahaha. It is very easy to get caught up in actualist identity on here… I decided I’d only write if I had interesting stuff to report! And today I do so here goes.)
Tonight I had the most mind blowing EE. I know PCEs are meant to be the OG, but EEs are absolutely fantastic as well and definitely nothing to sneeze at - this one has showed me that this whole actualism “goal” of mine truly is possible (and also how irredeemably sad/sorrowful the human condition is by comparison). I also feel more of a duty in a sense in that this has to change (!!!).
Lately I’ve been trying to calm myself down a lot. I tend to be a high stress type of person and it’s taken a while to get out of the chronic stress condition I’ve mentioned I developed a couple of years ago. These days I sleep well almost every night and don’t have any kind of stress attacks which is awesome. But with having become so aware of how I feel each moment again, it’s clear that even the average person, just like myself, is mostly always restless and unable to sit still/properly relax. So I’ve been challenging myself to put my phone down and do nothing for hours at a time - which I am having success with, including having intermittent naps, which are lovely as well.
As a weird kind of tip, I’d say it’s good for people pursuing actualism to be able to do nothing for long periods and also to be able to nap. If you can’t do those things than having peak experiences is probably not going to be that easy maybe (just a theory).
It’s hard to describe an EE that well, but basically I was lying with my eyes open for ages after a nap and then I started reading about PCEs and Richard’s “activating delight” thing (Topics Pure Consciousness Experience). I just imagined how that would be, and I realised to experience delight I’d have to feel a lot more awake and alive. I can’t describe how it happened except to say that I started living that or experiencing that - the combination of felicity and sensuousness. I went outside and the night sky was just incredible, magically ornamented with stars and I was surrounded by these most alive trees. It went on from there as I was driving but it’s kind of hard to remember exactly what I saw - I can only really remember the flavour of it after that. In any case it’s really nice that I’ve now had two solid experiences that are similar (I had a very similar and awesome peak experience at work last year) so I can say with confidence that I’m pretty sure this is what an EE is. Traits: - very very felicitous - naïveté occurs naturally and everything around is amazing - absence of feeling in control - quite dynamic in nature (whereas I think PCEs are more static).
Anyway it’s just unbelievable really, that this is all possible (even temporarily let alone permanently!). I can feel myself back in the drivers seat and there is a general weighty-ness/burden to being/doing as normal but I’m a lot more happy than usual post this event which is likely me as an identity being happy that I was able to “achieve” what I’ve been trying to do for a long time. I do think it can be distressing at times being an actualist and feeling like one isn’t able to do what’s necessary to “escape”. My only advice there is to keep calm, like having a goal in mind that one gently and patiently goes toward. Try not to be like me who has had a tendency to send my whole system into major stress trying to make everything happen 
. I’m not sure to what extent being was absent in this experience - when you feel that felicitous and naive it’s so much better than the norm that you really do feel very free and “weightless”.
I’m now wondering how close I could get to the EE just in every day life. Despite my now being very habituated with asking HAIETMOBA, I’m still a long way off a constant EE. The EE has really viscerally reminded me of what’s possible, whereas I think usually I just revert to normal and forget that this really does work to take you somewhere very very different.
I’d be interested to hear from either of you guys @geoffrey @Srinath as to whether you ever got your baseline up that high (as to be in a constant EE)? Even when I’ve got myself into a good mood it is still so far from what this was…I do my best to not get triggered but that keeps me more in neutral. Being just seems to have a natural “revert to neutral” function or otherwise I’ve just not been aiming high enough? This experience was of being overjoyed and absolutely delighted on the affective level and has reminded me of something much higher to aim for.
Cheers people, keep going! 
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Glad to see you back Felix.
Your honest ( sincere) style of writing has been wonderful to read and follow.
I am very happy for your progress in this difficult ( but fun) journey.
Your report of EE is wonderful and remembering all the good stuff that everyone
writes here, helps me to be able to EAATMOBA more and more as well, so it is
much appreciated !
Thanks Felix
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@Felix EEs were quite the frequent occurrence in the last months of ‘me’.
But only ‘my’ last week could be said to have been one of constant EE.
I don’t think such constance was the result of an ‘upping’ of my baseline per se, but of a decision to allow pure intent to be operative that happened in the beginning of that last week (while coming out of my last PCE). I think that this decision and the subsequent state is what made it so that this "revert to neutral"mechanism did not take place any more. In other words, there wasn’t anyone to assert control and have the EE end.
Of course, getting ‘myself’ to the point where such a decision could be made… might not have been, in my case, unrelated to some previous significant upping of my baseline. 
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I am currently experiencing the devolving of another incredible peak experience - I’m pretty sure this one was a PCE. Very different to last night though some qualities were the same (like wonder and the trippy nature of it). It was much more pure and still, yet the opposite of boring. Very wondrous and vibrant but also totally indescribable. This is impossible. Just impossible. I cannot believe this is possible……………!!! (x a million billion trillion).
I am now in absolute tears so needless to say it has devolved or I have regained control I guess .
It’s tears of just utter relief and disbelief and I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. I’m reacting, I can’t help it.
This (the existence of the actual world) is just the most incredible incredible thing. It’s as if all the stress and bad feeling I have ever experienced is cracking, I am cracking with it. I can feel myself stopping it and getting in the way right now but on a broader time scale I’m giving in and releasing to it more than ever. I’m starting to trust it or “know it” I guess. It goes so far beyond the words “enjoyment and appreciation”. It is of a purity that is unfathomable after 28 years as a regular human being
When I stepped out tonight to take a walk, on some level I knew I was going to have a peak experience. I was “pregnant” with it. It’s as if I’m not having to work hard any more. It’s as if the actual world is just suddenly appearing at times in all its purity and wonder around me, and my innate skepticism/cynicism can hardly take it as it withers in the process - hence the effusive crying and interrupting of the process, probably. I keep interrupting these peak experiences almost to verify or “fact check” myself (“am I going crazy?” “Is this real?” “Is this possible?” etc). The experience itself starts to butt against my very comprehension of what I understand experience to be.
I know some of what I’m saying probably sounds a bit enlightenment-y (crying about beauty, giving in and releasing etc) and I’m aware that there is a danger of getting caught up in that. Hopefully I’m aware enough to realise when I’m regaining control. It’s definitely ‘me’ who is writing this and reacting to this right now and I know that.
This experience I’ve just had shows me what an incredibly incredibly emotionally tortured and cynical being ‘I’ am. That ‘we’ all are. It’s just beyond words. No one could truly admit it to themselves. It’s an utter tragedy. The fact that there is a way out of this state, that is available, that I have been so incredibly lucky to happen upon, and that hopefully others will discover as soon as possible, is just beyond my comprehension right now.
Even on the precipice of this actual possibility, of living permanently in this actual world, I’m in disbelief as to it’s existence . I am so glad I’ve stuck with this confusing (and frankly bizarre lol) process for these two years of stress and anxiety, when I had no idea what I was doing or how. However, the irrefutable intelligence of those words, and the obvious demonstrability of it by those already actually free, kept me going enough.
But I know that this is not about ‘me’ - it’s the very opposite of that in fact. All I know is that now, reacting as a feeling being admittedly, my gratitude for the existence of this incredible solution called “the actualism method”, as well as the website and actually free people who take the time to communicate about it, is sky high.
I don’t even get what I’ve done to get to this point (even though I know I’ve spent every minute or every day thinking about this for 2 years now), or what all the fuss and non-progress of the last year especially was about. I’m wondering if the previous peak experiences I had actually increased my level of fear as a regular feeling being? Almost like a survival resistance - possibly. All I know is that resistance in general is starting to end it seems and I am starting to absolutely welcome that.
Wow. Just wow.
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Yeah! I’ve noted that, if someone isn’t aware of the alternative , of the ending of ‘me’ - it’s simply impossible to see this in its totality. Because you’d have to live with knowing for the rest of your life how rotten you are. It’s actuality that makes it possible to really see this. And as you may have noticed yourself, it’s not a self-flagellatory ‘moral’ seeing … it’s a noticing of what-is-the-case.
I almost perceive it like “it’s not a ‘bad’ thing that ‘I’ am rotten”… it’s just a “thing”. And then the question is just , what to do about it? And we all know the answer 
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The PCE has indeed devolved but there is a really nice afterglow Everything is shiny and cozy and my interactions with my housemates is experienced as very charming and magnanimous it’s lovely
@claudiu When I was referring to the way human beings are at root as ‘me’/‘we’, rotten is not quite the word I was going for. I was more getting at the fact that humans are choicelessly suffering as a direct result of ‘being’ itself. The last thing on my mind was that humans are rotten (as in bad, dirty, corrupt) actually - I was more making a comparative description from the perspective of the peak experience compared to the experience of being regular. Not sure if this is because I was in the midst of more of a “beauty/transcendence” come down .
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I think it’s the same idea, but different words. “I was more getting at the fact that humans are choicelessly suffering as a direct result of ‘being’ itself.” – if such a ‘being’ itself causes such choiceless suffering, wouldn’t an accurate descriptor of said ‘being’ be bad / dirty / corrupt / rotten / perverse, etc.? But not in a ‘moral’ sense like ‘we must atone for our sins’, but more in a sense of wow, this entire edifice “has” to go!
Yeah that makes sense I guess to me rotten just implies a moral thing even though I know you explicitly said you didn’t mean that.
So what do you reckon is keeping you away, from going further with actual freedom I mean @claudiu?
I wouldn’t usually ask, but I guess I’m feeling relaxed and socially-unrestricted enough to ask…
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I had very similar experiences, I remember writing about it in zulip I think, that every time I would get close to the Actual world, seeing just how freeing it is, how all of the suffering was for absolutely nothing. The enormity of that release would bring tears to my eyes, and then the ‘good’ feelings were never far away from flooding in. Also at this point the experience would be interrupted by ‘my’ antics.
But looking back it seems for me it was a necessary step to process what was happening (coming from so many years of utter despair and anxiety), eventually after some time the tears in eyes, good feelings, great release etc stopped of their own accord. I think most of us on this forum know enough about the trap of enlightenment to not go down that path, the very fact that you are writing about it means you are on the look out anyways.
Cool to have you around again @Felix I thought you had become another lost comrade
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Haha yeah I could feel myself start to come back into the picture and I was aware of it and then out of nowhere ‘I’ was there comprehending the existence of the whole event and reacting accordingly. I don’t see it as bad at all though, the release was good for me as a feeling being and like you said, almost a necessary thing to process.
Haha no I’ve been in the background as dedicated as ever! Honestly I still don’t think I’d have any advice for someone as to what to do, or not to do to get things to work - except….don’t give up
Right yes and that’s a good point about advice and maybe that’s because advice doesn’t often get the job done (in a sense of advice being a prescription of what to do) This is something I always noticed in peters and vineetos writings. People would ask for advice but they would mostly reply with their own experiences and discoveries. Not because they are stingy with advice but because at the end of the day ‘my’ great discovery might do nothing for you, it’s the process of each individual doing their own exploration and discovery that does it. Participating here seems mostly to share experiences, cross-check certain things and correct misunderstandings.
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Yeah that’s a good point. To me I’d say that it’s hard to give advice about something that esoteric. To me the process of having a peak experience happen is still pretty unfathomable . I used to go out on PCE walks every day - with all manner of advice in my head. I remember sometimes it was like 4 hours at a time, and even 8 hours on one particular day 
. And I had no luck. Even though I wanted so badly to have one. Was I too “insincere” or something? I don’t think so. Have I learnt a technique which i didn’t know back then? I don’t think so.
To me it seems there is mainly a serendipitous aspect to it which is why consistent application is the only factor I can really point to as a success factor (aside from being well, which I wasn’t back then. I got prescribed SSRIs twice, which I never took).
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Yeah serendipitous is a good way to put it, personally ever since my resurgence with Actualism I have not focused on PCE walks etc at all really.
Partly because when I first came across actualism years ago, I would go on these long PCE walks every day, often multiple times a day, and try to force a PCE to happen. Some interesting things would sometimes happen but mostly that aspect of pushing the experience would prevent a PCE from actually happening. Also it would often start verging into some weird ASC territory.
When I came back to Actualism I focused entirely on upping my baseline. The PCE’s that happened all happened like you say serendipitously.
When I step back and think about it, it makes complete sense, no matter how hard ‘I’ try to make a PCE happen, ‘I’ end up digging ‘myself’ in even further. Because for the PCE to happen ‘I’ must go into abeyance, the action of allowing it to happen is the opposite of ‘me’ trying to make it happen.
Reading your reply though has made me wonder about something that Srinath has mentioned previously, that this ‘allowing it to happen’ can be looked at as a skill in its own right. At first very difficult to grasp but once it is found and one has the knack for it, then it is like riding a bike.
This is one avenue that I have not explored at all and it is making me wonder wether this could be very useful. I remember when I met up with Alan I was asking about how important a PCE is to ‘actualism progress’ and he said that he did not have PCE’s all that often, Dona then added the observation that both Srinath and Geoffrey when close to self-immolation seemed to be able to have them happen very frequently.
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Nothing in particular. I sometimes get the sense I’m dilly-dallying. Coming with the sense of it is the automatic moving further along as it is clear that is what makes sense to do.
What is a huge difference now vs a few weeks or certainly months ago is that I can’t really get myself to self-recriminate anymore. It just doesn’t make sense to do. Bad feelings aren’t ‘bad’… good feelings aren’t ‘bad’. And neither are they ‘good’. They are what they are - natural human things. They evidently have clear consequences. It evidently makes more sense to be felicitous — it’s self-evident it’s better for everyone and everything to thrive and enjoy being alive. They’re clearly ultimately unnecessary. There’s not much more to it than enjoying being alive!!
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Yea! Definite knack to it. I am getting the hang of it. EE is much easier than PCE.
I would put it like there are opportunities to do it that come up naturally during the day- and more and more with higher baseline. And then I have a sense of when it can happen and then it’s sort of easy to “swim” in that direction. Or more like let the current take me there. Or some combo of both.
And then other times it happens serendipitously. If deep down i think and feel like i really want or need one then it tends to happen. But other times can still happen by surprise.
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@Kub933 haha yeah that makes sense. I was the biggest forcer ever and got absolutely nowhere. Didn’t Srinath write something on his website like “steely determination is for naught”. How right he is . It’s a tough one but that’s where dedication does pay off eventually in that you can gradually learn what to do or not do.
What is a huge difference now vs a few weeks or certainly months ago is that I can’t really get myself to self-recriminate anymore. It just doesn’t make sense to do. Bad feelings aren’t ‘bad’… good feelings aren’t ‘bad’. And neither are they ‘good’. They are what they are - natural human things. They evidently have clear consequences. It evidently makes more sense to be felicitous — it’s self-evident it’s better for everyone and everything to thrive and enjoy being alive. They’re clearly ultimately unnecessary. There’s not much more to it than enjoying being alive!!
@claudiu the above seems strange to me - you seem to write in such relative terms as if everything was all the same: good feelings, bad feelings, PCE….they are all just “natural”. Yet the difference in degree between these things is massive. Bad feelings are self-evidently so much worse than good feelings. And a PCE is so much better than everyday ‘being’ regardless of good or bad feelings (there’s no comparison). It’s curious given your extensive peak experiences that you aren’t impelled towards actual freedom at this point, as something immensely desirable for that body. You wrote in your last message that you have success with EEs but a PCE is harder, but I wouldn’t have thought one is that much harder than the other overall.
I’m wondering…and this could be way off…if there is any chance you are mischaracterising your experiences (ie. ascribing the name EE and PCE to experiences that weren’t that)? Or alternatively, do you reckon you’ve had those genuine experiences but are somehow blocking yourself on an identity level to progressing further?
It’s none of my business but I thought I’d at least contribute my thoughts given I’m interested in actual freedom for myself and everybody
Oh indeed. Just because all feelings are natural doesn’t mean they are all the same. Also note I didn’t group the PCE together with the feelings. What I’m getting at is that I am seeing it’s not sensible to morally judge feelings as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. As someone famous around these parts put it:
And yet when what is happening is a PCE, don’t you sometimes get the sense or impression that all ‘you’ get up to as a feeling-being is overly-dramatic, much ado about nothing?
I’m certainly impelled towards it, but I’m more seeing that my past attempts at propelling have only gotten me so far, and something else is needed to continue.
They aren’t so different , but still EEs happen more often for me than PCEs. What’s the ratio like in your experience?
I don’t think so - they’re pretty clear to me at this point. Though I’ve noticed sometimes hard to tell when a PCE has turned into an EE or vice versa.
Well as self-immolation can happen any moment - including while I write this and while you read it - then it’s always true we are all blocking ourselves from self-immolating somehow. So the question is what to do in the meantime?
I’m not saying there’s nothing I/you can do … so what do we do?
I think sharing on here implicitly invites anyone reading to comment or ask questions. So no worries there - fun to discuss and share!
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