Felix's Diary

[Felix]

Woke up feeling really exhausted (I’ve got a cold) and those typical burnout feelings I thought I’d left behind.

One thing when feeling bad is it’s hard to contemplate feeling good because the feelings are saying it’s not possible.

Especially with the burnout it doesn’t even feel
like feelings it feels more like a “state”, and it’s unpleasant.

So I go back to the basics of the method. Contemplate that it is possible to feel good. Ask myself How Am I Experiencing This Moment of Being Alive, feel the feelings directly without escape, enquire in what these feelings are saying and how they paint my reality, ask myself when I felt good last, trace back to when I felt good.

I encourage myself all the while, being gentle with myself - not fighting bad feelings by catastrophising them or trying to reframe them.

A bit of “inspiration” helps me too. Do I really want to be like this for the rest of my life? I acknowledge the potential for peace on earth, believe in my own potential to realise this for this body, and aim for naïveté.

[Felix]

One another thing I’m thinking

This moment of being alive is about the fact it’s always now.

Yet I, as an identity, am almost always aiming, no striving for, actual freedom - a goal that always seems far off in the distance.

I feel nervous if I don’t feel on track to this goal, I hyperreact when my feeling states don’t seem to be aligning, I compare myself to others and monitor a lot, I often enough feel somewhat unsafe - as if actual freedom is the last helicopter out of Saigon.

But as stated in the tool tips of the This Moment of Being Alive article:

“the means to the end - an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation - are no different to the end”

So it’s like I’m sitting on my hands, or nervously biting my finger nails - out of fear that I won’t “make it”.

That’s not enjoyment and appreciation.

If what “I” want most (not in the form of pure intent but rather a desperate wanting/demand) is this goal of actual freedom, the best I could do is “achieve” it now in the form of feeling good now.

This would align myself with my goal and relax my whole system. And then this emotional chaos around fear of failure and “not knowing what to do” can be put to bed.

It’s like this incredible furphy - “I can’t feel good until I achieve actual freedom so I won’t feel good until I do!”

Lol

[Kub933]

@Felix

Especially with the burnout it doesn’t even feel
like feelings it feels more like a “state”, and it’s unpleasant.

When I read this something stood out for me and I wonder if it may be what is happening for you. I remember when I was deep into Vipassana I eventually got to a point where I no longer experienced feelings as affective phenomena but rather only as physical sensations.

Initially I thought this was a good sign, some kind of progress towards freedom from them. But later on I realised that it only made things worse, because it cemented the feelings as something that was now unreachable/unchangable. For how could ‘I’ change a physical symptom, it’s not like ‘I’ can stop feeling pain or tell ‘my’ heart to slow down by choice.

Years later when I began applying the actualism method I had to unravel this mess. I remember symptoms of feeling tight, tired, uncomfortable, painful etc. It was like ‘my’ whole body was infused with a disease. I remember experiencing daily these episodes of intense ‘physical discomfort’, later on these turned out to be affectively rooted though.

The tip that allowed me to deal with this thing was @claudiu encouraging me to find the ‘affective flavour’ of the feeling. That instead of seeing only the physical symptom I could ‘taste’ that unique flavour of the emotion that was behind it (even though at the beginning it seemed the emotion was not there). What I did was develop the willingness to ‘taste’ and then fully ‘live’ the emotions which were at the root of this ‘physical discomfort’.

It took a while of consistently chipping away like this (at times this was quite intense too) but eventually they disappeared completely and same for any symptoms of burn out like constant tiredness, feeling painful, tight etc.

[Felix]

Hey! I think that was definitely the case before but has improved over time.

When I say a “state” it’s a psychophysical thing - so yeah there are symptoms (it’s basically a flight or fight state) but it definitely has a feeling orientation still. One doesn’t feel good essentially - there is a worry or panic.

And it does stay “stuck” but with time and attention I do get back to feeling good, and the whole system calms down - like a CODE RED that’s over lol.

I do think generally that I have some residual depression symptoms - from how I used to do this lol- but I have so much time off atm so it’s giving me plenty of time to fix thankfully.

[Felix]

This afternoon I thought of how Richard asked people around him why they held on to their bad feelings, something like “why do you nurse feelings of malice and sorrow then?”.

Ok found the actual quote (said to his mother-in-law)

“ Then why carry [harbour/nurse] such feelings … surely you leave yourself open to all manner of hurt by doing so?”

Something about this formulation of “holding on to” really struck me - the simplicity of it…

and I asked myself the same question.

This worked wonders, it oriented my attentiveness in just the right way (as opposed to other times when I feel overwhelmed or confused or lost) - and I was about to see exactly what I was holding on to.

It brought me into sensuousness and I had an excellence experience in the park.

Now I’m all excited about sensuousness - an “avenue” I had somewhat forgotten about. Perhaps a mistake!

Later this eve, I was not feeling good and once again tried to enjoy sensuousness as I had done earlier. I found I was blocked, and I was able to feel exactly what was blocking - my bad feelings.

And so then I was able to get back to feeling good, in the knowledge I had simply fallen into feeling bad. And then sensuousness came back …

Maybe feeling good and sensuousness should be a tandem approach rather than “only” focusing on feelings….

For me the sensuosity really helps stabilise the return to feeling good (and stops that “oh no I’m so lost” thing)

I know we don’t want people to end up dissociated like the AFFers but, still, I think maybe a mistake to totally eliminate it from the conversation.

[Vineeto]

Felix: Especially with the burnout it doesn’t even feel like feelings it feels more like a “state”, and it’s unpleasant.

Kuba: When I read this something stood out for me and I wonder if it may be what is happening for you. I remember when I was deep into Vipassana I eventually got to a point where I no longer experienced feelings as affective phenomena but rather only as physical sensations
Initially I thought this was a good sign, some kind of progress towards freedom from them. But later on I realised that it only made things worse, because it cemented the feelings as something that was now unreachable/unchangeable. For how could ‘I’ change a physical symptom, it’s not like ‘I’ can stop feeling pain or tell ‘my’ heart to slow down by choice.
Years later when I began applying the actualism method I had to unravel this mess. I remember symptoms of feeling tight, tired, uncomfortable, painful etc. It was like ‘my’ whole body was infused with a disease. I remember experiencing daily these episodes of intense ‘physical discomfort’, later on these turned out to be affectively rooted though.
The tip that allowed me to deal with this thing was @claudiu encouraging me to find the ‘affective flavour’ of the feeling. That instead of seeing only the physical symptom I could ‘taste’ that unique flavour of the emotion that was behind it (even though at the beginning it seemed the emotion was not there). What I did was develop the willingness to ‘taste’ and then fully ‘live’ the emotions which were at the root of this ‘physical discomfort’.
It took a while of consistently chipping away like this (at times this was quite intense too) but eventually they disappeared completely and same for any symptoms of burn out like constant tiredness, feeling painful, tight etc.

Hi Kuba,

What a fascinating story and a brilliant description of it!

It strongly reminds me of Richard’s article about ‘Dissociation and Trauma’, for example –

• [Richard]: ‘… ‘disassociation’, or ‘disassociative identity disorder’ are dissociative reactions or attempts to escape from excessive trauma tension and anxiety by separating off parts of personality function from the rest of cognition as an attempt to isolate something that arouses anxiety and gain distance from it. For example, in everyday life, mild and temporary dissociation, sometimes hard to distinguish from repression and isolation, is a relatively common and normal device used to escape from severe emotional tension and anxiety. Temporary episodes of transient estrangement, depersonalisation and derealisation are often experienced by normal persons when they first feel the initial impact of bad news, for instance. Everything suddenly looks strange and different; things seem unnatural and distant; events can be indistinct and vaporous; often the person feels that they themselves are unreal and everything takes on a dream-like quality’. (Richard, List B, No. 14g, 10 Dec 2000).

Your description added another aspect to it – with deliberate dissociation (Eastern spiritual meditation) one creates a traumatic state which is very hard to escape from, once the dissociation has been successful. This is one of the awful side-effects of Eastern spirituality.

I remember Claudiu talking about how difficult it was to extract himself from the effects of intensely practicing Dharma Overground meditation. Nobody who is promoting this stuff ever thinks of the consequences and ramifications their ‘good deed’ inflict on people.

Thank you for providing this report how you reversed the detrimental side-effects of such spiritual practice … and now demonstrate the experiential success of the Third Alternative.

Cheers Vineeto

[Felix]

Now that you quoted that section of what I wrote @Vineeto I see where the confusion arose.

I think this is an interesting chat and actually incredibly important - but for the sake of accuracy let me clear up my own comment.

I still meant “feeling state”, I was trying to say that sometimes it’s not just the case of having a feeling but something that is much more stable and fixed like an overarching state (same way someone might get into a loving state).

This is very much the nature of states like burnout, depression etc - and it makes getting out of those situations seem a lot more complex. They are even more confusing to navigate than singular feelings which at least rise and then fall in a predictable manner.

But what I’ve found with time is that getting out of these states is the exact same as with anything else - getting back to feeling good. It just takes a lot of intent…

For the record I’m not a Buddhist or Vipassana person. As for what caused my burnout, it was life trauma (before I found actualism), though my interpretation of the actualism method made me much more burnt out than I already was.

Looking back I can see I was so darn anxious, existing in a slow-burn existential panic, and feeling good seemed impossible at the time. I wanted to become actually free at any cost, but was stuck in functional freeze and had no sensitivity for myself as a feeling being. Meanwhile I was still exhausted and still trying to live up to real world expectations as well. Recipe for disaster really

Nevertheless doesn’t diminish the usefulness of @Kub933’s advice but just wanted to clear up my own case.

Regarding helpful advice like that, I wonder if a few years from now someone with that type of issue would manage to find Kuba’s post. I reckon not…I wonder if we shouldn’t have more or a Reddit set up in terms of the way topics work.

So someone with dissociation could go to that topic and read all the relevant posts from over the years.

Like

/actualism/burnout
/actualism/dissociation
/actualism/sensuosity
/actualism/PCEs
/actualism/keto (for the Geoffrey’s of this world haha)

[Kub933]

I haven’t read this article before so thank you for posting it @Vineeto :

Such dissociation is a psychotic sickness culturally institutionalised into a head-in-the-sand escapist ‘solution’ to all the ills of humankind

Ha well this really hits the nail on the head!

[Kub933]

@Felix Yes it’s an interesting conversation all round. For example when does a feeling of sadness become depression and what is the difference between them.

I do remember when I was younger I had a lot of body image issues and so I experienced this ongoing anxiety that eventually became completely ingrained to the point where it could be called a ‘state’. This also ended up creating it’s own physical symptoms eg constant tightness in the shoulders/upper back. So perhaps this is something more similar to what you are experiencing?

For example I remember that if I had a big meal and I could physically sense my stomach becoming full this would immediately trigger a strong episode of this anxiety. It did seem different to merely experiencing an emotion or being in a mood because it seemed I would then be locked into this ‘state’ until it wore off, usually it would persist until the next morning.

I remember these kept happening for the first year or so of applying the method, I would ride them out each time whilst remaining attentive to what was going on. I noticed over time they started to wither and eventually they disappeared completely.

It seems to me that what makes a feeling become a ‘state’ is when it has no way at all to be resolved. It’s truly an awful thing to be stuck in and I remember thinking that if only I could eliminate this ongoing anxiety that my life would already be complete.

It’s like if a person experiences fear but at the same time they hold the belief that they shouldn’t be having the feeling it in the first place, then the feeling becomes locked into something much more problematic. Then the next step from this dilemma is the ‘tried and true’ method of dissociating from the whole thing and thus turning it into a complete shit show

It seems to me that these ‘states’ are basically the end products of a completely failed system of dealing with one’s emotions. One is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Which segues into what you have described as your mistakes with applying the method… There were feelings happening but with pressure coming from all angles they were ‘locked in’ and eventually became something much more problematic.

[Vineeto]

Felix: … for the sake of accuracy let me clear up my own comment. I still meant “feeling state”, I was trying to say that sometimes it’s not just the case of having a feeling but something that is much more stable and fixed like an overarching state (same way someone might get into a loving state).
This is very much the nature of states like burnout, depression etc – and it makes getting out of those situations seem a lot more complex. They are even more confusing to navigate than singular feelings which at least rise and then fall in a predictable manner.
But what I’ve found with time is that getting out of these states is the exact same as with anything else – getting back to feeling good. It just takes a lot of intent… (link)

Hi Felix,

I think it is vital that you described your present situation as a “feeling state” because it reveals that not only are a lot of feelings happening but that they are set up in a way to keep each other in place … until you find the capstone of the upside down pyramid, so to speak, and crash the whole “state”. The second quote I posted yesterday (link) may be a clue for you –

Richard: If it be not fun to track oneself in all of one’s doings then one might as well ‘give up the chase and relax’ … however what you describe as a modus operandi does not make sense to me (‘go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax’).
To need to (and to be able to) ‘relax’ means there must be tension in the first place to relax from … thus the tracking down has changed from tracking down the ‘same emotions’ or the ‘same repetitive thoughts’ to tracking down the tension … and you did not notice that the game had changed horses in mid-stream. The need to ‘relax’ is a flashing red light that the game-play has changed: ‘when did this tension start?’; how did this tension begin?’; ‘what was the event that initiated this tension?’; ‘what were the feelings at the time?’; ‘what was the thought associated with that feeling?’ … and so on. Usually one has only to track back a few minutes or a few hours … yesterday afternoon at the most. Then one is free from both the tension and the ‘Tried and True’ cure of ‘relax’.
Speaking personally, I never relaxed in all those years of application and diligence, patience and perseverance … upon exposure to the bright light of awareness the tension always disappeared. [emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, Gary, 28 Jan 2001)

In other words, you are not only looking for one specific feeling but rather what is the stressor, the issue which again and again causes you to feel stressful and anxious. You give three clues –

For the record I’m not a Buddhist or Vipassana person. As for what caused my burnout, it was life trauma (before I found actualism), though my interpretation of the actualism method made me much more burnt out than I already was.
Looking back I can see I was so darn anxious, existing in a slow-burn existential panic, and feeling good seemed impossible at the time. I wanted to become actually free at any cost, but was stuck in functional freeze and had no sensitivity for myself as a feeling being. Meanwhile I was still exhausted and still trying to live up to real world expectations as well. Recipe for disaster really [emphasis added].

So the stressor, the cause for anxiety, is 1) not being friends with yourself, 2) to live up to expectations, and 3) your interpretation of the actualism, which is most likely formed by the same internalized real-world expectations and a disregard for your own well-being. Now you can start looking at such modus operandi and those expectations to find out which are sensible and which are simply not just silly but unliveable.

Also, keep in mind that ‘you’, the ‘self’, arising from the instinctual survival passions, is very very cunning when it comes to maintain ‘your’ survival – and will corrupt the very means of escape, the actualism method, and use it to keep you entrapped.

For instance, any words written about the actualism methods are tools, not rules – there is a big difference, lol.

Here is an idea, the actualism method is not “sudorific” –

Richard: I might add, though, that naïveté does away with all that ‘heavy lifting’ you spoke of in an earlier e-mail. Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘From what I can glean so far, virtual freedom is a period of ‘heavy lifting’.

Where you have gleaned this diaphoretic impression from has got me stumped … here is but one of the many ways I describe the actualism practice:

• [Richard]: ‘… the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity/ innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way. One is thus soon back on track … and all because of everyday events.* (Richard, AF List, No. 38, 20 Feb 2003).*

Or even more specifically to the point of your ‘heavy lifting’ comment:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘If it is the experiencer that makes efforts to be aware and stay aware, the centre is strengthened, not dissolved, right?
• [Richard]: ‘Since when has naiveté been sudorific? (Richard, List B, No 12q, 5 Jan 2003).

In short: if it be not either easy (effortless) or fun (enjoyable) then there is something to look at until it is again. [emphases added] (Richard, AF List, No. 46, 9 Aug 2003).

It could well be that an increase in naiveté will do the trick for you as well? It’s easy, ask Ian (link).

Cheers Vineeto