Hey @leila, wait really??!! That is amazing. My words have never been translated at all let alone into Farsi. You’ll have to share the translated text with me By the way have you written kind of intro here about how you came to actualism?
I am really glad you have that added kick of motivation. You should. Every ounce of effort towards this is worth it; even if one’s efforts don’t seem fruitful at the time. Figuring out how this whole method works can be difficult, frustrating, confusing and fearful. When you have a PCE, there is no question that it has all been worth it. Then when it’s over and you come down, it’s not too long before ordinary feelings come back to once more sandbag your naïveté (this still happens to me). However, you now “know” that there is this incredible possibility and will be drawn to do whatever it takes to further uncover it (“pure intent”).
Just remember that your flesh and blood body has the same capability for experiencing the actual world as anyone else. When one lives in daily life as a normal human being, things often seem very banal, boring, aggravating etc (making up what Richard calls “the resentment for being alive”). These feelings will make it seem like the possibility of something better just isn’t there. They will even make it seem like feeling good isn’t possible - hence why historically people have struggled with the basic method of feeling good each moment again (including myself).
To have a PCE, you need to recognise this status quo and question its very solidity/validity. Many people feel they are not able to have a PCE - it is the resentment for being alive which creates this impression and the very thing standing in the way. You gotta flip that!
I asked Richard once why he thought even people would really interested in actualism didn’t pursue it to its end. He said he thought it tended to be because people didn’t feel good enough. They’d say “well it’s all well and good for you Richard, but I’m not capable of this”. He’d remind them he was just a boy from the farm
All flesh and blood bodies have the innate capacity for apperceptive awareness.
Hey @Felix I can not say thank you enough . I have not seen Generosity in writing like this .this generosity , reminds me of the word benevolence of the Universe .I read your amazing words several times . I really needed it . Appreciate it .Now you give me more work to do . I mean whatever you write I m like : " oh I need to translate this too . So much things I want to say …
I have not been feeling good the last two days. It seems I am back to my old tricks like all get out.
I can see a pattern where, after a peak experience (which by definition means giving up control), ‘I’ return and make a massive power grab by trying to force the process to happen - all under the guise of actualist identity, for extra cunningness.
Less and less am I letting this moment live me - more and more I’m trying to control things: like trying to steer something that goes off track the more I try. Why am I such a control freak? It’s like I’m making this massive demand. I WANT FREEDOM NOW. I WANT THE PCE AGAIN NOW. (When it doesn’t work i bargain) I WANT TO FEEL GOOD NOW (still doesn’t work). It feels really bad - having reverted to being the very tortured type soul I described in my peak experience come down.
This way of operating is a very masochistic part of me, and something I can recognise in previous endeavours of mine as well. Other things in my life I’ve been able to achieve by being very intense, very determined, very industrious (and very self-punitive). With those things it didn’t matter how exhausted I made myself, or how sick, or how unhappy, as long as I was able to get what I wanted in the end I was willing to go through it.
But actualism is very very different. The more I want freedom and demand freedom the less I can have it. This then generates a lot of anxiety because the more I can’t make it happen, the more I become worried and fearful that it won’t. I can actually feel the bad feelings increase as if expressing this reality louder.
I’m not sure there is any one feeling to look at here using the normal method of tracing back. I don’t know though, I’m looking at it. Maybe it is a deeper thing, something which goes to the very core of this process. Like not being willing to get out of control or ge out of the way. Like wanting to make it about a fight or imagine a drama out of it. It’s a strange paradox, wanting so badly to let go of myself that I end up holding on tighter than ever.
Richard said sometimes people can have a strong fear reaction following an experience of the actual - I guess because it points to my illusory existence and the death of me.
In the PCE this time, I experienced the full import of what it meant in terms of ‘me’ being illusory - that wasn’t lost on me at all this time. Now I’m back, and purportedly wanting so badly to be free, but it’s as if on another level the memory of the PCE is a massive threat to me. Somehow I’m slamming on the brakes so hard right now.
It’s kinda like when you go up in an aeroplane to do a sky dive. On one hand you’ve started on the journey, and you can’t turn back. On the other hand you are shitting yourself with fear about what the task before you is (and doubting whether you can do it). I don’t even know if I’m my head that task is self immolation, or just giving up control, or what.
You do want it, you do want to sky dive - that’s why you signed up. On the other hand, a part of you really does not want to - you feel sick with anxiety in fact. That’s where I am right now.
I think this fear reaction happened last time (like a year ago) and I think I never faced the fear. I just kept running, and distracting (hence why I reported having trouble with addictive sexual behaviour) for almost a year. I also remember having so much doubt that I’d even had a peak experience
However this time, having had the PCE recently, the fear I was feeling little more an hour ago was contrasted all the while with the memory of the actual and the knowledge on some levels that the feelings aren’t material or substantive (despite being oh so real). This allowed me to face the feelings head on, and feel them, rather than what I’ve spent the last year doing - which is distracting myself.
And as I said at the start, I feel good again - which came of its own accord, having allowed the feelings.
This is quite a hairy business at times, but I am committed!
Hmm this is really interesting because I also remember going through periods of experiencing very intense emotions after a PCE but I don’t know if that is causation or just correlation.
I remember after the 25min PCE I spent a couple of months going through some pretty overwhelming emotions, they would come in waves of intense fear and sorrow and it seemed all I could do is sorta ride them out and continue applying awareness-cum-attentiveness.
I have wondered this before, wether experiences of the actual can end up triggering intense emotional reactions when back to normal. Because at the end of the day ‘I’ want things to remain exactly as they are, it’s how I maintain some sort of security and a PCE can really shake ‘my’ foundations.
In fact I remember learning in school that life changes such as new job, new house etc are likely to cause stressful reactions, so how about seeing that ‘I’ don’t actually exist and neither does ‘humanity’ that is bound to have some sorta aftershock!
It seems the main thing is ‘I’ resist any change and a PCE has the potential to lead to some very significant change for ‘me’ and ‘my’ reality, perhaps that’s why ‘I’ instinctually slam on the breaks.
Hey thanks for your reply. Yeah I agree, I think it’s a shock to the system and one is also locked out of paradise again too. Rather than blame a separate ‘me’ for this, I am trying to focus on what I did to have the experience in the first place (which was to feel good, to be naive, etc).
All that’s basically happened is that the habitual resentment for being alive (which all feeling beings share) has once again taken up roots. It stands to reason that I just have to flip this again and I will be a lot closer to where I want to be.
Im recalling the paragraph where Peter wrote about the role of naïveté in this process:
“It takes a bucketful and more to counter one’s personal fears and resistance and a mountain full to overcome the cynicism, despair and gloom of Humanity. One needs to concoct it, remember it, access it, resurrect it, find it, dig it up, fuel it, play with it, carry it in your pocket, stash a bit under the bed, season your meals with it, and stock up on it as much as possible from a peak experience”
I am the burden here as paradoxical as that is, and it’s in my hands to change that the same way I had the PCE in the first place.
The other side to it which I also think might be at play is that the PCE offers a glimpse into what life can be like, then when I am back to normal the work begins of once again inching closer to that place. So perhaps a lot of the resistance is a bi-product of this process.
When back to normal the gulf between where I am now and the PCE is brought into sharper focus and sometimes this appears to be somewhat agonising. As in why can’t I just be in that place now!! I’ll be interested to hear how you get on with all this @Felix
It seems the difference between my approach and yours is that you are focusing on getting the same ‘conditions’ in place after the PCE to fly into yet another one and my focus seems more on using the PCE to continue raising the baseline without a strict focus on another PCE happening right away. I am not saying one is better than the other but rather looking at the different ways to approach this.
So perhaps a lot of the resistance is a bi-product of this process.
When back to normal the gulf between where I am now and the PCE is brought into sharper focus and sometimes this appears to be somewhat agonising. As in why can’t I just be in that place now!!
Oh 100%. You have put that all really well. I think that’s pretty much the same as what I was trying to say actually. Well put! I recall Peter saying he had felt resentment about not being actually free even prior to having his first PCE after meeting Richard. It’s like “oh it’s so unfair that I’m in this situation and have to do all this work. Why can’t it just be like paradise already”, kind of thing. Similar to what I’ve been feeling in the last day.
It seems the difference between my approach and yours is that you are focusing on getting the same ‘conditions’ in place after the PCE to fly into yet another one and my focus seems more on using the PCE to continue raising the baseline without a strict focus on another PCE happening right away. I am not saying one is better than the other but rather looking at the different ways to approach this.
Yeah that is an accurate summary. I want to keep the PCE as fresh as possible each moment again, because nothing I ever attempt could come close to that. But making that so still requires the same steps as the virtual freedom method. However, I do plan to have more sprints, whereby I summon all my will to activate delight and put myself in a position for it happen. That’s what I did this week, so now I know that it’s possible to do so.
When I “activated delight”, it made it so my first step out was a felicitous one. That is, rather than focusing on the senses and staying put affectively (as I had always done), I actually kicked myself out of my default state into a better mood. That combination with the sensuosity together meant that the delight increased and I projected my happy mood onto the world, which in turn increased my enjoyment and out of that the EE happened. Then the next day, having just had an EE the day before, my naïveté was “awake” and so when I went out again it wasn’t so far a stretch to have the PCE.
I don’t think one method is more valid than another though. To be honest a gentle and gradual approach sounds lovely but Im not sure I’m built like that. I seem to be fairly perfectionistic and demanding so I might as well channel that to my advantage! I want to get off my bum and put myself in a position where it can and will happen.
I think as an identity with a vested interest in staying malicious/sorrowful, the best thing I can do to counteract that is overegg the pudding when it comes to the felicity/naïveté part!
I wonder if you can nudge yourself? like try to rememorate the excitement you were feeling when you wrote this - what is preventing you from relating that way to the path now?
Yeah that’s exactly what Im doing In fact more than a nudge I’m using a bulldozer . I’m not gonna let myself “forget” this time!
I’m actually feeling nice and felicitous right now. The more you get buried by bad feelings the more impossible everything seems, hence my whole freak out earlier as if the Chamber of Secrets was closing itself off to me.
I forgot that I’m the one with the key. The actual world isn’t coming and going - it’s totally stable. It’s the quality and degree to which I stand in the way which creates the movement of reality and how close or far I feel from the actual world. But it’s right under my nose. So no need for my usual drama queen histrionics .
This seems like the way to go for sure, it’s exactly what I have been focusing on too. Felicity first but then the next step is to start segueing the felicity with sensuosity. Then the resultant delight is what leads onto the cool stuff happening!
@Felix I 'm starting to read your posts from the beginning .This is so wonderful what you wrote about your experience …I m translating this one two ,it is very helpful . Many many Thanks Felix
@leila hey, please don’t do that . Just read my most recent posts - like the last week at most. I’ve even thought of deleting my previous diary entries for this reason.
So far, 35 people have become members of the channel .But I think that only 20 of them follow the content . Most of them are our families .That 's why we know they read these content .
Again many many thanks Felix .
By the way you are just like me , I do edit my writings a lot too
By the way have you written kind of intro here about how you came to actualism?
I mean whatever you write I m like : " oh I need to translate this too . So much things I want to say …
that is bound to have some sorta aftershock!
like try to rememorate the excitement you were feeling when you wrote this - what is preventing you from relating that way to the path now?
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