@Geoffrey talked about this in one of the chats, one part of you is trying to ‘command’ another part of you to be happy, but it’s a split. Trying to force something to happen doesn’t allow for the lightness of naïveté, happiness, harmlessness. It’s actually not being harmless with ourselves!
Interesting stuff, I’m happy for you that the emotions are accessible. It’s the right direction 
Good work Felix. Your honesty and transparency, is helpful not just for yourself, but for others as well.
All of this back and forth, shows that you are aware of yourself. And awareness is the key to catching
yourself splitting yourself. For instance, I was feeling good yesterday but could not reach the same
level of feeling good today – and initially very frustrated by not being able to reactivate that same level of felicity – then I realized that at least I am aware of how I am felling ( frustration, anxiety, confusion, fear of failure as an actualist, uncertainty ); even if I am trying to “get away” from these uncomfortable feelings. So this awareness is the first and most important step for change.
And with increasing and expanding my awareness of myself, I have confidence in the process and
in myself, that it will lead to good results [ because my commitment is suppose to be for peace on earth, experienced as this flesh and body in this life time; not for the benefit of this Intrusive Identity ( aka “me”, which is an illusion, but for “me” I am all that I know about so far, and this new awareness
will expand that) .
The goal of actualism is far beyond “oneself”, one needs to get over “oneself” ( the rigid rules, expectations, standards, morality, comparison, score keeping, etc. etc. ) with sincerity to connect to the felicitous feeling < > naivete .
Btw I am not saying I am there myself, but I see the direction that I need to go, in order to
get anywhere!
Yesterday, I started seeing how being serious is such a massive block to feeling good.
It’s just the exact opposite of being carefree. It blocks true exploring. One already has the picture of what is meant to be, and goes about it rigidly like a religious zealot.
Even if that is not producing anything useful, one’s attitude is to keep going. Because quitting is losing right?
I am finding feeling good happening more often. But it’s absolutely something I need to “work at” at times, whenever there is a drop or shift. My attitude/intent is “come what may”, but I don’t expect that to happen automatically - it’s on me to facilitate that to happen.
Throughout the day there are these subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) mood shifts. For example I was enjoying working this morning, feeling good even while working, and then there was a little shift. What was that about? Then once I see what it is (sometimes it’s really small stuff - for example the work thing was displeasure at having to do something challenging, feeling “up against” some wall of work). I look at the belief behind it (“everything needs to be perfect and easy for me to feel good”) and notice there is also a projection into the future of how much work I have to do, see it as silly to continue this because I was feeling good only recently, and get back to feeling good.
Once question I’m finding helpful is “what is it that caused me (and that is still causing me) to stop wanting to be here?”
In this case I also noticed there was a kind of tiredness that was still lingering, even after I’d looked at the trigger and belief (it’s bad to feel tired) - so that also had to be looked at and now feeling good again.
Things have been getting special today. I’ve been having periods of “weird in good way” experience - a sense of out-of-the-ordinary ordinariness. In these periods everything is the same but looks and feels very different - like being right on the moment, not in front or behind. There is much less sense of agency and everything is more special and sensuous. To get this to happen I basically spend a lot of time being aware of my beliefs/feelings at play - it’s about getting out of the way by sifting through what I’m currently feeling any why (a rather than. hoping/trying to feel good). As Geoffrey said to me once, this body already feels good.
One thing is clear though - most of the time I am holding on. I am literally choosing to maintain myself. I can see it. It’s like I’m on a cliff with my fingers clinging into the ledge. Not willing to let go. I’ve got other priorities, above being actually free. I always thought I wanted this so bad - but here I am willingly not going for it.
It’s so obvious that there is something very big there if I were to fully let go, and fully commit. I’m doing it at times but at other times my beliefs and my willingness to indulge associated feelings is keeping me coming back to the same old same old, over and over.
Time to go check out those priorities!
Beliefs go both ways, sometimes I believe I need ‘x,’ sometimes I believe that to be a ‘good actualist’/‘good person’ I have to ignore ‘x’
There are fascinating questions: “what is ‘x’” How does it work? What do I want to do with ‘x’? What is possible? What is worth it?
I’ve been feeling so good today, holy shit.
Maybe this method does work 
I’ve not had such a consistent day of feeling good for a long time. It hasn’t been hard to keep it going at all. The main thing) and this would frustrate me no end if I had read it two years ago) is that I really want to feel good (and with this is a “knowing how to feel good”).
Sitting at a cafe right now. I’ve been wanting badly to have another PCE. At least these days when I try, I don’t activate my entire affective system in the process .
My approach is different now. I am careful to look for those moods and feelings standing in the way. To start with, my (feeling of) determination to have a PCE in the first place. I can not force a PCE to happen through will. And below that, what about everything else which in my eagerness to succeed, I’ve been ignoring?
I am also aiming for a specific experience this time, which is a new approach. I’ve always tried to follow instructions about enjoying and appreciating, rather than following my own remembrance.
There is one peak experience I can remember more clearly than others, and that’s the one at the restaurant in Cairns a year and a half ago. The “bubbles in my coke” one. I think it was transitioning between EE and PCE at various times, but it had all the right qualities. The sensuousness was so high, it was as still and as static as can be. And I remember having more clearly than ever the (undramatic) realisation that there is no one in this body. There was utter safety and simplicity - nothing could be done to me as there was no one there to be affected.
As I sit in this cafe, there is indeed someone here to be hurt. When I slow everything down, and rememorate that stillness - I find ‘me’ right here. I am fragile and vulnerable. I feel like I’m taking up space, and can indeed feel the guilt of being here. I am constantly adjusting myself to accomodate the people around me at the cafe, with an ever-present, neurotic “outside eye” on my behaviour. I’m monitoring myself to make sure I present the right image to other people.
The idea of letting this moment be as it is, without adjusting to accomodate myself successfully within it, is foreign to me. A good looking guy sits next to me, opposite his female friend, and I am suddenly even more self-conscious about my whole presence.
“Fuck how does my hair look?”
“I should’ve showered before I came.”
“I wonder if he’s gay - he is looking at me a bit. Maybe I should go on Grindr and check”
“Are they worried I’m listening to their conversation?” “I must look weird just sitting here doing nothing, I should bob my head to show I’m listening to music” (lol).
“Ok they left I can relax. I wonder if the cafe staff are annoyed I’m here on my own taking up a table for 2”.
Wtf is this…I must be like this all the time and I’m just totally missing it. I’m somehow not aware
of it. The level of naïveté required to pick up on this stuff is deeper. My level of awareness right now is at least a level or two “below” the feelings/behaviour - whereas usually I am somehow on the same level as the feelings/behaviour. I’m usually “aware”, but still acting exactly as me…there is no real questioning, and no real undoing. The remembrance of the EE/PCE in this moment is providing a comparison, a vantage point from which this all looks both desperate and unnecessary.
I think the whole idea of “feeling good” as the aim has actually been obscuring a clear view of myself. Feeling good is actually a problematic formulation in my opinion. It helps with the macro stuff, the big triggers maybe - but it is not enough to induce a PCE. You can be feeling kinda good and miss a lot of stuff in the process. Under the microscope, I can see I am actually crawling with bacteria that I’ve not been seeing. No wonder I stay perpetually in the picture.
My whole aim has been dead wrong. Like dead wrong. I should not be aiming to be a guy who feels good (though obviously feeling good should result) . I should be aiming to be no one - this body only. And for that I need a very sensitive instrument.
Private entry:
This exploration is going much deeper than usual. I realise what I’ve been doing is kind of surface level.
Whereas this is taking me somewhere, not sure where but I’m moving - emotionally. At first for example I went deep into sadness - this underlying sadness I didn’t even know was there. I don’t try to feel good, I just stay with it. I stay with what is there. It’s awareness-based (are we afraid to use the word “awareness” as actualists?).
The sadness just cannot live with this penetrative awareness. It’s changing. my experience keeps changing. I’m travelling so much farther than usual whilst physically just sat here in a park. There is an enjoyment arising which is very strange and unusual.
It seems radical what I’m doing, as radical as going for enlightenment or something. It’s not conservative like some method for just feeling good. It’s going deep into being
It’s like going down a well. Each moment of awareness takes me further down a rung. But it’s not a dark well. It’s well lit and vivid, and strange in a good way. I’m glad things are happening.
That’s the undercurrent I spoke of Felix.
It’s a totally different line of feelings below the ordinary threshold. Quite interesting isn’t it?
Good surfing dude! 
Ok I look back at what I wrote this morning and I honestly think I was just off my chops hahaha
It’s so easy to depart from feeling good, and go down these crazy tangents. This process is so mindfucky. My brain is working over time here haha.
When I’m feeling good it’s all good though. And any exploration should start there.
In this case I think I just slept weirdly, had a few strange dreams and woke up in a weird slightly depressive mood.
I think feeling good is the only thing that’s gonna make things make sense. I can’t trust my intelligence to supposedly “figure things out” regardless of the mood state I’m in. This morning’s post is an example of what can happen lol.
That being said - I do think it’s possible to penetrate deeper into being, but better to try that stuff when already feeling good. Lesson learned!
Since yesterday the importance of feeling good has really got through to me in a way that it hasn’t before. It’s all I can do to make anything make sense.
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.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Actualism and Mental Illness
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