The intent to try to appear happy and harmless rather than actually be happy and harmless is a particular ‘trick’ I don’t think I’ve gotten up to in quite a while. But I do agree that experientially locating the third alternative is vital for directing ‘me’ in the right direction, and without that firmly in place there are many ways in which “I” will delay or misdirect things. I think the connection that is in place for me is to naivete which is probably less effective than a clear memory of a PCE, but is still a unique and hard to mistake aspect of the felicitous and innocuous feelings.
It is at least in the direction of the end of ‘cunningness’ and a blessed release from the perversity of the loneliness and resentfulness of being a ‘calculating’ self.
I spent some time around then really focusing on PCEs, but ultimately continued to have more success by focusing on upping my baseline. The progress has still been slow over the long term, but has sped up a bit recently. Lately I do make time to spend 30 minutes per day with my only focus being the actualism method, but it hasn’t lead to a PCE, usually just to various levels of feeling good, occasionally getting to the point of feeling myself to be the ‘beer’ and not the ‘doer’.
I still think of upping my baseline as being what actualism is fundamentally about moreso than the ‘PCE practice’, and that’s partly because I still find PCEs a bit mysterious and out of reach.