Adam-H: 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.
Hi Adam,
That is good news – you discovered this particular trick and abandoned it for good as fooling yourself is obviously of no value. Finding the various ways how ‘you’ “will delay or misdirect” is something like a game once you are clear on your intent to be happy and harmless. ‘Vineeto’ enjoyed it after ‘she’ became a bit more acquainted with ‘her’ tricks and at some point called it “balloon-popping party” –
‘Vineeto’ to Irene: Having come that far in my contemplations I likened the whole path to freedom as a big balloon-popping party. Imagine a room full of balloons floating near the ceiling, in different colours, with different names of instincts, emotions, beliefs and conditioning written on them. The aim of the game is to pop every single balloon one by one by questioning, investigating and identifying the nature of the various beliefs, emotions and instincts. Once the last balloon is popped I am free. I imagine it to be light green, big, evasive, with fear written all over it. I need to keep it firmly in place, not getting distracted by doubt or other flight manoeuvres, and then – pop! That imagination changes the whole adventure from its heroic and dramatic frame into the thrilling and delightful journey it actually is. It also pulls the plug of making a big fuss about it. Mind you, I still consider it the best game to play (Vineeto to Irene, 4 Oct 1998).
It was an imagination on ‘her’ part but it captured the understanding that it’s all about feeling good and not being bogged down by finding out how ‘she’ felt and that one can discover and remove the obstacles to feeling good and bring them to the bright light of awareness.
Once you take yourself less serious and accept that you are as bad and as mad as everyone else, genetically endowed with instinctual passions, then there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by discovering how you ‘tick’.
Syd: You wrote the above about 4 years ago. Are you still going for PCEs (in addition to upping your baseline)?
Adam-H: 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 more so than the ‘PCE practice’, and that’s partly because I still find PCEs a bit mysterious and out of reach. (link)
A wise decision. In actualism there is no such thing as a “PCE practice” (it was the invention of some spiritualists from the DhO, together with so-called PCE-walks) – the very idea is an oxymoron because the PCE happens when you allow it to happen. You cannot control or structure yourself to have a PCE.
Also, your idea to “spend 30 min per day with my only focus being the actualism method” is not what Richard meant when introducing the actualism method. It is something to do all day, in all situations – to be affectively aware and attentive to how you experience yourself affectively (i.e. how you feel) so that you can get back to feeling good whenever your mood drops below feeling good. Once you notice that, you get back to feeling good by recognizing it is a waste of this precious moment of being alive, and then –
Richard: What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.
What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.
Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet. (Richard, AF List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005).
If you only “spend 30 min per day with my only focus being the actualism method” then you allow yourself to be inattentive for about 15.5 hours per day to be sad or angry or grumpy or feel neutral. Thus, by doing nothing about it you reinforce the habit of letting those negative moods continue governing your life with the excuse that later on you will spend 30 mins of doing something about it.
Richard: ‘The actualism method is an awareness-cum-attentiveness method – not a method of enquiry – inasmuch one is aware of/ attentive as to how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (the only moment one is ever alive) so that the slightest deviation from the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition can be attended to forthwith … thus enabling one to live as peacefully and harmoniously (as happily and harmlessly) as is humanly possible each moment again.
Any and all enquiry has far more chance of success when one is back on track again. (Richard, AF List, No. 68d, 10 Oct 2005).
There are many informative tool-tips in the article ‘This Moment of Being Alive’ which can give you clarifying information how to apply the actualism method easily and successfully. (Make sure Java-scripting is enabled).
Whereas the 30 min per day easily becomes a duty, a chore, a daily ‘work-out’ like a session at the gym, and that would certainly defeat the purpose of learning the art of how to have fun and feel good. I also recommend Richard’s email to Claudiu in February 2016; it is very detailed and packed to capacity with information both from Claudiu and Richard.
Cheers Vineeto