Adam-H: I’ve been having an experience lately of ‘determination’ in a good way the last couple days. The experience has been that I want to become actually free and I know what I need to do to get there, and it’s not even that hard. What I have to do is enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive, and just keep doing that, without digressions into telling myself a story about what actualism is and how I am pursuing it and how I will explain it to other people in the future. When that self-centric, self-aggrandizing modus operandi is not dominant, then all the things about how easy the method is start to make sense, and it feels like all ‘I’ need to do is remember to enjoy and appreciate life and ‘I’ will effortlessly recede into the background.
This started the other day when out on a nice long walk alone over some sunny hills. I was starting to think about actualism and about how I really wanted to make progress. I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by the memory of how many similar moments I’ve had over the years, and with that there was a question of ‘how is this any different now, am I just walking over the same ground literally and figuratively, again?’
It reminded me of how people can spend their entire lives in conflict with themselves over losing weight. They can have an internal narrative about the plans to lose weight and different strategies and methods that basically goes on and on forever. Perhaps the narrative itself is a sort of ‘sustenance’ for me that I take pleasure in, and it certainly works the same for actualism. Actually doing it is quite simple – sustaining the narrative that I’m doing it or want to do it is a circus of complexity and diversion. Actually doing it goes somewhere new – sustaining the narrative is walking in a circle composed of highs and lows. And of course – as a note to myself, having this realization is not going somewhere new in and of itself, it will just be another high unless I actually walk the walk. (link)
Hi Adam,
This is an great illuminating description of figuring out how you ‘tick’, exposing how ‘you’ succeeded in keeping ‘you’ in place, and by the very exposure you disarmed this particular strategy. It was made possible by the sincere contemplation and acknowledgement that “sustaining the narrative is walking in a circle”.
Now you are at the threshold of a new adventure – “actually walk the walk”. And this is how you actually change the supposedly unchangeable human nature. It is a pleasure to read of your insights, following them up with action and the ever deepening of your determination.
Have fun. There is so much delight in chipping away at the “self-centric, self-aggrandizing modus operandi”, the “narrative”, whenever it gets in the way of simply enjoying and appreciating being alive, right here, right now.
Cheers Vineeto