Ahh, well that is simple. Who ‘you’ are is an illusory identity that only feels itself to exist but has no actual tangible existence. This illusory identity is rotten to the core and is the root cause of all the misery and mayhem in the world.
The only way to see this is to experience ‘yourself’ totally vanishing in what is called a Pure Consciousness Experience. This is a preview or glimpse as to what life can be like in the actually existing world, where you see that what you actually are (“what” as opposed to “who”) is a flesh and blood body only, made of the same matter as the rivers, trees, and starts, actually existing and capable of self-reflection and self-awareness. Yet the nature of this “self” in a PCE is categorically different – it is nothing but the actually existing flesh and blood body being aware of itself, as distinct from an identity that only feels itself to exist.
It is relatively straightforward to experience this for yourself – all you have to do is have a PCE, or remember you’ve already had (they are relatively common in childhood). As a starting point I would recommend reading these descriptions that others have written of PCEs: Various Descriptions of PCE's .
This identity’s origin is that it automatically forms itself out of the genetically-inherited instinctual passions that are prevalent throughout the animal world (and not just in humans). As this all is the result of Blind Nature’s evolutionary selection, it is not anybody’s fault in particular. Everyone is a victim of this, in a sense. Yet you can do something about it in that ‘you’ can agree to disappear to allow the actually existing purity and perfection of the actual world to become apparent.
What the spiritual path does it is results in an aggrandizement of this identity, from being a mundane, normal identity, to being a super-mundane, special, elevated, ‘awakened’ identity. Yet this does not eliminate the root cause, merely transcends it – and thus perpetuates the root cause of misery and sorrow.
The choice is yours to make as it is your life, but one is clearly superior to the other, both in terms of the effect on others and also the quality of the experience itself being far superior, more enjoyable, and perfect.
As this is both the ongoing experience of an actually free person, and the way to become actually free for one who isn’t yet, so long as it is not your interest then it will not make sense for you to pursue actualism.
The further one progresses on the wide and wondrous path of actualism, the more one is enjoying and appreciating one’s life. The rewards are immediate and incremental, and the result is a far better life. I speak from experience. It is certainly worth the effort. And the task does have a completion point – becoming actually free.
These are conditional pleasures, which of course there is no reason to disdain or give up on. However, with actualism one is seeking a baseline of enjoyment – a basic “being in a good mood” – that is relatively independent of any conditions in one’s life.
The impetus and feasibility of this stems from the PCE. With ‘me’ absent, one sees that the experience of being alive is intrinsically enjoyable and perfect. One does not have to “do” anything to be enjoying being alive – it is in the very nature of existence, the simple fact of being conscious. What ‘I’ as identity do is paste over ‘my’ worries and concerns onto this existing perfection, and essentially use them as excuses to not be enjoying and appreciating being alive.
Once you see it is possible to be conscious with the identity completely absent, you then will be able to start imitating that actually unconditional enjoyment and appreciation with a relatively unconditional one. The idea is not to set up one’s conditions to always be happy. The idea is to see what is allowing you to detract from your enjoyment and appreciation, and ultimately see that it is silly to let that take away from your experience of being alive. Thus the goal is not to change one’s life to be always enjoyable, nor to always enjoy everything that happens, good or bad (which is an insult to intelligence as bad things do happen), but rather to enjoy and appreciate being alive despite whatever may happen.
The following is a must-read guide for how to do this: This Moment Of Being Alive . You may also enjoy the flow-chart version of it: Actualism Diagrams Hub - #3 by claudiu .
My experience of being alive is of essentially uninterrupted enjoyment, happiness, and harmlessness. It is far, far from fleeting – and I am not even actually free yet.
If by “fully actualized” you mean a full, meaning-of-life actual freedom, then you must be mistaken as I am not actually free. Only Richard and @Vineeto have become fully actually free, and Richard has passed away recently.
Yet there are more people who are experiencing a basic, peace-on-earth actual freedom – Peter, Tom, Pamela, @Srinath, and @geoffrey, to name a few – which is when the instinctual passions and the ‘identity’ formed thereof has vanished but various impediments still remain to fully experiencing the benevolence and benignity of the actual world on an ongoing basis… viz.:
Look, spirituality has had thousands of years to accrue writings, experiences, methods – and, particularly, aspirants. There are millions of people around the world aspiring to spiritual heights. Given how many are aspiring to succeed, the percent that actually do so is not very high, is it?
By contrast, actual freedom has only come into existence a few decades ago [3], and there have probably less than a hundred sincere, dedicated actualists over the years. Given the sample size, the rate of success is actually quite high.
It is a new thing, though – so it will be ‘riskier’ in a sense than trying something that millions have already tried. However, all you have to do is read what the people who have succeeded actually write, and you will see that even if you succeed it won’t solve the problem of the human condition, neither in yourself nor for the world.
a.k.a.: a meaning-of-life freedom. ↩︎
a.k.a.: a peace-on-earth freedom. ↩︎
Despite what sites like Awakening to Reality might say, actualism is not yet another variant of spirituality, nor is actual freedom another variant of awakening. ↩︎