Thanks @JonnyPitt that’s a pretty awesome summary 
@Kub933 I don’t know if I see that much of a difference really. I certainly wouldn’t want to suggest that there are two very different direct route methods - mine or Geoffreys vs. Vineeto’s.
Re: my words above – at the time I had wanted to counter the emphasis given to investigation and dismantling of social identity – and the relative exclusion of the actualism method and PCE’s. This was a bit of an issue on the forum at the time. Many here were not experienced or experienced enough in PCE’s. Investigation in the absence of pure intent can easily deteriorate into a moral exercise. PCE’s and actualism method were also a big omission on the AFT landing page for a long time – but that has now been corrected.
That omission, as well as Vineeto’s prolonged VF period made me wonder if we had followed somewhat different direct methods. But she seemingly does not make all that much of it, and VF of greater or lesser lengths seem to have occurred with those becoming actually free.
Then finally there was my misunderstanding of what Richard meant by ‘rapid method’ which increased the apparent discrepancy.
I certainly didn’t experience myself as not investigating as a feeling being. I was investigating a lot, all the time and had to make attempts to reduce it as I suspected that there was something self-gratifying in it after a point. I never did stop investigating entirely. One needs the discernment investigation provides in order to progress.
What I would say is that it really depends on where you are. If like Vineeto, you are at a point where you have had a number of PCE’s and still find yourself back to ‘your’ old ways then there is a bit of digging and investigating to do. Only ‘you’ can finally do something about it after-all - not the body in a PCE. I found myself in a similar position towards the last couple of years prior to AF. I had to go more into figuring out why ‘I’ was still there and what bits needed to be dismantled in order to take that final step.
If your baseline mood is good and you have had no PCE’s or very few then it isn’t a bad idea to focus on the actualism method and specifically having PCE’s. Note that this will also involve some investigation. You cannot simply dive into pure intent or access purity when there are major social identity issues keeping you from being happy and harmless. And a self that is glum, sad and overly anxious is not going to want to go into abeyance.
If your baseline mood is not great with frequent dips into sorrow and anger, then its about getting your baseline up by a combination of actualism method and investigation. PCE’s can wait.
You’ll need to follow your own nose on this and not get too caught up in what this person or that person said. You’ll discover for yourself what is the right mix, what is that gets YOU closer to pure intent.
6 Likes
Actualism will evolve. It didn’t come down out of the sky fully formed.
Ok right I see, so the advice was more to correct what appeared to be deficiencies in how people on this forum were at that time approaching actualism as opposed to coming up with some new approach.
It makes sense, just as it might be correct for someone to up the efforts of investigation at times, it may also be correct advice for that same person to move away from investigation at a different time.
This is something I have observed in myself, like a lab mouse that has been granted a treat every time it presses a button and now it is stuck pressing that button over and over even though no treat is being dispensed. It seems investigation can almost become ‘my’ safe space, something ‘I’ get to retreat into. As always though this is something that is to be noticed within myself as opposed to taking a moral stance against investigation.
I have been playing about with all this the past couple of days and I have got a bit more clarity now. What @JonnyPitt wrote about ‘my’ problems becoming more trivial in light of purity has been a great pointer.
How I see this playing out in myself is that at times there is not really anything much to look at and yet there is somewhat of a pull into sorrow and malice, this pull is ‘me’ as ‘being’, it cannot really be reduced any further, it is ‘me’ ‘being’ ‘me’. At those times what works is seeing ‘myself’ as a totality and moving towards purity and it has been working exactly like this! Very effectively at times.
This is an example where taking an investigation heavy approach has been fruitless in the past because it seems I am trying to chip away at something that cannot be reduced much further, like ‘I’ am poking at ‘myself’ for no reason.
Other times though I can see that it isn’t just ‘me’ at the core, there is some sort of a ‘knot’, some sort of a ‘structure’, something ‘back there’ that is a bit more complex. This is where I will investigate, because unless this thing is looked at I will be back to it sooner or later. Also while that ‘structure’ is there it will be a blocker for that simple movement towards purity.
2 Likes
Also another thing I just realised re-reading the above posts is that the vibe and emphasis on this forum really did change! It seems it was this past year where quite a few of us began experiencing purity more and having that connection in place 
2 Likes
I think it helps to engage with the desire. Allowing it to exist helps it to get it out of my system, and puts it right in plain view where I can learn things about it, learn what it looks and feels like
3 Likes
Yeah that’s a good point, I was thinking about how morality (including actualist morality) will slow down this process. It will create this back and forth between desiring and the suppression of desire but the desire itself is never clearly looked at and explored.
Yet at the same time going with the desire will stop me looking at it clearly in the same way suppressing would. If I am too busy expressing this desire then I am not involved with examining it fully 
It’s an interesting one and I think this is a puzzle that is tricky for a lot of actualists. Let’s take love for example, I am driven to pursue love… Let’s say I know intellectually and from reading the AFT that something is amiss with love. I have some personal experience of the failings of love but to some extent I still ‘buy into it’, I am still driven to have it and I still believe that fantasy of ‘true love’. Maybe I find that more often than not it leads me to feel kinda shitty and confused but I still chase that high that it can sometimes provide.
So what do I do? :
If I take the actualist morality approach and simply look to avert myself away from love without experiencing it fully then this would be what Peter calls ‘snorkelling around on the surface’.
If I spend all of my time actively pursuing and expressing these loving feelings I will be darting from emotion to emotion and I will never have the attention and clarity needed to fully understand what is going on. Plus taking this approach I might only end up focusing on the good feelings (the ones I am pursuing) and never have the focus and clarity needed to see how they inevitably link with the bad, the bad will be conveniently ignored. Seeing the whole picture is necessary to be able to give up the whole package in favour for the felicitous.
So it seems the way to go is some interplay of allowing myself to have the feelings in the first place without any sort of morality interfering with the exploration but at the same time I must have the attitude of seeing this thing clearly for what it is as opposed to just blindly expressing it over and over and calling it exploration/investigation.
3 Likes
The identity will get up to all this nonsense on its own, that’s the starting place
The purpose of actualism is to drill down to the genuine, which is a gradual process - and even at the very end there are all kinds of identity things happening
I’m encouraged by Vineeto’s words that in investigation nothing can go wrong - no matter what, if I’m sincere & paying attention, I’m learning something. Even the periods when I was really a mess / dissociated I learned a lot about being a human
The measuring sticks are the primacy of pure intent & sincerity, time enjoying & appreciating, mood baseline, amount of triggers & their strength… and then ultimately, becoming free itself.
2 Likes
So it seems the way to go is some interplay of allowing myself to have the feelings in the first place without any sort of morality interfering with the exploration but at the same time I must have the attitude of seeing this thing clearly for what it is as opposed to just blindly expressing it over and over and calling it exploration/investigation.
Yeah, and this is basically addressed from the other side of the coin by Richard here:
There are two forms of ignorance about the genesis of the affective feelings: nescience and ignoration – wherein the former is to be incognisant of the root cause and the latter is to be disregardant of the root cause – and the latter has much to do with what is often expressed as ‘you can’t change human nature’ (only recently on another mailing list the sentence ‘we can’t change biological predisposition’ was pithily presented as if it were a valid reason not to discuss the genetic inheritance of aggression). Meaning that, apart from fanciful notions about genetic engineering, it is generally held that as human nature (biology) cannot be changed therefore biology cannot be the root cause of all the ills of humankind … or so the bizarre rationale goes.
Obviously part of the first step towards sincerity is the acknowledgement of blind nature’s legacy.
So, just as it is different to ignore nesciencesly than ignorationally, it is so with acceptance, for it is indeed different to fully acknowledge there is something happening, than to (implicitly or explicitly) accept it as fate (ie: not doing anything to actually change it).
3 Likes
Perhaps not necessarily a gradual process? When Richard says–what is it that caused drop in happiness? Identify it and get back to happiness because “Whatever it is, it is silly”. I thought his saying that is silly because people get caught up in their problems and dilemmas because it’s not silly for them. If it was so simple, there would be no problem in applying actualism. But later it became clear that it is(whatever “it”, the troubling issue) silly because it is “me” which causes the trouble and whatever that “me” does is ultimately silly. For Richard it was crystal clear. Richard didn’t have to investigate at all, isn’t that true?
2 Likes
That’s very interesting I didn’t see it from that angle, also impressed with how you managed to find that quote! The AFT just keeps on giving 
So I can accept that there are those things driving my behaviour (such as desire) and I can fully explore those without any suppression or morality. But at the same time I do not need to act as if acknowledging these drives somehow makes them set in stone.
In admitting my desire for love for example, I am not admitting that I shall be chasing it forever, in fact this admitting might allow me to explore it fully.
3 Likes
He definitely did loads of investigating, especially with Devika. They spent several years earnestly seeking to understand different conditionings.
With an individual trigger sometimes seeing the silliness makes the trigger go away in an instant, and it doesn’t return, but sometimes it takes a more persistent approach with more dug-in triggers to get to that point.
Additionally, we all have lots of triggers, which means seeing the silliness of lots of different things. That takes some time.
And then there is some amount of ‘acclimatizing’ to peace that the brain seems to want to do before freedom can occur
1 Like
It can only be explored fully when you acknowledge that it’s there!
I meant a blanket approach–seeing every trigger as silly, therefore no inner conflict.
If possible, could you link to the page(s) where Richard investigated?
We’d need to pull Richard out of retirement for this one 
We can club such questions and present to him at once like how Alan and Dona did.
“For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for.”
“I travelled the country – and overseas to India – meeting with people from all walks of life in an attempt to discover why Spiritual Enlightenment, which has been within the human experience for thousands of years, had not delivered the Peace On Earth it seemed to promise.”
“It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being. I am having so much fun … those middle-aged or elderly people who bemoan their ‘lost youth’ leave me astonished. Back then I was – basically – lost, lonely, frightened and confused. Accordingly, I set out on what was to become the most marvellous escapade possible. As soon as I understood that there was nobody stopping me but myself, I had the autonomy to inquire, to seek, to investigate and to explore. As soon as I realised nobody was standing in the way but myself, that realisation became an actualisation and I was free to encounter, to uncover, to discover and to find the ‘secret to life’ or the ‘meaning of life’ or the ‘riddle of existence’, or the ‘purpose of the universe’ or whatever one’s quest may be called. To dare to be me – to be what-I-am as an actuality – rather than the who ‘I’ was or the who ‘I’ am or the who ‘I’ will be, calls for an audacity unparalleled in the annals of history … or one’s personal history, at least.”
Really Richard has been the ultimate investigator… how do you think he learned all the stuff that he wrote on the AFT? The guy taught himself pali to better understand Buddhism, for goodness’ sake!
1 Like
Yea this doesn’t work in my experience , except sometimes when I am in a very strong EE already (and even then it doesn’t work on whatever trigger ends the EE).
It’s intellectually dishonest basically. Cause you are saying to yourself “ya ya it’s silly cause it’s ‘me’”, but if that worked then you’d already be feeling good and having no inner conflict. The fact that it doesn’t work means you don’t actually see it as silly. So then you have to look at the actual specifics of that very situation itself.
2 Likes
I think it makes sense in a nip-in-the-bud scenario, eg “I already know this trigger, I don’t need to understand it more deeply, I recognize there’s emotion happening right now,” and cutting it off.
With the understanding that if the trigger is persistent, that there’s still something in it to sort out via investigation
1 Like
I’ve always thought of all this process as consisting of two layers: immediate action (which relates to the generalities) and long run action (which relates to the particularities). So if this were an obstacle race:
-
Acceleration/speed is getting back to feeling good as soon as possible by just seeing the silliness of feeling bad in principle and as a generality.
-
Removing obstacles is fully seeing the silliness and the falsity of every belief as a trigger or root of such feelings as particularities.
Both make sense and play an important role for a smooth and effective race. Richard says to get back to feel good ASAP, and then going back to investigate, mostly if the trigger is chronic and recurrent, even if that means potentially taking you back to feeling bad, as it is worth doing so.
3 Likes