‘Que sera, sera’ means “whatever will be, will be”
I’ll answer that second question in a DM 
Yes, “cera” with “c” is wax 
(although it is often related to romantic love 
).
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Wait, how does wax tie into romantic love? Like the wax dripping thing?
Well… I had thought more along the lines of depilation and sex 
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I like to do my investigation brazilian style
This is actually funny because this is now the second time that waxing has come up on this forum
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Do as you want… but personally I’ll not try another investigation in this life. If it doesn’t come by itself - I’m not interested.
I know that “I” will only lead myself in circles and that I’ll focus on irrelevant stuff. Perhaps you have better confidence in yourself, that you think that you somehow know what ‘rocks’ to pick up and to study and what not, to become actually free? Personally I have no clue and that’s why I avoid picking up any rocks by my own effort - because I know that “I” (as an ego) will be wasting my time - or even worse - perhaps solidifying myself.
But sometimes… and out of nowhere… I have rocks falling into my hands and that’s always a liberating experience.
One quality that I also think follows an insight is that one feels nothing special afterwards (one cannot claim it as something created by oneself when it ‘just happens’). Compared to the excitement, exhaltation and the rush that follows everytime when “I” as an ego is involved. Perhaps that would be a good indication of whenever an investigation is good or not? I use exclamation marks etc. when I write about my insights (for a dramatic effect 
) but in reality… I’m already on my way further down the road - not even thinking of what had just happened.
Personally I don’t think that feeling good, is a ‘recipe’ for wanting an actual freedom: It’s simply what you do in the meantime. I also have this one particular actualist in mind that was feeling good for a great many years - unable to move on. He seemed quite happy about only ‘feeling good’. His “I” was very much solidified in his role as being the policeman of actualism - and he also seemed to have this habit of picking up ‘shiny rocks’ by his own hands.
Perhaps the reason was that he wanted to stay in ‘control’?
I pay notice to your expression “too forced”
Have you ever had an investigation going that wasn’t ‘forced’ at all - where you just found your thoughts wandering to an subject out of your control and suddenly there was this ‘pink elephant’ standing in the middle of the room:
AHA!
Perhaps you’ve already answered this one here:
Finally, I’m very ‘self-centered’ in my thinking and unexperienced on the matter of investigation (had few insights) so I might miss something of importance here. This is just my two cents when it comes to the subject.
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I’ve certainly experienced that tendency to ‘grab onto’ insights and make it a realization to be celebrating… demonstrating ‘my’ superiority.
This is obviously a distraction.
If you find yourself consistently enjoying + appreciating, each moment again come-what may, and have found your ‘baseline’ of experiencing moving upward over time from neutral to good, to excellent and beyond, then I can offer no criticism - you are clearly on the right path.
If not, then perhaps it’s worth considering a change - or perhaps some minor tweaks - to your approach.
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Hi John,
I am appreciating your detailed explanations on the how and why of your exploration of yourself.
It reminds me of Richards story when his first wife was in his face, raging and trying to get to him. Trying to break him.
He fully felt the anger rising, all the way to his throat, yet didn’t break. The feeling did. He neither expressed or repressed it. What struck me in remembering it was that the story concluded with him entering into a PCE. Well, it seems to imply that. (I remember the words “hove into view”).
It reminds me because what you have been explaining about being the feeling, and not just the “nice” feelings sounds like a similar thing. In that the feeling is fully experienced and only then something different can happen.
Regarding shiny rocks, I like this analogy. What happened to me recently was that the deliberate commitment to feeling good made thinking itself one shiny rock after another, the point that there wasn’t any time to “collect” them and have a “show and tell”.
I still voice record, and write some down. They become like check points then. Next time I really do remember “oh, I know this road, I found out that it goes no where”.
In a way those shiny rocks are laying all around, and it becomes less and less about what I can realise, and more about the adventure of going somewhere I haven’t been yet.
Like, for example, fully feel a “bad” feeling without expressing or repressing it. Normally I will indeed try and find a shiny rock to distract myself with. Which is abusing them. They were there to get me to that point of uncovering that feeling. To experience it fully.
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I’m surprised that investigation isn’t getting much love on this thread 
. Anyone who has read Peters journal will know that investigation was a massive part of his process in becoming virtually free and then actually free. He looked at problematic parts of his psyche through a lens of silly / sensible and investigated the hell out of them to allow himself to come to the conclusion that they are silly, not helpful and could be dropped. He even went to the extent if studying human behaviour and evolution / our ancestors to understand the forces driving us. He gives explanations of the behaviour of our ancestors, such as Neanderthals and cro magnon in the book, for example.
From Peters journal:
I recognised the behaviour and feelings in myself, saw the appalling consequences both to my happiness and that of others … and then they simply disappeared. The complete and total understanding of a belief and its accompanying emotions actually results in their elimination.
I find this question from Peters journal incredibly helpful too:
Does blind nature care about my happiness and harmlessness?
Richard doesn’t seem to talk much about investigation, however I see him as a special case due to the fact he was already enlightened. I imagine an enlightened person is less perturbed by emotions than your average joe, so the silly / sensible, back to feeling good process was probably simpler for him. A better lodestone for regular actualists is Peter and Vineeto in my opinion, since we are all going the “direct route” (and also Srinath, Geoffrey, Craig).
I do absolutely agree that feeling happy and harmless is the priority, however sometimes it’s not possible for me to reach that without investigation. More power to you if you’re able to!
There may also be some discrepancy in what we each consider investigation to be. For me, it’s a process that allows me to understand my emotions and beliefs then leads me to seeing that they’re silly or not helpful and it allows them to be dropped, or at least be nipped in the bud more easily.
I have a long list of questions I ask myself when I investigate and this process has given me a lot of success with working through some shitty emotions and allowing my general baseline happiness to improve (especially during my current relationship crisis). So, for me investigation is an important part that feeds into the process of enjoying and appreciating this moment.
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I used to think the same but I was re-reading Richards journal recently and I noticed that actually he investigated a lot. I mean the first articles are about his and Devika’s huge exploration and discovery into male/female conditioning, the next articles talk about all the discoveries of the social identity not being a fact and then comes the whole questioning of the enlightened state and of love and compassion. All across the journal he mentions that one has to question every belief, moral, value etc. Richard set out to investigate and question everything that humanity holds as set in stone and found it to be the ‘tried and failed’.
The only difference I can think of is that perhaps sometimes we can get trapped in doing too much purely intellectual investigation as an avoidance tactic. Whereas what Richard did was a complete and total exploration and discovery of where humanity is going wrong. There is a pioneering spirit to it, a spirit of questioning anything and everything that stands in the way and a spirit of actually doing something about it as opposed to standing back and philosophising about things. Also the whole thing was grounded in actually living peacefully and happily with a partner.
Actually just for a moment if we change the word investigation for exploration and discovery I think that really summarises the spirit of ‘good’ investigation.
I think that total exploration and discovery ultimately needs to be attacked from many angles and this is a good thing. On the one side we have the intellectual approach and down the other is the experiential, then there is everything in between. Honestly it seems to me that for someone who has been doing this for a while there is no particular right or wrong way to approach an issue, you follow your own nose as to what you need to do right now. Maybe right now I need to just step back and write a few notes, just think about this thing or am I doing that as an avoidance tactic? Only I can know this.
The trick is to get to know ‘myself’ thoroughly so that I can catch myself playing games as opposed to doing something productive.
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I concur. From the experience of the last while, the flurry of enthusiasm sparked by events, at least 3 versions of “investigating” have born fruit.
-
The “be the feeling” type. Laughing at the reality of believing either involved (me and her) where anything but self centered.
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Methodically ensuring I feel good before any thinking happens. Nipping in the bud the “nursing in one’s bossom” via rumination and fantasy. Insight level thinking becomes the norm. No shiny rocks are special when there are so many of them.
-
Normal thinking something through without any particular flavour of the other two. Arriving at the conclusion that I was being “immature” or in actualism terms, insincere.
I love the “exploration and discovery” angle.
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I’ve thought a bit more about this discussion of investigation, and it seems that the implication is that the outcome of investigation will be overly celebrating the shiny rocks of discoveries, or that investigation will be too ‘tight’ and serious, and ultimately only growing the ego.
I agree that this can happen, but if this is the overall outcome of investigation then something is being missed.
The great thing about the actualism method, which is extremely simple, is that if one is not enjoying & appreciating, then one has something to look at.
Whenever one’s ego is inflated, when one starts to celebrate one’s discoveries a bit too much, whenever one is getting ‘serious,’ this enjoying & appreciating will inevitably fade. If one is at all sincere, if one is at all sensitive to one’s experience, it will be obvious.
So the situation is self-correcting. It’s not remotely investigation which is at fault here. It’s that ego, self, will grab onto anything it can as a life-boat to continue surviving. I’ve seen this happen in my own experience with innumerable different things.
And ironically, the way to sort that situation out is investigation itself. The outcome of investigation should be an observable change in emotional tone, an observable lightness, and an observable removal or lessening of the specific triggers or emotional habit under investigation. If that doesn’t happen, then the investigation is not complete.
Additionally, investigation is not just about sitting there cogitating - just about anything you can think of can be investigation, so long as it gets you closer to ascertaining the facts of the situation. And if you aren’t getting closer, that’s investigation too - you’re investigating what becoming more hung up, more involved in some dream looks like! It really is win-win with this stuff.
Also - at this point this stream of conversation might be better if it were merged with the Investigation thread, we’ve been talking about it for quite a few posts now
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Merged
I haven’t actually read Richard’s Journal in a few years, so that’s interesting. I find Peter’s Journal more practical and tend to re-read that often. I’ll need to give it another read soon, I might get more from it now from my current vantage point.
Richard’s part of the AFT is full of realizations. But are they the result of intellectualization or reflective contemplation? That’s the difference in my book. Intellectualization = bad. Reflective contemplation = good.
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Ok and where would you place investigation in this assessment? As you only mention intellectualisation or contemplation.
Intellectualisation seems a circular pattern where I am already feeling bad and trying to escape the issue by thinking about it over and over, I agree this doesn’t lead to much at all.
Contemplation is allowing the answer to surface naturally and experientially, it is done whilst already feeling good and is marked by fascination so I also agree that it is much more effective.
How would you describe successful investigation? Or do you not think there is such a thing?
It seems to me investigation is what allows me to initially penetrate and ‘unpack’ a complex issue, it’s done so that I can get somewhat of a handle on something that has been previously untouched, some deep and complex emotional structure that needs to be looked at and understood. In my experience it is not always possible or necessarily advisable to jump straight to contemplation. I need to understand what it is that I am dealing with first, to me this is where investigation shines. With investigation I find out how ‘I’ tick, I explore and mark out the emotional landscape sufficiently so that other tools such as contemplation can be used effectively.
I think what might be happening is that because there is a risk of investigation devolving into intellectualisation that we begin to blame the tool itself as opposed to how it is being used.
There are for sure some things that need to be accounted for when attempting to investigate, such as :
- Am I doing it to escape something?
- Am I doing it cos I thought that’s what Actualists do all the time?
- Am I doing it when feeling bad and intellectually trying to force an answer, often in the form of ‘actualist morality’
- etc
Or
- Am I investigating only that thing which is preventing me from feeling good right now?
- Am I remembering to get back to feeling good before investigating?
- Am I approaching it with curiosity as opposed to a forceful attempt to come up with an ‘answer’?
- Etc
So it does seem to me that investigation essentially gets a bad rep because people are doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
The other thing that just came up writing this is it seems the main difference between investigation and contemplation is that the purpose of contemplation is to land at an answer experientially. I allow the fact to present itself by contemplating.
Investigation however is not really concerned with finding any answers at all! It is only concerned with exploring just how ‘I’ tick, getting some intel on what’s going on inside, no answers needed, it’s like I’m scouting out the territory but I don’t need to make any decisions yet. I think that is the rightful place for investigation for an actualist.
Once the territory is known fully it is very possible that the answer will indeed surface naturally and experientially.
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@Kub933 Your answer seems to be in your reply. Contemplation is good. Intellectualizing is bad. Investigation is the act of investigating via contemplation.
Hmm and yet they seem different no? Because successful contemplation allows me to see a fact whereas successful investigation allows me to see how ‘I’ tick and of course ‘I’ am not a fact. All the investigations will uncover the intricate workings of an entity that is not actual. Whereas contemplation will uncover that which is actual.
Unless what you mean is that the ‘mechanism’ of successful investigation is fundamentally the same as contemplation. As in it is marked by curiosity, openness and a spirit of exploration, it is just that with investigation it is pointed at the ‘inner world’ whereas contemplation is pointed towards actuality.
Well the word reflective in reflective contemplation means it’s inward. But the point is to be as loosely tied to your identity as you are comfortable being and letting the discoveries come what may. No need to get into categories of thinking. Notice when I wrote intellectualization = bad. contemplation = good. That was my attempt to avoid an intellectual rabbit hole.
It was after reading