John

[Kub933]

The funny thing is that back then I actually used more or less the very approach I am describing now and then I somehow forgot about it! Maybe I got too comfortable haha, but I remember with this body dysmorphia situation one of the biggest changes came when I finally allowed myself to experience the feelings that I have been suppressing for so long, to live them fully without moving in any direction (psychically).

[Miguel]

@John

Do you still experience this, when you can go for long periods of time, stuck in not feeling good and being unwilling to do anything about it?

I’ll seize this question you asked @Kub933 to describe/explain some of the elements which prevented me from

@Miguel

wanting to feel good (happy and harmless at the end)

or at least better daily/periodically which constituted part of my own “wall” (incidentally, a few days later @claudiu also referred to not wanting to enjoy and appreciate here: Claudiu's Journal - #82 by claudiu; maybe you will find it useful).

NOTE: My post grew so much that I noticed it was a good opportunity to turn it into one of the articles I had set out to write, taking advantage of my journal as a “draft notebook” that would allow for criticism/comments, successive modifications, etc.

So here it is: Miguel - #4 by Miguel

[John]

Funnily enough, today I was so annoyed by this re-occuring feeling (anxiety) that was once again trying to impose itself upon how I am experience this moment of being alive (My annoyance was a part of the general feeling/frustration of not getting anywhere.). I nipped it in the bud thinking:

“This shitty crap feeling again!”

And the feeling immediately vanished without a trace. Apparently one can sometimes ‘nip things in the bud’ while being really annoyed about it.

EDIT: Now, that I think about it, it was quite a move, because I have never really been able to deny things related to my social anxiety (the feeling was about how others might percieve me.)

[FrankN]

@Andrew

It’s not “feeling good all the time”. That is subtly different. It implies that there is this big continuous “time” and the goal is to fill it with feeling good. Like a marathon, but no way to know how far it goes.

This entire single post was very helpful Andrew. This approach to feeling good “each moment again”, takes the pressure off of having to perfume or succeed in a marathon achievement kind of way. So I just wanted to make sure I understood what you said in the above quote correctly, so I have reworded it; did I understand this correctly?

It’s not “feeling good all the time”. This ( “all the time” ) would imply that there is this big continuous “time” and the goal is to fill it with feeling good. Like a marathon, but no way to know how far it goes.

[Andrew]

Hi Frank,

It seemed significant that “each moment again” is different from “all the time”.

“Each moment again”, has the initialisation which may already be there, or can be re-initialised without any reference to the previous moment, or a future moment.

“All the time” is linguistically the same if one understands the rest of Richards writing, in that "time (this moment) has no duration. It’s however a tautology; there is no need to add “all” to something which can’t be subdivided and has no duration.

As if I could enjoy a part of a moment which has no duration, so must add “all” to specifically avoid missing a part of it.

[John]

The method and it’s success must be contained in the first few lines in the article: This moment of being alive. Richard writes:

“It does take some doing to start off with but, as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it becomes progressively easier to enjoy and appreciate being here each moment again.”

Richard became virtually free in 2 months? Me, I can’t even get a glimpse at feeling good lol. What the fuck!?

I’ve said that I felt good, but I’m not sure this sensation of being ‘hungry for’ whatever that was happening, during an hour at work, was feeling good? It felt nice, but was it feeling good? I have no clue.

I’m pretty content during the days, living in a sort of limbo, where I feel neutral most of the time mixed with bad feelings. I laugh alot… but mostly due to something being experienced as funny - like how fucked up I am not getting anywhere?

Good feelings seems almost completely lacking. I can’t experience beauty, I can’t experience gratitude, I don’t experience empathy, compassion, tenderness and loving feelings etc.

Neutrality mixed with bad feelings is what I got. I seem to have had some success minimizing the bad feelings though, since my mood is experienced as a alot more stable. It’s like I’m reducing my sense of ‘I-ness’ and all that which defines and triggers me, but happiness (feeling it) and the experience of pure intent isn’t pouring in - only more nothingness, blankness, indifference etc.

I’m at loss of what to do really. If I try to whip myself to feel good and to enjoy and appreciate I won’t succeed and have had no success in this. If I don’t try and just let myself sit on a chair and completely let go of the controls - I’m afraid that I’ll get zoned out, dissociated and get lost in a sort of fog of nothingness. But what else is there to do?

Perhaps I’ve got major bad feeling blockers? Perhaps my poorly developed attentivness hasn’t even begun to see what’s really going on each moment again? I mean, I experience anxieties of all kinds quite alot. Perhaps it’s them? Perhaps I’m not even neutral at all? Perhaps I’m anxious all the time and this anxiousness is blocking me? Oh fuck the confusion.

Still one would think that there should be room/space for a felicitious feeling to pop up now and then. This unmistakable sense of a good feeling.

I’ve always thought that if I only could get a good sense of how the method works I could ride that wave until the end. But I can’t even get a glimpse of feeling good, so the fantasy of riding any waves remains.

[Andrew]

@John

Richard became virtually free in 2 months? Me, I can’t even get a glimpse at feeling good lol. What the fuck!?

Comparing yourself to anyone, let alone Richard, is going to be futile. Which we all know, but do it anyway!

@John

I’ve said that I felt good, but I’m not sure this sensation of being ‘hungry for’ whatever that was happening, during an hour at work, was feeling good? It felt nice, but was it feeling good? I have no clue.

It’s not some magic ingredient, rather a space where one’s thinking can make better choices.

If you find yourself thinking clearer, then that’s a good indication.

@Kiman on the phone last night made an excellent point about everything being on a spectrum. Meaning, there is no division between "feeling flat, feeling ok, feeling well, feeling good, very good, great, excellent, perfect (EE), *except for the last one; immaculate (PCE). Even then, there are many reports where the PCE is not a “hard” state, and it fades, and comes back etc.

So, I am suggesting that having some particular “feeling good” on a pedestal , like a magic bullet, isn’t useful.

Having a blameless honesty about everything (like you are posting here), is useful.

@John

I’ve always thought that if I only could get a good sense of how the method works I could ride that wave until the end. But I can’t even get a glimpse of feeling good, so the fantasy of riding any waves remains.

The method and the end, according to Richard are the same thing. So , one doesn’t lead to the other (like some piggy bank of feeling good with get you there), rather one is a microcosm of the other. The dedication to enjoying life as a feeling being, carries on as a lived actuality. Geoffrey was saying something along these lines; Feeling good, enjoyment always made sense to ‘him’, now it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I suppose that Richard is making this point about the actualism method; it is what one does in the “meantime”. Meaning, it’s not a “retirement fund” which will mature into actual freedom.

One could, in theory, ‘self’ immolate right now.

Indeed, naivete is as much about eliminating “grown up” objections which are creating these fantasies, as facilitating the method itself.

It’s also useful to me at least to have realised, naivete is not synonymous with feeling good. One can have naivete and feel bad. It’s a description of a state of mind to me. One which can, like a 4 year old ask “why not?” and see the objections.

[Shashank]

It’s good you’re taking a sincere stock of the situation…that place of thinking - “I’m feeling neutral but maybe its some everpresent anxiousness aka feeling bad that I don’t recognize or lack the sincerity to look in the eye” - is very familiar to me

This may seem like the oddest feeling good advice lol…Richard says that feeling good is a general sense of well being and as obnoxious it may sound, but I find that quality of general sense of wellbeing most apparent in the day after going through a good crap…my mood right before is that is generally of feeling bad and right after, there is ease n better mood

But then I have a bit of an IBS, so maybe it’s a unique situation to me

[Kub933]

There is something that Peter writes about in the Actualist guide (quote at the bottom) and also what Richard writes about ‘durance-ville’. I have definitely had those exact experiences too, of going through what seems like ‘no mans land’, where it seems all I have ever known is grim reality.

I really don’t know what the ‘correct’ path is in terms of applying the method and probably there isn’t such a thing. Maybe there is some people that somehow can just get on with enjoying and appreciating from the get-go, for me it didn’t quite go like that.

What I personally found was that when I dared to peel back those things which were somewhat keeping ‘my’ reality intact (the habitual actions, the good feelings, the dearly held beliefs etc), once I started prodding around, shifting things and experiencing things deeply I would go through various ‘storms of the psyche’ or these long stretches of bleak reality, sometimes for weeks/months.

This is why I am always quick to come out and write about this stuff because I have often wondered (whilst in the middle of one of them shit storms ), will this ever end? So far every single time it has ended, it is like eventually the thing cannot sustain itself and something shifts, often this is when I will find new levels of clarity and ease and often this is also when I will end up having lots of EEs and PCEs happening.

I would say the key things when in those periods :

• Diligence, persistence, bloody-mindedness
• Willingness to fully feel and experience
• A memory of perfection giving confidence that there is a place beyond this grim reality, that it is possible to live it.

It is possible to pass through periods of stark reality where nothing has any meaning and all is experienced as grey and dull. Boredom, meaninglessness, pointlessness and similar feelings are often encountered and this is where a continual memory of the pure consciousness experience is vital, for that becomes one’s single pointed goal in life while crossing what can be experienced and felt to be a desert completely devoid of usual meaning and familiar emotional experiences. Traditional and accustomed relationships and ways of thinking and feeling are all broken apart and there seems to be no way of putting anything back together again. One realizes that the path is essentially a demolition job – the very aim is to demolish, piece by piece, ‘who’ you have been taught to be and ‘who’ blind nature has programmed you to be.

[Kub933]

Oh and also writing notes I think can help although as I wrote about recently for me it became a crutch.

But I found that when in those very grim periods, if I could just sit down, relax, feel and write notes whilst exploring this thing in myself, all of its corners and winding turns that it would really help.

The notes would keep me focused on the task, and they become like an ice-breaker, a slightly more comfortable way to begin exploring these intense parts of myself.

[Andrew]

Powerful stuff.

@John , I remember you writing that you didn’t trust yourself to investigate beliefs etc et al.

Time for something new heh?

It’s one thing to push through the “valley of the shadow of death”, it’s another to spot the bypass highway which was built around it.

I have gone the hard way. As it sounds you have. Which is perfectly understandable.

There is however, more than one “hard way”.

Apparently, there may be even an easy way.

Let’s make a wager; your ‘hard way’ vs my ‘hard way.’

Shortcuts, cheating, deserting the sinking ship, are all on the table. Betraying the “hard way” is allowed. Slinking away into the “easy way” completely legit.

The prize? …Steak knives, of course!

[John]

I think the problem lies in ‘him’ which is questioning my own experience and comparing it to others. I mean, right now, I find it quite fun to be attentive to feelings and this moment of being alive.

@Andrew

@John , I remember you writing that you didn’t trust yourself to investigate beliefs etc et al.

The thing is this, I was experiencing anxiety this night while trying to sleep; ‘bouts’ of anxiety rising to the surface. These feelings came with no clue whatsoever to what might have been behind my experience. No thoughts/images, nothing that was really happening, but me laying on the pillow waiting to sleep. How am I to investigate anything which gives me no clues? The only thing I could do was to immerse myself in the experience and later to see it fade away and to be gone - until it again was upon me a few minutes later.

Anyways,
I feel back on track after writing my post, but I bet that this isn’t the last time that my cheerful spirit is to be caught up in the questioning of my progress and whereabouts. What @Kub933 calls ‘no mans land’ doesn’t have to be bad, as I said: it’s still interesting and quite fun to pay attention to this moment of being alive. Perhaps it’s the very questioning of one’s experience that causes all sorts of discomfort?

I always like you guys replies. Even if I don’t respond or aknowledge what you write, I read it and often go back days/weeks later and read it again, to see if there’s something to extract.

Our shared togetherness here… is so ‘comfy’.

[Andrew]

We are allies.

[Kub933]

@John

The thing is this, I was experiencing anxiety this night while trying to sleep; ‘bouts’ of anxiety rising to the surface. These feelings came with no clue whatsoever to what might have been behind my experience. No thoughts/images, nothing that was really happening, but me laying on the pillow waiting to sleep. How am I to investigate anything which gives me no clues? The only thing I could do was to immerse myself in the experience and later to see it fade away and to be gone - until it again was upon me a few minutes later.

Interesting you write this because it is also something that Peter describes in the guide (quote at bottom) and also something I have experienced. I think all the pioneers wrote about these kinda mini panic attacks that can happen as a result of the prodding into ‘me’.

I also remember having the same thought of - “how the hell do I investigate something so raw” and it seems the answer is to do what you did :

@John

The only thing I could do was to immerse myself in the experience and later to see it fade away and to be gone

Peters quote :

A variety of weird experiences are possible for one’s traditional defences, ways of coping or ways of avoiding, are no longer available. It is often as though one is naked in the world and it takes nerves of steel to not raise one’s traditional defences but to stay with any feelings of vulnerability and fear. Each time one dares to fully lower one’s guard and experience the consequences as only temporary and unsustainable instinctual emotional reactions, one gains more confidence to keep going, no matter what.

[claudiu]

@John

I’m at loss of what to do really. If I try to whip myself to feel good and to enjoy and appreciate I won’t succeed and have had no success in this. If I don’t try and just let myself sit on a chair and completely let go of the controls - I’m afraid that I’ll get zoned out, dissociated and get lost in a sort of fog of nothingness. But what else is there to do?

What if you just forget actualism for a sec and just do something fun? Something you genuinely enjoy doing. Like going skiing . Or something with less travel required. This may help remind you what “feeling good” is like!

[John]

ATTENTIVENESS AND MY INTENT
Perhaps it’s just easy… Relax… relax and be attentive to how I feel each moment of being alive. Forget about getting anywhere and let whatever that’s going on - resolve itself.

Perhaps pure attentiveness is the key; a completely soft and relaxed attentiveness? As of now, there seems to be a quality problem to my attentiveness… I often seem to be too involved in this attentiveness to “How I am experiencing this moment of being alive”. Sometimes I even forget about it, as in social gatherings at work for example. Even worse would be the times I struggle to apply it - as when being upset about some silliness.

But all these scenarios where I fail, must eventually be brought under the umbrella of attentiveness.

I keep getting back to this attitude of attentiveness to HAIETMOBA… until the very end… It’s a scary thought, because It means that I’d have to stop having a goal, it means that I’d have to stop doing everything which I’m currently doing. It means the complete end of ‘my’ active participation and it means the begining of:

Pure attentiveness

Isn’t it possible to be just attentive and to have myself slowly drift of into the unkown? I’m so fed up with this analyzing of feelings (it’s just feelings), what the words on the actual freedom page means and what’s meant by all your ‘helpful’ replies. It’s all but confusing to ‘me’. It just doesn’t seem sensible to wait for ‘me’ to get a good grip on all the technicalities and what’s going on. “I’m” the root of the problem - what the fuck is it that “I’m” to understand? Another stupied realization? Another “I think I got it now?”

No!

I ask, isn’t it as simple as having oneself ‘withered down’ to dust - through attentiveness alone; being attentive to how I feel, each moment again; to slowly have myself melt away in the rays of awareness? I mean, a great part of me is already gone through this process alone of bringing the light of awareness to feelings. The other part that’s still here… seem to be the part that wants to stick around and discuss actualism, bitch and moan about my struggles and everything that I’ve yet to understand. It seems to be the part of me that doesn’t want to be brought under the umbrella of attentiveness.

The idea of ‘me’ understanding anything is silly - in a sense at least.

What has really had me come to an halt after the realization of my intent in august has been the fear of loosing it - that I somehow need to keep it alive through some ‘willfull act’. This is an error in my thinking and I’ve certainly slided of my tracks here. I don’t have to be aware of my intent at all. I don’t have to worry if it’s here; if it’s gone; or wherever the hell it is.

This is self-evident when reflecting back upon ‘how I quit smoking’ many years ago. I just brought awareness to my ‘smoking sessions’ and forgot about the whole thing of having an intent of quiting. One day I just had the words come to me: “I don’t want to smoke anymore” and I quit right then and there. I back then had my experience of how my intent works - right then and there. I don’t need to check up on this intent. My intent was set months ago and it’s set to this day: “TO BECOME HAPPY AND HARMLESS - COME WHAT MAY!” My only job… is to allow the light of awareness to be shined upon me by the body.

I must allow the body to keep working it’s magic upon me.

[John]

Yes, this is what it will be all about: To remove my last doubts about letting go of everything and just be cool with seeing where attentiveness will bring me.

Good or bad feelings? I care not! - at least I’ll try not to.

[John]

I know it’s silly, but “I” get so excited by all this. I feel good. I know I feel good and has felt well all day long. It’s okey to get excited. I’m so rarely excited by anything these days. Sorry @claudiu nothing really works and is seen as great fun - but this! - this endeavour of attentiveness to TMOBA is creating fun and excitement.

Where will I go? Experience so far tells me that I’ll go… here now… even more.

[claudiu]

Great! You went from " Neutrality mixed with bad feelings is what I got" and “I’m at loss of what to do really. If I try to whip myself to feel good and to enjoy and appreciate I won’t succeed and have had no success in this. If I don’t try and just let myself sit on a chair and completely let go of the controls - I’m afraid that I’ll get zoned out, dissociated and get lost in a sort of fog of nothingness.” to " I feel good. I know I feel good and has felt well all day long." in the course of less than 3 days!

All without having to leave your house or plan a ski trip

Definitely worth a pat on the back… it is more than okay to get excited! Not many people in the world can do or have done what you have done just now. Enjoy your new superpower

[claudiu]

One thing I’ll comment on, for what it’s worth:

@John

I ask, isn’t it as simple as having oneself ‘withered down’ to dust - through attentiveness alone; being attentive to how I feel, each moment again; to slowly have myself melt away in the rays of awareness?

It isn’t exactly like that, depending on what you mean…

I would say that attentiveness doesn’t wither ‘me’ away. It’s tempting to try to do it. But that way you’ll find frustration. Cause you can’t stop ‘being’, so you will just be being a being that is trying to not be, which is not that much fun.

Rather ‘I’ stay exactly as “existent” as ever, and actually in a sense become more present, in that ‘I’ don’t withdraw anymore or shy away. But rather it’s that ‘I’ turn into felicity and naivete instead of the usual. ‘I’ as ‘being’ am as ‘strong’ as ever, it’s just ‘I’ am expressed differently.

You could say that it withers the ‘bad’/‘good’ parts of ‘me’ away… but it isn’t exactly like that either. Those parts are still there, capable of being expressed at any point. Still latent and able to be triggered. It’s just that ‘I’ don’t manifest that way as much anymore.

You could say it withers who ‘I’ am away… which is more true in my experience. I go from being a particular and special person, to just some guy who happens to be in this body doing these things.

In any case I’d more put it that attentiveness reveals when ‘I’ am getting up to the same ol’ sadness madness and badness, to let me get back to gladness ASAP. But it isn’t about lying out in the sun and drying myself out. Rather more about getting up and doing this thing called LIVING with utmost zest and gusto!