@claudiu So I’ve had experiences over the last week of what I would call sincere intent. It’s kind just a thought, “hey, why not feel good right now?”. This idea washes over me like cool water and suddenly I’m feeling good again. How would you compare pure intent to something like this?
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Combining @Kub933’s experiences and my own about how to go about feeling good, I’ve come up with a 4 step process. If a step doesn’t work, then it’s not available to me at this moment and I can try a little, but there’s no point in forcing it. Just move on to the next one.
So you’re feeling bad
Step 1) Sincere/Pure intent - recalling one’s intent to be happy and harmless is enough to propel you into feeling good again. I’ll talk about sincere intent since I do not yet have access to pure intent. For me this is just like, “why not feel good right now?” Or “feeling bad sucks, let’s enjoy this life”. It’s some kind of variation of Richard’s “why waste the only moment of being alive feeling bad, when you could be feeling good?”
Step 2) Being the feeling, feeling it out - Okay so step 1 didn’t work. Either you’re just half-assing it, don’t have the necessary intent, or the feeling is too strong. No problem, here I would try to feel out the feeling more. Name it, see if I’m dissociating from it. Maybe it becomes apparent that I’m choosing to “be” this feeling, and so feeling good appears into view as a choice.
Step 3) Getting your hands dirty - Alright, that didn’t work either. You’re probably dissociating hard from this feeling and don’t even know much about it. It’s probably been around for a while. It’s time to get curious and sincerely ask yourself about how you’re operating? What is causing you to feel this way? Essentially, investigation.
Step 4) Feel it out - You’re too overwhelmed by the feeling, it’s not the right time to investigate. Try your best to be the feeling. Try your best to not suppress or express. Chill out, take a walk.
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That sounds truly wonderful and I would certainly encourage you to nourish it!
I would say it’s a clear indication of having naivete or being naive or being naivete itself. Indeed, why not feel good right now? That simple unsophisticated uncomplicated thought is very indicative of naivete. Because indeed there is no reason not to 
.
From this place of being naive, pure intent is readily accessible.
It might help to consider that pure intent is not something ‘I’ do or am (while naivete is), rather it is outside of ‘me’. It is essentially equivalent to the purity of the actual world in and of itself.
Another tip is that there is an inflection point, before which ‘I’ am in control (even while being naive), and after which it is pure intent running the show. This giving up of control is what going out from control is, and it is what an EE is if not an ongoing modus operandi.
You may find yourself reading this and contemplating on it, nourishing and allowing that naive thought to take root and take hold and allow yourself to be naivete going in that direction, and at some point you may find you have already allowed that locus of control to shift!
At this point you can contemplate and reflect on what is it exactly that is “running the show” now? What does it mean that this moment is living me now? This will direct you to contemplating and experiencing that pure intent more directly and gaining a better experiential understanding of it.
You may also find yourself trying to think about what it is or feel it out or mentally categorize it or explain it, etc., I would advise to catch yourself doing this and then reflect back on the fact that it’s something to be experienced, this is the only way to understand it. You may be able to find that distinction then between thinking about your experience / feeling out your experience, and simply allowing yourself to experience it. The answer is to continue doing the latter.
After sufficient experience then you can draw on this experience to put it into words for others, a describing after-the-fact, but you will never arrive there by trying to think your way to it.
To summarize, pure intent is that which is outside of ‘you’ that can pull ‘you’ ever-closer to the actual world, if you’ll allow it, and at that edge of EE experiencing where pure intent is running the show you may well find that ‘Josef’ seems to have disappeared, or rather never have been there in the first place, and you wonder what all the fuss is really about?
This state of simple wondering will serve you well to put a stake or a flag in it, as it were, and come back to it when next in the depths or pits of some powerful emotions or passions, as this is a fine moment to really appreciate just how different and how much better that simple “what’s all the fuss then eh?” way of being conscious really is!
Cheers,
Claudiu
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I never thought about this point but it makes complete sense now, why pure intent can be difficult to grasp. It’s just a case of using the wrong tools, the ones we are used to applying to everything else.
Geoffrey’s leathery armchairs poem seems very apt here!
Pure intent is something I can never grasp with the tools of imagination, intellectualisation, conceptualisation or belief. Perhaps this is why it is possible to go through a period of ‘forgetting’ what pure intent is, like I did recently. Because once the experiential link is cut, then ‘I’ am left with those inappropriate tools again. Until of course the link is re-established and then it’s all so obvious again.
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What’s the leathery armchairs poem?
Actually reading this again now it’s so brilliant!
This bit especially stood out, I never noticed it before this way, but I see it now. The weight of the description itself, the word becoming holy, meanwhile the experience itself is never had, so what is the fuss all about lol.
This also I related to experientially, I do remember instances where reality is peeled so far back that to even engage with any real world dilemma seems impossible. How could you engage with things that seem so foreign now, so irrelevant that they are meaningless. It’s nice to read this and to see that it is a direction I have been moving towards. It seems at this point it is the only direction worth traveling in.
Actually it’s kind of cool that the solution to the human condition is not to solve it’s puzzle but rather to travel in a direction where it becomes so faded that it never existed.
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Wanted to note down a particular quality that exists when the method is working well for me. Often when I am unsuccessful at applying the method, “I” am not willing to feel good. So I might rememorate an EE/PCE, or try to convince myself to feel good with various logics (“this is your only moment of being alive, so feel good. Why aren’t you feeling good???”). Here “I” am being very passive, trying to find the magic password that will allow me to feel good. If only I can say the right thing. Not only is this unreliable as a method to success, it’s a recipe for frustration. Clearly there’s some dissociation here as “I” am trying to act on myself. What is needed is an “active” approach (this is basically just intent, I think). Unless “I” am actively willing to enjoy my life, to have fun, a kind of “wooo let’s do this”, my attempts at the method will just be a façade.
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Sincerity all the way! The question is how to make oneself sincere when one is not 
It’s like looking for a technique for cultivating sincerity is the very antithesis of what sincerity is all about lol.
I remember a zoom we had a while back and someone was talking about defining sincerity for themselves.
It seemed to me like trying to turn sincerity into something that could be ticked off on a spreadsheet - ‘oh look I do A and B so that means I am sincere’ and I remember thinking ‘man this is the very opposite of sincerity’ 
It’s like I have these MMA shorts that someone gave me that say ‘you can’t teach heart’ it’s kind of like that but less dramatic haha. There is no exam I could pass (with the most sophisticated answers) that will award me my sincerity trophy.
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Oh how about this tho! Sincerity is the outcome of being genuine, so what ‘I’ can do to get closer to sincerity is to continue exposing all that is not genuine.
It’s like sincerity is not something I can do, only something I can be, whereas the normal way is to do things (tick off boxes) that guarantee a certain status, eg I feed the poor so I am a good person.
And it’s the same with the method, that I can tick all the boxes, ‘do’ all the things I am meant to and the reward is nowhere to be seen! Because I was never being sincere in the first place.
I was just playing the game that I was taught - ‘do the right thing and get the reward’ - it was all for show, a performance.
Yes very true. Sincerity with regards to the obstacles preventing one from feeling good is a curious exploration. You don’t know the answer, so a step-by-step method will not work. Triggers and situations, though similar by theme, are unique in their specific occurrences. So what is bothering you at this moment in time needs to be looked at openly, rather than mowed down with an algorithm.
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Yeah it’s quite fun to get down to the nitty gritty of these beliefs because this modus operandi of ‘performance for reward’ is the normal way we are taught to operate.
The interesting thing is how it links back to the belief in a god, in the ultimate authority that sees all your right deeds and will reward you suitably.
So I take this normal mindset to actualism and all of a sudden I am frustrated that my performances are not being rewarded, but there is no god in actuality so I am appealing to a piece of programming, to the hope that the right performance will have me rewarded.
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I’ve wondered this about love for a while. Everyone sees the same proselytization of love in the media and by our society in general. Is it just me who got caught in the trap of believing that love could be my purpose in life? Everyone else seems to balance their love life and their main purpose just fine. They don’t seem enamored by the idea. It’s almost as if they already know that the media is just exaggerating everything, and you can’t really make a life out of love.
I’m at the point where I don’t think I can ever fall in love again. It has just proven to be a dumb idea with disastrous consequences for everyone involved. It just doesn’t work. It took hundreds of failed attempts for me to realize it. How does everyone already know this lesson?
I have some theories
- some people keep trying with different people, they haven’t given up on the idea of love
- some people keep trying with the same person, they haven’t given up on love
- some people give up and stay single, they also haven’t given up on love (or maybe some have)
I guess not having an alternative like actualism would not allow you to give up on the exalted deity that is love
I think it’s about belief. They believe in love no matter what.
My neighbor where I previous lived said that God is love.
Yeah it’s like they know deep down the pitfalls of love but then without any other alternative they cannot abandon it, because then “life would be meaningless” and they would “be like a zombie” etc.
Then there is always that hope for ‘true love’ which keeps people hoping that things might be different one day, that they just haven’t met the right person etc.
It’s funny because really it is just shifting the goalposts each time so that love itself is never questioned, person after person is at fault and never love itself.
That together with the fact that love is so deeply woven into our culture it is a taboo to even contemplate abandoning it.
This is an extreme example but not long ago I saw a video of this man in Poland first shooting his ex lovers new boyfriend in broad daylight and then killing himself after, whilst the woman watched in horror. The thing is I remember the intense feelings of jealousy, rage, hatred etc that love always stirred up in me.
I can easily see how one could be driven to do something so extreme by love and somehow love gets pardoned every time. The person is seen at fault and yet any sane person can become as if possessed when these feelings are in full force.
Allowing love to run the show is basically leaving a door open for a hurricane of passions to blitz through. I guess that is why most people as they get older settle for a different kind of love, they learn to control it and work around it, but again if it takes that much effort to make it workable then why not just get rid of it lol.
Had a nice taste of purity yesterday, all by deciding that I’m not going to worry anymore. What became clear to me is that none of my problems mattered at all when I’m feeling great/excellent. So by deciding there was nothing to solve, there turned out to be nothing to solve . It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.
I don’t want to delude myself though. Aiming for a clear and stable PCE so that I don’t need to convince myself about feeling good
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I think I have spent most of my life convincing myself to feel bad.