Selected Correspondence: Pure Intent (actualfreedom.com.au)
This is a great read. @rick (hopefully the same one) voices some common concerns regarding motivation towards self-immolation that I’m sure have gone through all our minds, and Richard talks him through it in simple language.
Back on the actualism train… 
More relationship stuff going on. Overall though, I’m in a much better place than I was last year, with the honeymoon phase long behind me. In a recent discussion, my partner and I realized that we do not agree on a fundamental issue in our relationship. Long story short, I have made up my mind but she’s 50-50. So I’ve decided to stick around and wait. This has completely destroyed my security in the relationship and casted doubts on our future. But really, it revealed how dependent I am on future “security”. There is no security. Anything can happen. She can die, or get into an accident, or cheat on me. And in the end one of us will die first anyway.
The security that we commonly depend on in relationships doesn’t actually exist. Moreover, I find myself pulling away and withholding intimacy now that I feel she can leave me anytime. So the investigation right now is what is causing me to pull back? I’m also dealing with sorrow, it feels like my future plans have been shattered. Very interesting feeling all these things. It challenges me to discover a new way of relating to a person as opposed to a relationship (some guarantee in the future).
Wanted to share a practical example of the method in action for me. I, like many others, have the Monday blues where the start of the week is accompanied by feelings of resentment, depression and general malaise.
This is particularly pronounced in the morning for me. I felt tired, and I could feel on some level I was angry. Slowly I asked myself, “how am I feeling, how am I being?”. I began to feel the anger, making the subconscious, conscious. This allows me to feel the anger, but it was still a feeling I was observing; it was happening TO me. So the next step for me was to BE the feeling. To facilitate this, I usually ask, “is this feeling happening to me? Or am I choosing to be it?” This worked today, and so I was being angry. Actively. Immediately I felt this was silly and I could feel good instead. No forcing necessary.
Often I try to force myself to feel good, but this never works because I have to actively WANT to feel good, and if I’m forcing it then there’s some part of me that I need to feel, or BE before feeling good becomes the obvious choice.
I haven’t a memory of the method being described so well in this way of “being the feeling, then feeling good through choice”.
I am sure it’s been written a million times, but your example and explanation really clicked.
Nice description! I experience 2 more ways that it tends to go practically also.
The direct/easy way happens when I notice I am no longer allowing pure intent and this noticing re-orients me towards pure intent. Contemplation seems to facilitate this movement also.
The hard/longer way is when I find myself in something that is more sticky and neither the easy way or the way you described seems to work. At this point I will decide to roll up my sleeves and unpack exactly what is going on underneath, often by writing notes and exploring through every turn inside the psyche. Once I do this sufficiently and sincerely there is a feeling of some kind of a load being shifted off, now it’s possible to go back to the other 2 options.
I think having a connection to pure intent makes this whole thing way easier. I don’t even really know what pure intent is, let alone have an active connection to it. As for the second way, yeah I get that sometimes too. In that case, the issue is pretty serious and I probably have to wait a few hours/days, not suppressing or expressing, and just feel, until I come to the, “okay, let’s do something about this.” But by that point I’ve already kind of been checking out the specifics of the situation here and there, and the fact becomes apparent once I’m not blinded by emotion.
It may be worth deliberately setting out to find out!
What I’d suggest is read lots of descriptions of PCEs, and/or Richard’s writing, and then go alone on longish contemplative walks or a hike or some other nature activity, ruminating on and contemplating on what you’ve read. It may just trigger something for you!
@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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.