Very well said @henryyyyyyyyyy. You have rung my bell.
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Having a ton of fun right now, the method is working exquisitely well.
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Drive and motivations ?
Can you say more about what you’re asking?
Drive and motivation to feel better and have more enjoyable life.
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Yes - whatever drive and motivation can be generated
My current recipe is EEs & history books 
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How you doing with the breakup so far?
Better than expected!
A few days after there was a folk music festival in my town and so I spent a week dancing, listening to music, and hanging out with some new people. We went camping at the end of the week, as well.
There’s something about being outside the previous habitual mind of the relationship that ‘woke me up,’ and so in many ways I’ve been having an even better time.
There have still been times where I have gotten insecure or felt bad about her not wanting to be with me. I’ve been doing pretty well with noticing as that emotion is coming up, ‘freezing it’ (that’s what I’ve been calling @Kub933 's method of getting back to feeling good), and then investigating.
I’ve also been doing well with maintaining a connection to the ‘sensible,’ not getting too lost in emotion and prioritizing doing things that, well, make sense.
I think frequently in the relationship I was being so controlled by my desires and worries, as well as the worries that I subconsciously picked up from her, and being outside of it has been a good reminder of what’s possible.
I’ve also made a significant dent in the loneliness that I would feel when by myself, I think because I’ve been having so much fun with the method and generally in the world. There’s not space for the loneliness to ‘get in.’
I’ve been reading a lot, and have found some subjects that are interesting to me and have a lot of overlap with actualism-relevant information. I’m actually thinking of typing up a bit of a ‘book report’ on some interesting things I came across.
I noticed something I never had while I was camping:
When I first woke up I was feeling bad about the breakup, and I decided to take a look into what I was feeling bad about. I realized quickly that it was my desire for her. In the past desire has been difficult for me to remove because I like it so much - historically I’ve had a lot of success removing the ‘negative’ emotions, not as much the positive. But this time, I could see the connection between the desire and the suffering I was experiencing. Additionally, I could see that the desire-suffering dynamic was taking me away from enjoying my time at the cabin with the people I had been hanging out with and having such a great time together. So it was an easy choice to drop it and go have a fun morning.
So now for the first time I’m invested in removing desire. It also means I can think a little more clearly about romantic interests.
Thanks for asking! How are you?
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I’m doing really well lately. Since I went through a breakup a bit ago and it was hard on me I wanted to ask how you were. Def hit me up if you ever want to talk about it - either in an actualist or casual way.
I have some time now if you’re interested!
I might be too late but I DM’d you
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4|20|22
With desire there’s always underlying sorrow
So now when I see desire I stop and look for the sorrow
Once I find that I ‘freeze’ it (don’t feed it, don’t go anywhere, let it pass away in sensuous attention)
No more desire, sorrow minimized
Back to enjoying & appreciating
—
Also noticed that anger and disgust seem to exist with a similar logic to desire, they’re there to ‘get’ something and they’re layered over sorrow
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4.25.22
Whenever I start to do well I take it into the same narrative, ‘some girl will find me attractive.’
And that’s why being broken up with is hard, because everything is based on that narrative. The drive to be desired/desirable.
And on my side I’m desiring them
For sex and for validation and for having a fun time together
The sex and fun times also carry aspects of validation
I’m here, doing this, because I want to live the PCE.
At some point in the past I got lonely and retreated back to having a partner be a requirement
I think I got excited reading Richard’s and Vineeto’s and Peter’s descriptions of what their investigations looked like, and I started trying to model things after that
It’s been one big side quest of trying to make that happen
Not so bad. But now with being broken up with it’s not what’s happening, today.
And for that matter in general I haven’t found many people that are similarly interested/motivated.
Certainly she never was. Ah well.
Maybe someone else will be.
–
I’m scared I won’t be able to have a good time alone
Guess I can prove that one wrong
—
Definite misery/bleakness changing to some enjoyment at the beach
I can see that we both played parts in how things went
I can’t control her and it’s not great to try to
All there is to do is get back to the business of living my life
Plenty of adjustments still to make, plenty of beliefs still floating around.
It’s fascinating to notice that I don’t know what will happen next
All my divinations have been wrong
Can I enjoy such an insane situation as this?
I have nothing to hitch my happiness to
I’m as much a ‘free agent’ as I’ve been in a long time.
—
Something about recognizing that we both played a part seems to be effective at neutralizing both externally-directed anger and internally-directed sorrow.
We both played a part. Both of us ‘could have’ done more. We didn’t. That’s just the way it went at the time. And now I can do what I can to figure out my own bullshit.
The sky is not the limit
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A glimpse, for an instant, outside the binary of ‘attractive - not attractive’
4.27.22
My motivation to become free comes from being in relationships and having it devolve into bad feelings
For me romantic love had always been the pinnacle, that’s where the enjoyment would surely be. But even at its best there was uneasiness
I’ve also blamed the failures on partners, or on myself that I wasn’t attracting the ‘right partners’
Those beliefs would be good to lay down.
The partners have just operated the same way as me, as normal humans. They have insecurities and they’ve projected insecurities on me
There were beliefs about the things I was doing wrong that were causing their suffering
And I’ve thought that maybe if I saw someone else, that they wouldn’t have those insecurities and beliefs. But I think now that really I’ve been looking for someone that has the same beliefs as me, or that I could convince.
I’ve also put a lot of energy into ‘understandings,’ and into finding ways to be ‘more convincing.’
But it doesn’t work. Even if I could force all my ideas onto someone else they wouldn’t be free. They’d be the same as me, with my beliefs.
I’m a pain in the neck too. With my insecurities and beliefs about what they should be doing or being
I’ve made plenty of mistakes or had the wrong idea about actualism. It’s like hacking through the jungle with a machete sometimes. And then I’m thinking that if only someone else, who was equally as lost as me, would only follow me, that it would be so much better.
Really I want them to rescue me. All the beliefs are that if only they did the right thing, that it would be easy
Even hanging out with Richard & Vineeto it became clear that I would have to do it myself.
It’s a bit funny too, because I’m always correcting them [partners] and telling them how to do this, how to do that, while also thinking that they should be the ones rescuing me. But if I need rescuing, what am I doing telling others what to do?
Something has been in my mind a lot since the other day, I realized that all ‘my’ ‘understandings’ were just ‘mine’… they don’t exist in the actual. Only this direct experience is happening in the actual, there isn’t that sophisticated piecing together of models of things.
Schemas
So I’m trying to enforce my schemas to them, all my great ideas, but all those great ideas aren’t the same as actual freedom
If anything the schemas need to go.
They’re all my ego-beliefs
I’ve been jealously guarding them, stroking them, thinking that they were what makes me special
But they haven’t protected me from screwing up, they haven’t stopped me from hurting others. Actually they’ve been ammunition for hurting others more. “You’re doing it wrong. You’re not safe, because you’re not doing it this way.”
And they’re not really giving me what I want either. It’s just been this battle
I saw it a lot in the last months of the relationship: the thing that I was the most offended by was when she did things that didn’t align with my beliefs. Because I knew it meant that she wasn’t in my control. It felt like her leaving
But that means my idea of her ‘being there’ was just ‘thinking the same as me.’ It was always a problem if she wasn’t. It would feel like I was alone
‘I’ am alone, but not because there aren’t enough that agree with me. I’m alone because I’m hiding behind the schemas. Because I am the ‘understandings,’ instead of just being this. This conscious, sensitive body.
The present-time consciousness is being updated all the time by everything that’s happening. The crystallizing into beliefs, models, is only to try and have security. I think that if I can pin everything down, arrange it, that I won’t have to feel bad anymore. I can control everything according to my ‘great understanding.’ But the great thing about this breakup is, it reveals that my ‘great understanding’ was shit.
Every time I’ve had some clarity, I immediately get excited and diagram out a new ‘great understanding’ that will this time definitely give me security.
But I’ve just left the very safety itself. All the diagramming exists within the belief that I’m not safe. The only reason to do it is if I’m not safe.
–
I can’t do it the same way again.
I already know it doesn’t work.
Right now I’m afraid of being alone…
I’m alone right now, so really I’m afraid of right now as well as projecting it into the future and putting ‘bad feeling on it.’
None of that is a fixed fact. I’ve been also enjoying myself a lot today while I’ve been alone.
And it’s definitely not a fact that ‘bad feeling’ has to be an ongoing condition for me while I’m alone.
I think if anything I’ve been happier being alone when I really look at it
So it’s pure belief that it’s worse
Every time I’ve ever dated someone it started when I was doing really well, and then gradually during the relationship I/we became mired in bad feeling.
So it seems to be easier to be happy alone, the greater challenge is carrying that forward while with someone. That’s what this whole investigation is about…
All the bad feelings as the relationship struggles are predicated on being alone being bad also
–
All the beliefs have been tying both hands behind my back as I’m trying to date
So few options. It’s just playing out a script
–
There seems to be some predatory instinct that makes me want to enforce my beliefs on them. I’m driven to spread ‘myself.’
–
“…the transition from the real-world to this actual world is a seamless transition – all what happens is that an illusion is no more (somewhat analogous to Santa Claus, et al., ceasing to appear real upon the illusion being exposed) – it is thus all much ado about nothing … literally!”
-Richard
So all the battling is to defend Santa Claus (essentially).
–
Her being attracted to someone else and not me is a problem for me because I feel cut-off from her love
So that’s about the loving feelings that I get to feel when someone directs them at me.
I experience myself as being lost in the wilderness, howling miserably.
That’s interesting bc that’s also how I experience actuality, as wilderness.
That fits with how loneliness is closer to the actual than love is (being only once removed, rather than twice).
So then it may be just about how much of the experience of wilderness ‘I’ can bear.
In the past when I’ve done really well in ‘wilderness,’ it became for ‘me’ something I could take back to show off to potential mates (like as a badge of honor).
I can see myself doing that now with her, too.
Those haven’t worked in the long run. They have worked to initially attract people occasionally but then I’ve run into the same quagmires
So the ‘badges of honor’ don’t work.
It’s more about becoming that, becoming the experience of being the wilderness. The universe experiencing itself.
This explains the quagmire, too. Too busy hanging onto a love-teddy-bear to experience the wilderness itself.
The wilderness is seen as a bad, dangerous place.
But it’s not. That’s where the perfection is. Provided that one can pass through the loneliness/fear.
So it’s about seeing the wilderness experience as more valuable than the love experience. I’m literally better off not being in the love
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5.2.22
There’s a sense of righeousness that comes in when someone disagrees with me or doesn’t understand something in my world-view
Or won’t hear me out
That interrupts the perfection, from my side.
There are a few things I’m considering as too important
-
That I get to ‘say my piece.’
There’s a sense of injustice that happens when I don’t feel that I’ve been allowed to say something. That is moral, others won’t necessarily play by those rules. -
That they understand what I’m talking about
Again this is something I sort of take for granted, that I make sense and therefore I’ll make sense to them. It’s a belief on my part, because I’m not really talking to a sensible person. I’m talking to a self, with their beliefs and ideas about things. Whatever beliefs they may have in the way have to be dismantled before such a conversation can happen, a highly uncertain process. Maybe the best example of this is all the correspondence on the AFT site, most of which seems to have a hostile tone toward Richard and toward actual freedom. That may be simply the norm in the human world. It’s interesting I’ve never noticed this before. -
That I won’t be alone
Out of all the considerations this may be the strongest. In my past of just being normal everything I did was within the normal ideas and beliefs of humanity, and I could find others who carried some of the beliefs I did and agree with them about things. I suppose even in that case it was never comfortable though, there were always contradictions and uncomfortable aspects, always fights over different beliefs. So in that sense it wasn’t so different. I even always had a similar doubt that there could be any people ‘out there’ that I could ‘fit in’ with… so it seems that this is another part of ‘me.’
This discomfort with loneliness keeps me from being relaxed in this situation of disagreement, because I’m being very careful not wanting to offend anyone’s sensibilities because I’m thinking that I’ll be alone. I’ve covered it up by acting as if it’s to protect their feelings, but really I’m only afraid of treading on toes because it means I might be left alone… and that is terrible for ‘me.’
I can feel some fresh air coming in from approaching this issue. There is great freedom in being able to allow myself to loosen the reins, to not be so afraid of operating. I think this breakup has emboldened me because even with being so careful over the years she still left me. It didn’t save me from the loneliness. So I may as well be genuine in the meantime.
I’d still like to date another actualist. Maybe I will hold out for that. I was thinking about dating last night and about how I could just ‘hook up’ with people, but I don’t really want to play with anyone’s emotions like that. I don’t want to cause those heartbreaks of them believing something will happen. Maybe in some situations it’s ok, someone can be there for it and just enjoy it, but most often it becomes all this attachment. I don’t want to keep doing that to people.
I’m also emboldened in all of this because I’ve met a few people these last 6 months that seemed to really understand what I was talking about in a way that I had never experienced before. So now I know from my own experience that it is possible. Maybe I’m getting better at describing things, maybe I’m vibing with different people now, or maybe it is just a very occasional thing that happens. But it does happen. So I’m less willing to compromise in how I talk with people. The risk is that people may think I’m a bit strange. Sometimes people thought Richard was crazy, or even dangerous! I just don’t want to hide in a hole.
—
Something else I noticed last night is that I’ve seen to have prioritized ‘realizations’ as being the meat of actualism for me, I think because they would frequently come during PCEs. But it’s not really the actualism method. Obsessively ruminating won’t really make me free, I have to get into the enjoying & appreciating more. So something to watch there. This morning has been going well in that regard.
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5|5|22
The romance myth still has a hold on me
That’s what’s next
The belief is that there’s someone that I can be ‘connected to’ and that connection will result in happiness, good feelings
If there isn’t an answer to the instinctual passions though nothing will change
I’ve already proven for myself that the love can’t control, protect me from, or remove the suffering.
The love I feel is just desire so that I stay with the group and pass on genetic material
It becomes a demand on them and on me
And the suffering is always still there to tell me and them that something is going wrong, that they or I are ‘wrong.’
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5|5|22
My eternal frustration and discouragement have been because of trying to make the dysfunctional fantasy of romantic love work in my life.
By the very nature of desire, as soon as something nice comes into my life it flits just out of reach
I’m left overreaching once again and spoiling whatever good thing was going on
And then not understanding what went wrong, all the while holding a deeply flawed set of instructions in my hand.
My desires, combined with those socially-engineered ‘instructions,’ are to blame. All that I consist of.
It makes sense that it took so long for actual freedom to come along… who would ever dream to question love itself?
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5|10|22
Still anger around [redacted]
Almost a sense like he wasn’t playing fair
Of course they’re all just my rules
I have my way that I think is the way to go, but it didn’t pan out w her
She chose him
It doesn’t mean I’m wrong. It just didn’t work out. It has to be considered that she’s who she is.
She wasn’t ready to work through stuff. She doesn’t have the experiences that I do that inform how I approach stuff.
With all that it’s no surprise that she went into love when it was an option.
There was always resistance and I just wasn’t willing to see it because of the lust.
So one thing I have to look at now, is the lust.
But I also want to settle that anger.
Other people are doing love. It’s the most natural thing in the world to do. The weird, surprising thing is to do anything else but that.
I want to have success in all these matters.
This isn’t abstract.
Anger and pure consciousness don’t coexist.
The next question is, why is pure consciousness a higher priority for me than being angry?
The anger is really about the lust
And lust isn’t even comfortable compared to PCE
Definitely not comfortable for others
The end of me
—
Past romantic situations have fallen apart because 1) I was sacrificing my own interests for the sake of ‘peace,’ resulting in a depressive existence 2) I wasn’t as attracted to a person once I got past all the projections I was making on them 3) I was in a contradictory situation in which I lusted after them but they couldn’t meet my projected desires in other arenas - my desire to engage in intellectual discussions of becoming free with my partner.
In the case of #3 I was constantly shuttling between being attracted to her and wanting to push her away
She couldn’t satisfy my desires
Neither could my first 2 partners
I’m wanting to date someone super hot who can also carry out conversation to my hopes
Both of those are emotional measuring-sticks
I know when someone’s super hot because I experience lust for them
I know when someone can ‘carry out a conversation’ when I experience excitement while talking with them
Interesting
This actualism isn’t about giving anything up, it’s about achieving the optimum.
—
There’s something I’m missing around dissociation
Some distance happening
I project that it’s because of girls but maybe it’s more because of the hopes
Since even when I was dating people I was experiencing disappointment at how the hopes weren’t fulfilled
Dating someone isn’t enough
It takes more, it takes the enjoying & appreciating for PCE to happen
And the desire is actually incompatible with that
So the girls, as I currently experience them, actually block PCE from occurring
The belief is fading
Experiencing it with this vitality has a viscerality which all the intellectualizing lacked… that’s what the gap was. The distance
There’s a comedown from the desire, fears of disappointment
Can’t maintain the love
The exhausting cycles of desire & disappointment lead to exhaustion, dissociation, intellectualization
& loss of vitality.
There’s fear in the desire. Because it’s always ‘over there.’ The feeling itself can’t maintain.
I don’t know what it will take to drop this part of myself
It has to be for them
I know my desire & related sorrow & anger cause others distress
That’s reason enough.
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5|11|22
Some fears around working on projects, specifically tiny house & motorcycle
Ok, maybe they’ll get fucked up! Maybe they’ll cost some money. Maybe I’ll be in that position, “I fucked that up.”
I want to ‘be’ someone who is ‘good at stuff,’ because that’s who gets respect. I’ve had a few mistakes on the tiny house that have made me feel like a screw-up
When I was much younger I got into all kinds of random projects with no expectation that it would go so well
I didn’t have all of humanity bearing down on me at that time, trying to maintain my place in the pecking-order
When you’re a kid screwing up stuff is kind of the expectation, so anything that works out is a bonus
A big part of it is tied up in money, which has been really tight for the last few years
A lot of elements connected there
My parents worried that I’ll screw up
Me afraid of all the machinery of life involved with making money
Afraid of being ‘controlled’
Afraid my rebellions will result in being broke & alone
I’ll keep trying to put myself in the best position as far as work goes. That’s for granted
Can’t do more than that
The next ingredient is making enjoying & appreciating a non-negotiable aspect.
This is something I’ve put considerable time into investigating, but I haven’t revisited since I changed my investigative approach in the new year
What’s sensible is to consider the facts & do what I best know to do. Simple.
And it’s sensible to enjoy & appreciate. It serves everything. Except for ‘me.’
Actually it does that too. I want success for me & for everyone.
I just have to change, I have to go away little by little.
It’s me that’s afraid of this and that.
Afraid of failure, afraid of ‘alone,’ afraid of demands
So then getting back to these projects
It is good to make some judgment calls on doing this project or this project, I don’t need to be reckless
I can consider, ‘what are the repercussions of this getting messed up’ and make a decision with that consideration
I think I’ve picked up some ‘being reckless is good’ as a belief sometime back
I can see the chaos that engendered looking backwards
I always cut short the consideration process when things got scary. “I’ll just jump in”
It’s been a bit traumatic actually
And now here I am today. I can notice when I’m cutting the consideration short. That’s where the fear pops up
“I don’t want to screw up” / “I’ll just jump in” as two fear-responses.
The fear is already happening by the time either of those thoughts occur.
So now I have my approach: “intelligent consideration, from a place of enjoying & appreciating” whenever a project is in front of me.
Really just the actualism method, but knowing that those situations have been a trigger I can look out for it specifically.
—
All the hopefulness of the past didn’t go anywhere
I’m still breathing. Everything actual is here right now.
It’s like I’m holding my breath, waiting for something else to happen
What’s in the way of the perfection?
Humanity has these flows, pressure of where I’m supposed to be going at every phase of life, pressures for every different identity
Thought wasted on trying to meet those pressures
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