Thanks for that reminder, Claudiu. I’m going to take a break now from posting for a bit and just practice. Thanks again for engaging.
@Nikolai_Halay Perth. Where I am pretty sure we (and I mean someone else, but from here too) invented the the gentrification of “cunt”.
One of the things which has long fascinated me is the ability of a ‘self’ to feel bad about this body and the existence it leads. It’s really quite bizarre.
The self recriminations, however humorously intended, are a marvel of nature.
It really does make one wonder; “who am I working for?”
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It’s a classic cliche really.
Those with the introspection to see the “cunt” within, are not those who most need to see it. It becomes a mark of half-baked wisdom; self-abasement is regarded as wisdom.
What I see in those who can make something of actualism is a audacity to truly have that laugh at the ridiculous situation which leads to the suffering which we so readily take personally.
The situation itself is funny. The suffering, far from it. Everything I ever laughed at was that the situation itself is laughable. The suffering, never, but the situation, my god, hilarious!
Hola, Nikolai.
For some reason this thread went over my head. Unexpected to see you here after all those years of discussions and heated debates, lol.
I see how Actualism/PCEs can leave an imprint for sure. And I speak personally, 'cause historically ‘I’ am constantly doing whatever ‘I’ can to get the hell away from it, but just can’t for some reason. Glad to have you here.
Thanks Felipe!
Reminder to self:
Human sorrow is *not * imaginary – it is the very essence of the human soul, of ‘being’ itself. Again, you would have to split one part of ‘yourself’ from the rest of ‘you’ in order to classify it as merely imagination. ‘You’ are your feelings and your feelings are ‘you’ and those feelings only disappear when the identity disappears. Unless you acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings, you will always come up with tricky ways to keep one aspect of ‘you’ in existence, disguised as [fill in your own discoveries here], while pretending to yourself to have made advances in becoming free when you have merely rearranged the deckchairs. (Mind you, this is a very common occurrence when one is embarking on the path of leaving one’s ‘self’ behind, so no need to beat yourself up for it. Just remember that ‘I’ am a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity programmed to stay in existence at all cost – hence the necessity of being scrupulously honest with oneself).
Reminder to self:
1 - Whittle the social identity enough that I am relatively happy and harmless and I have demarcated ‘being’ enough so that the next step is possible.
2 - See ‘myself’ as a totality and continue moving towards purity, eventually have bucketfuls of EE’s PCE’s (these EE’s, PCE’s will continue to show the difference between ‘being’ and purity).
3 - Having experienced purity enough and having an acute understanding of the difference between ‘me’ and this purity, the possibility of Actual freedom via self immolation becomes an option.
Virtual Freedom vs. Rapid Method - Actualism - Discuss Actualism
Reminder to self.
Every single fear I have of self-immolation, every single argument I have against it, every twinge of trepidation, every single doubt no matter how sublte…is answered and muted and put to rest while in a PCE/EE.
I had this realisation last night while in bed half-asleep. I then woke up with it being my first thought. During the day yesterday I found myself reading through a thread on actualist practice on the DhO that Srinath and Claudiu had started last year I think, and it was triggering old habitual patterns of thinking/belief and feelings of fear to come up, really obvious fears about self-immolation.
But then this realisation while half-asleep occured…I am not sure why it never was considered before because it is obvious.
Every single fear is muted in a PCE. Remembering that fear that came up from reading that DhO thread while half asleep, I also remembered the purity of the PCE, the fact that it IS the safest place, and this triggers momentary apperception, EEs then PCEs that last seconds then back to EE’s. But the fear is put to rest immediately. The fear juxtaposed with the memory of experience of how safe the actual world is, blows the fear away immediately. So, anytime this occurs again, I will repeat this: Fear comes up, tap into pure intent, allow EE/PCEs to occur even for brief seconds, and see that fear lose ground. That fear really has no legs to stand on in the actual world.
Previously I was questioning why I had fear, investigating the beliefs and seeing them as silly, which they all are, but those beliefs are subtle and sometimes not seen clearly. But this “newly discovered” way for me feels like a significant development, as I am feeling amazingly good at the moment, and appreciating and enjoying this moment of being alive seems automatic.
My chest feels clear of the dank heaviness that at times I am feeling. The practice in the post above that Srinath suggested at that link has, for some reason, made the path clearer and these past number of days seems to have made it ever more where I wish to go i.e. self-immolation.
I know that feeling good and appreciating this moment of being alive is the method, but I am finding that tapping into pure intent again and again, to be the thing that works magically, and feeling good and appreciating this moment of being alive is the constant magical result of tapping into pure intent. That golden thread is key.
I think previously, “I” was trying to “feel good” but trying to force myself to feel good and appreciate this moment. Tapping again and again into pure intent, remembering the purity of the PCE, of the actual world, where seeing the purity of the actual world from the edge of my eyeballs (to maybe misquote something I think Peter said) as opposed to seeing it from the centre of my head filtered through that soupy heavy filter of “me”, naturally leads to feeling good, appreciation, naïveté and then more and more PCEs/EEs. The way forward has become so much clearer these past days.
The picking apart of whatever I post here previously brought up fear of judgement as Claudiu pointed out, but that fear also is muted in a PCE/EE no matter how short and momentary it is. Now, I look forward to it, as it presents a mirror that sheds light on things I’d not really 100% considered.
Goodness, “I” feel good atm. If anything, this path is a happy one.
Note: edited a few times.
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This is a good sign you’re getting it 
The only comment I have is regarding what you write about fear in the PCE:
You mention a few times it’s “muted”:
Can you elaborate what you mean by that?
For me ‘muted’ gives a connotation of ‘muffled’, like something that is still there but has been subdued or diminished
While in a PCE, it’s not that any fears are subdued or diminished – it’s that they are completely, 100% totally gone, not only vanished without a trace but also as if they had never been there in the first place.
It’s possible – a suggestion only – that what you’re calling a PCE is still “only” an EE (and still a wonderful thing the EEs are), but ‘you’ are still present, not in abeyance.
What you wrote here corroborates this possibility a bit:
I will give an anecdote. There was a fairly intense fight with my partner. I was still upset in the aftermath. Yet fortuitously, whilst being upset, lying there, serendipitously it happened that when once there was an upset ‘Claudiu’, now a PCE is what was happening. And in that PCE I remarked, in wonder and amazement, that there was nobody to be offended. Previously ‘Claudiu’ was offended and, as a result, upset. But in the PCE, there was no one there to be offended in the first place! So no offense could possibly happen.
I wouldn’t have put it that ‘offense’/upset’ lost ground and then had “no legs to stand on”. To me this would indicate more that there is still the potentiality of upset, but it’s seen to be silly in a way and therefore dissipates. This is my experience in an EE – the potential is there, but the purity is at the fore-front and it is easy for this consciousness to decline to go there.
But a PCE – is when it’s completely gone, no potentiality left for such things, they can’t even arise in the first place cause the entity that would feel them is gone.
It is of course possible you are describing the same thing in different words but, thought it might be of benefit to share notes.
Cheers,
Claudiu
Yeh poor word choice to use. I was wary it might be read that way in hindsight. Muted was meant to mean gone, not there, absent, but it ain’t just the absence alone in the PCE that led to this amazing development, it was that it was more the realisation after the PCE that it answered the big question I have had coming up of why am I continuing to be fearful of self-immolation. I often can’t find any answer though the fear is there , so it’s something I’m not seeing perhaps, some belief or desire I can’t see clearly yet.
However. the realisation arose that there is no need to fear anything as the actual world that the PCE shows is the safest place to be and fear isn’t there to be the frustrating problem it is as me the feeling being. Any fear I have is really baseless when I consider it all.
I tried it again today, a slight tinge of doubt coming up, usually I’d investigate it, try and wait for some thought/belief to come up and see it as sllly
Till it may dissipate. But instead this time I simply tapped into pure intent by recalling the actual purity of the PCE, which lead to an EE quickly (this I find wonderfully beneficial because as soon as I direct the mind to recall the purity of a PCE as a memory, any emotion I have dissipates, I “thin out” and feel closer to actuality) and then a momentary PCE where it is pristine with no feeling being commenting on it until I then do and then back to an EE. But those moments are enough that once I as the feeling being raise my head again, the fear or whatever belief behind it has lost all causes and ground to stand on so to speak. That fear that was coming up has gone. Or at least it has lost some of its edge so to speak. I may be speaking too soon. I’m sure there is more fear to work through. But it feels like the right thing to keep doing. Tapping into pure intent really works wonders and the more you do it the more it seems to becomes the go to movement when I wake up, when I catch myself getting agitated, upset etc. Something Srinath posted somewhere which I read…
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I can’t remember where he posted it but it was something like the more you see the two means of exisiting side by side, as a feeling being VS actuality, eventually there will be a flip of which side is prefered leading to actual freedom. This make sense to me, even though I maybe screwing the quote up. The more actuality is experienced and even within the EE’s, the more and more convinced I become of my direction of self immolation. It makes a lot of sense to me now and just thinking about it leads me to feel good and appreciate this moment.
I think I needed 10 years to drift away sufficiently from old beliefs and views to be able to start doing all of this
Thanks for the pointers! They help.
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Reminder to self:
"@Kub933 for me the caring thing was the very last piece of the puzzle. ‘I’ wanted to self-immolate, I could feel that there was this momentum, this sense of destiny, this tingle in the air. The PCE had shown me what the destination was, but there seemed to be no way to get there - to untie this knot that was ‘me’. Caring for another was the escape hatch to get me out of the circularity of my pursuit. I started thinking just about caring for others, both specific persons - such as my partner and people more generally. Eventually it ramped up into a caring for all and an appreciation of the plight of humankind, which was the same as my plight. In that brief out-from-control phase of mine, the level of universal compassion and empathy reached a real pitch, all backgrounded by having dazzling actuality within a whisker of me. Craigs words about ‘bridging the separation’ between me and others I found useful too. I saw what I would need to give up. It dawned on me what needed to be sacrificed. And then it was all over." A more detailed description of 1981 - Actualism - Discuss Actualism
Don’t mind me, I’m collecting things that I feel are somehow relevant atm, so i can come back and remind myself if needed:
"Vineeto talks about a parallel between this and her experience of actual freedom here. Back in the day I couldn’t really understand the parallel.
"The final clue was again about caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. Only when I cared enough to give all of ‘me’ to another person, to give them what they want most, was I then ready to give it to the one I cared for most, the one I was closest to, and then I was able to leave all remnant concerns and inhibitions of my identity behind.
Those who are concerned that my report be consistent with Richard’s process of becoming free might consider that Richard gave all of ‘himself’, an enlightened Being at the time, to Devika. She had challenged him to, instead of loving All, to instead love one person only and Richard took the challenge. He cared enough to dare – he fell in love with Devika and gave her all of ‘himself’. That total commitment proved to be the beginning of the end of ‘him’… Quotes - Actualism - Discuss Actualism" Quotes - Actualism - Discuss Actualism
“The key component for both of us had been caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster.”
“To put it in context of my own experiences: Over the years I increasingly allowed myself to dare to care for my fellow human beings, and gave up dissociating, rationalizing and turning away from the plight of humanity, something which I had practiced as a kind of ‘self’-defence during my spiritual years. I instead gave myself permission to become acutely aware of their pain and suffering, which was also ‘my’ pain and suffering. This in turn increased the urgency to do something about the human condition in myself in order to set others free from my suffering and animosity with the added intention that after becoming actually free I would be able to show by example how others who are interested could do it for themselves.”
My experience was similar. I wasn’t much of a spiritualist, but I think actualists can have a blind spot with regards to caring too. As an actualist I thought of anything in the empathic, caring territory as being akin to garlic for a vampire and ran the hell away from it! I had to soften and start to feel something for others, but knew that love was a dead end - there was somewhere else this needed to be taken … into biological atruism territory that is. Quotes - Actualism - Discuss Actualism
Riffing off of the quotes above while the thoughts are still here, this “biological altruism territory” seems key. I just went on one of what I now term “actual freedom” walks around the block which I now do every day and all of this was buzzing around my head, contemplating what it might mean. Looking at myself over the years, even when I was immersed in insight practices, it was all for “me”. And being brutally honest now, yes, it is still all for “me”. That feeling is there. Further, contemplating this, what does it mean for me to flip it to caring for others?
Well, I can’t do it just for me (or at all for me), as that just reinforces some aspect of me to stay around. My son, my daughter, my wife, my family, everyone I come in contact with. They need to be the reason, otherwise, I’m just re-arranging deck chairs.
Click! I had one of those moments while walking in the warm Melbourne sun just now. It has to be for them. They will benefit so much more from interacting with this body sans feeling being than ever with it. This is clear with my interactions with my son most of all. He is somewhat on the spectrum and with his own mental challenges. His personality is much like mine when his age, and he is good at pushing my buttons. Sometimes my reactions don’t help him at all. He benefits so much more when I am not reacting with annoyance and at least in an EE. His life will be for the better without me being pissed off with him for being just like me at his age. Haha.
Contemplating further, I truly would die for him physically to protect him. The thought that that should transfer to self-immolation arose while walking. And that is when it sort of clicked, and yet another thing now makes more sense. The act of self-immolation can never be for “me” as that is impossible. “I” seem to want to have all the benefits. So silly, but that desire is there, and I wasn’t totally aware of it previously. This is a wonderful development yet again.
This is all fresh and probably needs more contemplating, but it has led to again EE/PCE territory.
Feeling great atm.
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The good thing about investigation is that you start to get a sense of the ‘shape’ or the ‘flavour’ of ‘you’. Your own very brand of subjectivity with its idiosyncrasies, jealousies, fears, insecurities etc. As a feeling being I found that while it was good to steadily become happier and more harmless, it was even better to see all of me as a whole and to have an acceptance of ‘me’ as ‘I’ am. To do this I had to repeatedly go into purity, via PCE’s, EE’s or even near-EE’s. Purity will bring ‘being’ into relief, demarcate it and give you that acceptance. I don’t mean some deep self-love thing. Just an acknowledgement of the ground reality of your subjectivity, as ‘you’. Eventually you realise there is nothing much you can do about being. It just is what it is. It’s a T-rex that the actualist is forever trying to turn into a fluffy poodle. That’s when the next step will begin to appear into view.
So in summary: maybe investigate a little less, focus of seeing/feeling being as a whole and accepting it as what ‘you’ are, juxtapose purity and being.
Journal de Henry - #186 by Andrew
Reminder to self:
Pay attention to what you do when you get out of the PCE. Use that time to cement intent, because you won’t be able to remember the PCE. But you can remember what you think and decide right after.
PCEs aren’t like normal memories because the important aspect is the lack of ‘being,’ which can’t be directly remembered. It’s not so important what you looked at, what you were doing, who you were with, as it is to understand how it works, how ‘being’ works, and to get to the point where you have the intent to go for it.That’s how you can generate pure intent - it’s the connection between the PCE and the experience you’re having right now - an awareness of the purity. Keeping it as ‘just a memory’ keeps it at a distance. What you want is to recognize that there is something actual happening right now, and the PCE was a window into that. You can tap into it now, by recalling the ‘fragrance/flavor’ of it. Notes from meetings - Actualism - Discuss Actualism
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Got to admit, I really do appreciate Srinath’s way of communicating. It has been immensely helpful to read, consider, and put into practice.
Reminder to self:
Oh yes and in the meantime, in between PCE’s you practice the actualism method to the best of your ability - ‘consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive’, investigating obstacles to enjoying and appreciating. You can also investigate what is keeping you from self-immolation. This is a fascinating process to be enjoyed as much as possible to - not something to be endured or cussed because self-immolation has not happened. It is this fascination that will pull you ‘out from control’ prior to self-immolation for a longer or shorter period. Getting the Word Out - Actualism - Discuss Actualism
Reminder to self:
Also frustration is a sign that you are trying to get ahead of yourself and getting too expectant. Slow it down. Go back to feeling good if you get frustrated and simply enjoy wherever you are. Sensual delight will be very mild at first. The trick is not to discount those early subtle impressions but to appreciate them, as this what will form the basis for the next level of enjoyment and appreciation - and on and on it ramps up. 15 minutes is quite a short time to have a PCE in. See if you can have more time without putting pressure on yourself. Josef PCE Practice - Journals - Discuss Actualism
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Just a short update.
Never have I been so aware of my proscrastinating tendencies. I procrastinate all the time. But I’m becoming friends with this part of “me” to the point where it’s comical and actually slowly becoming the habit to point it out to myself more and more. Sometimes just saying “procrastination” is enough to then see myself tap back into pure intent. It is making more sense these days why it’s been said that 100% of me needs to be behind the direction of self-immolation because I realised it definitely isn’t 100% at the moment. Haha! Still the happiest path I’ve walked/am walking. Weirdly though, all of these little realisations feel like amazing progress as I move in that direction.
I had something click recently. Due to strong habit, I will often resort to some sort of “default” setting that isn’t happy and harmless. Sometimes a dour mood or maybe some weird equanimous mood, which doesn’t seem happy and harmless as I’m habitually trying to “cope” with some agitating sensation always in my chest. I had the thought that there is actual energy being spent within the body on propping up any default setting. Realising that I’m expending energy willy nilly on these now seen as mindless and fruitless endeavours, I decide to spend it on being happy and harmless. This seems to work for me immediately in moving that “energy” towards being happy and harmless and me as the feeling being approximating actuality as much as I can. It helps also with the procrastinating as any default setting does seem to lead in that direction. I am now waking up in the mornings and more than not, my first thoughts will be about actual freedom.
It is indeed a fun path.
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