I have some more clarity on another “blind spot”, which is to do with what the actualism method is all about - enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. I can see now why in the past it all ended up with narcissism, that ‘I’ made actualism all about ‘me’, ‘me’, ‘me’, rather than about diminishing ‘me’.
What I did in the past is that I tried to sift enjoyment and appreciation through the outlines of ‘me’, so it wasn’t enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive which was the focus. Rather ‘I’ was trying to infuse ‘my’ life with enjoyment and appreciation, which means that with any success ‘I’ only grew stronger whilst those outlines of ‘me’ remained unexamined.
Furthermore it explains why the ‘good’ feelings had such a strong grip, because ‘I’ am those ‘good’ and bad feelings and all this time ‘I’ was paying into the piggy-bank of ‘me’, rather than focusing on enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, which has the effect of diminishing ‘me’.
It also explains why despite many experiences of the perfection and purity of actuality ‘I’ would only end up exerting more fierce control by the end, like this whole time ‘I’ was digging ‘myself’ in even deeper rather than becoming less and less important.
There is a post which I was reminded of this morning (which spawned a bit of a debate after) which demonstrates this "blind spot” I am describing :
So the problem is that to “integrate the commitment towards actual freedom” into the different parts of ‘my’ identity is actually a disaster waiting to happen… The ‘good’ feelings will never be far away and cunningly ‘I’/’we’ will only become more important.
Also if all this time ‘I’ am integrating things through ‘me’ - of course ‘I’ will claim credit, but more importantly, by the end of this process, how on earth am ‘I’ going to give ‘myself’ up? When ‘I’ have only been aggrandising ‘myself’ all this time, making ‘myself’ even more precious, more important etc.