Ooh this is giving me a nice proposition Because I know from experience, from doing sports that performance is far superior when attention naturally rests on this moment, on what is happening right now. A bit like Richards painting doing itself.
In parkour ‘I’ was always a liability, because ‘I’ got in the way of the movement doing itself effortlessly. Especially when physical danger was involved, a huge part of the skill was for ‘me’ just to chill out, step back and let the thing do itself. When this was allowed to play out you’d shock yourself at what the body was able to do without ‘me’ doing a thing.
I’ve been struggling for a long time with the belief that in actual freedom or in enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive I am somewhat crippling my capability (in whatever area). That ‘I’ am required to keep things from falling apart, that a plan is needed to move things forward etc. But I know from direct experience that in sports these things are a liability not a help.
When attention rests on this moment of being alive, then my action is current with what is happening now, this is more like a superpower not a hindrance.
Yeah. I don’t know if it’s leading somewhere but I’ve had the same experience, although I think for me it goes something like this (in all physical/mechanical activities): “burn off steam” for about an hour. This is when I’ll do all the faffing about, overcomplicating things and generally not getting anywhere. Once I’ve burned off the steam, I get out of my own way and things handle themselves (and most of the time much better, I might add).
Not quite sure how this translates other than being an interesting parallel and/or anecdote, at least for me. How do I burn off steam when it comes to my whole being? Or is that what I’ve been slowly doing over the past few years, just seeing how badly this whole ‘being’ thing holds up in everyday life? Maybe I just need to take a closer look in order to be properly put off by the indignity of it all.
Hmm, ok. Here I think maybe you might be onto something. I’ll give it an honest shot (and we’ll see how long my mental energy can keep it up). I have been quite good at being hypervigilant before, so maybe it can be leveraged. The only issue for me is to try not to suppress or over-analyse as soon as something turns up… and things are bound to turn up.
The other thing that rears its ugly head with this is the question of why I’m doing it. I guess I’ll have to settle for “because I’m curious” for now, and hopefully I’ll find the gateway to all-encompassing obsession later on.
For the individuals or newcomers (like me) who are clearly interested, what worked for me was reading Vineeto’s correspondence and story.
I was approaching AF with a left brained approach with Richard’s and Peter’s left brained explanations, when Vineeto’s more right brained approach seems to click much better for me. And maybe AF is like that, you (or some like me) can’t approach it with a regimented left brain approach.
Also when seeing Srinath’s and Geoffrey’s and even Vineeto’s AF threshold crossings, the key theme that comes across for me is relentlessness. That single minded move towards the goal. I could be oversimplifying things.
You said if the student wasn’t getting it, you wouldn’t think there was something wrong with him. But sometimes it just can be the student. People can just coast getting stuck in minutae, whereas that relentless movement forward is something I’d emphasise for beginners.
Vineeto’s right brained informed kind of approach, and relentlesness as a mindset is the way I would suggest putting it across to them (without referring them back to information which has failed to do the job).
A lot of my headspace is taken up addressing these emotions that pull my attention to them.
I’ve begun to see them as helpful children, and if I don’t listen to them, they will shout louder.
I need to address what needs to be addressed. But there’s so much that comes up to be addressed.
And I get overwhelmed and get into an avoidant tangle that exacerbates the situation.
And that’s pretty much the only source of stress in my life - the stress I give myself that I should be doing much more than I’m already doing. Which to be honest is a fair bit.
However there are a subsection of emotions that point to problem areas that absolutely NEED to be addressed. We live in an actual world and rent, utilities, taxes all need to be paid or the penalties are severe i.e. eviction, utilities cut, or even prison.
I did some ayahuasca, and asked her why I wasn’t addressing solving the problems in my life and she showed me this tremendous pain in my chest that I realised I had been carrying around ALL the time. The pain from not addressing problems that would turn into bigger problems if not addressed down the line (delay with rent - fine, severe delay with rent - eviction, same with taxes - fine for a short delay, prison for a longer one). Knowing I was causing myself that much pain with my avoidance made me learn to get what absolutely needed to be handled, handled.
It’s the lesson I learnt in therapy too - what ‘I’ want isn’t important. It’s what this thing inside my chest wants. All good stuff on examination. The thing inside my head wants me to chase shitty validation and other counterproductive outcomes. The heart wants me to address shyt that’s taking up headspace. And jeez, the multiple open loops my avoidance causes can really eat up my headspace/RAM.
Sure, I can focus in the now, but I can’t ignore that there is a ton of background stress from avoiding addressing practical real world problems.
I thought the pain in my chest was childhood pain - but when I address shyt in my life, it goes away. When I avoid addressing important issues, the ‘childhood pain’ comes back. That made me realise it wasn’t childhood pain, but the pain of avoidance and procrastination.
There’s almost nothing that gives me as much joy as ticking things off my sort shit out list. It’s like when I do a house clean/elimination drive, each bag I chuck out gives me a sense of joy.
I also went on an energy healing course, and learnt to connect to what they convinced me was Source, and I asked it what the reason for the pain in my chest was - was it childhood abuse, and the answer i get was, nope, it’s your chronic dissatisfaction with the present moment and yourself. I realised I was always ignoring the present moment, and it was coming second best to some arbitrary future moment.
So lesson learnt, focus attention in the Now, but address what absolutely needs to be addressed when the time comes, or well ahead of time, or before it absolutely goes Pete Tong (as they say in the UK i.e. goes wrong).
Hah, been there done that. Heck, there and doing that now.
Tim Gallway speaks about this in his book, the inner game of tennis. The see saw between the two selves.
He says he would tell his students to focus on non trivial aspects of the serve like say ‘bounce’ or ‘hit’ when the ball would bounce or they would need to hit the ball so he would keep that narrative voice occupied and let the intuitive self take over.
He was amused by how we trust the dime store calculator over something that’s faster than the fastest super computer in the world.
Well something that I have been considering is alluded to by the below texts
First one by Geoffrey in the Actualism diagram thread :
It is a third kind of feeling, but that is quite apparent in the flow chart in my opinion (it is as apparent as left denoting ‘feeling good’ vs. right denoting ‘good’ and ‘bad feelings’ )
The definition of feeling good as “ordinary feeling good” is quite sufficient in this context. Everybody should be able to relate to “ordinary feeling good”, and have recent memory of such, which is enough for an application of the method aimed at reaching that first goal of actualism, which is consistently feeling good (and btw, that is what I got from the “Alan and Dona questions”).
Once one has reached that condition, then one can define further. What I said in that video on that topic was in response to an ‘advanced’ question regarding moving up from feeling good to feeling great and beyond. My response assumed that the questioner had a sufficient grasp of the method, to the point of having somewhat reached such a condition in which indeed, the necessity becomes apparent to ‘refine’ one’s feeling good - not to change it, but simply to remove whatever was ‘mixed’ within it (good feelings, which made it still somewhat conditional), and in so doing reveal what was there all along: the ‘pure’ feeling good I talk about in the video. So it was there all along in that “ordinary feeling good”, it was just mixed with a bunch of other stuff.
Again, this is a somewhat ‘advanced’ theme, which most probably requires an active connexion to pure intent through naiveté, etc… and at that point, one does not really follow the above flow chart anyway, but simply ‘orients’ oneself toward enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive more and more. So no, I don’t see the need to mention anything of the sort in this (excellent) flow chart, which aims at helping people get to that very significant (and awesome ) achievement of consistently feeling good .
And also by Richard in the ASA article :
A sincere actualist is attentive to feelings all the time, day in, day out, whether active or resting; whether in association or on one’s own; whether there is thinking as well as perceiving or not. When attentiveness is actual, one will notice when one becomes stuck in one’s feeling patterns; it is that very noticing which allows one to back out of the feeling process and free oneself from it. Sensuousness returns one’s attention to its proper focus: if one is actualising a virtual freedom at that moment, then one’s focus will be the actual object of actualism. If one is not in virtual freedom, one’s focus will be just a straight-forward application of matter-of-fact attention itself, just a simple noticing of whatever comes up without getting possessively involved: ‘Ah, this feeling … what is it … where is it … where did it come from … what is it made up of … what is it connected to …?’. Virtual freedom re-establishes itself easily by the attentiveness that it has not been current. As soon as one is aware that one has not been attentive then one is experiencing sensuousness in virtual freedom … and thence: Apperceptiveness.
The way I see it is that there are different levels of applying the method. At the beginning it is a lot more like what is described in the actualism diagrams (Actualism Diagrams Hub). One has to follow this step by step process, with certain specific conditions that have to be consciously followed and ticket off. It’s like I just bought a furniture set from IKEA and I have absolutely no clue how to put things together, I am constantly having to refer to the instructions to see if I am somewhat following the right process and where I stands in the big picture.
But then with practice as certain habits become internalised, it becomes a lot less like this structured process and more like this dynamic on the fly activity, more like the example of surfing. It’s all happening in real time, there is no longer any solid structure that is being followed. I think at this point, at least for me, it is a waste of time to continue looking for some ‘system’.
What I have noticed from my practice is that when attentiveness is current and when all these other little mechanisms have been internalised and run on automatic, that a lot of the time I don’t even need to find triggers for example. It’s like the mere seeing and the mere intention to get back to feeling good orients me in the right direction, and this can happen constantly, with each little blip. As Srinath mentions on the Simple actualism page (SIMPLE ACTUALISM - The Actualism Method) :
The idea is to constantly evaluate what your mood is on a moment to moment basis – this might sound tricky and difficult and it certainly can be initially. But it gets easier over time as success builds on success. Eventually, with practice this effort gets internalised and becomes rather like a thermostat where you can often automatically up-regulate to a better mood.
For me its like this nowadays, and actually this is very cool how many things the brain can do at once. Because certain building blocks are in place, affective awareness is habituated to ringing the alarm bell when feeling bad happens, attentiveness is habituated to immediately zone in on what is going on (like the eye of Sauron the second the ring is put on haha). Then because I am very familiar with my emotional landscape the second that attentiveness looks, it already knows exactly what the emotion is, what caused it, what theme it relates to etc. Its like all this information is processed in a blink of an eye.
Then either this activity in itself simply melts the emotion away OR secondary processes will jump in automatically also (they too have been habituated), this might include investigation for example.
So any ‘system’ with relation to applying the method is something to get one going when they have no clue what it is all about. But just like with any skilled activity you eventually begin to operate at levels that are beyond a step by step process. Then I think it’s about continually developing this skill as opposed to intellectually looking for further maps and steps. At this point it is to ones detriment.
Like I don’t know how to play piano but I know that when you play piano there will be a myriad of automatic and habituated processes that are shaping what is happening in real time, they are adjusting, correcting errors etc Whereas when I sit down in front of the piano for the first time you’ll have to tell me the difference between the white and black keys and what the general idea is for how I’m using my hands and you might show me this sheet that explains some basic song and tell me how to read the notes etc.
Yeah I had a similar experiences, I always took to Peter’s and Vinneto’s descriptions, somehow I could relate to them in a way that seemed more pragmatic. It looked like any other activity, you roll your sleeves up and start chipping away at things.
But then it seems recently that kind of approach has been no longer fruitful for me. I have really enjoyed re-reading Srinaths Simple actualism page though. The main bit that seems very relevant for me at this point is :
However, you need to remember that actualism is not about investigation but about feeling good. It is the intention to feel happy that does most of the heavy lifting, with investigation being a subsidiary practice.
But this is exactly what I was writing about the different levels of abstraction. It’s like if you say to someone who is fresh to this and maybe feels bad for the majority of the time, that their intention to feel happy will do most of the heavy lifting, they will probably end up taking this to mean that they need to repress their emotions and gloss over with some pretend happy feeling. Whereas I know exactly what this is referring to, because the building blocks are in place so this advise can work, I can work at that level.
Haha yeah in my experience it never ends. I spent almost 4 years going balls to the wall and trying to demarcate every little detail of what comes up from the inside, like really obsessively mapping out my inner world. It did some things for sure, but one thing I know now it cannot do is to stop the well from re-filling over and over.
Thanks for digging up the quotes @Kub933, it helped piece together a lot of what was buzzing around in my head.
I decided to dig up Geoffrey’s video, and I think he talks about the “feeling good” aspect starting around the 16 minute mark. It was also quite poignant since I was out on a walk at the time and had decided to start practicing what we talked about.
For the record, I managed about 20 minutes before I could feel attention slipping But it did show me a couple of things that may or may not have been mentioned already:
→ I do actually know how to get back to a reasonable baseline (as long as I can understand why I should lose the vice grip and actually let myself be, if not happy, at least happier)
→ Enjoying and appreciating has to be unconditional. I don’t think I properly got that until today. (I was walking in snowdrifts at -11C so it bloody well had to be unconditional )
→ Somehow along the way I’ve shut off my brain, quite possibly out of fear. It’s been a bit maddening seeing how willing I am to forgo natural intelligence to fit in and remain the same. Somehow it feels like turning my brain on again is going to be the bigger project in all of this. As Vineeto put it: learning to think all over again.
I’m posting on mobile right now so if I’m reiterating things that have already been said, that’s why. I’m mostly a bit embarrassed about not realizing things that are probably self-evident and possibly skipping over things, or repeating things. Take it for what it is.
Yeah I think ‘I’ will always fall back to this stagnant place if ‘I’ am left to ‘my’ own devices. I think this is partly why I have been stagnant for a while, because I got to a point where I expected for things to take care of themselves, for me to continue feeling good each moment again without any kind of active involvement. And so I no longer had awarness-cum-attentiveness running each moment again, I allowed whatever drama that comes up to run the show and then intellectually try to fix things whilst sitting in the back seat, kind of like what you say - I shut off my brain.
I think success with the method is exactly from the opposite kind of involvement, it’s not that it’s some round the clock mindfulness but each time feeling good blips there has to be an active looking and resolving. And it has to be always about what is happening now, each moment again, I never really focused on this aspect of current time awareness but I am starting to see why it is important.
I think you really don’t get to rest on your laurels until actual freedom or maybe some stable stage of late virtual freedom
And I can catch myself doing this all the time, it’s quite fascinating actually. It’s almost as if there are different levels of being conscious. When attentiveness is not current there can be some kind of drama going on, I am ‘being’ that drama but I am not aware of the fact that it is happening, kind of like sleep-walking or something. Then all of a sudden attentiveness is activated and it’s like I am snapped back into full consciousness, now I am aware of just what has been going on, that for the past 30sec I was a zombie.
It makes me think of apperception, that it is the minds awareness of itself. I think well developed awareness-cum-attentiveness is ‘my’ closest approximation to apperception. It’s how ‘I’ can step back and somehow see from a higher vantage point as opposed to being in some sleep-walking state.
The thing is that whilst apperception happens automatically of itself, attentiveness does not, so I think this is where there will always be an active component that is required.
An interesting aspect, for me at least, is that there’s a point of no return these days. If I let the drama get a hold and linger too long my thoughts will get muddied up and there’s no way I can think properly until the storm has passed. I used to be much better at snapping back to baseline… but perhaps this is yet another thing that will get better with practice.
Ah, now there’s some weird collective shit going on. That’s another thing that became self-evident today. I keep wanting to scurry back into this safe mental construct where past and future blend in and somehow block out the present moment, but nothing can be done with that. It has to happen right now. I still can’t really see (or at least explain to myself) that this is the only moment I have, but the end result and the application sort of rule out any other ways of dealing with time… if that makes sense. Again, erudite is not my middle name.
I don’t think you get to rest even then; Irene/Devika comes to mind. Also other who’ve hit VF and then regressed (for lack of a better word).
And a completely unrelated chain of thought, but I figured I’d put it here since we’re doing sports metaphors:
I do a lot of weight training (OLY/strongman) and what I’ve noticed is that when doing warmups and technique drills, when the bar isn’t loaded, I’ll get in my way. Lots of analyzing and theorizing. The moment I start loading up the weights, and especially when approaching my limit, I (or rather my body) starts doing the right thing. If I’m not doing the right thing, it’s fairly easy to figure out where I’m falling short.
In a weird way this has applied to this round of figuring stuff out: I had a pretty bland year where nothing much was happening, so I was theorizing and mucking about. The moment things got bad (around late November) I started gradually waking up to how inadequate I am, and a lot of my world was turned upside down, until things came to a head and I popped into a mini-PCE. It’s quite clear to me that I can’t keep hiding away - I need the friction and weight of everyday life. I now have my sick mom and her sick dog living with me and have to do a lot of figurative and literal heavy lifting, but that’s also where I’ve seen the most results. I want her dog to get better and I want the relationship with my mother to run smooth, but it’s quite evident how much I get in the way.
Oh that’s cool I was not expecting that, I used to do quite a bit of Olympic lifting too. When the actualist meet up finally happens we shall do a weights session together
More sports metaphors from me too When I was driving to a training session today I was thinking about my previous sleep-walking post and how a lot of beginners in BJJ will usually ask me how to escape some submission that they keep getting caught in.
My usual answer is along the lines of ‘don’t get caught in it in the first place’ which sounds kind of like I’m being dismissive or difficult.
What they want is some magical remedy to get out of a dead end they keep finding themselves in. What I would point to however is 5 steps before you got caught, why did you not address that grip they had on your wrist, or when they shifted their weight why did you not readjust yours?
Essentially what I am pointing to is that they have sleepwalked through all these details that step by step led them to the dead end, but they do not see those, they only come awake now that the submission is slapped on, and now looking for a fix.
When you get good at BJJ you get very good at constantly winning the smallest of battles, each step you are addressing and correcting and viola you find yourself winning. Again this focus on the big picture is usually a result of a lack of involvement now, when it actually matters.
I haven’t done anything like that and don’t intend to. There’s no happy ending to that.
My ‘anxiety’ or background stress only comes from avoidance of high priority tasks.
There are 3-4 trains of thought that I’d like to not engage in - one is annoyance (which can be constant and get in the way of my Now), others are much less often like justifying myself in my head (simple things like if I do something odd whilst riding, I’ll imagine the other person in traffic criticising me and I’ll justify it to him or her in my head).
The ONLY emotion I’d like to address is avoiding the important jobs have to get done before the consequences increase. And even that isn’t a daily neurotic chase, but just make a list and set time to get to it - and again, minimal time, maybe 1-2 hours a week max. I’d be on top of things with just an hour.
This definitely HAS worked for me in the past, sure jobs keep adding up - but it’s about discretion and not chasing every shiny thing, but just what absolutely needs to get done.
Almost nothing gives me as much joy, peace, and makes me feel balls to the wall fantastic as getting important shyt done.
Then again, nothing gives me as much stress as putting pressure on myself to get even more done than I already am doing, which is a fair bit.
It’s that problem free life goal that I keep moving towards. Problems will never stop, but I’d like them to be high quality problems, like normal obstacles that come up with setting up a business and the like and not these low quality avoidance caused issues.
There have been months at a time, when I’ve been on top of things, and these have been the best times of my life.
Avoidance of issues - stress. Confronting problems - joy. Both the avoidance, and even confronting and sorting issues out should be minimised to the bare minimum of time in the day. 25 minutes 1-2 times per week usually has me sailing.
I think that’s why Richard prescribes harmlessness (and possibly addressing what keeps us from happinesss) - it’s similar to buddhist precepts - that basic shyt that needs to get done or NOT done, so the guilty mind doesn’t work overtime.
Being wilfully harmful causes a lot of distress. That’s why I do very little of it. The only harm I think I engage in is irritability, or showing my annoyance i.e. snapping at someone, and this is AFTER they have snapped at me. And even that’s once in 300 interactions and I can cut that down to 1 in 500 interactions.
So yeah, it’s only emotions related to avoidance of high priority jobs, and guilt related to snapping at someone that I’d like to address. I started thinking, fuck it, if I snap at someone that’s how I’m showing up in the present moment, they needed that ‘truth bomb’ as it’s the most helpful thing I can say. BUT it’s someone else’s problem (SEP like Vineeto said) and I shouldn’t get drawn into solving everyone else’s problems.
Just be decent to people across the board bub.
Annoyance and irritability was getting in the way. Don’t engage in those thought streams.
Justification - much much less often. Again, don’t engage in thought stream.
Now it’s taken up by ‘solve problems, solve problems, solve problems’ and I have to find a solution to this.
I can pick my mood up at will - but it’s a false security or economy if I still let problems simmer away.
The investigation has been helpful - annoying thought streams no longer encouraged.
Focusing on intention to be happy is working a-ok, but further investigation shows the same solve problems dont avoid them stress runaround taking up most of the space.
This was helpful for me too.
Solving problems leads to peace, but then feeling good from that appears conditional on solving problems. When it shouldn’t be conditional. BUT the voices in my head go, but how can one feel good if rent, utilities or taxes aren’t being paid and eviction, or prison is a real alternative. Then another voices says, bub, all those are on point, your life is on autopilot, and address most stuff, you’re just gung ho on this problem free life which you wont get. Most of the stuff you want to address, you dont address nothing much will happen. I need to chill out and be comfortable with having 5-10% problems in life.
I’d really like to shut off my brain, and that’s the taoist wu wei model - where one doesn’t try to do anything but nothing is left undone.
And everything gets effortlessly sorted out. It works to an extent, much better with self 2 (Tim Gallweys inner game analogy) running the show rather than egoic self 1 who’s really good for nothing but neurotic suffering and resistance and blindly bumbling about.
But even with Wu Wei the high priority tasks still dont always get done.
I’m repeating the same thing - but yeah, I’m looking forward to a solution to neuroticising about getting important shit done and my happiness being conditional on it. And my doubts about can one be happy without addressing important shyt, OR does one just commit to being happy no matter what is happening in the background.
And this is why I’m looking to address the problems before they become nine stitches rather than the one stitch that would solve the problem ahead of time.
But again, this means my happiness is conditional on getting shyt done.
I’ll write something in my journal and come up with a solution to this.
Yeah I’ve had something very similar going on for a long time @bub its basically this question of - what will my life look like, in the marketplace, when I have committed to feeling good each moment again.
The fear is somewhere along the lines of - ‘will I just become some couch potato or a leaf blowing in the wind’. Will I forget to do important things, will I let life and others bulldoze over me etc
For me it has a flavour of - will I continue to look to exceed in whatever involvements if there isn’t that drive coming from the good and bad emotions.
It seems that this needs to be disentangled experientially, where it can be seen that feeling good is simply the baseline that I am operating from, and what I choose to do with my time, with you thoughts or whatever does not change.
It’s that ‘actualist hobo’ fantasy that Geoffrey mentions in the zoom chat, seems a very common theme for most people because we are used to having the good and bad emotions somewhat tangled up with the day to day activity.
I guess the simple question is, can you feel good whilst you go about addressing your various tasks. Can this nervous energy be noticed and simply replaced with feeling good as you go about your life in the marketplace.
I guess a great example of this working is @claudiu’s recent post about the family troubles and how he was able to function in what is normally a ‘high stress’ situation, all the while maintaining felicity and innocuity.
Actually there is more, it’s the fact that he was able to function even better than he would otherwise with the good and bad feelings on board, I think this is also key. It’s not just some acceptance of life whilst you feel good, it’s seeing that you’re even better equipped to deal with these things now that feeling good is habituated.
Because I know from experience, from doing sports that performance is far superior when attention naturally rests on this moment, on what is happening right now. A bit like Richards painting doing itself.
)
But it did show me a couple of things that may or may not have been mentioned already:
