And for further context, we’re all going to be utterly destroyed, as Rick kindly reminded us, so how can we take anything too seriously? Being here while it lasts is such a blast!
Yeah it’s all really interesting, I have never managed to find any kind of set formula for the explorations and I don’t think there is one necessarily, as in it can never be taken on as a discipline. Like oh I just do 3 sets of 5 on this exercise and now I am feeling good, and it works like this in every scenario.
I always wonder about what Vinneeto mentioned in the Q and A from Australia, that once she committed to feeling good it was always an of course. So feeling good was not contingent upon anything anymore, if she noticed she was not feeling good she would be back to feeling good due to the noticing. Then if any investigation was done that would be a subsidiary thing.
I find this really interesting because I am not there and I can’t yet see how this is possible. As in currently it seems that whatever success I have with feeling good is due to exploring and removing the obstacles. As in until I remove or weaken the affective structure which is in the way, I cannot allow feeling good.
So then is a virtual freedom a situation where 99.99% of the obstacles have been removed and as such the choice to feel good is always an of course. Or is it a situation where one has committed to/habituated feeling good to such a degree that it is chosen each moment again regardless of what is going on.
But the second one doesn’t quite make sense to me, if there are affective structures in place, let’s say a belief that I should not feel good unless X, this structure is a part of ‘me’, this is what ‘I’ currently hold as true. So how can I sincerely allow feeling good whilst at the same time holding the belief that it is not possible unless X. Unless that belief is seen for what it is I will not allow myself to feel good, not that there is anything actually blocking me, but due to the belief I will not allow it.
It seems to me that those affective structures are a bar with regards to what level of enjoyment and appreciation I will allow. I get to choose to feel good within/up to this bar that I have set for myself, but only when the boundary is weakened or removed do I get to go to the next level.
This is that experience when a big belief disappears and it’s as if I can breathe properly for the first time, there is this experience of a huge load being lifted off and the freedom that is now available. Then it is seen that this freedom was here all along but I held myself back due to belief.
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Yeah, I wouldn’t say that feeling good is an “of course” for me either. It only becomes that way after I see the silliness of what’s stopping it.
I was rarely able to feel good by simply choosing to. If I tried, I often found myself struggling in the wrong places (fighting feelings with feelings) and I couldn’t make it last.
When I started looking at the conditions I impose on my well-being moment to moment, that’s when it really clicked because it showed me it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t. I have much more say in it than I thought, and it showed me how I can change if I want to. Not by will alone, but by seeing that it really is silly to place absurd and impossible conditions on my well-being!
Then habituation works too. I never got the benefits of feeling good by thinking about it, only by feeling it and finding out that life is easier and better for everyone when I do. Now it’s more of an “of course”, because the more often I feel good, the less sense or benefit there seems to be in ever feeling bad 
That said, when I feel bad, I don’t usually get back to feeling good just by noticing it. I have to extract myself out of whatever worm’s-eye view put me there in the first place!
I note that Vineeto said once she committed to feeling good it was always an “of course”. Maybe by that time she had already done most of this, ie. burned a lot of bridges and dropped more illusions and conditions in previous phases of her life.
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OK yes so that is more or less the same experience I have had up until now.
This one I also relate to up to a point it seems. As in I was able to apply this approach with most of the smaller things, the little peeves that would chip away at me moment to moment. Like seeing that it’s absurd to get angry every time someone cuts me off in traffic or when I have plans outside and it starts to rain etc. Then it is just a case of seeing that the conditions I am placing are silly, it’s like a simple recalibration of my approach to life.
Then what has been left since is maybe 3/4 core dramas that seem to be rooted so deeply into my personality that this recalibration does not work. It then begins to have a flavour of me trying to convince myself that I don’t care about something which I actually do care about. It’s like if I have an exam tomorrow which I have been preparing for for a long time and the outcome is important to me. Can I then distinguish between caring and conditions? Which got me onto this whole thing yesterday about emotion getting in the way of caring.
I guess what I am trying to get to is how to fully care about something without getting in my own way. To see that even if I want things to play out a certain way (I do want to pass the exam) that feeling bad is only an obstruction, not an assistance.
Because currently it is as if caring and emotion is intertwined, which means that to crank up caring I am also cranking up the possibility for sorrow/malice. So then there are attempts to stop caring in one way or another as a way to reduce my vulnerability to emotion.
What I am considering is if it is possible to fully crank up the caring (caring about people, things and events) without getting passionately involved.
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This is quite fun, to give myself permission to care. What I see already is that there are many many things which I genuinely care about and which I have been blocking under some kind of morals.
Morals dictating what I should and should not care about and also in which way this caring should be carried out.
If I allow myself to genuinely care (which I have been all along anyways) then it seems like a lot of the emotional turmoil disappears also, it’s like I am finally removing this internal conflict by allowing myself to… be the person I have been all along, thanks @claudiu 
In fact I have just jotted down a list of the things that I care about (people, things, and events), the same things which I have been denying myself from caring about all this time, in the name of Actualism. Looking from this naive vantage point I see absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t care about these, at the end of each of these things is the same consideration, I want myself and those that I interact with to have fun.
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Ok so a few more things I can see so far is that there are many things I care about as an identity for example to be respected by others. When I look at this caring without any morality though it quickly becomes clear that there is something underneath the respect, maybe I want others to hold me in good esteem, then I go even underneath that and find something more pure, that actually I want to relate to others amicably. Then if I go all the way I see that what I actually want is what the PCE demonstrates.
It makes me think to how reality is a distorted imitation of actuality. But that caring for something pure and perfect is there, it is just that it gets distorted through all the real world concepts.
So in the past I would moralise the situation and end up rejecting the caring along with it! I can see that in actual freedom caring is automatic towards anything and everything, it’s just a feature of being the universes experience of itself as a flesh and blood body, it would be impossible to switch off.
And there is a seed of that in me now, as in I cannot help but care about people things and events. I’m not sure why I have been blocking it all this time actually 
I can’t see any good reason right now other than taking on some form of morality.
But if I stick with this caring then I start to see that the real world concepts get in the way of what I actually care about, and then they can be removed as they are no longer needed.
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For what it’s worth, I think it is. It’s possible to feel good because I care, not because I don’t. If I endorse and approve of feeling good as the solution (because it’s good for everyone, including me, and anything else ultimately is not), then it doesn’t have to be a passive thing, it has all the energy of ‘me’ behind it.
What I’ve found is that it works best if I don’t take myself and my feelings too seriously. It’s not a moral crusade, and I’m still going to be a fool sometimes, but it makes sense that the (interim) answer to ordinary human unhappiness is ordinary human happiness. If I care enough about my own suffering and human suffering in general, I know what I can do about it, starting with me.
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Oh, I get what you’re saying now. Underneath what seemed to be a personal quest motivated by desire for esteem and recognition (with accompanying performance anxiety, fear of failure, fear of rejection, etc) there’s actually a pull toward excellence and ultimately perfection that doesn’t depend on that and is hindered by that, and you want to crank that up all the way. Cool.
Yes exactly that is a great way to sum it up. For a long time I kinda split things in 2 and moralised the whole thing. There was the ‘identity motivations’ and there was the ‘actualist motivations’ and I was stuck trying to convince myself that I want one over the other.
It reminds me of when Devika challenged Richard to love her completely as opposed to loving all of humanity, he went through love to realise that it could not driver the goods.
I see the same with all these little things I care about as an identity, if I give myself permission to want them, then I can find out for myself that ‘I’ only stand in the way of what I genuinely want.
But no longer moralising all these ‘identity motivations’ I have removed a ton of internal conflict, then I can go through them as opposed to circling around them.
I remember @claudiu mentioning a conversation with Richard (that went something like this) where Claudiu said he should be happy and harmless even if he doesn’t have a partner, that his desire for a partner was in some way the issue. Richard mentioned that this sounded more like Buddhism and not Actualism.
And this is the flavour of what I have been doing to myself, removing my involvement from the marketplace and trying to foster some kind of unconditional happiness, so I might as well find a cave to sit in…
And why should being happy and harmless be unoriginal in its expression? Any kind of actualist morality doesn’t make sense, it is the wide and wondrous path after all, not the straight and narrow.
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Ah, brilliant. It can’t be “boots and all” if you’re divided against yourself, right? Sounds good. 
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Lots I wanted to write today but not enough time. Don’t know if @milito.paz has blown some big hole in the psychic web or what But it’s like this whole new ground has opened up to me. Feeling good is beginning to make sense as an ‘of course’ each moment again, why wouldn’t I ?
The thing which I wanted to write though is briefly seeing my step mum today, actually seeing her. The only word that I can think of to describe the experience is rich, it was infinitely rich, completely fascinating.
Now what I can see is that genuine fascination with this moment of being alive is the doorway into apperception, into actuality. The great this is that again fascination is something ‘I’ am capable of, in fact ‘I’ am already fascinated by so many things, I was always like this. The best thing is that now I have this infinitely rich world that I can turn this fascination towards, how could it ever get boring?
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Not enough time my ass. This is perfect.
You wrote a perfect post about a perfect visit to a perfect woman in this perfect, infinite and eternal universe.
It can never get boring
Hey Kuba, I’ve thought a lot about your recent journal entries, and it’s fucking excellent stutt. The idea that whatever fear or desire is present in the moment, if you trace it deep enough, there’s something pure and perfect behind it, that’s fucking brilliant. It’s true. Thank you. What better way to get all of ‘me’ on board?
This really complements the realisation I’ve had that it’s great to feel good because I care, and not because I don’t. Same flavour. All of ‘me’ behind it.
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Right and it’s all become much clearer to me with regards to intent. Of course I have to have all of ‘myself’ on board if I am to commit to actual freedom. Any form of morality or splitting myself up cannot work though because then ‘I’ don’t want it with all of ‘my’ being.
So lately it’s almost like I am slowly collecting ‘myself’ in this way, getting all these bits to point in the same direction, or maybe seeing that these other bits are no longer necessary because there is something better available now. It’s like tidying ‘myself’ up in line with the perfection and purity.
And still there are a couple things that are pointing in the wrong direction. But the difference now is that I know I will not fix this by any means of control. These last couple of dramas will go in the exact same way as all the other ones, when I actually see that they are unnecessary, that what I was after all along is the perfection and purity.
But it is really great to eliminate internal conflict, to no longer be at war with myself. Also to see that deep down I’ve always wanted this anyways!
This is what drew me yesterday to actually see my step mum. I became fascinated by something that can be summed up by - ‘it’s amazing what has been achieved despite the human folly’. We were having Easter dinner, I was feeling very good, and there were these constant little niggles between family members. I was fascinated to see though that each person is indeed doing the best they can, that underneath this absolute shit show called reality, there is good will in each person. Deep down we all want this already, and not just the Actualists either, underneath the BS this is simply what we are.
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I think I did actually hit the mark when I made this diagram a while back. It’s like this, that even reality is ‘informed’ by actuality, it’s just a very very bastardised imitation :
Man there really isn’t much left these days, but ‘I’ am still here
I spent some time just now looking at this slight feeling that something is wrong, this feeling is beckoning me to go ‘out there’ into reality, into that ‘story’ of ‘my’ life. To find what is wrong and to come up with a solution. But I been there and done that so no more.
This ‘story’ of ‘my’ life is truly hanging on by a thread by now lol. It’s like I’ve gone through the whole book and ripped out page after page, now there are a few short paragraphs left that keep wanting to be read over and over, even though they don’t make that much sense anymore
Ok so the challenge is to virtually eliminate that ‘story’, challenge accepted. It might not be 99.99% but it seems like it’s 97% by now, with those 3% carrying the whole weight of ‘me’.
This investment into the ‘story’ is diametrically opposed to the commitment to enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. If enjoying and appreciating is to be an ongoing way of living then that ‘story’ has to disappear, or at least virtually disappear.
A cool thing that clicked just now with regards to the ‘actualist hobo’ fantasy. This fear that things will somehow go wrong upon actual freedom, I see now it is a massive furphy. What ‘I’ am really concerned with is not that this body and everybody will not be better off. Instead what ‘I’ am resisting is things operating outside of the boundaries which ‘I’ have set, which ‘I’ identify with.
‘I’ can see now that things will be better in every single way, but it won’t be in ‘my’ way, that is what the resistance has been all about, sneaky!
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It’s funny I noticed that whenever I find myself experiencing actual intimacy, it is smell that stands out the most.
It’s like ‘I’ don’t really smell much normally, and then I find myself here where this moment is happening and the nose delights in any and all aromas, it’s so delightful just to smell the air, the different hints of this and that, man I could do that all day and not get bored
I remember reading/hearing somewhere that smell is the most direct way to elicit a memory. It’s like smelling takes a more direct path in the brain or something.
It’s like I can experience sight or sound in the past/future, but it’s as if smell can only be properly experienced now.
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Hah, that final paragraph woke up my inner Wikipedia. Yes, the olfactory pathways are more direct. I’ll let ChatGPT put it much more succinctly than my ESL language centers can (I did check it for factuality. This has been an interest of mine for a long time):
Here’s the kicker: When you inhale and scent molecules waft into your nose, they directly contact the olfactory epithelium—a special tissue up in the nasal cavity that’s loaded with olfactory receptors. These receptors are neurons, so when they catch onto a scent, they don’t need to send the info elsewhere for initial processing. They’re already primed to do the job right there on the spot. They convert the chemical signal of the scent directly into a neural signal.
This neural signal then shoots straight up to the olfactory bulb, which is the brain’s front line for processing smells. The olfactory bulb is basically your scent analysis HQ, and it’s located right at the base of the brain, on the underside of the frontal lobe. This proximity to the brain means the scent signals don’t have to travel far to get processed, making the whole operation swift.
From the olfactory bulb, the signal takes a beeline to the brain regions involved in processing emotion and memory (like the amygdala and the hippocampus), which is why smells can trigger memories and emotions so vividly and quickly. This direct connection is unique compared to the pathways of other senses, such as vision or hearing, which require more steps and involve the thalamus before reaching the areas of the brain that interpret and give meaning to these inputs.
So, to wrap it up, the olfactory system’s layout with its direct, neuron-to-brain connection gives it a shortcut to our brain’s processing centers, allowing for a quicker and more direct handling of impressions. It’s like having a VIP pass to the brain’s emotional and memory centers, which is why smells can so powerfully evoke memories and feelings. Pretty neat, huh?
(Fixed the quoting on desktop)
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OK so continuing this one here - The "Rift" - #20 by Kub933
Something quite significant has clicked, this difference between alleviating and eliminating. What I am starting to consider is not just that as an identity I am unable to positively benefit others. Because then sure there can always be these excuses like - “well even if I become free it doesn’t mean others will”.
There is something much bigger here! It is the ongoing harm ‘I’ am actively causing merely by ‘being’ an identity. If we consider the potential harm caused by a newly free individual remaining in that ‘social identity sandpit’, the outcome is that ‘humanity’ in whatever form is perpetuated.
But then am ‘I’ not doing something similar but much worse merely by ‘being’ a ‘self’ each moment again? If ‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’ then any direction ‘I’ move in, other than self-immolation, is to perpetuate suffering, as Devika wrote - the original cause of suffering (being a self) is vindicated.
Each vibe, emotion, belief that is ‘me/humanity’ gets to live another day, and bounce from one to the other. Anything that reinforces ‘me’ reinforces ‘humanity’ and reinforces suffering. Every interaction ‘I’ have with another identity is another chance for reality to be reaffirmed and so for suffering to continue.
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