Funny aside, the largest mental hospital in Western Australia, is called “Graylands”. No joke. That’s it’s official name!
There is something far more problematic about that “grey world” than blocking your experience of purity. If it was only such an inconvenience, who would care?
I think this is turning altruism into something it is not. How exactly can I cultivate altruism? In what small measurable increments is my altruism increasing? This is what I mean about it turning into a morality. How can I measure that I have cultivated altruism along the way without a morality to compare against?A morality that will decide just how much ‘I’ apparently sacrificed when I gave up this or that belief or became nicer to those around me. Am I more altruistic now than when I started? If altruism is sacrificing ones life for the group then altruism is not a scale but an instinctual action so this becomes a meaningless comparison.
The fact is that ‘I’ am still here now as I was when I started so in what way have ‘I’ sacrificed ‘myself’?
I think I do remember Peter or Vineeto using altruism in that sense (of something that grows along the path to actual freedom) somewhere on the AFT but I am not so sure this is in line with what altruism is.
Yes, I agree. I changed my tune by the end of that post.
It’s not cultivating, as in growing, but opening one’s eyes, as in seeing the trigger is all around you.
One’s psychic eyes?
Whatever.
It’s not a bad metaphor. One can squint one’s eyes, have them closed, or open them wide.
I’ve been using exactly this motivation lately. To keep my elbow on the button marked ‘self-immolate’, because it’s clear to me that the final event is no different to the event now. Something is in the way of more freedom, better and clearer thinking, and ultimately the only thing I can do for anything and everything I care about being happy and unmolested.
It really struck me that Richard’s metaphor had “Anything” outside myself was enough.
I haven’t read of anyone becoming free because of the destruction of the environment yet, but hey, that’s pretty shitty too!
Anything and everything.
Maybe it will morph from one thing to the next until that common denominator in all the freedom reports is clearly experienced; it’s you in the way. It’s me in the way.
Nope. Richard was contemplating exactly that at the moment he became free on the 30th of October, 1992.
Richard
“Then in the late afternoon of the day before Friday the thirtieth of of October 1992, whilst out in an abandoned cow-paddock planting tree seedlings, I was struck by the curious fact that at the beginning of my life I had been engaged in chopping down trees to turn the land into cow-pasture. Now the needs of the situation were sharply reversed and so I paused in my task and stood erect, looking about me in this little sub-tropical valley that the ex-dairy farm was nestled in. As I looked I idly mused upon the irony that the change in human needs regarding physical survival had wrought such radical transformation in the attitudes toward the environment during the forty five years I had been upon this planet. In a flash of a moment a vast understanding of the enormity of the Human Condition transfigured my comfortable comprehension of what it was to be an Enlightened Master … a Self-Realised Being. My entire affective and cognitive configuration – my highly prized state of awareness – was seen at a glance to be nothing more than a passionate mental construct. In other words, my world fell apart.”
Humans as a whole, had changed their attitude. Started to do something that cost them time and effort to survive. They started to sacrifice short term gains, started to care about the planet. Perhaps something in that “idle musing” about the planet Richard often describes as “verdant and azure” was the weight on the other end of the lever?
Viscerally, Richard was already having back pain at 45. From the work he described as a young person, through to the work he was doing then.
I am just riffing here. It wasn’t insignificant “idle musing”. The actual world, he had shaped, and had shaped him was all around him.
Anything outside ‘yourself’.
Something I’ve noticed as I get closer to purity & enjoyment of love, that there’s more vivacity, everything has more depth than it did previously. I suspect that this depth & vivacity means that any instinct, including altruism, is much more likely to be triggered (where the opposite is in dissociation, every instinct is being smothered/deadened - except for the instinct to dissociate).
This is also what makes it necessary to remove as many triggers as possible & get to know myself, because otherwise these instincts going off all the time would be overwhelming
It’s interesting because where something like love or desire or hatred are triggered quite frequently, ‘true altruism’ of the self-sacrificing kind only pops up rarely… people are often crowned heroes when it is triggered.
Something really cool has clicked since yesterday when I was teaching a class. I was showing a sequence and in the process of demonstrating the sequence I actually deviated from it due to the reaction that my partner gave me. Initially there was this immediate fear of - I have done it wrong, I am a fraud.
I stuck with this feeing and looked to find out more about it and I saw that this whole hang up I have is to do with elegance/beauty. It is something that Richard mentions in his journal but I could never quite understand this whole thing of beauty/elegance.
What I see now is that beauty/elegance/smoothness is all to do with how well I am able to act out the script, whatever the script might be. Elegance is not so much concerned with the practicality of what I am doing but rather with the extent that I successfully perform as an identity - how well did I follow the ‘recipe’ handed to me by society.
I can see this is something that my mum was always very attached to and something I have picked up too, hence the incessant need to do everything ‘right’ or ‘perfect’, for every conversation, action etc to be done with elegance, any deviation would be seen as things going terribly wrong.
So the goal of elegance is not down to earth practicality but instead ticking all the boxes in ‘perfect smoothness’ so that I can be ‘that’. The goal of elegance is to align itself with the ‘truth’.
What I am seeing is that there is something better than elegance, something better than the most ideal performance done by the identity.
Because elegance actually prevents the free application of intelligence to the situation at hand. Free application of intelligence operates with no prior tenets which actually obscure its operation. It looks at the situation without bias and acts in the way that is the most appropriate, even if it means deviating from the sequence. It’s been very cool to finally put a name to it, it’s interesting how putting a name to something like this can make such a difference, now I am zoomed in, focused on this thing so that I can see how it affects me in its totality. So lots of exploring to do now.
I’ve never read someone dealing with “elegance”.
It’s such a rare word in everyday experience. It goes without question when we see it though. Not appreciating the work the elegant person is putting in to achieve it.
Elegance is forever an imitation, a performance. So no matter how much effort ‘I’ develop the elegance with it will never be original, authentic and genuine. It will also never be free-flowing which means it needs to be forever sustained, so ‘I’ am forever on high alert, monitoring ‘my’ behaviour to ensure that it aligns. There is a certain pretentious flavour that elegance can never escape, this is because it faces 180 degrees opposite to naiveté which has nothing to do with acting out a script and everything to do with being free-flowing.
It has immense power though. I have never considered that the experience of being around elegance was being contrived by them. I suppose it wouldn’t be elegance if it wasn’t so carefully maintained!
Yeah for sure there is power, for example the power that a woman can hold via beauty which is the same thing.
And yet at the same time women are always crushed by those same beauty standards which if maintained perfectly can grant them power.
I am watching Star Wars. The original ones. I was always enamoured with the swagger of Harrison Ford. Are you saying it’s fake!!?
My life was a lie!
Heheh what I am seeing is that there is something that is actually better than being elegant, which is being spontaneous, free flowing, naive. Because only by being spontaneous I can act in the optimum to what is taking place right now. Elegance no matter how refined is always a step behind because it consists of nothing but an imitation of various morals, values etc. For sure one sounds waaay more fun than the other and with none of the negatives of having to be sustained, practiced, monitored etc which inevitably brings its own anxieties and issues. And as always it leads away from intimacy. That’s a pretty hard deal to refuse!
I’m sold.
This thing has really been an eye opener and lots of fun to observe. I open my instagram and what I describe in the previous posts is blatantly demonstrated : There is the beautiful women, the guys who are ‘living the life’, some other people acting out/to the dramas that humanity has weaved etc.
Essentially it is a bunch of people screaming out - “Look here 
I am doing that ‘thing’ that you said life is all about and I am winning at it! Can I have my acknowledgment now please” And of course we all know the inevitable outcome of such pursuits where sooner or later the ‘bad’ starts to creep in.
But what I never observed was the aspect of beauty/elegance specifically, of that quality which arises when ‘I’ am aligned with the ‘truth’, it is a currency within the ‘real world’, something that ‘I’ am always after.
Sadly though this very pursuit is what binds ‘me’ into forever pursuing someone else’s values. And there is so much more to this, it seems to go as far as I am willing to look… I can see how this ‘set up’ inevitably leads to malice, because we are all trapped playing the same values and so there will inevitably be power battles between groups who would rather shift the values in their favour.
I can see how this ‘set up’ leads to depression for those who “just don’t have it”, that X factor that everyone is after.
So how cool to see that there is a way of being which is superior to this!
One way that this beauty/elegance expresses itself for me is in simple interactions with others.
What I notice is that each interaction with another identity has a certain pre-arranged ‘rhythm’, whether I experience the interaction as awkward vs smooth is based entirely on how well both of us are able to stick to the ‘beat’.
Of course this ‘rythm/beat’ is nothing but the groundwork of values, morals and beliefs (overlaying the instinctual being) which we are both operating under, somehow trying to align them for a smooth interaction.
I have noticed this especially when doing my hen party jobs, there is a certain ‘cadence’ that those interactions are meant to take place to (apparently), these are based on my beliefs and expectations. What happens is that jobs which I experience as going smoothly, to plan etc are simply the ones where the ‘cadence’ dictated by my beliefs aligns with ‘theirs’, we have both played our performances well 
BUT the times when I have had EE’s/PCE’s when doing these I noticed that this aspect was completely missing. There was no longer a ‘rhythm’ that ‘I’ had to anxiously keep up with. What replaced it was a free-flowing intimacy which was invulnerable to these sorts of things. Then I was able to be spontaneous and not just to my benefit but theirs also! Because I could tell they were enjoying my company, they wanted me there, they wanted to interact with me, even though there was not even an inch of pretence that I was living up to, this was me as I actually am and they liked this me.
The other thing that becomes clear is why feeling happy and harmless must be in place in order for me to live spontaneously, in order for that which is described in the previous posts to be discarded.
It is because in normal interactions those beliefs and morals are merely the tip of the iceberg which cover up the powerful affective currents flowing underneath. This is easily observed in the fact that all interactions are smooth when ‘I’ am gone (as in a PCE). They simply lack that element of ‘friction’ that is inevitable when 2 identities interact.
Playing to the script ensures some form of structure and so beauty becomes ‘my’ reward for aligning myself with that ‘truth’.
There is something that I have been seeing lately that is very cool. Often in the past when I contemplated what self-immolation would entail there was a sense that with ‘me’ disappearing there would be a void of sorts.
What I am seeing lately is that what actually comes after is a completely new consciousness which is utterly superior. It’s a tricky one to explain but the difference is HUGE.
I saw this the other day when I was driving my car, that it is not just that ‘I’ disappear leaving some void, but that when ‘I’ disappear there is something that is automatically ‘live’. that something replaces ‘me’, it is complete in a way that is incredible to behold.
I guess this initial misconception is because ‘I’ fear that without ‘me’ this body will struggle to survive, so then ‘I’ imagine actual freedom will be this weird zombie-like state where there is all these key functions missing, because apparently ‘I’ was needed for all these things.
But it is actually the other way around, ‘my’ disappearance kicks things into this new superior gear that ‘I’ cannot even imagine. And there is no ‘hand-over period’, no void that then has to be filled by something. It is a shift from one way of consciousness into a completely superior way of consciousness. In the new way of consciousness this body has a certain integrity that is light-years ahead of this uneasy arrangement which is happening right now.
I have been getting a flavour of this a lot since, this ambrosial seeing that what is coming is better in every regard and that it is utterly complete in every way.
It makes sense though! Because along the way it is always the same, I find time and time again that the 3rd alternative is better than both good and bad, it is always that something which is even better.
This is a great pointer whenever one is looking to locate the 3rd alternative actually… to look for something that is even better than the current possible options, it is always superior.
This thing I am getting a flavour of lately is so unbelievably superior which also allows me to see that there is nothing at all to be afraid of. What could possibly go wrong when this new consciousness automatically swings in?
This morning the focus is on enjoyment and appreciation. I noticed that although I have been very focused on habituating feeling good, I have not been focused much on taking things into the next gear and actively enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive.
It appears that those are 2 different actions. Feeling good is like a baseline which is somewhat more passive. From that baseline I am in position to launch myself into actively enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive - this is definitely something I do, like an activity I participate in.
Moving from feeling good into enjoying and appreciating is like jumping into a higher gear. What I notice is that as soon as I do this I am experiencing pure intent.
It seems feeling good without the active component of enjoyment and appreciation is more likely to stagnate and devolve into some form of bland or bad feeling. Actively enjoying and appreciating has the effect of brining my attention to this moment, because what else could I be enjoying and appreciating?
Whereas without this, it seems I am more likely to ‘float away’ into some ‘other place’ where the good and bad feelings are never far away.
So actively enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive cements feeling good and takes it onto a higher level by bringing my attention to this moment and this place. For that same reason it automatically orients me towards sensuosity and pure intent because those cannot be found ‘out there’ (in the psyche somewhere), they are only here where this moment is happening.
So this step that I take when I actively enjoy and appreciate has the effect of cutting through everything else. It brings me right here where this moment is happening, there is purity, there is delight, all of ‘my’ reality is becoming more insignificant.
This is the very same reason why I can resist it, because heading in that direction is at the same time heading away from the real world, from ‘my’ world.
This is the balancing act at the moment, because there is objections towards this enjoyment and appreciation, reasons why I need to attend to various ‘real world matters’. Although this is mostly a habitual response as every time I look into these they are seen to be fluff.
There are also times I might dip into feeling bad and I notice from that point it is silly to try to jump to enjoyment and appreciation. At that point I might have to take a step back, potentially do some investigation, get back to feeling good as a baseline and then I am at that launching position again to go for enjoyment and appreciation.