Very interesting indeed.
Pondering the obvious…
So lately I keep coming back to this kind of obvious observation, I could sum it up with - "If the majority of my unhappiness and malice is the result of straining to create and sustain the ‘structures’ of ‘my’ life, why don’t ‘I’ just stop?
It’s like I keep noticing that I create a plan, scheme or otherwise some other structure inside and then all of a sudden I have something to worry about! 
I have already seen that there is no purpose to these ‘internal structures’ as they have nothing to do with the actual, they are like this extra activity that is going on parallel to what is actually happening.
However I also notice that I cannot stop doing this completely as long as I am an identity, because this constant creation and maintenance of said structures is just what ‘I’ am. These structures are like a house, an outer shell for the passionate energy to attach itself to. This is the very drama which arises out of the affective faculty - the passionate energy aka the self infiltrating into the cognitive and becoming a ‘who’.
The interesting thing is that although the feeling being is not just those structures it also cannot exist without them, in order to continue creating the deception that ‘I’ really exist, ‘I’ must skulk behind some construct.
So basically I have noticed that the vast majority of the times I am not feeling good are the direct result of one of ‘my’ precious ‘structures’ inevitably crumbling, needing to be maintained etc. But then if the majority of my feeling bad is to do with these structures failing why don’t I just stop setting up this house of cards? All ‘my’ struggles are those of maintaining something that is artificially created, projected and then painfully maintained, always in opposition to fact and therefore requiring belief - this is reality.
So it’s quite cool now because as soon as I notice this ‘internal scaffolding’ coming together to create a structure I know exactly what game is being played and so the thing is halted.
The other thing coming from all this seeing is a really clear grasp on just exactly what is going on with the human condition, I could never see it all so clearly but also in such a comprehensive way where all the understanding is coming together.
I can see now that this entire thing we call reality, this huge drama that humans have been living out is the very expression of the instinctual passionate energy infiltrating into the cognitive arena. In there somewhere the intuitive instinctual sense of self/other, danger/safety, attraction/aversion etc can take root and develop into the various truths and stories that make up the vast construct called reality, with none of it having any actual existence at all.
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Living in a glass house…
I am still getting a clearer picture as to what exactly is going on with the human condition. I notice that in terms of the ‘big themes’ there aren’t really many left of any substance, there is like these bits of shrapnel flying about which means I am able to get a clearer view of what exactly is going on underneath, what is this fundamental game of ‘being’ a ‘self’ all about.
What I was looking at this morning is the intuitive sense of ‘danger’ which is more or less always there. This ‘danger’ is felt on some fundamental level to always exist ‘out there’, yet it can never be given a face, it always remains as this ephemeral thing. This intuitive sense of ‘danger’, existing in some unexplained location but most definitely real is projected into a dimension called ‘the future’.
The bottom line is that this ‘danger’ being a product of intuition and projection has no actual existence at all, however ‘I’ feel it to be real and so ‘I’ must always prepare myself for it, it having no face though means ‘I’ must always remain on guard. It’s interesting because essentially what I am describing is the very instinct for survival itself, which is what ‘I’ am.
The second layer comes in where out of this intuited/projected sense of ‘danger’, ‘I’ begin to create a glass house in order to protect ‘myself’. This glass house is built on very shaky ground however, it is trying to protect against something that cannot be pointed to, only intuitively felt out, a danger that does not exist. So whatever security comes from this endeavour is so very shaky as well. It is essentially like being demanded to provide an answer without knowing what the question is!!
So on top of the instinctual fear which is always present there is now a secondary problem, because the constant creation and maintenance of this glass house becomes a source of stress and anxiety in it’s own right. ‘I’ am terrified of ‘my’ security being taken away because ‘I’ intuitively feel that there is a ‘danger’ ‘out there’.
The third bit to all this is a nice surprise though, the image I have in my head is this glass house being located squarely in a magical wonderland. Instinctually ‘I’ have locked ‘myself’ away in this prison, in doing so ‘I’ have blocked ‘myself’ from the safety that is actually all around. The glass house was never required because ‘the danger’ was only intuited and projected, it does not actually exist.
And so the secondary game (of creating and sustaining) can also finally stop, it was only a response to ‘the danger’ after all.
I have this seeing in front of me now and it’s like how long until I finally and fully accept that there was never a ‘danger’ to begin with, it seems so very simple after all. How long until I finally accept that I am basically living a lie, a huge instinctually sourced lie haha. How long until I finally accept the fact, and in doing so betray the belief that ‘I’ am needed.
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Actually this is not fully correct, this ‘danger’ does temporarily put on a face, it will be the next worry, the next thing to be tackled. The fundamental game never stops though, it’s like playing whac-a-mole, that intuitive sense of danger will simply pick the next scapegoat, and so it goes on forever, with no amount of generated security ever leading to a genuine safety.
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I read that with a very intense level of concentration.
I think you may be generation Y’s “Richard”. I can’t be sure though, as I haven’t understood my own generation yet.
I was rather thrilled tonight to have my oldest son hear me sing and play guitar.
I was afraid of being my own father; dead without ever leaving anything but memories of how good he really was at music.
All the fears, eventually, are revealed to be projections of some essential need to exist.
No one actually needs to exist; yet of course we will persist to some point at which we no longer have anything to live for.
Whatever fear of the future you talk about, none of it happens for us in the affluent west. What actually happens is you get old. Closer to the biological breakdown of the systems which sustain life.
There is indeed something “bad” going to happen in the future.
You will be dead. Though statistically, I will beat you too it by a couple of decades; all things being equal.
The future is very predictable really. The sun will rise, and the body will continue to eliminate the cancer and various degradation that comes with time, until that ability is spent.
That’s all that is actually happening.
And that is the nub of it, the fear of death, the ultimate ‘danger’. I remember (even from yesterday actually) experiencing actual intimacy and in that place seeing that there is no ‘danger’ in death. The fear of death stems from ‘me’ being separate to begin with, where there is no separation death is no longer a ‘bad’ thing, for there is nowhere else to go, there is only here.
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I linked to a YouTube video in my journal of a psychologist which came closer than anyone I have heard to cracking actualism.
Basically, everything that is “bad” is all about my desire.
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Being a part-time actualist…
There is a memory I have of when I first came back to actualism a few years ago. I remember making the decision that from now on this was the direction I was going to travel in, that I was going to do it.
I remember doing my best to apply the method within the first couple of weeks and so I found myself with my girlfriend at the time in a local park on a sunny weekend. I was feeling good, it was something I haven’t felt in so so long, but there was also this commitment to travel fully along this new way.
I remember from that place of feeling good, seeing that I have been wasting my whole life in some weird chase for something that was never going to satisfy. But in that place of feeling good I no longer had anything missing, there was nothing else to do but to enjoy and appreciate. I remember thinking wow this is like a whole new life, where I get to finally enjoy all these things I have been blind to, because I was so obsessed with being anywhere but here.
What I saw then was that my identity since a young kid has been structured around pursuing achievements, they usually took the form of something related to sports, of chasing this carrot that was always ahead of me. And being so focused on the chase I always missed out on the simple joy of being here.
It is really weird because that place I found myself in those first couple of weeks, I haven’t been to in a while. I have some memories of last summer also visiting that place where enjoyment and appreciation was the only thing to be done but since I have been stuck in the in between.
What I am seeing now is that since that initial full commitment I have gone back into this carrot chasing identity and have been endeavouring to make it work alongside actualism.
There is something inside of me that says I should be able to continue chasing all of those carrots whilst applying the method. It reminds me of Richard talking about obsession, that it is required in actualism and that usually it’s seen by people as something to be avoided. It is like I believe that way of looking at things, that I must apply moderation in some way, that just throwing everything away is a crazy thing to do. And so I continue playing in 2 camps, hence that place of gay abandon that I visited the first couple of weeks has been inaccessible to me.
Whenever I find myself feeling good, great, excellent there is like this weird reluctance to enjoy it fully because I know that I will simply return back to my normal way. Yet in those first couple of weeks this was not the case, it was like I could see that feeling felicitous and innocuous each moment again was to be an ongoing way of living for me, a wide and wondrous path that I was to walk from now on.
It is nice though because what I have been doing all this time has been useful in the sense that I truly have investigated a lot. To the point where I can see that the choice to walk down the wide and wondrous path requires literally just that, a choice.
But also it is a weird thing to see, that truly it is up to me which way I travel each moment again. It is so ridiculously simple, it’s a simplicity I almost don’t want to admit because then there is only doing left.
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In my experience/case, this is more like: whenever I find myself feeling good, great, excellent there is like this weird reluctance to enjoy it fully because “I” WANT to return back to “my” normal way (i.e. back to the pursuits and the carrots).
While feeling good/great/excellent, it’s been instructive to observe that wanting as it happens, the anxiety (however slight) of not “doing”, of not pursuing, of not seizing the opportunity to move forward in “my” chase.
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Yeah funnily enough when I wrote that sentence it seemed incomplete and I was going to add that it is because I am wanting to go back (for whatever reason), but I decided to keep it simple in the end.
Yes the reluctance is to do with me wanting to go back to my normal ways. Weirdly enough it is about going back into suffering in order to feel ‘right’.
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Something interesting just clicked, it’s all following this challenge of committing to feeing good each moment again for the rest of my life.
Like I wrote a while ago this necessitates a stepping out of ‘the game’ of humanity, basically the collective dramas that make up reality. I cannot pursue both goals at the same time, yet this is exactly what I have been trying to do.
What just clicked now is that I have been subconsciously pursuing various good feelings and only investigating when the bad ones inevitably pop up. Trying to retain the good whilst eliminating the bad, we all know this doesn’t work.
So noticing this I have decided that each time I am not feeling good, to trace back this drama to the good feeling, the dangling carrot which made me blindly proceed down the dead end alley again.
What I can see immediately is that all of those good feelings have the same core agenda, to be somebody special, to stand out from the group and in doing so to be noticed.
So I am not content with being happy and harmless because those qualities are not the ones that allow me to stand out from the group. Feelings of power and authority surely tick the box though! Hence I am addicted to the endless planning and scheming, endless achievements etc all directed towards allowing me to stand on some special pedestal and be noticed.
The thing here though is that the pedestal only exists inside ‘humanity’, as such to try to stand on this pedestal I must play by the ‘rules of the game’, I can only succeed in the specific way which has already been demarcated by humanity. Therefore to enter the game of standing out is to enter the entire package of reality.
This is where those good feelings are such insidious seducers, this carrot dangling, luring me to proceed towards this promise of something, as soon as my foot is through the door though I am now trapped playing by all of the rules of humanity, all the petty games that we all know so well.
It’s funny cos I also notice this tendency in my approach to actualism, wanting to be noticed as someone special by putting in the hardest work - now isnt that just the most perfect demonstration of peasant mentality 
Look at me sire I picked the most carrots today 
So it seems quite a big assignment ahead, to dare to look at those good feelings, to see what is going on, to eventually see that it is not needed.
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And this is the fate I am headed for currently 92 and still going strong in the race to stand out.
Damn it, any of the admins know why my instagram links never seem to work? Unless anyone else is able to play the above?
So far this way of approaching things has been really working, it’s finally starting to put some chinks in dramas that I have been stuck in for so long. It’s a great feeling to finally start to have these structures peel back somewhat, to see that there is a place outside of them. And in the place outside of good and bad is felicity and innocuity that is essentially ‘on tap’, nothing needs to be done for it to flow, other than to stop the dramas of course.
It’s very interesting to see how all this operates, the role that the good feeling plays in ‘setting the scene’ for the drama to play out. I remember Geoffrey mention in the zoom video that the good feelings go last.
This is how I have experienced it for myself, when I first got going with actualism I mostly focused on the overwhelming sorrow and malice that I existed in. Eventually it was minimised to a point where day to day I am good, things are going just fine.
But there is still something missing, I am still not in a place where each moment I am enjoying and appreciating, actively relishing being here.
So it seems now to arrive at that place those remnant good feelings, the ones that have remained somewhat unattended to, need to be seen for what they are.
Then there is nothing left but felicity and innocuity, I experienced this for a couple of hours yesterday, no more good/bad, only felicity and innocuity each moment again. It made me appreciate what Richard writes about virtual freedom - that it is way beyond normal human expectations anyway. I remember thinking that if I could only maintain this condition each moment again for the rest of my life that my life would be complete, actual freedom or not - it is that wonderful to simply feel good each moment again.
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Yes I can relate to this “still something missing” part
If I recollect correctly, Peter said something like everyone has that 1 last issue that they hold on to dearly.
I think Richard told some respondent that its high time to ramp up sensuousness when that person didn’t know what’s the next step after considerable investigation n feeling good
Let me see if I can get a link to these…
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Sometimes I wonder if you are Richard trolling us with this stuff.
JK.
That’s a huge insight. That to stand on the pedestal one endorses it’s foundation.
However, one can do something worthy of worship, worthy of utter adoration.
What each actually free person has done is worthy, for the first time in history, of those of us not free literally bowing down and kissing their feet, whilst washing them with our tears.
The pedestal, my young friend, has a expiration date. Somewhere around 35 for men.
I’ve said it before, that you won’t have to “investigate” anything at a certain age. Everything you hope for will be taken away anyway.
Which is a fact, unless the simplicity of enjoying this immediate future, the “space” in which we live and move is actualised.
In which case there is nothing to lose because infinitude is worth it. Apparently.
I’ve been riffing today on Claudiu’s exhortation that it’s all very simple.
Had a great day. On my own. Could be better, but it’s a win.
Hahahaha
If you are looking for a pedestal, you are on the top of mine. No one in the decade of me being interested in actualism can articulate the human condition like you can.
Absolute rock star.