There is a lot of cool ramifications to this line of enquiry. Firstly there is only the conditioning, both instinctual and societal, that this conditioning produces an individual ‘me’ is merely a facet of the illusion.
Hence why enlightenment was an option. One could stop being a separate ego and instead dissolve into an ocean of oneness, where there is no longer a distinction between ‘me’ and ‘them’, yet one still lives in a delusion.
When I investigate into ‘my’ self, I am at the same time investigating ‘humanity’, I have been conditioned to take these things to be ‘mine’, somehow unique and personal to ‘me’, yet there is no demarcation possible at the root of it.
What is ‘my’ personal emotion or ‘my’ original belief when ‘I’ cannot exist independently of ‘them’?
If I walk into a room and detect a vibe how can I demarcate the self that originated it, how can I say this is my emotion and this is yours? At this level the distinctions become meaningless and it all becomes nonsensical, ultimately because none of it is actual, it is calenture.
So what is happening on route to a virtual freedom? Attentiveness is being applied to the conditioning itself, ‘I’ am making these explorations apparently but really ‘I’ never come up with an answer, for ‘I’ am merely an echo of the programming. It is attentiveness that changes things, not ‘me’.
Yet something is required to show a way out, otherwise the exploration becomes an endless circling of the inner world. ‘I’ am stuck without the assistance of pure intent.
Attentiveness exposes the conditioning, pure intent offers a way out.
Oh wow and I have never seen this before, but truly there can be no shame or guilt when investigating ‘my’ self, for ‘I’ am merely a product, ‘I’ did not even originate ‘myself’.
The feelings of shame and guilt are necessary aspects of morality, aimed at reducing the severity of violence by making the instincts, feelings and beliefs personal. Morality had to create a separate ‘me’ that could be held liable for ‘his’ sorrow and malice, this belief in individuality as a social identity is a convenient lie, it is not a fact.
So this entire edifice of belief that culminates in what one calls ones identity is merely a bunch of very important lies, important as long as the instinctual programming remains.
So indeed self immolation is not merely a personal thing, one is ending ‘humanity’ itself along with the ‘me’. How can this not have a significant effect? I can see why Richard would have the theory of the critical mass, the ending of ‘me’ is guaranteed to ripple through as there is no demarcation between the 2.
This is adding a whole other dimension to the statement of ‘doing it for others’. I could never see the strength in this before. I saw it as a meaningless thing to self immolate, in terms of benefiting others. Seeing how recalcitrant identities are it seemed like what is the point?
But ending ‘me’ goes way beyond what the ego bound mind can conceptualise.
Another fun aspect to this relates to what Richard wrote that he “stopped believing that it was not possible” [to become actually free]. Going into the depth where there is no longer any demarcation possible, how can I say that I cannot self immolate? When this very same programming committed psychic suicide in another? The same ‘humanity’ that is ‘me’ has already done the deed, it cannot be impossible.
I was thinking this exact thought this morning. I can’t come up with answers. Anymore than a mirror can look at itself directly.
By the time I have “investigated” something about myself, there has been every stage another twisting of the thoughts by the very feelings that are me.
Hence for a decade I have missed the huge void called “abandonment”.
It’s like the secret service investigating itself.
Ok so this post from Srinath popped up in my head today. I think this might have been around the time when I found a stable connection to pure intent and went through a period of almost accessing it on tap. I remember through a certain period I was having EE’s pretty much daily.
But since then the connection has been somewhat severed, and I have been going through very much what Srinarh describes as the ‘investigation churn’, trying to turn ‘being’ into a fluffy poodle and failing.
It’s like when I first got going with actualism I started exploring my identity and it was like this huge tree with branches reaching out in all directions. I explored and trimmed away one by one the majority of these branches. But even with all this whittling away there are certain core aspects of ‘me’ which have remained more or less untouched.
So it is interesting to read this post mentioning that there are certain idiosyncratic aspects of ‘me’ that might remain all the way until self immolation. I certainly notice that those core parts just won’t go, and it’s not for a lack of trying!
I am trying to continue whittling down something that just won’t budge any more, I guess those core aspects of ‘me’ are just too intertwined with ‘my’ very ‘being’.
It seems if I was to get rid of those whilst remaining a ‘self’ (and without a stable connection to pure intent), psychologically I would land in some messed up place.
What happens if I try anyways is that I seem to come across this never ending well of sorrow and malice that is ‘being’ itself. I can poke and prod it but all this accomplishes is setting off a storm of affect that gets me nowhere.
So again it’s interesting to consider this advice of seeing + accepting ‘myself’ as a totality and then juxtaposing this ‘being’ with purity. Actually this is exactly what I was doing back then with awesome results.
This brings me onto the next bit which is the limits of an in control virtual freedom. Just how much can be done via chipping away at the social identity? I am not in virtual freedom but even so it seems like at this point it is a waste of time to be doing any more chipping away.
I always had this belief that if I continued chipping away there would be a point at which there is only feeling good left, but it just doesn’t seem to play out that way, and instead it’s starting to feel like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole - Can I really turn the t-rex into a fluffy poodle?
Or will I just continue coming across the same core aspects that will not budge.
When I consider how Richard went about it he did not take this route at all, he had pure intent in bucketfuls which meant that bits of the identity could fall away as something far better was available.
It feels like a bit of a relief actually to consider leaving ‘myself’ be for now, just as ‘I’ am. No longer on a mission to purify the last bits, to reach perfection whilst remaining a ‘self’.
When in an EE it seems that is the only time when ‘I’ get to be (temporarily) a fluffy poodle. But it’s not ‘me’ responsible for the shift, it’s the purity that brings ‘being’ into relief.
Ok some progress here… I had this thought pop up this morning, it was @geoffrey writing/talking about the method at core being about the naive representation/rememoration of the PCE? I couldn’t find the text anywhere so I could have imagined it lol but I don’t think so!
Anyways this is a good way to summarise what I was doing when pure intent seemed on tap last year and I have had success doing the same thing this morning.
When it works it seems almost too simple to work, it’s like setting my antennae to the frequency of actuality and then it appears.
Setting the intent to rememorate the experience of actuality means that I allow the possibility that perfection is here right now, it is no longer being downplayed as some far away dream.
Then when the memory is locked onto and the flavour of actuality is tasted, then it is no longer possible to deny it, it is happening now.
In order for the above to play out though I need to have this sense of making ‘myself’ and ‘my’ dramas unimportant enough to put to one side, not so much repressing but rather seeing + accepting as per Srinath’s advice. I put ‘being’ to one side and then incline my mind towards actuality. Often as soon as I do this I begin to experience this softness, it finally brings relief to ‘being’. Then if I continue wondering in this direction it gets more and more magical, this is how I would hang out in EE’s quite a bit last year.
I think the reason I stopped doing this and got back to the ‘investigation churn’ was because I was looking for something that would solidify this experience. As in I could see that I was able to temporarily taste actuality and swim in purity but there was no way to ‘bottle it up’ as Srinath mentions on the simple actualism page. I wanted to make it so that I don’t revert back to the t-rex every time.
The other cool thing that I realised here is that this entire process has nothing to do with belief. It is not about believing or building faith that actuality is here. It is the very opposite, by tasting it now I can no longer believe that it is not here, then it is happening.
Ok so there is something interesting here, because I see just how easy I can slip into that experience where everything becomes so magical but I have noticed that I am actively blocking it. It’s like I have these hang ups for what is socially allowed and I feel it to be somehow forbidden to get so close to others.
For example I have this appointment soon to see this guy for my injured neck and I noticed I started getting in the way of things. Like I can’t go and meet some complete stranger who’s going to be massaging me and interact with him from that place of softness, sweetness and magic. There’s this whole construct of male to male interaction that I have to respect, I can’t just go in there with separation so greatly diminished, what if I get too close, will it get weird etc
OK so I find this super fascinating, there is an experience which I have written about before, first couple of weeks into giving actualism a good go I found myself with my gf at the time walking through the park and just enjoying and appreciating.
I remember saying to her (and this was so precious for me to experience) that all my life I always had to do all these things in order to be happy. For me personally it was always related to various achievements, when I get better at my sport then I get to be happy, when I am looked up to by others then I get to be happy etc.
So the goal deep down was always the same, I just wanted to enjoy and appreciate being alive but in my normal mode I had to go through things in order to qualify for it. That day in the park though I no longer had to do any of that and what a load it was that was temporarily lifted.
For example I never liked going on holidays because when I am there I am too busy thinking about how I am not working towards my achievements. That day for the first time since I could remember I was delighted about the prospect of going on holiday just to enjoy and appreciate, end of.
Right there I ‘cut out the middleman’ and I saw that all my life I could have been going straight to it, simply enjoying and appreciating, that I have been wasting this simple opportunity each moment again because I believed that I had to ‘go through’ things in order to qualify for happiness.
It’s kind of like when I am young and I realise that I like girls, I want to enjoy their company and all that it entails. But in order to do that, to attract them, I enter the rat race of male to male competition, in order to be noticed. So now in order to have that simple wish, I had to build an entire identity of being a man, to go through it only to get what I wanted all along.
This is essentially what Richard discovered, that all this stuff that humanity gets up to is not needed, that we can go straight to the source, straight to enjoying and appreciating, and from that point there is no longer a need to do those extra things, because the ultimate is already being lived.
It makes me think about how all emotions are distortions of the actual, the goal is the same all along, to enjoy and appreciate, but as an identity I have to go through hell and hope that I qualify for the reward at the end of it. Whereas Richard found that it is possible to simply side-step that entire thing and go straight into enjoying and appreciating (the goal all along).
Now the annoying thing is that 4 years later from that park experience I still do not live what I saw each moment again. There is this big construct I created in the hopes of qualifying for happiness through humanity. I am afraid that if I simply go for enjoyment and appreciation that I will be left worse of, because that entire construct will be no longer needed. But of course this fear is all back to front, it won’t be needed because I will be living what I wanted anyways and without having to do anything extra. I guess it is a case of unraveling the mess sufficiently so that I can clearly see this to be the case.
Essentially I am afraid of being like @geoffrey, just sitting out in my garden having the time of my life, no extras needed!
This ‘nothing else needs to be done other than enjoying life through and through, each moment again’ scares me so much and this is exactly what is happening when I enter that magical fairytale land.
So what I am considering now is my investment into being a ‘someone’.
What if this was always a misguided means to an end, a ticket to get what I wanted all along, which eventually became a trap in itself.
I can see this entire armour of ‘me’ that is structured for this specific purpose. I know that enjoying and appreciating will make it redundant.
The fear is that I will no longer be special in the eyes of others, but the question is why do I feel the need to be special in the first place?
Is it because I have denied myself from enjoyment and appreciation and believe that the only way now is through others.
The answer is obvious (intellectually), because I can observe my little brother, he has not denied himself yet, he will do soon and will carry that armour also.
For now though he enjoys in a naive way as opposed to the sophisticated way that he will learn later, but he will loose something in the process, something that I remember living myself as kid, that simple delight and wonder at being here.
The belief is that happiness is earned, this seems like a core rule of reality. In order to forgo being a ‘someone’ I need to confirm for certain that enjoyment and appreciation is actually on tap, it is literally available 24/7 and everywhere all at once.
Then that armour can be for sure dropped. Right now I wanna keep it on just in case I need it later
Just having a nap and in that hypnagogic state I find myself contemplating the ramifications of infinitude and boy the whole body was jolting with each realisation of the immensity of it.
This immensity amplifies without a cap, it feeds back and forth between the realisation that there is no place else but here and the fact that I am actually here now.
This infinitude is like a card that trumps every other consideration, not a single thing that exists in reality is worth even a cent in light of it.
Then the last jolt was the realisation that there are human beings alive right now who live in and can speak from that place?! Whereas for me it’s like a brief flash of seeing but they live there 24/7
Compared to just about anything else, a human is incredibly special.
@Kub933 do you know that you are special? I mean in all the observable universe we only know of 8 billion humans. Sounds like a lot, but really it such a tiny number.
Your experience of infinity isn’t available to the tea pot. Or the cat. It’s special to a human.
I would suggest going into the heart of being special, not to undo it, but to ramp it up. You are special. You are the only you that you will ever have. Either in the real world, or the actual.
I discovered this only a couple of days ago. What it means.
You are the only one you will ever have. Isn’t it worth a shot to completely go into being special?
Richard wrote about the megalomia needed to go beyond enlightenment. The shear audacity to question “who am I?, that they all got it so wrong, I have have got it right?”
