Hi mate, the context in which I made those remarks was “are you your own best friend?”
When I listen to myself, and ask myself “how are you, mate?” I am treating myself with singular care, as if I am the only person in the world. Whatever other meaning of special, or unique in the context of the AFT has no bearing on the obvious facts that no one else can answer my question.
It’s a unique moment, a unique and special question.
So you and I have identical psychology? Does anyone have identical psychology?
If I treat myself, which I have, as just another psyche, one about which I assume I already know all about because the AFT says this or that, where is the genuine interest in how I am feeling?
I am special. Special not in some elevated “better than others” way, but special.
The eldest son in a particular family of my birth, with 47 years of various experiences and emotional goings on.
I would think it’s obvious that one can’t ask oneself a question and have the answer already because “I am not unique” according to the AFT (your reading of it).
Factually, I am whether a psyche or an actual human, the only instance of either.
This doesn’t seem controversial to me.
For example, I don’t ask you or anyone else “how are you?” expecting that I know the answer. I also don’t ask myself that either (now) with a “super ego” expectation of the “right answer”.
Yes I see what you are saying but this is uniqueness that depends on doing something that others haven’t done, on comparison. It’s the same quest for uniqueness that might inspire me to beat a world record so that I can stand apart.
Like there is a guy I follow on instagram who is the first person running the entire length of Africa. Which is mega impressive but at the same time you can have a PCE right now and look at your actual neighbour and see that they are unique as a flesh and blood body, without any qualifications necessary, they are already unique.
Also what if Richard’s theory was to turn out correct and after a critical mass the last billions of people become free automatically, are they no longer unique now because they did not achieve it?
What about the last person on earth to become actually free, is he/she no longer able to claim uniqueness because everyone else has done it already lol
I didn’t answer that question before, yeah I would say so for sure, this is something that I never had that much of a problem with, I actually don’t remember engaging in things like telling myself off, talking myself down etc.
When I am investigating into myself or dealing with a drama it is very much like I would deal with a best friend, a case of ‘lets look at what’s going on here’ without any weight of morality, shame, expectation etc.
I can see what you mean that there has to be enough interest and care for ‘myself’ to investigate sincerely. But then again I might tell my best friend to stop fancying himself as some special person if I can see that his incessant need to be special is to his detriment.
I think this being special thing goes pretty deep, I remember reading this book recently and it was mentioning the case of an orphanage is Bulgaria I think where babies were housed and provided with enough ‘care’ to physically survive but that was it. The ones who missed direct human interaction completely during a certain developmental stage went on to develop with significant issues.
So it seems babies require rich human interaction as a necessity for development, the self needs to be seen and attended to, it needs to be special enough to hold the gaze of another, to be touched, interacted with etc.
It’s like instinctually ‘I’ feel that ‘my’ very survival is so intertwined with the attention of the ‘other’. It makes sense as developmentally the baby/child not only requires the other for survival literally but secondarily it needs the other to model it’s understanding of the world and itself around.
But then one becomes an adult and it all gets rather silly I remember Richard writing that his life is most definitely mature and actually when I look around at what we are doing half the time it is as if we are stuck in some developmental stage lol. Deep down still driven desperately for love/attention as a baby is, still entertaining the same fairy tales as a child does, still jockeying for position within the hierarchy as a teenager does etc. What is a ‘mature adult’ if not some conglomeration of all these things glossed over with some pride.
Your two posts above, one about not having an issue with “being your own best friend” and this one about “developmental stages” of babies, are very much what I am getting at with being special.
There is maybe a better word, as “special” does usually mean " better than ".
It’s never been so clear to me that a “one size fits all” approach, a top down, generalised way of thinking is barely adequate. Like the babies in an orphanage, getting the bare minimum of human emotional attention, one can remain stuck in way of thinking and feeling and never knowing the difference.
Yes I know what you are referring to and I’ve also been looking at another word for it and couldn’t describe it haha hence I got thinking about those babies.
I remember Srinarh writing about the exquisite attunement he noticed towards his patients after becoming free and how it was even better than relating to them through emotion.
I see it the same with the babies and with what you said, we might say that we need love or they need to be loved, but that is just our emotional approximation for what they actually need which is a caring and considerate attention.
It’s the thing that love aims at but it has all those other pitfalls, it’s what comes automatically in a PCE, each person and each situation is attended to afresh and with complete involvement.
Always a pleasure catching up with your journal @Kub933.
As somebody raised with a materialist viewpoint to the universe it was not really ingrained in a way that stated this universe was neutral, there was much to be amazed and fascinated by in nature, the observable universe and the beauty of the human world. There were things to be horrified and disturbed by too though, like diseases and parasites. The material universe was subject to and imbued with whatever emotion the particular phenomenon aroused in us individually (me and my siblings I mean). We still wanted to believe in a soul interestingly, despite not having religion/spirituality, we wanted some phenomena that guaranteed us a chance to be infinite and eternal, as soon as we realised our mortality.
I have met people with a more neutral perspective to the material universe and others with an almost nihilistic materialist view, like its all dead and pointless, so even in the realm of materialism there seems to be a spectrum of different experiences and interpretations. I am pretty sure most kids raised without religion/spirituality would still have this initial emotional real world materialism and or find some form of concept of soul/self would be explored as in wanting to be something more than this flesh, and fear of death and the realisation of mortality would be counteracted with some form of protective idea, that the soul/after life provides. I have now met some people raised atheist that were fine with that and it didn’t make them feel bad. As a materialist atheist you are constantly exposed to concepts of soul in music, stories, tv, film and other media, in people’s general conversation, so it is not like being a materialistic atheist in vacuum without external influences to other opposing or contradictory ideas.
Maybe getting older and with further reflection, certain materialists start changing their stance and perception of the material world, leaning towards, positive, neutral or negative materialism if they haven’t done the U-turn to spirituality or religion.
I guess realising that emotions and my sense of self was a material phenomena was a big breakthrough personally, but that meant it could be changed, controlled or something different. Me and my emotions and sense of self was not some permanent and unchangeable thing. It was like a nebulous area I hadn’t sought to define or understand at first.
Even raised without spirituality, religion or a concept of a soul, one can still not immediately understand the material aspect of what we are. It was like a slow, piece by piece realisation. It is like I hadn’t asked deep enough questions about what I am, what my emotions and thoughts are and so many other things.
There were so many big thoughts like this happening over these years, like accepting the fact that evolution really meant that animate matter arose from inanimate matter. The fuzzy lines between the organic and the inorganic. The first dent in my wishful soul thinking, how and why would a soul form, did ants have souls, did bacteria have souls, how could I virus which requires a host to live have a soul, things that sit on the classification border between the organic and inorganic, how could they be said to have a soul.
The interconnectedness between energy and matter and that change and flux are inevitable, proved another dent in the shiny idea of a soul. Nothing in the universe seemed to support some unchangeable aspect that is infinite and eternal, flux and change are an inevitable aspect of matter and energy. And if matter could become energy and energy become matter, a soul might exist but would still be subject to the physical laws and not guaranteed a means to be something infinite and eternal. A final nail in the coffin for believing in a soul for me personally.
I can see this real world materialistic view that has been the foundation of my upbringing so often clashing with what I have gleaned from the PCE. The need to divide and identify things as good and bad based on my emotional reaction to things. Even with a materialistic view I would ascribe intent and meaning behind this material universe, like the belief the universe was against me and wanted me to suffer, so absurd. It is so easy to be silly intentionally and unintentionally in this life.
The PCE and even to a lesser degree EE’s are such a different experiences and outside of my control and interpretation, it is like so much of emotion and creativity is an interplay of personal interpretation and meaning, a PCE just blows your internal meanings and reality to smithereens.
This strikes a chord, I am sort of in this point of less is sticking but unlike you I am not experiencing PCE’s again yet, regular felicity and a sprinkle of EE’s though. I also find myself very satisfied with this because it is so much better than depression and anxiety and for so long I never believed that I could have been in a situation like this, I don’t chastise myself for not having a PCE anymore. Pure intent has been the recurrent subject in my mind of late…and rememoration…it spontaneously pops back into attention from time to time.
There is a passivity to me still, allowing things to just unfold as they are. Letting things happen to me and not actively trying to engage with that realisation that it is my choice how I will experience this moment of being alive.
What you write @son_of_bob reminds me of the book I just finished reading - ‘The Soul Fallacy’. It’s interesting really because looking into what the current thinkers and scientists have managed to arrive at in terms of the soul, self, emotion, consciousness etc I cannot help but think that it’s all rather weak haha.
Like in this book the guy basically puts across various philosophical and scientific reasons for why the soul does not exist, but the funny thing is that he still has one/is one! It all happens on this shallow intellectual level.
I have spent quite a bit of time doing this recently, pouring over all the recent developments in these fields and I can’t help but think it is all weak. It might be a complete waste of time for me actually haha but at least I can progressively put it to the side by seeing that only a genuine experiential answer will do the trick. Instead of trying to scientifically/philosophically understand about the soul, materialism, atheism etc lets actually eliminate the soul, the metaphysical, the gods and the rest of it.
Otherwise all these theories and understandings are poisoned by the fact that the thinkers trying to make sense of it all are still identities inhabiting the flesh and blood bodies.
In fact I also (painfully ) got through half of the book - ‘Making sense’ by Sam Harris whilst on the plane yesterday and oh my god what a load of intellectual masturbation it is haha.
It’s actually quite funny to think that this is the best we have in terms of the various thinkers, what they have arrived at after a lifetime of study and they are talking about how the AI will take over the world, panpsychism and a bunch of other rubbish really.
Recently I was reading a book called ‘determined’ by Robert sapolsky. Essentially he is making the stance that free will is a myth, that every behaviour can be explained by what happened a second before, a few minutes before, during development and all the way back. When we refer to something such as ‘I chose to do X’ what we are really saying is that the sight of A caused the thought of B which caused C and all the way to X.
Another way to look at this is saying ‘I chose X’ is a way of talking about those same deterministic events (A,B,C → X) but at a higher level of abstraction. Just like I might go to a university and point out the library, the cafeteria, this and that school and then wonder where the ‘university’ itself is, the term is merely a way to describe the buildings at a higher level of abstraction.
So this got me thinking about the application of the method. For example if I am teaching someone a martial arts technique, if they are pretty experienced I am able to talk at a higher level of abstraction because they have the building blocks (on the lower levels) to understand what I am talking about. If I use those same terms to a complete beginner they will think I am talking gibberish. What I have to do with the beginner is to implement those building blocks at the lower levels and some time down the line they can effortlessly work at the higher levels also.
So bringing this back around to actual freedom. Someone who has been a faithful denizen of the real world comes to me and says ‘how do I have a PCE’ and I reply with - ‘by allowing it to happen’.
What I said might be factually correct but is it practically applicable to the person in front of me? Do they have the building blocks to do anything with what I just said? Or will it appear like useless gibberish to them?
So we have someone like Richard who due to whatever circumstances was able to get on with the method and jump to an out from control virtual freedom. Does it make sense to talk in the same terms that worked for Richard to someone who is coming from a completely different situation. And does it make sense to simply refer them to the same information over and over when clearly it is not practically helpful.
If I did this as a martial arts coach and over and over it was the student that was unable to follow my apparently simple information, what is really going on? I would say it means I am unable to teach them something, it is not them who are unable to learn.
I am not in disagreement that the method is about feeling good, that the PCE informs the ultimate goal. This is not what I am proposing that should be shifted . But perhaps the way in which it is practically applied to each different individual needs some tinkering.
Perhaps those of us coming from the depths of the human condition, those who are deeply mired in the conditioning, maybe they require things to be broken down on the levels that are practically applicable.
I remember Peter mentioning in the virtual freedom video that it took him a very long time to overcome this huge resistance he had to feeling good, whereas for Richard this was never even a thing.
So what I am wondering is whether there are other practical ways that the same method (enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive) can be put across to individuals who clearly are interested, trying and yet failing, without simply referring them back to information which has failed to do the job.
As we spoke about on video, this aspect of self-kindness wasn’t an issue for you.
I remember years ago, the front page of the AFT had a section that started with “One begins by dismantling the social identity…” (Words to that effect). It was changed in recent years to "The way of becoming actually free is both simple and practical. For a start, one needs to fully acknowledge the biological imperative (the instinctual passions) which are the root cause of all the ills of mankind "
Did it become a landslide of actually free people?
However, like your example of martial arts, there are literally thousands of topics and starting points on the AFT.
What has always been missing is those skilled in seeing exactly where a particular person is coming from, and what the first step to having the "building blocks " for the higher level instructions.
Which is the weakness of typed communication. Often the literal meaning of what a person is saying is far from an accurate account of where that person actually is.
It’s no one’s fault. Everything on the AFT is a free gift, and there really is a treasure trove there.
However, handing a person a library of all the martial arts is likely to produce a scholar of martial arts, not a martial artist.
Yeah self-kindness was never an issue as in I would not tell myself off etc. Yet as I just wrote in the other thread this huge tyrannical theme in my life has been the necessity to stand out and accomplish in each and every situation, its gonna have to go soon and it’s a big one!
So what I am wondering is whether there are other practical ways that the same method (enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive) can be put across to individuals who clearly are interested, trying and yet failing, without simply referring them back to information which has failed to do the job.
What about for the old timers (who are trying and failing) too
Just re-reading the Simple Actualism website (https://www.simpleactualism.com) and actually this is a good example of the method being presented in a slightly different way. The key thing though is that it is still the same method, just that in this case it is presented a la Srinath.
There is one bit that caught my attention because it has never been a part of my practice really :
So keeping all of that in mind and especially keeping in mind that the actualism method is about imitating actuality to the extent possible as a feeling being, we get to the actualism method in its fullest expression: consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive It is an enjoyment that delights in the sensuous materiality of our moment to moment existence and one that relishes feelings of happiness and congeniality towards others.
This ‘sensuous materiality’ is something that has only ever stood out in PCEs for me. For example I remember a PCE last year where I was smelling the actual freshly cut grass - this was exactly that.
But when I am in normal mode, it seems that the only thing on my focus is the affective flavour of experience. I wonder to what extent this is simply because I have not been orienting myself towards sensuosity.
I think when I was making sense of the method I interpreted it that ‘I’ as a feeling being am forever separated from the actual and therefore any enjoyment of this sensuous materiality is forbidden for ‘me’. That ‘I’ am in this bubble and the only flavour that ‘I’ can access is an affective one. So the focus was always on feeling and thought, I had kind of segregated the sensuous enjoyment to something that can only be accessed in a PCE. Also there was the fear of going into some ASC if I focus on sensuosity from the starting point of ‘being’.
I do remember Srinath’s ‘Gymnastics PCE guide’ and it seemed that this intentional and growing sensuous enjoyment was a key part of getting to a PCE.
What are your guys thoughts and experiences here? What role does sensuosity play for you in the moment to moment application of the method? For me I just realised it’s role has been pretty much null and void. It does make sense that if I the method is about imitating the actual then sensuosity is a big component, because in a PCE the sensate experience is so incredibly delightful and its everywhere.
I also wonder if the focus on sensuosity could provide some ‘grounding’. What I mean by that is that my experience thus far has has been that either I am lost in some depth of being and looking for ways out, or I find myself somehow effortlessly swimming in purity, very manic lol. And it seems that when ‘I’ am in normal mode there is nothing there that is intrinsically enjoyable, there is emptiness and blandness so from there often I will go looking for good feelings and of course in the process I will invite the bad ones also. But from that ‘meh’ place it seems like there is nothing to kick start felicity and innocuity. Could it be that an intentional focus on the sensuous pleasure in whatever form could provide this grounding that can get felicity and innocuity going, give ‘me’ something to feel good about?
Also what is going on, is it that ‘I’ am affectively enjoying a sensuous experience? Or is it that in the same way that pure intent is a connection to the actual, sensuosity allows ‘me’ to glean actuality also?
I was also thinking how this relates to the fact that the method is enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, not something specific. But then I might start with a particular aspect of experience that is enjoyable, the smell of coffee, the colours all around, the sounds etc If this continues through then this sensuous enjoyment is everywhere all at once / nowhere in particular, it’s simply what it means to be a flesh and blood body experiencing itself and the world around, it is all sensuous.
In fact this brief PCE I had when landing on the plane happened exactly this way, I just didn’t intend it. I was drawn initially to specific aspects of what I was seeing - ‘oh look the clouds are such a nice light grey against the city lights and this weird red/pink hue all around’, and this sensuous enjoyment got more and more overwhelming (as in overwhelmingly delightful lol) to the point where I momentarily flipped through into a world where all is wonderful.
OK so playing around with the above. There is currently a pretty emotionally charged situation that I am dealing with so this is a good time to put this to the test.
Right now I am oscillating, there will be a few moments spent feeling good then something will arise in the heart, some strong emotion, the thing I am trying to solve is as follows :
The emotion demands attention, it is screaming “come inside and take a look at the suffering you should rightly be feeling, you cannot ignore this, there is something key here that you need to look at”. So in the past I would indeed take a look inside and then spend the next few hours intellectualising over it. It’s kind of like I fool myself by going in under the guise of investigation, but I have done this a lot already so I am more interested in side-stepping the thing.
Then there is this second way it can go where I feel this emotion rise up, I see where it leads and then I turn back around and get back to enjoying and appreciating.
It seems though that there is some component of a skillful navigation here. It’s like a sliding scale, this emotion that rises up will compete for attention with the enjoyment and appreciation. When the emotion is weak it doesn’t have this compelling aspect, I see it, I see that it is silly to go there and I get back to enjoying and appreciating.
When the emotion is strong I feel compelled to look, now in comparison this happy place seems no longer enticing enough, I am more driven to look inside and swim in this sorrow and malice.
So at a certain point trying to side-step the strong emotion begins to smell of suppression/dissociation. So at this point perhaps I have to look inside, unpack a little, but with the specific aim of getting back on the horse ASAP. I think any investigation in actualism should come with the proviso that it is the minimum amount needed to accomplish the job, not an inch more.
The other thing is that it all seems to depend on just how precious this enjoyment and appreciation is, I can see that the more I enjoy and appreciate there easier it is too see that this emotion raising up is simply not worth it, it just doesn’t make sense to give up A for B. And so whereas in the past my approach was like, let’s investigate every inch of the inner world so that I am no longer compelled by it. Now I am starting to see this as a job with no end to it, because the very mechanism of the emotion is that it compels attention, it’s like the devil playing his tricks, it’s getting pulled in under the guise of some key information being inside, but the outcome is just going round and round.
So enjoyment and appreciation is maintained because it is more precious than whatever emotion comes up. I think I haven’t got to that point yet, where I can sincerely say that enjoyment and appreciation is more precious than this or that drama demanding my attention.
But I am starting to consider a different approach, that it will be the strength of the enjoyment and appreciation rather than some ultimate resolution of the inner world that will maintain happiness and harmlessness.
I’ve been experimenting with the exact same thing over the past few weeks. I’m also in a very emotionally taxing situation at the moment (though it’s calmed down over the last week) and it’s given me ample opportunity to try a few things out.
I very much remember the “LOOK AT IT!” factor of the emotions. I tried to do the whole “it’s actually not a problem in actuality” and it sort of worked, but it was a bit like trying to balance on a greased beam and I ended up fairly quickly in ASC or suppressing territory. At the same time, I had a brief PCE opening when shit was at it worst… but ofc all the emotions came rushing in and I felt compelled to keep them up. It was the old self-referential “I need these emotions to do the right thing”, while now in retrospect it was the emotions that were telling me everything was an emergency that needed to be solved right now. Bah.
Anyway. I think I might give the sensuousness a try, but as you said, it seems to be very much a balancing act that requires quite a lot of skill. I wonder if this is something that will get better with practice? It should, technically… but I’m being the proverbial woman here needing assurances before I jump in. Also with a fairly fresh memory of sensuousness becoming the trend du jour a couple of years ago (either in Slack or here) and maybe it became too much of a focus to the detriment of everything else.
Oh dear please don’t be looking for assurance from me this is very much on shaky legs so far.
I think this is it really, it’s the kind of skilfulness that I never focused on. It’s like expertly driving a car, it’s all happening in real time, you don’t get to sit back and plan out when your foot will come off the clutch and what gear you will drop into as you turn around that bend.
My ‘skilfulness’ has been more like sitting in a library and writing my thesis on how to drive a car.
I remember Richard writing that his life is most definitely mature and actually when I look around at what we are doing half the time it is as if we are stuck in some developmental stage lol. Deep down still driven desperately for love/attention as a baby is, still entertaining the same fairy tales as a child does, still jockeying for position within the hierarchy as a teenager does etc. What is a ‘mature adult’ if not some conglomeration of all these things glossed over with some pride.
Also with a fairly fresh memory of sensuousness becoming the trend du jour a couple of years ago (either in Slack or here) and maybe it became too much of a focus to the detriment of everything else.