I think there is really something here, I think most of us are naturally inclined to take the back seat approach. Somewhat standing back in the safety of inaction and trying to intellectually piece together the perfect plan. A plan which is never carried out because the scheming becomes an end in itself.
How different this is to actually getting up on the surfboard, playing with the balancing act in real time. Over and over getting sharper, eventually with minuscule rapid adjustments of weight-distribution and pressure. This is how genuine skill is developed in any other activity.
Haha, no worries, I caught myself the moment I started doing the safety dance. And please take this as it was intended with no malice whatsoever - you have no clue. And neither do I. We’re fairly different personalities as well, so I’m just finding it very interesting to compare notes. Since I tend to lack mental endurance at times it’s also interesting to see how people that are a lot more focused deal (or don’t deal) with things.
Whether this has been conscious or not I think (but I can’t read minds so I’m just extrapolating from what I’ve seen and heard) that this has been the case for a lot of the forum. A weird kind of waiting for someone else to take the first step. For what reason this happens seems to be as diverse as personal experiences go, but it does seems to have been a recurring theme.
I do this too from time to time but it’s been exacerbated lately. However, I think it won’t work with the actual. But this is where I sort of end up in a bind - I can’t use my normal planning/listing/scheduling cope. I’ve also sort of run out of things to just wildly jump into because I know most things won’t solve the base issue. So where the hell do I go from here?
On a side note I was looking at your description of your “going home from school” PCE in Bub’s thread and I started wondering if getting a hold of more PCE descriptions would help. Perhaps to jog my own memory a bit but also to home in on the actual qualities of sensuousness. Hmm.
Dude, sorry for hogging your diary here but as long as you don’t throw me out I’ll keep riffing (let me know if I’m mucking things up and I’ll dash).
I started playing piano again after an almost 20 year hiatus. When I started up again I was nowhere close to where I was when I stopped playing, so I was looking for ways to get back into shape. At first, I did the planning thing: I had my Hanon practice book, my other finger gymnastics books and a schedule for it all. I was planning on doing regular follow ups and tracking my progress… and I got nowhere. Daily drills and regimented practice seemed to do nothing. I tried teaching one of the juniors at work to play and that seemed to help a bit (since I had to think through things and figure out what I was actually teaching him and why) but after a while I was yet again at an impasse.
What finally cracked it for me was remembering a particular sonata and then getting obsessed with playing it. It was far above my skill level but I had to figure everything out to get on with it and in the end it turned out that I hadn’t gotten anything particularly wrong, so whatever I figured out myself seems to have been adequate. I also ended up practicing daily out of sheer joy (and some competitiveness, and grit).
Now, how to translate this into AF for me…
Obsession
Figuring out a way forward
???
~profit
So how do I ramp up the obsession? Fear is the wrong way forward for me (evidently) but there’s got to be something that pulls harder than “well, it would be nice…” (and I know there’s an answer, black and white in writing, I just haven’t found my own connection to it). Number 2 is also a complete blank to me right now, but given previous experiences it might resolve itself as long as 1 is there. And look at me planning again.
Yeah this is the difference, it’s like when I was training parkour and I’d be balancing on a railing or something, there would be no possibility to know what the ‘next step’ is, to know in advance which way I will have to shift myself not too fall off.
You end up too involved in what is happening now to have any concerns for a plan, and yet things are happening, things are moving. Often if you get good at this you end up performing way better, for example there would be a common fail in parkour where you have to first step on A then jump from B to land on C. Often people would be so busy looking at B (that which is ahead) that they would completely misplace their foot on A and come crashing down lol. The thing was always to relax and just let attention naturally fall to what you are doing at this moment. That’s when I performed at my best anyways.
Like I just tried to pay attention to each and every little thing that came up from the inside, every little blip into feeing bad and maybe I caught a few out of a dozen, there’s just so many little lapses in attentiveness. Where attentiveness is not current, things are running amok on the inside and I am busy scheming on the ‘big picture’.
Wouldn’t I have been better off if I just caught each one, and over and over got my self back to the baseline.
It makes sense what Richard writes that in virtual freedom where attentiveness is current there is no possibility of a mood, becasue it’s cut at the root each time, each blip. Whether that eventually has some cumulative effect due to habituation I’m not sure as im nowhere near
Ooh this is giving me a nice proposition Because I know from experience, from doing sports that performance is far superior when attention naturally rests on this moment, on what is happening right now. A bit like Richards painting doing itself.
In parkour ‘I’ was always a liability, because ‘I’ got in the way of the movement doing itself effortlessly. Especially when physical danger was involved, a huge part of the skill was for ‘me’ just to chill out, step back and let the thing do itself. When this was allowed to play out you’d shock yourself at what the body was able to do without ‘me’ doing a thing.
I’ve been struggling for a long time with the belief that in actual freedom or in enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive I am somewhat crippling my capability (in whatever area). That ‘I’ am required to keep things from falling apart, that a plan is needed to move things forward etc. But I know from direct experience that in sports these things are a liability not a help.
When attention rests on this moment of being alive, then my action is current with what is happening now, this is more like a superpower not a hindrance.
Yeah. I don’t know if it’s leading somewhere but I’ve had the same experience, although I think for me it goes something like this (in all physical/mechanical activities): “burn off steam” for about an hour. This is when I’ll do all the faffing about, overcomplicating things and generally not getting anywhere. Once I’ve burned off the steam, I get out of my own way and things handle themselves (and most of the time much better, I might add).
Not quite sure how this translates other than being an interesting parallel and/or anecdote, at least for me. How do I burn off steam when it comes to my whole being? Or is that what I’ve been slowly doing over the past few years, just seeing how badly this whole ‘being’ thing holds up in everyday life? Maybe I just need to take a closer look in order to be properly put off by the indignity of it all.
Hmm, ok. Here I think maybe you might be onto something. I’ll give it an honest shot (and we’ll see how long my mental energy can keep it up). I have been quite good at being hypervigilant before, so maybe it can be leveraged. The only issue for me is to try not to suppress or over-analyse as soon as something turns up… and things are bound to turn up.
The other thing that rears its ugly head with this is the question of why I’m doing it. I guess I’ll have to settle for “because I’m curious” for now, and hopefully I’ll find the gateway to all-encompassing obsession later on.
For the individuals or newcomers (like me) who are clearly interested, what worked for me was reading Vineeto’s correspondence and story.
I was approaching AF with a left brained approach with Richard’s and Peter’s left brained explanations, when Vineeto’s more right brained approach seems to click much better for me. And maybe AF is like that, you (or some like me) can’t approach it with a regimented left brain approach.
Also when seeing Srinath’s and Geoffrey’s and even Vineeto’s AF threshold crossings, the key theme that comes across for me is relentlessness. That single minded move towards the goal. I could be oversimplifying things.
You said if the student wasn’t getting it, you wouldn’t think there was something wrong with him. But sometimes it just can be the student. People can just coast getting stuck in minutae, whereas that relentless movement forward is something I’d emphasise for beginners.
Vineeto’s right brained informed kind of approach, and relentlesness as a mindset is the way I would suggest putting it across to them (without referring them back to information which has failed to do the job).
A lot of my headspace is taken up addressing these emotions that pull my attention to them.
I’ve begun to see them as helpful children, and if I don’t listen to them, they will shout louder.
I need to address what needs to be addressed. But there’s so much that comes up to be addressed.
And I get overwhelmed and get into an avoidant tangle that exacerbates the situation.
And that’s pretty much the only source of stress in my life - the stress I give myself that I should be doing much more than I’m already doing. Which to be honest is a fair bit.
However there are a subsection of emotions that point to problem areas that absolutely NEED to be addressed. We live in an actual world and rent, utilities, taxes all need to be paid or the penalties are severe i.e. eviction, utilities cut, or even prison.
I did some ayahuasca, and asked her why I wasn’t addressing solving the problems in my life and she showed me this tremendous pain in my chest that I realised I had been carrying around ALL the time. The pain from not addressing problems that would turn into bigger problems if not addressed down the line (delay with rent - fine, severe delay with rent - eviction, same with taxes - fine for a short delay, prison for a longer one). Knowing I was causing myself that much pain with my avoidance made me learn to get what absolutely needed to be handled, handled.
It’s the lesson I learnt in therapy too - what ‘I’ want isn’t important. It’s what this thing inside my chest wants. All good stuff on examination. The thing inside my head wants me to chase shitty validation and other counterproductive outcomes. The heart wants me to address shyt that’s taking up headspace. And jeez, the multiple open loops my avoidance causes can really eat up my headspace/RAM.
Sure, I can focus in the now, but I can’t ignore that there is a ton of background stress from avoiding addressing practical real world problems.
I thought the pain in my chest was childhood pain - but when I address shyt in my life, it goes away. When I avoid addressing important issues, the ‘childhood pain’ comes back. That made me realise it wasn’t childhood pain, but the pain of avoidance and procrastination.
There’s almost nothing that gives me as much joy as ticking things off my sort shit out list. It’s like when I do a house clean/elimination drive, each bag I chuck out gives me a sense of joy.
I also went on an energy healing course, and learnt to connect to what they convinced me was Source, and I asked it what the reason for the pain in my chest was - was it childhood abuse, and the answer i get was, nope, it’s your chronic dissatisfaction with the present moment and yourself. I realised I was always ignoring the present moment, and it was coming second best to some arbitrary future moment.
So lesson learnt, focus attention in the Now, but address what absolutely needs to be addressed when the time comes, or well ahead of time, or before it absolutely goes Pete Tong (as they say in the UK i.e. goes wrong).
Hah, been there done that. Heck, there and doing that now.
Tim Gallway speaks about this in his book, the inner game of tennis. The see saw between the two selves.
He says he would tell his students to focus on non trivial aspects of the serve like say ‘bounce’ or ‘hit’ when the ball would bounce or they would need to hit the ball so he would keep that narrative voice occupied and let the intuitive self take over.
He was amused by how we trust the dime store calculator over something that’s faster than the fastest super computer in the world.
Well something that I have been considering is alluded to by the below texts
First one by Geoffrey in the Actualism diagram thread :
It is a third kind of feeling, but that is quite apparent in the flow chart in my opinion (it is as apparent as left denoting ‘feeling good’ vs. right denoting ‘good’ and ‘bad feelings’ )
The definition of feeling good as “ordinary feeling good” is quite sufficient in this context. Everybody should be able to relate to “ordinary feeling good”, and have recent memory of such, which is enough for an application of the method aimed at reaching that first goal of actualism, which is consistently feeling good (and btw, that is what I got from the “Alan and Dona questions”).
Once one has reached that condition, then one can define further. What I said in that video on that topic was in response to an ‘advanced’ question regarding moving up from feeling good to feeling great and beyond. My response assumed that the questioner had a sufficient grasp of the method, to the point of having somewhat reached such a condition in which indeed, the necessity becomes apparent to ‘refine’ one’s feeling good - not to change it, but simply to remove whatever was ‘mixed’ within it (good feelings, which made it still somewhat conditional), and in so doing reveal what was there all along: the ‘pure’ feeling good I talk about in the video. So it was there all along in that “ordinary feeling good”, it was just mixed with a bunch of other stuff.
Again, this is a somewhat ‘advanced’ theme, which most probably requires an active connexion to pure intent through naiveté, etc… and at that point, one does not really follow the above flow chart anyway, but simply ‘orients’ oneself toward enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive more and more. So no, I don’t see the need to mention anything of the sort in this (excellent) flow chart, which aims at helping people get to that very significant (and awesome ) achievement of consistently feeling good .
And also by Richard in the ASA article :
A sincere actualist is attentive to feelings all the time, day in, day out, whether active or resting; whether in association or on one’s own; whether there is thinking as well as perceiving or not. When attentiveness is actual, one will notice when one becomes stuck in one’s feeling patterns; it is that very noticing which allows one to back out of the feeling process and free oneself from it. Sensuousness returns one’s attention to its proper focus: if one is actualising a virtual freedom at that moment, then one’s focus will be the actual object of actualism. If one is not in virtual freedom, one’s focus will be just a straight-forward application of matter-of-fact attention itself, just a simple noticing of whatever comes up without getting possessively involved: ‘Ah, this feeling … what is it … where is it … where did it come from … what is it made up of … what is it connected to …?’. Virtual freedom re-establishes itself easily by the attentiveness that it has not been current. As soon as one is aware that one has not been attentive then one is experiencing sensuousness in virtual freedom … and thence: Apperceptiveness.
The way I see it is that there are different levels of applying the method. At the beginning it is a lot more like what is described in the actualism diagrams (Actualism Diagrams Hub). One has to follow this step by step process, with certain specific conditions that have to be consciously followed and ticket off. It’s like I just bought a furniture set from IKEA and I have absolutely no clue how to put things together, I am constantly having to refer to the instructions to see if I am somewhat following the right process and where I stands in the big picture.
But then with practice as certain habits become internalised, it becomes a lot less like this structured process and more like this dynamic on the fly activity, more like the example of surfing. It’s all happening in real time, there is no longer any solid structure that is being followed. I think at this point, at least for me, it is a waste of time to continue looking for some ‘system’.
What I have noticed from my practice is that when attentiveness is current and when all these other little mechanisms have been internalised and run on automatic, that a lot of the time I don’t even need to find triggers for example. It’s like the mere seeing and the mere intention to get back to feeling good orients me in the right direction, and this can happen constantly, with each little blip. As Srinath mentions on the Simple actualism page (SIMPLE ACTUALISM - The Actualism Method) :
The idea is to constantly evaluate what your mood is on a moment to moment basis – this might sound tricky and difficult and it certainly can be initially. But it gets easier over time as success builds on success. Eventually, with practice this effort gets internalised and becomes rather like a thermostat where you can often automatically up-regulate to a better mood.
For me its like this nowadays, and actually this is very cool how many things the brain can do at once. Because certain building blocks are in place, affective awareness is habituated to ringing the alarm bell when feeling bad happens, attentiveness is habituated to immediately zone in on what is going on (like the eye of Sauron the second the ring is put on haha). Then because I am very familiar with my emotional landscape the second that attentiveness looks, it already knows exactly what the emotion is, what caused it, what theme it relates to etc. Its like all this information is processed in a blink of an eye.
Then either this activity in itself simply melts the emotion away OR secondary processes will jump in automatically also (they too have been habituated), this might include investigation for example.
So any ‘system’ with relation to applying the method is something to get one going when they have no clue what it is all about. But just like with any skilled activity you eventually begin to operate at levels that are beyond a step by step process. Then I think it’s about continually developing this skill as opposed to intellectually looking for further maps and steps. At this point it is to ones detriment.
Like I don’t know how to play piano but I know that when you play piano there will be a myriad of automatic and habituated processes that are shaping what is happening in real time, they are adjusting, correcting errors etc Whereas when I sit down in front of the piano for the first time you’ll have to tell me the difference between the white and black keys and what the general idea is for how I’m using my hands and you might show me this sheet that explains some basic song and tell me how to read the notes etc.
Yeah I had a similar experiences, I always took to Peter’s and Vinneto’s descriptions, somehow I could relate to them in a way that seemed more pragmatic. It looked like any other activity, you roll your sleeves up and start chipping away at things.
But then it seems recently that kind of approach has been no longer fruitful for me. I have really enjoyed re-reading Srinaths Simple actualism page though. The main bit that seems very relevant for me at this point is :
However, you need to remember that actualism is not about investigation but about feeling good. It is the intention to feel happy that does most of the heavy lifting, with investigation being a subsidiary practice.
But this is exactly what I was writing about the different levels of abstraction. It’s like if you say to someone who is fresh to this and maybe feels bad for the majority of the time, that their intention to feel happy will do most of the heavy lifting, they will probably end up taking this to mean that they need to repress their emotions and gloss over with some pretend happy feeling. Whereas I know exactly what this is referring to, because the building blocks are in place so this advise can work, I can work at that level.
Haha yeah in my experience it never ends. I spent almost 4 years going balls to the wall and trying to demarcate every little detail of what comes up from the inside, like really obsessively mapping out my inner world. It did some things for sure, but one thing I know now it cannot do is to stop the well from re-filling over and over.
Thanks for digging up the quotes @Kub933, it helped piece together a lot of what was buzzing around in my head.
I decided to dig up Geoffrey’s video, and I think he talks about the “feeling good” aspect starting around the 16 minute mark. It was also quite poignant since I was out on a walk at the time and had decided to start practicing what we talked about.
For the record, I managed about 20 minutes before I could feel attention slipping But it did show me a couple of things that may or may not have been mentioned already:
→ I do actually know how to get back to a reasonable baseline (as long as I can understand why I should lose the vice grip and actually let myself be, if not happy, at least happier)
→ Enjoying and appreciating has to be unconditional. I don’t think I properly got that until today. (I was walking in snowdrifts at -11C so it bloody well had to be unconditional )
→ Somehow along the way I’ve shut off my brain, quite possibly out of fear. It’s been a bit maddening seeing how willing I am to forgo natural intelligence to fit in and remain the same. Somehow it feels like turning my brain on again is going to be the bigger project in all of this. As Vineeto put it: learning to think all over again.
I’m posting on mobile right now so if I’m reiterating things that have already been said, that’s why. I’m mostly a bit embarrassed about not realizing things that are probably self-evident and possibly skipping over things, or repeating things. Take it for what it is.
Yeah I think ‘I’ will always fall back to this stagnant place if ‘I’ am left to ‘my’ own devices. I think this is partly why I have been stagnant for a while, because I got to a point where I expected for things to take care of themselves, for me to continue feeling good each moment again without any kind of active involvement. And so I no longer had awarness-cum-attentiveness running each moment again, I allowed whatever drama that comes up to run the show and then intellectually try to fix things whilst sitting in the back seat, kind of like what you say - I shut off my brain.
I think success with the method is exactly from the opposite kind of involvement, it’s not that it’s some round the clock mindfulness but each time feeling good blips there has to be an active looking and resolving. And it has to be always about what is happening now, each moment again, I never really focused on this aspect of current time awareness but I am starting to see why it is important.
I think you really don’t get to rest on your laurels until actual freedom or maybe some stable stage of late virtual freedom
And I can catch myself doing this all the time, it’s quite fascinating actually. It’s almost as if there are different levels of being conscious. When attentiveness is not current there can be some kind of drama going on, I am ‘being’ that drama but I am not aware of the fact that it is happening, kind of like sleep-walking or something. Then all of a sudden attentiveness is activated and it’s like I am snapped back into full consciousness, now I am aware of just what has been going on, that for the past 30sec I was a zombie.
It makes me think of apperception, that it is the minds awareness of itself. I think well developed awareness-cum-attentiveness is ‘my’ closest approximation to apperception. It’s how ‘I’ can step back and somehow see from a higher vantage point as opposed to being in some sleep-walking state.
The thing is that whilst apperception happens automatically of itself, attentiveness does not, so I think this is where there will always be an active component that is required.
An interesting aspect, for me at least, is that there’s a point of no return these days. If I let the drama get a hold and linger too long my thoughts will get muddied up and there’s no way I can think properly until the storm has passed. I used to be much better at snapping back to baseline… but perhaps this is yet another thing that will get better with practice.
Ah, now there’s some weird collective shit going on. That’s another thing that became self-evident today. I keep wanting to scurry back into this safe mental construct where past and future blend in and somehow block out the present moment, but nothing can be done with that. It has to happen right now. I still can’t really see (or at least explain to myself) that this is the only moment I have, but the end result and the application sort of rule out any other ways of dealing with time… if that makes sense. Again, erudite is not my middle name.
I don’t think you get to rest even then; Irene/Devika comes to mind. Also other who’ve hit VF and then regressed (for lack of a better word).
And a completely unrelated chain of thought, but I figured I’d put it here since we’re doing sports metaphors:
I do a lot of weight training (OLY/strongman) and what I’ve noticed is that when doing warmups and technique drills, when the bar isn’t loaded, I’ll get in my way. Lots of analyzing and theorizing. The moment I start loading up the weights, and especially when approaching my limit, I (or rather my body) starts doing the right thing. If I’m not doing the right thing, it’s fairly easy to figure out where I’m falling short.
In a weird way this has applied to this round of figuring stuff out: I had a pretty bland year where nothing much was happening, so I was theorizing and mucking about. The moment things got bad (around late November) I started gradually waking up to how inadequate I am, and a lot of my world was turned upside down, until things came to a head and I popped into a mini-PCE. It’s quite clear to me that I can’t keep hiding away - I need the friction and weight of everyday life. I now have my sick mom and her sick dog living with me and have to do a lot of figurative and literal heavy lifting, but that’s also where I’ve seen the most results. I want her dog to get better and I want the relationship with my mother to run smooth, but it’s quite evident how much I get in the way.
Because I know from experience, from doing sports that performance is far superior when attention naturally rests on this moment, on what is happening right now. A bit like Richards painting doing itself.
)
But it did show me a couple of things that may or may not have been mentioned already:
