Yeaaa actualism does work best in the marketplace! Especially when others are involved. It makes it clear it’s not just about ‘me’.
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Oh that’s cool I was not expecting that, I used to do quite a bit of Olympic lifting too. When the actualist meet up finally happens we shall do a weights session together 
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More sports metaphors from me too 
When I was driving to a training session today I was thinking about my previous sleep-walking post and how a lot of beginners in BJJ will usually ask me how to escape some submission that they keep getting caught in.
My usual answer is along the lines of ‘don’t get caught in it in the first place’ which sounds kind of like I’m being dismissive or difficult.
What they want is some magical remedy to get out of a dead end they keep finding themselves in. What I would point to however is 5 steps before you got caught, why did you not address that grip they had on your wrist, or when they shifted their weight why did you not readjust yours?
Essentially what I am pointing to is that they have sleepwalked through all these details that step by step led them to the dead end, but they do not see those, they only come awake now that the submission is slapped on, and now looking for a fix.
When you get good at BJJ you get very good at constantly winning the smallest of battles, each step you are addressing and correcting and viola you find yourself winning. Again this focus on the big picture is usually a result of a lack of involvement now, when it actually matters.
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I haven’t done anything like that and don’t intend to. There’s no happy ending to that. 
My ‘anxiety’ or background stress only comes from avoidance of high priority tasks.
There are 3-4 trains of thought that I’d like to not engage in - one is annoyance (which can be constant and get in the way of my Now), others are much less often like justifying myself in my head (simple things like if I do something odd whilst riding, I’ll imagine the other person in traffic criticising me and I’ll justify it to him or her in my head).
The ONLY emotion I’d like to address is avoiding the important jobs have to get done before the consequences increase. And even that isn’t a daily neurotic chase, but just make a list and set time to get to it - and again, minimal time, maybe 1-2 hours a week max. I’d be on top of things with just an hour.
This definitely HAS worked for me in the past, sure jobs keep adding up - but it’s about discretion and not chasing every shiny thing, but just what absolutely needs to get done.
Almost nothing gives me as much joy, peace, and makes me feel balls to the wall fantastic as getting important shyt done.
Then again, nothing gives me as much stress as putting pressure on myself to get even more done than I already am doing, which is a fair bit.
It’s that problem free life goal that I keep moving towards. Problems will never stop, but I’d like them to be high quality problems, like normal obstacles that come up with setting up a business and the like and not these low quality avoidance caused issues.
There have been months at a time, when I’ve been on top of things, and these have been the best times of my life.
Avoidance of issues - stress. Confronting problems - joy. Both the avoidance, and even confronting and sorting issues out should be minimised to the bare minimum of time in the day. 25 minutes 1-2 times per week usually has me sailing.
I think that’s why Richard prescribes harmlessness (and possibly addressing what keeps us from happinesss) - it’s similar to buddhist precepts - that basic shyt that needs to get done or NOT done, so the guilty mind doesn’t work overtime.
Being wilfully harmful causes a lot of distress. That’s why I do very little of it. The only harm I think I engage in is irritability, or showing my annoyance i.e. snapping at someone, and this is AFTER they have snapped at me. And even that’s once in 300 interactions and I can cut that down to 1 in 500 interactions.
So yeah, it’s only emotions related to avoidance of high priority jobs, and guilt related to snapping at someone that I’d like to address. I started thinking, fuck it, if I snap at someone that’s how I’m showing up in the present moment, they needed that ‘truth bomb’ as it’s the most helpful thing I can say. BUT it’s someone else’s problem (SEP like Vineeto said) and I shouldn’t get drawn into solving everyone else’s problems.
Just be decent to people across the board bub.
I’ve been looking to do this.
Annoyance and irritability was getting in the way. Don’t engage in those thought streams.
Justification - much much less often. Again, don’t engage in thought stream.
Now it’s taken up by ‘solve problems, solve problems, solve problems’ and I have to find a solution to this.
I can pick my mood up at will - but it’s a false security or economy if I still let problems simmer away.
The investigation has been helpful - annoying thought streams no longer encouraged.
Focusing on intention to be happy is working a-ok, but further investigation shows the same solve problems dont avoid them stress runaround taking up most of the space.
This was helpful for me too.
Solving problems leads to peace, but then feeling good from that appears conditional on solving problems. When it shouldn’t be conditional. BUT the voices in my head go, but how can one feel good if rent, utilities or taxes aren’t being paid and eviction, or prison is a real alternative. Then another voices says, bub, all those are on point, your life is on autopilot, and address most stuff, you’re just gung ho on this problem free life which you wont get. Most of the stuff you want to address, you dont address nothing much will happen. I need to chill out and be comfortable with having 5-10% problems in life.
I’d really like to shut off my brain, and that’s the taoist wu wei model - where one doesn’t try to do anything but nothing is left undone.
And everything gets effortlessly sorted out. It works to an extent, much better with self 2 (Tim Gallweys inner game analogy) running the show rather than egoic self 1 who’s really good for nothing but neurotic suffering and resistance and blindly bumbling about.
But even with Wu Wei the high priority tasks still dont always get done.
I’m repeating the same thing - but yeah, I’m looking forward to a solution to neuroticising about getting important shit done and my happiness being conditional on it. And my doubts about can one be happy without addressing important shyt, OR does one just commit to being happy no matter what is happening in the background.
And this is why I’m looking to address the problems before they become nine stitches rather than the one stitch that would solve the problem ahead of time.
But again, this means my happiness is conditional on getting shyt done.
I’ll write something in my journal and come up with a solution to this.
Yeah I’ve had something very similar going on for a long time @bub its basically this question of - what will my life look like, in the marketplace, when I have committed to feeling good each moment again.
The fear is somewhere along the lines of - ‘will I just become some couch potato or a leaf blowing in the wind’. Will I forget to do important things, will I let life and others bulldoze over me etc
For me it has a flavour of - will I continue to look to exceed in whatever involvements if there isn’t that drive coming from the good and bad emotions.
It seems that this needs to be disentangled experientially, where it can be seen that feeling good is simply the baseline that I am operating from, and what I choose to do with my time, with you thoughts or whatever does not change.
It’s that ‘actualist hobo’ fantasy that Geoffrey mentions in the zoom chat, seems a very common theme for most people because we are used to having the good and bad emotions somewhat tangled up with the day to day activity.
I guess the simple question is, can you feel good whilst you go about addressing your various tasks. Can this nervous energy be noticed and simply replaced with feeling good as you go about your life in the marketplace.
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I guess a great example of this working is @claudiu’s recent post about the family troubles and how he was able to function in what is normally a ‘high stress’ situation, all the while maintaining felicity and innocuity.
Actually there is more, it’s the fact that he was able to function even better than he would otherwise with the good and bad feelings on board, I think this is also key. It’s not just some acceptance of life whilst you feel good, it’s seeing that you’re even better equipped to deal with these things now that feeling good is habituated.
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This has always been a weird one for me since it’s never been a concern. I’m not sure why though. From my few PCEs it’s been quite evident that this is not an issue whatsoever - things get done, necessary things get prioritized and the rest get handled on an as-needed basis. A lot of superfluous wants and desires also disappear entirely.
Is this because of some fantasizing aspect of thinking about actual freedom? As in, the actual experience gets mixed up with memories/fantasies about dullness and listlessness? I’m a bit stumped since again, this has never come up for me. Or maybe I’m just used to being a hobo already
Starting to get some more of an idea of where I have been going wrong for the past year. I was reading the PCE guide on the Simple actualism page and I realised that this is exactly what I was doing last year, except I didn’t structure it in any formal way.
What would happen is that I would orient myself towards this sweet, magical flavour of actuality, I would allow the possibility that it is already always here by rememorating the flavour. Then all of a sudden there would be no more difference between rememorating it and experiencing it now. So it’s almost like daring to allow perfection now automatically results in tasting it. The gap between reality and actuality is not as vast as it seems, it can disappear in a blink of an eye and merely by orienting myself in such a way.
But I don’t know what I have been trying to do since, perhaps to fit this perfection back into reality? To bring it back in a way where it can be instated into ‘my’ world, or perhaps I have been trying via control to make reality in line with actuality.
Either way it doesn’t work very well at all, I can’t exist in those 2 worlds at once, trying to somehow merge them together, I think this is what I have been trying.
What I am seeing at the moment is that I am either orienting myself towards this magical world and by virtue of doing so reality is fading away. Or I can retreat into reality where I am in charge of this and that and continue spinning around in drama, those 2 worlds are being seen as incompatible.
And it’s funny because there is no longer any kind of recipe I can hide behind or to delay things, because all it takes to experience this magical wonderland is to allow it now, it’s more a case of do I want it? And if not why the hell not lol.
I am reminded of what Vineeto mentioned that we all need to have our dramas, or what Geoffrey mentioned in a zoom that one needs to find out for themselves that the tenets of society do not ultimately provide the goods.
I think I have been doing this exactly, arriving at a full confidence that there is no direction within humanity that works, even actualism without a stable connection to pure intent begins to devolve into something stagnant, so even ‘my’ last straw (the actualism method) is beginning to look like a failure. I can look around at the world and at myself and see that I am a failure and so is the rest of humanity, it’s hard to escape this fact lately 
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There’s this other aspect I notice also where if I am deep in reality then actuality is merely an idea, so it feels like I am working against this impossible tide, reality seems too real, all pervasive and concrete.
But then the more I allow this magical aspect to become apparent the more I see that actually is all there is, now reality seems like some fading figment of imagination, it has no strength.
A minute ago I saw it quite concretely, and it seems that the jump into actual freedom would need to happen from there. It’s like a see-saw where once I am on the side far towards actuality it seems so completely sensible to live there. Weird that it is the magical fairytale land that needs to be seen as the sensible option not the grim and glum reality. There is this aspect that it would be too good to be true, and yet it’s here. But I hang back because of this ‘too good to be true’, because then none of the cynical worldview could be sustained anymore, what a blow haha.
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No one answered this but yes. Of course. And harmless too.
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To add to @edzd 's answer:
Part of actualism method also is no longer refusing to engage with the world and your life and the problems in it. So if there’s something to be done , you do it, instead of dreading about doing it or worrying etc.
Together with this comes a clarity of focus and an ease of being, as you simply know you’re doing the thing that makes the most sense to be doing, the most you can be doing, as you’re doing it. It makes all the feelings around the matter redundant, be they neurotic or otherwise.
With this approach it matters not at all what the particulars of what’s happening in the background or even in the foreground are – you are (almost/virtually) unconditionally happy and harmless regardless.
But as soon as you withdraw or step back or decide not to engage with something or get some ‘me’ time etc… that all fades and then it’s right back to the neuroticising.
This is my experience in any case
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I’ve been having some issues related to this topic. Maybe I’m going about it wrong, but when I decide that I won’t engage with any of the worries in my life, I start to feel like a loser. Like I’m just going to get stepped on and end up in a life I really regret, because I just did not bother worrying about anything.
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Right, that’s why I wrote the opposite: “no longer refus[e] to engage with the world and your life and the problems in it”.
Or in other words, actively embrace and engage with your life and all the situations it consists of.
If you don’t actively embrace your life and engage with it and just put it all aside, then that leads down the road to becoming a hermit, separated from all and everyone. It’s an option, but it’s not actualism.
Note how the initial “engage with your life” morphed into “engage with the worries in your life” – which is still somewhat related (as in a fact or situation that is a “worry”) – which then morphed into “worry about your life” which has nothing to do with the initial one.
The point is that worrying about a problem is on a different dimension or axis than engaging with the problem. Don’t ignore it, solve it! Now that you’re engaged – what good will worrying do?
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But then how is this unconditional? It seems akin to the real world approach of solving your problems like a to-do list
The unconditional part is this one:
The particulars of your life are never unconditional. You are sometimes hungry, sometimes full, sometimes tired, sometimes energetic, etc. It is all conditional.
The unconditional part is how you experience it. The way to experience it is always happily and always harmlessly. Then it doesn’t matter in an ultimate sense if you’re enjoying a tasty burger or solving an interpersonal conflict, just in a relative / preferential sense (preferably no conflict vs some conflict).
The point is that the way to assist in bringing about this unconditionality is not shying away from or refusing to engage in whatever aspect of your life.
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Just writing some notes now and I am currently in a place where there is some issues bubbling but at the same time there is this purity that is constantly in the background.
The really cool thing I am noticing is how investigation goes when pure intent is active, it’s so effective haha! The investigation is being informed by the purity, there isn’t a sense of going round in circles but rather things are dissolving in front of me.
Srinath writes that pure intent is like life on steroids, investigating with pure intent is like investigation on steroids!
It seems because with pure intent the investigation has a goal, a direction, it is looking at things which are standing in the way of this purity, whereas investigation from the depths of reality has no alternative, so it just goes round in circles.
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One bit that I think is worth sharing is what clicked just now about good-will. I can see that up until now I distanced myself from good-will and from kindness, it was for a reason, because I saw back then that in reality the best intentions will simply devolve into sorrow and malice sooner or later. I might hold a door open for someone (with good intentions) and when they walk by without a thank you I will be uttering ‘what a c**t’ - that kinda vibe
What I can see is that good-will being intertwined with the self preservation mechanism is always vulnerable to this kind of degradation into sorrow and malice. Like when unreciprocated love can turn into rage capable of taking someones life.
So good-will requires something to make it stable, it is not that I distance myself from others in order to keep myself stable (this might be a necessary in-between step) but rather by allowing pure intent I can be kind in a way that does not devolve into sorrow and malice, because pure intent provides a security from which I can operate without this kind of instinctual baggage where I am constantly in a battle to survive.
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This is quite exciting stuff actually, because I can see that this is a way to get close to others in a way that is safe and stable (which is what I want anyways). Only by being happy and harmless can I safely get close to others - safely both for myself and for them. But there needs to be that stability that is outside of ‘me’, pure intent offers this.
It’s only when I am no longer fighting tooth and nail to survive that I can have actual magnanimity, but I do want this. I think we all want this but the cynicism develops as our best attempts within reality fail over and over.
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Wow, this one really goes far… What I am seeing is how as a self I fabricate this entire world where I am at the centre of it all, others (just like the main character vs NPC) become merely pawns in my game to survive. I cannot allow them autonomy as this would shatter my control, and I have so desperately manufactured a world where I am kinda safe. If I am to see others as fellow human beings then I can no longer use them as a means to an end, the end being a blind drive to survive.
I can see why the various dysfunctional personality types eg narcissists are the way they are, they are clawing for a way to survive and the way to do that is to turn themselves into the main character and the rest of the world merely an NPC.
Only when this core insecurity is somehow settled can this whole mess begin to unravel, as all these mechanisms are no longer needed. When there is security there is no longer a need to use the other/be afraid of the other, and then they can finally be seen as a fellow human being, and then I can finally get close, and then I can finally allow good-will etc.
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