So just now I found myself experiencing actual intimacy, man it’s so good! How can it be this good!? 
To live in a universe where there is only that actual intimacy, what an incredible thing that would be 
I can see the possibility for sure, but how to make it happen.
Also it makes a joke out of feeling bored, there is no boredom possible when this actual intimacy is happening.
So I see why it is enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive and it doesn’t matter what is happening, it’s along the lines of what you wrote @Andrew. To actually be here is the ultimate thing, being the universes experience of itself as a human being is what it’s all about, that is the meaning.
I mean whilst the experience was happening I went into my bathroom where my flatmate just did a no2 and it was still utterly perfect to have that actual intimacy
But how to have this experience more 
It makes everything ‘I’ have as a feeling being so pathetic that it kind of makes ‘me’ somewhat resentful/stuck when ‘I’ am back.
It seems the best way to allow the experience is for ‘me’ to feel good, then the immanence of the actual world is ever more present. But ‘I’ don’t even want to feel good, ‘I’ want the full thing.
Sounds like ‘you’ are a bit unreasonable
Yeah haha, I do see it a little clearer now, the ‘distance’ between feeling felicitous and innocuous and things beginning to get somewhat magical is not that big at all. Feeling good is ‘my’ gateway to allow that. Then it’s a case of hovering in that place where things can ‘flip over’ at any moment. I seemed to have divided it into either being stuck back in full blown reality or having PCEs but there is this quite wonderful in between also.
It seems like this comittment to feeling good each moment again requires that I finally accept that life is meant to be easy and wonderful. It seems such a small thing but it has such big ramifications, to live that.
The Basis for Happiness - #14 by Kub933 - OK so just continuing with this one here. I remember observing this funny trend whenever me and my friends go on holiday. There is a ton of good feelings prior to the holiday, all the ‘looking forward to it’ business. After the holiday there are photos/videos shared, all the memories are being re-lived, all the stories re-told, again all these good feelings about ‘what was’.
During the holiday though it seems something does not match what was felt during the build up and after, no-one is being here where this moment is happening. In fact even during the holiday it is as if the situation is already being set up to ‘make it memorable’.
Basically there is no interest in the actual living of the experience, there is all the interest in making it into another chapter in the story. Is this simply the only way ‘I’ can experience the world as an identity?
In actualism the experience is primary, but it seems in reality the actual experience is never had, and the focus is instead on ‘living out the story’.
I can see it is similar with the application of the method, there is the doing of it, and then there is the ‘story’ that ‘I’ habitually get lost in.
It seems this is more a feature of being an identity rather than a personal fault, as in an identity being made up of beliefs can only see the world in this format, in effect it can only be anywhere but here now.
Yeah, I’ve been reflecting on this too. You’ve described it well. I think it’s a natural effect of living in real world time, or psychological time, or the flow of linear time. Not sure how to put this. We see life as the story of me and us through time, moving from this event to the next and the next, trying to collect and capture something as we go. Trying to collect happiness even. Trying to “get something under our belt”.
I caught myself doing it recently. I was thinking about happiness, meaning of life, ultimate purpose, and said to myself “I don’t have infinite time to do this.” The words stopped me dead in my tracks, because I realised that’s exactly what I do have. I don’t have unlimited time as a commodity, but infinite time is all there is here. I can try to bundle it up into parcels or try to capture it and make a commodity out of it, but it’s an infinite expanse that’s always here. There’s nothing I can capture here, and I don’t need to.
In the real world, time is short. In actuality (or EE), there’s plenty of it 
I think you’ve described real world time really well. It’s scarce, it’s fast, you’ve got to pin it down, get things done, get things under your belt, “make the most of it”, and so on, but somehow we’re never really in the situations we collect.
It makes me think me of Richard’s words “But refrain from possessing it and making it your own … or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared”, and also Vineeto’s last words as a feeling being “We have all the time in the world.”
This real/psychological time is something that has been coming up for me the past couple of days. Yesterday when I was driving back from training I found myself enjoying and appreciating, there was that quality which Claudiu mentioned here - The Basis for Happiness - #47 by claudiu :
The key is that the startling clarity and simplicity of being alive, unencumbered / unburdened / unhindered by a ‘self’/‘Self’/ego/soul, is intrinsically enjoyable and there is nothing to actually be done besides enjoy and appreciate it.
But something started to get in the way, to take me away from this simple enjoyment and appreciation at being here. I noticed that it was specifically this sense of real world/psychological time. It was also what Richard mentions in one of the audio taped dialogues, that time began to have periodicity again.
So I found myself in the present slice of real time, sandwiched between the past and the future, what I noticed immediately was that when I was enjoying and appreciating, time did not have periodicity like this, I was simply here, enjoying what is happening now.
The other thing which immediately stood out was that this real time is merely a story, it is not genuine. Real time is a story weaved from many different truths, it is the timeline that ‘I’ as identity exist in and ‘I’ am not genuine either.
I also noticed that only when time does not have periodicity can I have actual intimacy, only by being here now can I experience the magic of actually being alive. That is because as long as I remain in real/psychological time I am not being genuine. This real/psychological time is quite seductive/compelling because there exist all the hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties etc that ‘I’ am so used to, this is ‘my’ story after-all.
It seems the next step is to proceed into that place where none of those ‘human’ values and meanings hold anymore, where the ‘story’ is no longer distracting from the main event which is actually being alive.
The other thing is that often I don’t see this for what it is, as in I will be sold on whatever the latest thing is occupying my mind, for example under the guise of ‘preparing for the future’ when really what I am doing is catering to my own anxiety, getting involved in that ‘storyline’ where nothing is genuine.
But just how much I am stepping out of in order to actualise this, it’s like all the stuff that ‘I’ have been investing in ‘my’ whole life exists only in that real/psychological time, so it is not genuine.
But the awesome thing is, that by locating that which is genuine I can live this - The Basis for Happiness - #36 by claudiu
Yea and I find when life is living me at its best, I experience myself as more like myself, as I ought to have been the whole time! As opposed to less like myself. It is being closer to that which I already have been being anyway.
In effect I am locating my individuality, the thing that had me tear up the other day, that indeed I can be me as-I-am. And it is such a precious thing to be genuine, it had me tear up the other day because not only did I see how previous it is in its simplicity but also that this is what I been this entire time anyways, it is just that I have been too lost in the BS to see this.
So with the contrast of this unburdened state that I have been describing it is becoming clearer which parts of my social identity, of being a ‘who’ are still in place. There are a few core ones that all the remaining dramas seem to circle around and have been for a long time. It’s a funny one because they are so slight, so normal that I wouldn’t even think that they could be an issue. For example this role I took on in being a BJJ coach, it seems so normal that since I take a job I must therefore operate under a role. But in taking on the role I am opening the floodgates for all the BS that comes with it, most importantly though in taking on any role I am also giving up my individuality, I am placing something in the way of that unburdened state, even if it is just the mundane identity of being an employee. No wonder there is always resentment that comes with these things, because I am no longer an individual. My behaviour is now controlled by the constraints of the role, by the expectations, obligations, responsibilities etc that come with it. The resentment is at loosing ones individuality and autonomy.
This is then tackled in a few different ways :
But this is just more silliness on top, none of this is necessary if I do not surrender my individuality to begin with, or stop surrendering it now lol.
So I am looking to peel things back until only the facts remain, at the end of the day I might happen to do this or that in exchange for some money but the ‘who’ that seems to automatically come with the package is not necessary, I can be what I am which is a fellow human being, even when in any kind of professional setting.
I was doing my hen party gigs last weekend and I actually tested this out. Because normally I will place this distance between me (as the professional) and the clients, in fact those identifications of professional/client is the thing that is in the way. The fear was that removing this thing would send me off the rails, like it was needed to keep me in check.
But I set myself this challenge of going to the hen party and meeting them as fellow human beings only, no longer through this distancing thing, instead relating with them how I would relate with myself. The other part of the challenge was that I would allow myself to sincerely have fun, because another aspect of this ‘professional role’ is that you can’t have too much fun, because then you are not working lol.
It was quite interesting because within minutes of me being there they were all commenting on how nice it was that I was so relaxed around them (compared with other experiences they had in the past), that it was not awkward at all. When I was leaving the girls kept mentioning the same thing, that “I had the best kind of character for this job”, vibes anyone? 
And indeed just past the ‘who’ is a magical experience. No wonder ‘I’ as this ‘who’ is always restless and looking for things to do. Caught in a never-ending meat grinder of having to further the causes of whichever role I have taken on.
The other bit relating to the above I saw the other day when watching TV. It clicked that indeed this ‘human drama’ was invented a long time ago, back in the mists of time. Where people lived in small groups, with the ‘outside’ being an unknown and dangerous territory, where the ‘group’ was the ultimate authority (a necessity for survival), where ones role and position within the group dictated the entirety of ones personhood (‘who’ one was), where ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (as if 2 different species) would come together to carry out their instinctual burden, where the leaders of the tribe would look to ‘spread their ways’, to further the authority of their tribe by conquering other groups and lands, where the shamans would offer up ‘other worlds’ as an escape from the ‘imperfect world’ they found themselves in.
It’s funny watching TV now because these archetypal belief systems are all there, all those stories are being replayed to the point of being so extremely unoriginal haha.
But it’s cool to see just how far belief goes, and to contemplate what is available when this ignorance is wiped out.
Yesterday evening just for a couple of seconds I had a glimpse of the world where none of these beliefs ever existed. I can see why after self-immolation it would be impossible to ever find the real world again, because one lives in a universe where reality never existed/cannot exist, there is no space for it haha, actuality could not possibly be tainted by the real world, it’s a whole new universe.
After this experience I was laying in bed and still kind of phasing in and out, at one point I became utterly fascinated by what actual colour is, by how utterly stupendous it is that it exists, that it is a feature of this actual universe. Richard’s words were on my mind that this universe is surely a flamboyant one (something to that effect). It’s interesting that something that ‘I’ take so easily for granted, is so marvellous, but of course ‘I’ am too busy living that ‘human drama’ to ever get to see the extent of this, of the brilliance of the world where reality has never existed.
I was watching the show ‘Griselda’ on Netflix where the main character becomes a drug lord and initially it seems that she is doing it to find a better life. Some time down the line though when there is a chance to walk away she does not want to, after all this is who she is now, what would she do with herself if she did not have a war to fight.
This is the kind of predicament I find myself in, why simply being here is not enough. There is this investment into being a ‘who’, some story which has to continue being written. So like Griselda, what do ‘I’ do with ‘myself’ when ‘my’ story is no longer being entertained? Then there are feelings of emptiness, of blandness, of boredom, of restlessness etc.
But those feelings are not at all what actually being here is like, I know this from experience. They are ‘my’ emotional reaction to the story no longer being entertained. So this ‘who’ never gets to enjoy simply being here, ‘he’ has operate within the boundaries of ‘his’ story. And I know that enjoyment and appreciation is available right now, it is just that in some perverse way I want to continue playing within that story, so indeed I get exactly what I want.
I have tried in the past to cut the investments I have by turning the issue into morality, by forbidding myself to go in that direction and of course it did not work. Then the past couple of years I tried to kind of assimilate actualism alongside those investments, to have my cake and eat it too, but I am starting to see the limitations of this.
It seems the genuine way forward is to actually see that there is no necessity to play this game anymore, because this compulsion to go ‘into the story’ has a flavour of “you must do this or else something bad will happen”. Which means there is something there that I cannot see clearly yet, something to be discovered.
It seems it is about seeing that there is no longer any need to continue being a social identity, and this makes sense when I take into account just how ancient and ignorant these belief systems are (as per my previous post), why continue playing to a story which was written back in the mists of time? The funny thing is that whenever I contemplate an alternative course of action I simply jump to the opposite - “oh so I am just meant to sit around and stare at a wall all day long while I waste away”, of course within the group I am either aspiring to be a hero or I am accepting my fate as a looser, meanwhile that incredible place that I visited yesterday is simply waiting here to be lived.
It is a funny one also that I have those experiences of perfection on one hand, which is the actual Summum bonum of human experience. Then on the other hand I have this obligation to forever pursue that which ‘humanity’ has already defined as worthwhile. But how could you even compare this magical perfection with essentially being a valued group member, yet the latter one seems to win a lot of the time.
It seems that my frames of reference have to change altogether, to admit that what actualism offers is simply way more precious than the most cherished values of ‘humanity’. It seems once this is in place fully then there is no going back anymore, why would I?
So in order to choose feeling good now (the third alternative) over the good/bad feelings (the tried and true) I must do something I am not currently habituated to, it is changing myself from the very start as currently ‘I am the kind of person that…’.
I must allow myself to walk this other path, the one that I have not walked previously, hence the resistance to the application of a method that is so simple.
With every trigger there is the possibility to ‘be the kind of person’ that feels good come what may, but this is always new territory, I have never felt good whilst X was happening before.
But this is what the resistance consists of, fear of change. No matter how terrible ‘normal’ actually is, it will be defended because it is already known, already habituated, it feels safe.
It really can be done, within whatever limits you’re comfortable with at the time. Success with a few things makes it easier to with the next thing and the next. What’s really helpful for me is seeing that it’s often literally impossible for certain conditions to go my way. There will never be a time when things are “sorted” at that level. Then it’s no longer a moral judgement to call it “silly”, it’s more of a practical recognition of that.
It’s really interesting to work with, actually. It’s like Richard says, it takes a bit of doing to begin with, but as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it gets easier.
I know I’m not talking to a beginner, so I’m sorry if it sounds that way . I think a lot of this process is going back to the basics again and again, seeing them with fresh eyes, with more experience under the belt.
Yes and this bit is interesting because even though I am the one setting the boundaries it cannot be a ‘flight into feeling good’, if deep down I am holding a certain boundary as unquestionable then it will remain so until I can genuinely see that I can simply step over it, that it was only me holding myself in place for no good reason at all, but this has to be sincere.
BUT then looking back I can see that all along I had the choice to simply feel good but I declined.
So yes starting small and building up seems the most sensible way to build momentum for this kind of thing.
haha no this is really good, it’s like in BJJ when the fundamentals start to make a whole lot of sense then you know you are actually getting advanced.
Exactly. The “flight into feeling good” shows its limits quite quickly, but it can take time to fully admit it and see what conditions are still being held onto that prevent a fuller freedom. I know I’ve done that. The good side of it is, the feeling good that comes from dropping a piece of suffering because you’re really done with it feels so much better than that.
Never practiced BJJ, but that really makes sense too.
By the way, if you’ve got BJJ belts and you’re also the Adonis of hen parties, you’re miles ahead of almost everyone 
Can such a man still have problems?
Yeah that’s a funny one, I don’t know how much it’s related to my involvement with actualism but I find my life (in terms of the set up) is like what Vinneto described in the ‘out from control’ DVD, it’s perfect really.
Furthermore it’s like the worst effects of the bad feelings have been dealt with, nowadays it seems it is my ongoing investment into the good feelings that is the cause of the remaining dramas.
A bit like what Geoffrey described in the zoom chat, that feeling good gets mixed in with the good feelings and creates this sense that something is missing.
This is exactly how I find myself nowadays, they can put on my gravestone - “lived a perfectly OK life”, that sums it up really
But of course how could this be enough for anyone who has had a PCE.
Ah, I see.
There are two versions of the “good” feelings I can relate to. One is the warmth and comfort of old friendships and relationships based on loyalty, trust and nostalgia for good and bad times that we’ve been through together. I don’t suppress or frown on those feelings, I just allow them but try not to depend on them entirely to be okay. That actually works pretty well, because it makes the friendship less conditional from my side. As I keep on finding out, I can actually give more and be a better friend when I need less and don’t expect/demand as much, so the relationship actually works better. But I won’t suppress normal human stuff on principle because it’s ‘against my religion’
The other main one is the sublime feelings, transcendent feelings, ASC territory, especially love, beauty and something that’s sourced in universal sorrow that I don’t have a name for. “Divine Compassion” sounds a bit overblown, but maybe that’s the best fit. It’s feeling universal sorrow fully, but not being personally hurt by it. It’s quite profound and beautiful. This isn’t so much an issue any more, but for a while it was, because I felt that I hadn’t explored the full range of feelings/states that I’m capable of. I can still be curious about those feelings, but not convinced by them because I know what they are, what they’re sourced in.
Sometimes I had trouble separating distant PCE memories from those feelings. Sometimes if I traced back through distant memories that seemed incredibly precious, they were surrounded by walls of nostalgia and sadness, and sometimes the nostalgia and sadness seemed precious themselves! But what really made those times precious, and made me nostalgic for them, was actually a PCE at the core, which obviously contained no nostalgia or sadness whatsoever at the time. That only came in later, when I knew that something magical that was once here seemed to be gone forever.
Your journal. I’ll stop now. Back to your “perfectly OK life”
Yes I can relate to both of those good feelings although they both play a minimal part in my life these days. That Divine Compassion type feeling is an interesting one because for a long time it blocked me whenever I got close to the actual world. I think because my first PCE devolved into a powerful ASC and so afterwards this Divine Compassion somehow became associated with the PCE. Eventually I came to the conclusion which you mention in your post, that what I am really after is the purity of the PCE.
The good feelings which wreak havoc in my life are more closely related to the instinctual passion of desire. It’s this desire for power and authority, if we’re going overblown then I am after omnipotence
The name for this archetype I came up with the other day is ‘the quest’. It’s like every moment is interpreted within this framework of a pursuit of some kind of special achievement, something that will grant me power and authority. The thing is none of this exists in the actual world, there is no longer anything to achieve, there is only the delight at being here and this is 180 degrees opposite to my normal state of mind where every moment is another opportunity to grind out ‘the quest’.
It reminds me of gaming when I was a kid, I was really into MMORPG games where I would grind for hours to level up my character only to add some skill points and then continue grinding some more, that was it
There are times when all of this falls away, one happened a moment ago which prompted me to write this. Then I can see for a fact that all of this is just a burden and a hindrance, that I actually do want to live in a world where authority and power no longer play any role, where I am no longer on any quest.
Writing this makes me realise that I have to eventually come to the conclusion that I am done with these kinds of feelings, just like I did with Love and Compassion - they are still there but I simply have no interest in them anymore, in this sense they can be virtually eliminated, minimised to the point where they don’t really feature in my life anymore.
Oh, I get it. I just want to add that the propensity for mastery and excellence isn’t inherently silly. If you strive for that and let the chips fall where they may, esteem or no esteem, it’s water off a duck’s back eventually. The only “silly” part is if it’s driven by and dependent on esteem or recognition by others, or the desire for power and authority over others, because that’s literally insatiable and has the darkest of all dark sides. They’re different things that often get mixed up into one.