Grumpy old me :
- Oh yeah that’s my dog poncho
Naive me :
- What?! You mean I have this fairy-tale creature following me around all day long? Running about, playing, napping together - what a blast.
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Claudiu's Journal - #166 by Kub933 - continuing this one. It seems that at some point in the past few days I pulled back from excellence due to this sense of ‘what have I got myself into’. Initially this is how I was experiencing this whole endeavour with buying the BJJ/MMA business :
So essentially things were being allowed to just do themselves, and it was all happening so easily and so marvellously, in fact I was shocked that I was doing all this without a care in the world it seemed. But it got to the point where this momentum was starting to put ‘me’ into new territory where ‘I’ have not been before. Then I remember this ‘oh shit’ feeling, like I am out of my depth here, it seems this is what made ‘me’ slam on the brakes.
It’s funny because I was always afraid of allowing actuality because I thought ‘I’ was needed in order to ‘perform at a high level’ whatever that means lol. But it seems ‘I’ have slammed on the breaks because things were happening too well without ‘me’ in the driver’s seat. So well that it seems ‘I’ have experienced some kind of stage freight, this reminds me a little of Devika pulling from the out from control virtual freedom she was living, this sense of no longer being able to live up to all that she wrote and spoke about. I thought to myself “am I really going to naively step into this new situation without a care in the world?” This seemed too ballsy, like “who am I to operate like that? Will I be shown to be a fool after all?”.
In fact this is exactly what the fear has been all along. I can see when in excellence that this perfection and purity allows life to be lived so magnificently, so magnificently in fact that ‘I’ am afraid, it’s all too smooth, too delightful, too magical, too carefree. ‘I’ dive back for control because it’s all too marvellous ahead, it’s too far from ‘my’ MO.
It was the same the other day when I got to the hen party job and I pulled from excellence, ‘I’ just couldn’t allow that ‘I’ could be in such a professional setting but experiencing life so marvellously. Like ‘I’ would be sticking out like a sore thumb, or doing something I am not meant to. So in short it seems that the fundamental feeling is one that says “living in perfection and purity is taboo” a sort of ‘we don’t do that around here’ kinda vibe.
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I remember last week when in excellence that I was finding myself doing things and saying things that were out of character for me. So basically the gym I train at has been in a bit of a rut for a long time, and it seems everyone involved in the operations is completely content at things forever remaining the same.
Usually I would kind of sit back out of fear of ‘stirring the waters’ but all of a sudden I found myself naively going ahead and shifting the whole situation about, like I was shamelessly doing what needs to be done, whether it would stir the waters or not.
Like Geoffrey mentioned in the zoom chat you can do the big work project no problem, and with no fear of what others will think, you see something is sensible - you do it, or more precisely it happens.
Same for my work situation, all of a sudden I found myself being able to conceive of these new ways that I can operate within the company, and somehow having the balls to naively present these suggestion to the guys in charge, and the outcomes have all been great so far. This is the funny thing, this naive ‘me’ can get shit done so easily, whereas the ‘grumpy old me’ struggles so hard to get the basics done lol for ‘he’ is carrying a heavy burden.
So this fear of moving further into perfection and purity is a fear of it all going too well, it’s like will the rug eventually get pulled out from under ‘my’ feet and ‘I’ will land on my ass looking like a fool. Will ‘I’ make the fatal mistake of naively wandering too far from the ‘group’ and pay a dear price when all crumbles in the end?
Sounds like an atavistic fear to me haha!
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This reminds me of Srinath’s report of becoming free :
I had to graciously bow out like a clumsy, incompetent old fool who had bumbled through life just about holding on to his job out of dumb luck. He realised that he had to hand over the reins to super-smart and infinitely better qualified young man.
So I am seeing now that indeed this new thing that lays ahead is a ‘super-smart and infinitely better qualified young man’. I can’t excuse things anymore with this belief that ‘I’ am needed for things to run optimally. In fact ‘I’ am afraid of just how smooth the operations can be on the other side.
It’s that the way this new consciousness would operate no longer functions within the rules and boundaries of ‘reality’, which is a good thing, for those ‘rules and boundaries’ are the very burden which makes ‘me’ so incompetent.
I can see that I am invested into all of ‘my’ insecurities, those ‘good reasons’ which apparently make life so difficult, they are excuses that ‘I’ can use to justify ‘my’ incompetence. And at the same time ‘I’ pull back when it is seen that life can live itself so successfully, that it becomes taboo to even consider living it.
It’s a clash, as in there is this entire personality that sprung up to deal with this fundamental burden of ‘being’, and now this new consciousness gayly hops around transgressing all those rules and boundaries, and yet doing a much better job.
But this is a big change, it makes me think of how people tend to experience stress when there is a substantial change in their life, whether it be negative or positive. It’s the change that matters, all those patterns which were solidified into a set system, a static picture of ‘me’, no longer apply.
It seems that a large aspect of this is a fear of operating outside of the boundaries which others know me through. I remember Srinath writing that the first day at work after becoming free he was concerned that he would be called out for having so much fun, it’s that kind of fear. The belief is that there is a static ‘me’ that others relate with, and that I am somehow bound to operate within this picture.
It’s kind of like when I was young and would turn up at school with a new haircut, or holding hands with a girl or anything that somehow shook up those set boundaries, it was as if the eyes of others would pick up on this immediately and they would immediately seek to ridicule.
So I can see as a response to this I retreated into a set of firm boundaries that would remain more or less unchanged going forward, this was ‘my’ attempt at generating security against this ridicule, as long as ‘I’ remained within this static picture, ‘they’ would leave ‘me’ alone. And this static picture is the ‘story of my life’, the one that ‘I’ am invested into repeating over and over, translating each event in line with those hang ups and insecurities which make up the story.
So the fear is about operating outside all of that, so much so that it is then no longer possible to step back and relate what is happening to this overarching ‘story of my life’. Then I can no longer be proud at having accomplished this or that, there is only enjoyment and appreciation left.
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So lately I have been having these relatively frequent flashes of perfection, they always serve as a reminder of what is possible and where I am now in relation to that. A few times recently it happened when I was playing Elden ring, for those who know it’s a pretty difficult game and it can get somewhat tense at times, albeit in a very fun and stimulating way. But nevertheless that undercurrent of stress or tension to whatever degree gets in the way of the possible enjoyment and appreciation.
And so a few times I experienced this flip, from this fun but slightly tense ambience to one of utter perfection. Then the game is just as difficult, but there is only enjoyment and appreciation at the fact that I get to do it all in the first place.
All of sudden nothing matters in the long term, “will that boss kill me and I loose all my runes?” this no longer matters because it is the magical quality of being here in the first place and doing this business called being alive which is precious beyond compare.
When these flashes happen they serve exactly as reminders, it’s like the universe is going “look you have got yourself into a dead-end again, stressing over ‘what will happen’ when this perfection is all there is”.
And I notice it is the same with everything else, I was just studying some BJJ material and the same procedure went on, ‘I’ got all wrapped up in this quest, still fun, still exciting, but some kind of an undercurrent of stress there.
And it’s almost like I don’t realise this undercurrent is there until it is removed completely, then all of a sudden the slate is wiped clean and I am here, having a magical time learning how to choke someone with this new technique.
There is no stress, no concern about ‘what will be’, no need to control anything in relation to some ‘big picture’. And I find I am just as effective at carrying out whatever quest is in front of me, but now there is only enjoyment and appreciation left at getting to do it in the first place.
And it seems it is all related to no longer having a need for this ‘big picture’. This is what allows such enjoyment and appreciation, it is delighting with gay abandon, like Richard wrote - no longer saving myself for some special time or place. It seems the ‘big picture’ is the realm where ‘I’ play out ‘my’ fears and battle for ‘my’ security, and so ‘I’ can never fully enjoy and appreciate being here now.
It’s interesting because as much as the experience of perfection is just as fresh and delightful every time, it has now gone from a ‘wow’ to an ‘of course’. As in of course everything is perfect, of course I know this, of course I am this body, of course ‘I’ am but a phantom.
I went to the shops this morning to buy some tobacco and walking back to the car ‘my’ very core faded back for some time, again it was utterly delightful but there was this ‘of course’ more than the ‘wow’ dominating the scene.
It was a very smooth and stable experience, it was the simple joy of being a body, unencumbered by any ‘being’ inside. Then from that position of being utterly unencumbered anything and everything could be delighted in, non-stop. Rather than some blissful state it is a freedom to delight, as in now that the shackles are off I am free to delight. It is such a silent contentment also, not something that I would need to shout from the rooftops, but rather this perennial contentment at being alive.
Driving home I was still very much in a magical land but with ‘me’ kind of phasing in and out. I remember looking around at the colours, it has been raining here recently and the grass near the road was such a deep and lush green, it was like the whole world was an oil painting. But again there was this sense of ‘of course’, as in of course only the sensate world genuinely exists, of course all of this is actually here.
It is so funny that now this seesaw is constantly going, I’m constantly zipping from ‘you gotta stress about the big picture!’ to ‘oh man there is only enjoyment and appreciation left’. It’s like an instant shift where what ultimately matters shifts from that which is ‘out there’ to that which is immediate. The funny bit is that they are both kind of fighting it out for primacy. There is this pull towards investing in something ‘out there’, some thing which promises eternity, and then there is the pull into a world where the immediate is the ultimate. It’s like a battle between instinctual security seeking on one hand and delighting with gay abandon on the other.
So the question seems simple and right in front of me. Do ‘I’ allow this body to delight with gay abandon, to only enjoy and appreciate this magical world OR do ‘I’ choose to continue carrying the burden of ‘being’ and for what? What objection do ‘I’ still have which keeps ‘me’ carrying the burden? Like @claudiu wrote, where I am experiencing from right now the only objection seems that it feels dangerous to proceed into perfection, it is not a specific thing but rather the very force of ‘my’ being.
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What seems different lately is that I seem to have a very good grasp of the nature of what I am going for. This is somewhat entailed in this ‘of course’ sense in which actuality is being glanced. It seems very obvious now, things are coming together experientially. As in I understand what being an identity is all about and I also have a clear grasp of what it means to exist as a body only.
There is this sensate world which actually exists and in which this body exists and there is the world of calenture that ‘I’ exist in. The distance which needs to be bridged is so minuscule, in fact it does not actually exist at all.
Actuality is all that exists and it is not so weird either, as in it could not be any other way, hence when ‘I’ fade back there is this sense of ‘of course’. Just past this thin veil of ‘me’ is this enormous stillness, like a hush that is all around, and everything exists within/is supported by this stillness. ‘I’ resist the movement into this stillness because in there there is no longer any space for ‘me’, ‘I’ no longer have agency in that place.
Allowing this body to exist in actuality means ‘I’ relinquish any control/agency. I think part of the problem is that ‘I’ confuse agency for will. As in ‘I’ feel that once ‘I’ relinquish control there will be some kind of a zombie left behind. Like this body will become a leaf blowing in the wind, so ‘I’ desperately try to remain in control, to steer it towards safety it seems?
It’s like once ‘I’ take ‘my’ foot off the break pedal there will be a motion that ‘I’ am no longer able to control, which is to say life will live itself. It does feel like boarding on a train that continues to speed up and cannot ever be slowed down again. Yet a lack of agency does not mean absence of will, life living itself does not mean life living itself blindly.
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I’d put it like this. You don’t have to proceed any further than that point in order to stabilize being at that point. You may be doing what I was doing which is to try to go forward and self-immolate from that point, then fail or shrink back and go back to normal.
The reason it doesn’t work is you aren’t yet comfortable enough to proceed past that point.
But you don’t have to! You’re already comfortable enough to reach that point.
So my advice to you is to go back to that point and then commit to staying there. Don’t try to go any further for now, just explore and see if it is safe to stay precisely there. I started to do this shortly before I went out-from-control and I found it very easy to do. You already have everything you need to be able to do it.
Then you will have the luxury of always being at least at that point and you can more freely and easily explore things from there.
Cheers and best regards,
Claudiu
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Ah yes that is great advice, because this is exactly what I have been doing, as soon as I get to that point I’m screaming “ok now, you gotta do it now!” Haha.
So this is something that I was considering a while ago, to get to a point where I can be in that ‘inbetween place’ more or less all the time. And by ‘inbetween place’ I mean this dynamic state where ‘I’ am no longer in stark reality and yet it is not all the way through to actuality either, it’s like I am on the cusp of actuality at all times, it’s all around and yet there is this tiniest/flimsiest bit in the way. So the goal would be to accustom myself to remain there, that seems doable.
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And remaining in that ‘inbetween place’ is the same as saying allowing pure intent to dynamically work. Which once committed to fully becomes an out from control virtual freedom.
So first accustom and then dare to commit fully. @claudiu man I’m gonna be nipping at your heels soon! 
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The interesting thing is that I was on this over a year ago when I wrote the below post :
You replied with the below :
And I wonder if you were essentially incorrect here, by proposing that allowing pure intent is merely a function of facilitating enjoyment and appreciation which is what actualism is all about, or that at the very least it is not something that needs to be focused on as a priority in itself. And in a sense that is correct, that the ‘in the meantime’ method of actualism is all about enjoying and appreciating. But to carry this all the way through to it’s ultimate conclusion it is all about allowing pure intent to dynamically operate in one’s life. Also even whilst doing the ‘in the meantime’ business, a connection to pure intent makes the whole thing a breeze vs some arduous task when ‘I’ do it alone.
I remember around that period (not throwing blame around here btw 
) I pulled back from this dynamic aspect of allowing pure intent and instead became obsessed with making an in control virtual freedom work. This seemed like a step back for ages because I eliminated something that was actually the main ingredient. Essentially ‘I’ went back to trying to do it all by ‘myself’, without the assistance of this something outside of ‘me’.
From where I am now I can see what Richard was able to do in order to go straight into an out from control virtual freedom, and it was allowing pure intent to dynamically operate.
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The way I see it at the moment is like this, without pure intent the whole thing becomes ‘me’ trying to fix ‘reality’ from the inside all by ‘myself’. Whereas when pure intent is active the whole thing becomes about ‘me’ progressively getting closer to what is experienced to be a magical wonderland. Of course eventually ‘I’ hit a wall that cannot be passed, but ‘I’ can get pretty damn close.
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It has been delightful experiencing my mind reading those old posts and then your posts here and seeing how it iterates through the various combinations of what may actually be the case, in the process of puzzling out what the best answer is.
Currently I’m left back with that it’s a “how many angels on the head of a pin” type argument. Because you write here that in your experience, pure intent “makes the whole thing a breeze vs some arduous task” – so why would you abandon this “main ingredient” in pursuit of enjoying and appreciating being alive, when that main ingredient made it so much easier to do that? I think the answer must lie somewhere other than what you’ve written here.
In fact it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that enjoying and appreciating being alive is what the point actually is. Pure intent being dynamically active makes it easier to see this, provides a safe backdrop for doing so, and amply grants the means with which to do it – so getting back to enjoying and appreciating is much easier than before. But it is still something I choose to do in a sense – I notice I have gotten caught up in an old habit and then it’s obvious the thing to do is to cease doing it, because it is spoiling this enjoyment and appreciation.
That being said you can put it another way – when one is fully, meaning-of-life free, one then is that very purity. So you can say the goal is to continue allowing the purity, and giving ‘oneself’ up until all that remains is just that purity and nothing else. From this way of phrasing it it would seem like allowing pure intent is the main goal. And perhaps it is – but what is the point? Why strive to allow that purity and perfection to be all that is experiencing itself? Because it is better to be that way… and why is it better? Because it’s an infinitely more enjoyable way of being alive. So then you go back to the enjoying and appreciating as being the point of it.
I wrote out the rest of the answer that it doesn’t practically matter which one one picks, but now my mind is settling on that it’s enjoying and appreciating that is primary, and that one will be limited by how much one can do it unless one establishes that active connection to pure intent. In other words, that the active connection becomes a key ingredient at proceeding further, at a certain point.
And now I am back on that it doesn’t matter which one one picks, just pick the one which allows you to maximize the purity and the enjoyment and appreciation 
I don’t know if one can derive a teleological argument of which one is “primary”, and I’m not sure it practically matters – so I’m back on the angels-on-a-pin answer . It seems clear that we can say the reason to do all this is because there is a better way of being alive, that better way of being alive is characterized by intrinsic and immaculate enjoyment and appreciation and an outstanding purity of existence, that one can find that purity and allow it to run through one’s life, that this allows one to enjoy and appreciate far more than is normal, and also that enjoying and appreciate enables one to allow that purity to flow more and more freely.
In other words, it is quite the feedback loop! So I would say whatever maximizes your felicity and your allowance of the purity is the way to go, whether you conceive of it one way or the other, do it in the way that maximizes that
Cheers,
Claudiu
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The other thing I am remembering now is that investigation whilst firmly connected to pure intent is a whole different game.
Investigation when ‘I’ work alone is very much swimming against the current. This is because without an escape hatch, without a connection to something outside of ‘me’, ‘I’ will grip on even tighter at the prospect of a core aspect of ‘myself’ disappearing.
Furthermore without a connection to something outside of ‘myself’ one is resigned to basically reshuffle various aspects of reality in order to try to effect change, but this never accomplishes much.
However when investigating with perfection and purity on one hand and some pesky aspect of one’s ‘being’ on the other hand, much progress can readily be made. ‘I’ can now be interrogated freely, because it is seen that a better alternative is available. Now ‘I’ am willing to lay ‘my’ cards on the table, in fact ‘I’ might be genuinely excited about this prospect.
Hmm so could it be said then, that enjoyment and appreciation is the ultimate goal as well as the way towards the goal. However pure intent is the active ingredient which enables the whole process to work.
Because without the PCE none of us would be here, it was always the case of that something outside of ‘humanity’ which had to be discovered, acknowledged, allowed, and eventually squarely brought into human consciousness.
Allowing pure intent is like feeding fine grade fuel into this whole machine of enjoyment and appreciation, it dynamically propels the whole thing in a way that ‘I’ could not otherwise do by ‘myself’.
Would you then advise to establish a connection to pure intent before going deep into investigation? Or rather, before using investigation as a tool at all?
So I wrote that post yesterday when after writing to @claudiu I noticed there was some kind of a fear there, something like “will this devolve into an argument because I suggested he may have been incorrect”, of course it was super nice to come out with a fruitful discussion instead.
But when this fear came up there was also the background awareness of purity, and this made it possible for ‘me’ to safely lay ‘myself’ bare, with the sure knowledge that whatever was revealed by the investigation would be small potatoes, that it didn’t matter in the end, it was just some pesky aspect of ‘myself’ getting in the way of enjoyment and appreciation, no big deal.
Actually the experience of investigation with pure intent reminds me of a post by @John a while back - John - #114 by John
This different approach … felt like the opening of a window and now to have a fresh air flowing into the dark dungeon called me - here to mix with the stench of the rotten feelings that I’ve been breathing for so long. Everything felt so much easier, my heart felt light and the most part of yesterday morning I thus spent in a most unusual joyous state of mind; playing and fooling around with the kids that I work with.
But without complicating things I guess what I said is really no different to the already established advice of getting back to feeling good before investigating. Because like @geoffrey mentioned in the zoom chat the felicitous feelings contain a flavour of the actual in them, they are an imitation of the actual.
So using this diagram I made a while back, where investigation will be most arduous is that ‘normal reality’ stage, where one has separated oneself from purity in whatever gradation and so one is doing it all alone, without a solid alternative at hand.
But as soon as the felicitous feelings are activated one is tasting purity to a degree, and from there the job gets progressively easier and more effective. This will go all the way to investigating whilst purity is all around and then it becomes this whole other experience.
So I was looking at something yesterday that is hard to put into words, so I will try! I was contemplating on how all those ‘actualist concepts’ can be so hard/elusive to grasp. There is this strange phenomenon that happens, when one asks : what is pure intent, what is naiveté, what is sincerity? And an explicit answer is provided, a solid description is right in front of them, and yet it appears to them like a bunch of meaningless words strung together. This is something that I can still remember when first coming across actualism, the whole thing seemed like a bunch of meaningless words strung together. It seemed as if each definition only shifted the goalpost onto the next word, which again required further definition, and so on it went, round and round.
I was contemplating this yesterday and it struck me that the way the ‘actualist concepts’ are defined is no different to how anything is defined. Try defining a triangle, something we all understand unambiguously. Here is what google gives me :
A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three sides, one of the basic shapes in geometry. The corners, also called vertices, are zero-dimensional points while the sides connecting them, also called edges, are one-dimensional line segments. The triangle’s interior is a two-dimensional region
Now present this information to someone who has never come across a triangle before (or any other shape for that matter), who doesn’t know what a polygon is either, or what geometry is or what vertices are etc and all of a sudden something so obvious seems like a mess of words that point to nothing. They can try to find further definitions - “ok, what is geometry then?” :
the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, solids, and higher dimensional analogues
But it seems that the more definitions are presented the more diluted the thing becomes and still the fundamental understanding of what is being spoken about is somehow eluding one - “what is this damned triangle!?”.
And here is the crux of it all, the reason why those ‘actualist concepts’ are so hard to grasp, why the definitions may seem meaningless - It is because they have not taken full root in human consciousness yet, they have not had sufficient experiential exposure to make sense. Just like trying to describe a triangle to someone who has never experienced shapes.
Which brings me onto the next point, why it is so important that actualism is practiced, discussed and openly shared between human beings, it is because those things which are currently outside of ‘humanity’ need to become fully rooted in human consciousness, in a way that they become an ‘of course’.
As in ‘of course I know what a triangle is’, or ‘of course I know what pure intent is’.
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This also makes me think back to the book I have been reading recently - The better angels of our nature. Although this is slightly different as these things relate not to facts but to beliefs/concepts. But even things like religion, morality, government, law, money, human rights. Things which the current human is easily able to comprehend. These things were once upon a time equally meaningless propositions. Yet somehow human beings have been progressively refining their understanding of what being alive is all about. Actualism is simply the next step, and a huge one at that, towards a complete experiential understanding of what it means to be a human being living in the world as it actually is.
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So this is what I have been doing and this is what has been happening I woke up this morning and realised that I spent most of yesterday aware of this magical quality that is all around (in varying degrees) and then I was delighted to wake up this morning with this quality still all around. Last night before going to bed I briefly dipped back into ‘normal’ but upon realising it I was able to simply steer the course back towards the magical aspect.
There is something that I was contemplating yesterday which has been helping me to remain in this magical place, it relates to the realisation that I am already not in control. The way I experience it is that this game of control is as if I am holding a bunch of sand and letting it slip through the hands. Now even if I knew the exact number of grains contained to begin with and the number slipping away, the very second ‘I’ go to announce how many remain, the number has already shifted.
I find life is the same, as in there is this infinite number of infinitely intricate cogs which are constantly turning. And here ‘I’ am announcing a plan, ‘I’ am taking a snapshot of life and from this snapshot planning out what will happen in the next moment. And of course this never works as ‘I’ am out of time. The outcome is some desperate game of trying to make life fit ‘my’ demands, a game that is ultimately always painful.
Seeing this fully ‘I’ can no longer justify remaining in control, then there is just this wondrous awareness of life as it happens now.
It seems now it is about committing to remaining in this place come what may OR returning immediately the second ‘I’ go back to ‘my’ old ways. But this is getting easier and easier because why would I want to go ‘back there’, it is painful and it is mad ‘back there’, and here all is magical.
Yesterday I was doing my hen party jobs all day, now those have always been notoriously difficult with regards to not going back into ‘my’ shell. It’s things like - I am technically at work, that I am going to meet strangers, that I cannot predict what the group will be like, that I am having to provide a performance, that I am naked in front of a bunch of women! etc. So many variables that would scream for ‘me’ to retain control.
But yesterday I was able to remain in this magical place whilst doing the jobs, this is something quite new for me. And so now I have the confidence that if I could do it then, I can do it come what may.
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