Haha, I am 88… which is also a dragon! Perhaps I shall be the first actually free earth dragon then, as the fire dragon slot has been filled
Nice rule
What a surprise geoffrey !
thank you for everything that you have done for me /us, in the last 2 years.
now that my level of enjoyment have been increased , it has been so much easy to enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive .
before it was like , "please god how can i enjoy this moment ", but now even without any PCEs , it is getting easier and easier .
and this is exactly what geoffrey said : "the moment you start to know how easy it is to enjoy and appreciate this moment , your progress will go like this " , and he put his hand as if though , to signify exponential progress !
now my senses are waking up . i am realizing that whatever i enjoyed when i was 10 years old , it is what i am enjoying right now . i am enjoying them even more .
for example walking barefoot on concrete , feeling the warmth and coolness of it , looking at the cracks and the shininess on the pavements . i am even noticing the hearing brings my level of enjoying a lot higher : for example listening to the sound of passing small airplane ,or paying attention when the sound vanishes , becoming very amazed at how all this is even possible .
Thanks for sharing this stuff guys! @leila I enjoyed reading your sincere descriptions of your experiences with the method and of course it’s cool to see some fresh writing from @geoffrey also
I have thought about this age thing a few times, it does seem like at the current state of affairs it is unlikely for a young person to become free. I remember trying to commit to the method at 19 and there was just no chance. By then I hadn’t even failed at being ‘normal’ yet haha.
Now at 30 I am slowly coming to the blessed realisation that the tenets provided by society do not deliver the goods, but this took a long time to sink in, it needed genuine life experience.
So I’m still going for the youngest ever to do it but I am glad to be getting older haha.
Still waiting for my pre-frontal lobe to fully develop….
a message about anger and my mom
a message :
and the result of seeing this belief ( that i have kept about my mom ) , and taking responsibility for my own emotions , brought to my amazement , a calmness and lightness , that replaced the swirl of feelings.
no longer I am thinking about my mom ,when she is not responding , no longer suspicious, impatient or moody . and I began increasingly to accept her as-she-is .
looking at an orchid bud that seems to be dying before opening , brings up a memory of death of my 3 days old sister .
i don’t know if this is part of the cleaning process , because it brought up some emotions ?
maybe the fear of death and my brain circuit was shaped right there.
i was 7 years old , going to open the door for my aunt and grandma coming back from the hospital , to bring a news about my sister , (she was home for only 2 days and she got sick after wards) , my mom did not go with them , she was home with me and my other sister ,and we all were waiting for them to come home and give us a news about how she is ) .
hearing the nocking on the door, rushing and opening the door , my aunt and grandma , they looked so bad , as if somebody has died .
they did not say anything to me .
while being in the yard , i saw they are taking all her things to the The basement underneath the house ( from baby bed to all her clothing and all the toys ).
i sat by the ground , looking at the little garden , my mom came and sat besides me , she said your sister died today . i remember a sad silent.
after that , when my dad came home from work , i asked him what did they do with my sister , does she have a grave.
my dad said : " no they put all the dead babies on the back of a truck , and they bury them all in one grave."
i remember picturing his words in my mind , thinking about that image for couple of times .
…
i think i made a mistake by going on the known path , which is remembering all the goary and disturbing memories and details of that event . ( the death of my two day old sister) . by doing that i over triggered myself with each details again and again .
i thought i have to remember all the details , so they can be cleaned , but no, it is not the way .
i remember geoffrey saying something like this : you are making several mistakes » you are not feeling good at this moment , and you don’t know what to do…you prolong the story and memory of the event and by doing so you increase those suffering . you prefer to stay with your emotional habits like feeling sadness, because of that story that you are telling yourself and continue.
…
peter : how much this emotion was a part of my identity. When the emotion finally left me I was no longer a grieving father with all that being that identity involved. It was literally as if a part of ‘me’ had disappeared along with the associated reoccurring emotional memory.
A lot of people interested in actualism / who later became free seem to have an experience like this. Death being placed in front of us as an unavoidable fact.
Richard: “ From that moment on death was my constant companion; an ever-present reminder that to die without having ever lived fully – as in totally fulfilled, completely satisfied, utterly content – was such a waste of a life.”
that memory about death , consisted of intense emotion .
i went for my PCE walks ,and fully felt the emotion ,
i felt a heavy thing around my stomach , i relaxed my jaw , some burps came up .
i was saying : i allow whatever is happening , to happen freely , to allow purity to clean up whatever it wants to clean .
this emotion was very intense , and it took an hour to completely go away . and at the end some tears came running down .
i looked at the sky and clouds , thinking about the purity : am i closer to my destiny ! and the tears of amazement came down .
so now i understand that not just at the stage of self emulation , i am allowing the purity to dynamically work , but at the first stages too , i have to allow whatever is happening to happen freely.
This is something that came up yesterday , and the investigation that took place after feeling better . i did the investigation exactly as Srinath wrote in " simple actualism " .
maybe this helps newcomers in this matter .
i " bold" the most important parts .
…
conclusions :
Leila 's recurrent themes : being insulted - being humiliated - being disrespected - being rejected – feeling ignored === hurts and slights
self doubt - Fear of losing credibility in people 's eyes - which comes to self worth …opposite of self doubt in extreme . i am a very complicated identity .
self doubt is what causing the fear of losing credibility in people 's eyes which comes with sadness , sadness covers this fear , and to ignore this fear , i cunningly turn this fear and sadness to anger in two known path or known ways : in polite way( indirect way ) by arguing ,
and in a non polite way , expressing anger with pointing to them their faults .
for examples : my writings or messages have not been answered, or someone does not greet me , or someone turns her /his way so as not to see me and etc .this is my theme . feeling ignored and disrespected .
seeking good feelings : getting good grades—my pride—acknowledgment and approval from others—impressing others
after the above investigation , i could enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive and the level was pretty high , with some tears of joy from this method that works so well. and i try now to appreciate this new found ability and how i am able to use the method to make progress and this continues appreciation is what will increase my feeling good base line .
appreciation of having the tools to deal with a very difficult situation were before i just had reacted and get myself deep in a hole and again i would add to my feeling structure another new subject or story to my many already existing similar feeling structure .
appreciation for having made progress to emotionally be able to handle these situations .
appreciation for not reacting immediately , not biting someone else immediately .
i am less harmful , i am being more happy and harmless .
appreciation of having the confidence that i could deal with future resentments .
a memory of a " war "
ok , it is been two days now that the enjoying has diminished ( the level).
and i just wanted to write this , so people don’t think i am doing great .
editing : after one and half day , yesterday afternoon , when i went for my pce walks the level of enjoyment was back , but by realizing this fact that i might under estimate feeling good . when i cant EATMOBA after i realise what has happened and what is the feeling that blocks me from going to that level , i have to come back at least to feeling good or feeling neutral .instead of being disappointed with myself and i know this is my cunning thing , i want that level and forget about feeling good.i am not satisfied with feeling good .
maybe this is what geoffrey were talking about when he said he got that key information about feeling good when Alan and Dona in 2017 went to Ballina ?
some notes :
1 : not comparing your enjoyment to yesterday’s ,
because each moment again , means this moment and again .
so , if you have not been enjoying and appreciating , or you have not been feeling good , or somebody said something or did something for the last hour, you have a choice right now , to feel good at this moment .
but my identity keeps the score , saying because i could not have feeling good for the last hour , i can’t right now , it is as if i am a bad actualist !
you have to allow feeling good this moment regardless of what you have been feeling last moment , or last hour , because only this moment is actual .but allowing feeling good is complicated depending on the psyche’s habitual way of living .
Richard : " It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. My life became cleaner and clearer and more and more pure as each habitual way of living life was consciously eliminated through constant exposure to the bright light of awareness shining its attentiveness into every nook and cranny of the psyche.
2 make a big deal about your feeling good at this moment
and appreciate it , wow and woo it , and be amazed by it .
when you have feeling good , you have to really really pay attention to it , instead of fritting it away or wasting it on thinking about stuff , or on non intentional activities .
there are two words in this sentence , “(…) imitating the actual " knowingly” and " consciously " .
maybe knowingly means with intent
and consciously means with sincerity and genuineness . ( not pretending feeling good , maybe your feeling good has some good feelings in it , but it is ok , as geofrrey said : the good feeling goes at the end ) .
intent makes for the possibility of using that feeling good for enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive .
Richard : ( …) " how it was far, far easier and simpler to stay in a good mood come-what-may—preferably a happy and harmless mood of course—than claw ‘his’ way back up to feeling good, again and again, after having habitually reverted to type.
Hence being (affectively) aware, each moment again, of more and more subtle variations in the quality of one’s moment-to-moment enjoyment and appreciation of being alive, of being here, so as to earlier and earlier pre-empt any potential reversion to type.Also, repeated experience had shown ‘him’ how minor dips in this quality presaged each major diminution—indeed miniscule blips soon became evident even earlier than those minor dips as ‘his’ ability to (affectively) detect subtle variations in the affective tone of mood and temperament became evermore fine-tuned—and the earlier such habituated silliness could be (affectively) discerned the sooner ‘he’ could thus nip these instinctual potentialities in the bud.
As an aside, it is worth mentioning that ‘feeling good’ each moment again over extended periods is thus not an emotion per se but, rather, an affective mood—as in, ‘I’m in a good mood today’ (and, conversely, ‘I’m in a bad mood today’)—just as ‘feeling happy’ moment-to-moment, for the remainder of their life, is also an affective mood (e.g., ‘I’m in a happy mood today’) as it would be simply impossible to sustain an emotional happiness day-after-day week-after-week, let alone being passionately happy, due to such being both emotionally draining and, usually, a conditional happiness anyway.
I remember @claudiu mentioning this quote a while back so thanks for finding it @leila. It does seem much more doable if I put it to myself in this way - that the goal is to remain in a good mood each moment again. I can angle myself towards ‘being the kind of person’ who feels good each moment again, as a general proclivity. I can see that this is where the habituation aspect can come in more easily, then I can continue returning to this basic disposition, of being in a good mood each moment again.
It seems a very sensible thing to commit to also, so instead of being a sorrowful and malicious person who tries to have feeling good, I can focus on being a felicitous and innocuous person, as a moment to moment mood/proclivity.
I guess a good everyday example of this working is holidays right?
So most people when they go on holiday they make a choice at some point, deep down they decide they are going to be in a good mood, then from this basic disposition feeling good can come easily each moment again, they are there after all to enjoy themselves.
Then when they are back to work and daily life they again make this choice deep down to set a sorrowful and malicious disposition, from which it is then natural to generate feeling bad each moment again.
Why is it that whilst on the holiday ‘nothing is a big deal’, kindness seems to flow more easily, laughter is easier, because they have already set a disposition for themselves for the remainder of the holiday - ‘I am here to have fun and be in a good mood’.
It’s fascinating to me that this can happen in a blink of an eye, the guy finishes his shift on Friday night and is off to celebrate the weekend with his friends, all of a sudden this basic proclivity has shifted, he is going to have fun regardless of what is going on,
It is the weekend after all haha. Is it just that he has decided to put himself in a good mood, and from this disposition enjoyment and appreciation flows easily.
Really great note & good reminder for me atm.
opening the refrigerator door , smelling garlic , oh , Frank has left the pickled garlic in the refrigerator without a lid .
thinking started : he always does this , he always do that. …
i was doing the same thing as before , triggering myself .
then i realised , being naive , is the other direction of what i am doing right now .
i imagined myself as a " big kid " , opening a refrigerator door and smelling that garlic .
what i would do or feel as that kid ? just looking , smelling , maybe giggling …simple and pure .
but i am this social identity, which makes everything complicated , with should and should not , with judgments , likes and dislikes , as opposed to being simple .
but if the key to be naive is sincerity for experiencing purity .
and when Richard says naivete is a higher form of awareness , (apperceptive mind is a simple and naive awareness ).
so , for imitating the actual= the world of the senses , i have to be more simple . even investigation has to be simple .
even saying " silly " and " sensible " is being simple .
by being more of " the beer "( the instinctual identity ) than the doer . i am going more toward being this flesh and blood body , and less of the social complicated identity .
i think geoffry said something , " let the body do it ". he said this for EATMOBA .
in actualism from feeling the feelings ( sensing them in my body ) ,to coming back to feeling good ( allowing the ease and calm in the body ), till using that feeling good for EATMOBA (noticing or/ and exclusive attention to the senses : looking ,hearing , smelling ,and enjoying them, etc…) is all what the body is doing . i as this social identity just allowing attentiveness to run .
i guess the points are this :
less social identity (meaning less judging ,less shame , less should , less should not , less opposites ,less seriousness , less intellectual thoughts ).
more beer , more simple , more naive , more being here enjoying , more fascination , more pure contemplation , more curiosity .
i am allowing exclusive attention to this moment , to be here fully , for purity to work freely , because " all that is required is ‘my’ cheerful, and thus willing, concurrence’."