Matt's Journal

Journals
1

You think you know who you are, how the world/universe works, or what it means to be human. But then it dawns on you, I don’t really know anything. Hell, the person I think I really am, turns out to be a nothing more than a whole lot of social/emotional conditioning.

What got me started on this path was the constant suffering. It seems that pain/hurt is my everyday expression and experience of being alive. There’s been little joy, happiness and that feeling that everything is ok, hasnt been felt since early childhood.

Where to start?
Traumatic birth…oh yes.
Religous upbringing… unfortunately so.
Generational mental health issues…yup.
Parent’s marriage difficulties…it toxified the home.
Sexual Identity crisis…ya.

That about sums it up, lol.

So now I am left with a big ol’ pile of feces that I either investigate or continue to sit in, until the end.
I’ve hit my 40th year, and there isn’t much to show for…I lived as a self with grandeous dreams that have only served to distract me from whats actually going on.

Recently I have been applying Richard’s method to see for myself, what makes me tic. Any thought or feeling gets funneled into the 4 instinctual emotions that drive us humans. For instance sexual identity; sex is desire, but coupled with identity I also add fear, because I grew up in a religious and social setting in which anything out side “traditional marriage” was evil and deviant. I quickly learned my survival was contingent on who I expressed sex with. Marriage was a spiritual practice, and to my innocent ears, a commandment from the lord most high.

I do have to practice having an intent…but I am finding this extremely difficult. Allowing myself to feel good, seems antithetical to my “core”.

2

Hey Matt, welcome to the forum!

I remember having the same kind of experience when first rolling up my sleeves and deciding to apply the actualism method.
All this conditioning seemed like this giant mountain in front of me, and I was to go through each and every piece of the rubble, one by one, until the whole thing was gone :sweat_smile:
I would read Richards journal where he wrote that one must investigate every belief, theory, custom, moral etc and think that he must be joking or exaggerating for it can’t be possible.

And funnily enough this is exactly what happened in the end, that mountain, one by one got reduced to a rather small pile.

But you don’t have to wait until the end to reap the benefits, they happen incrementally along the way. Because each and every piece of conditioning that falls away makes life that little bit purer and cleaner. And the cool thing is that you don’t have to worry about the ‘big picture’ too much, just the next thing that obviously comes to attention.

I can also relate to this, because if all this conditioning (societal as well as instinctual) is who ‘you’ are, then currently all of your identity is slanted away from the felicitous and innocuous and towards the doom and gloom. A large part of this is simply down to habituation though, it’s just ‘who’ you have been for so long that it has become ‘normal’.

But as you continue to apply the method the scales will begin to tip, you will begin to slant further away from doom and gloom and more spontaneously towards ease and happiness.

4 Likes
4

I’m seeing the anger. I’ve always repressed it.

1 Like
5

How refreshing to have someone new to the forum who has seen spirituality for what it is though! Now it means business, onto becoming free :muscle:

I came from a spiritual background too (as well as many others on this forum) I had an accidental PCE and ended up going down the dead end of spirituality thinking it would lead me back there but boy did things get worse instead :joy:

2 Likes
6

Discuss Actualism

Matt’s Journal

Journals

Matt’s Journal

Journals

5

/

5

Kub933

1d

Hey Matt, welcome to the forum!

I remember having the same kind of experience when first rolling up my sleeves and deciding to apply the actualism method.
All this conditioning seemed like this giant mountain in front of me, and I was to go through each and every piece of the rubble, one by one, until the whole thing was gone :sweat_smile:
I would read Richards journal where he wrote that one must investigate every belief, theory, custom, moral etc and think that he must be joking or exaggerating for it can’t be possible.

And funnily enough this is exactly what happened in the end, that mountain, one by one got reduced to a rather small pile.

But you don’t have to wait until the end to reap the benefits, they happen incrementally along the way. Because each and every piece of conditioning that falls away makes life that little bit purer and cleaner. And the cool thing is that you don’t have to worry about the ‘big picture’ too much, just the next thing that obviously comes to attention.

I can also relate to this, because if all this conditioning (societal as well as instinctual) is who ‘you’ are, then currently all of your identity is slanted away from the felicitous and innocuous and towards the doom and gloom. A large part of this is simply down to habituation though, it’s just ‘who’ you have been for so long that it has become ‘normal’.

But as you continue to apply the method the scales will begin to tip, you will begin to slant further away from doom and gloom and more spontaneously towards ease and happiness.

3

MattWG23

6h

Spirituality. Seems like a nice, innocent word. Gives one meaning. Let’s us have a ‘feeling’ that there is something more to our existence other than…um…existence itself. Apparently this blue and green garden, orbiting that ball of light, within the setting of galaxies upon galaxies, set within infinity itself…just isn’t quite good enough.

Even when the the light bulb went off about 17 years ago and the mind finally saw the utter lack of evidence for any fact based spirituality, the beliefs themselves did NOT disappear. They just went deeper. And unbeknownst to ‘me’ the feelings of those former beliefs, still played out in day to day life.

I didn’t believe in God anymore; but a guiding presence was still felt.
I didn’t believe in heaven or hell; but there was still a feeling of “what it?”
I didn’t consciously believe in any of it; but in the sub concious, those former beliefs had free reign. And boy did they wreak their fun.

About 5 years ago eastern spiritualism made itself known to me; Of course! How could ‘I’ be so blind. I’m not a soul…I AM conciousness itself. I am awareness! The totality of all things! I’ve just been playing a game with myself because, well, because eternity can be boring! God had to keep busy after all, and what better game then to become a human!

Enough! The body has had enough of this bs. Even using spirituality as a tool to be free from trauma and the illusions that have been accumulated, is too much. I despise it. The very word makes the stomach tense.

What is this nonsense the vast number of humans use to cope with the actual? Has it worked? Honestly humanity, has this idea of being a separate entity, placed within this incredible universe, actually done ANYTHING “good?”

The question doesn’t even have to be answered!

Look at the so called “holy lands”. To this fucking day, blood runs through and through that paradise. Oh the Lord God most High, must be so very pleased. He just loves the bloodshed. I mean, he sent his own begotten to shed his own.

All so very normal; isnt it?

Is the far east any better? With their beliefs in godhood, attman/brahman, consciousness, and awareness identities? Is there actual peace? Are the people happy? Are they signing and dancing at the feet of the blessed enlightened? How’s all that Buddhist philosophy working out for the poor? Are India’s water ways clear of the literal ‘bull’ shit and human feces? Oh I forgot! They’ll have the next life to do it better. Don’t worry about what’s right in front of you… you’ll catch it next time around. Fuckers.

I’m over it. I am bloody over it. There is no peace in the peace of God. What a cosmic joke.

MattWG23

3h

I’m seeing the anger. I’ve always repressed it.

1

Kub933

1h

How refreshing to have someone new to the forum who has seen spirituality for what it is though! Now it means business, onto becoming free :muscle:

Blockquote

I came from a spiritual background too (as well as many others on this forum) I had an accidental PCE and ended up going down the dead end of spirituality thinking it would lead me back there but boy did things get worse instead

Blockquote

May I inquire as to what your background was?

I find it mind boggling that more humans haven’t put the peices together. This is our solution to the human condition? To become seperate from the very fabric of existence… and we wonder why we treat eachother, our planet, and ‘our’ very bodies like this?

Even as a tool, a method to free oneself. That’s a medicine that seems more poison then cure.

Yet! The sun still shines. The earth spins. And the birds sing their song. All the while humanity dreams of things that don’t exist.

Blind nature indeed.

8

So initially when I was younger I was into all manner of self help stuff, which was obviously spirituality inspired, self improvement, manifesting, that kinda stuff.

Then I had this random PCE one day which devolved into an ASC where I was overcome with love and compassion. I started looking for something more ‘hardcore’ that could replicate the experience and I came across vipassana meditation, I did that intensely and made some good progress (if you can call it that :joy:), eventually there was some kind of a ‘shift’ I noticed after this pivotal event that I no longer experienced emotions affectively but instead felt them only as physical sensations. Initially I thought this was heading me in the right direction but very quickly it became apparent that it made things even worse, because now they could no longer be resolved but rather they just built and built as some repressed tension/anxiety.

Luckily on the dharma overground around that time there was the section for ‘actualism inspired practices’ I browsed it one day as I was still looking for something that would actually work. That’s when I came across the actual freedom trust website and when I read Richards writing, although it seemed like something out of this word, it described exactly the experience I had that day (the PCE).

Then I dabbled with actualism for a couple of years, decided I was too young and I was going to live the ‘normal life’ for a while and so I took like a 5 year break from it all. I came back to actualism a few years ago with the intent of going all in this time and my life has been better than it ever has been, in fact what I take for granted now I used to dream about when I was trapped in some dissociative anxious state, I used to think that if only I could be free from this anxiety that my life would be complete, and it’s nowhere to be found now. Although I am far from enjoying and appreciating each moment again.

3 Likes
12

i relate to this. eliciting pity/sympathy as a bid for attention. i have mistaken pity for love because that’s how my family members often asked for attention from each other. acting sad meant that you would be attended to and doted on. being pitied was reassurance that people cared about you. did your family do this at all?

2 Likes
13

I can very much relate to this as well. It also happened around the same time. It’s interesting to note how much similarities there are in everyone’s experiences. I remember seeing many peers post about their depression or being sad and I clearly remember thinking ‘what is everyone sad about?’. It was very strange to me because to my naive mind life was great but there was an instinctual pull to want to belong with everyone else. So I started pretending to be sad until it just stuck (and it feels so weird typing that out lol). And I believed in the reality that I cultivated and which was also further enforced. I still always get this notion of everyone playing pretend sometimes. Even going further back and perhaps my most earliest memory was being in my room and hearing everyone playing outside. I felt this most intense feeling of Fomo. That feeling features quite a bit in my life. It’s kind of what keeps me linked with humanity. So feeling good most of the time also must start to break that bond with everyone else in some way.

Typing this all out has me thinking ‘what if being happy and harmless was more of the norm with humanity?’. Would I have been pulled the same way I did into being depressed? Such a world is something I desire more and more very deeply.

1 Like
15

it’s not just performance alone though, there’s something that feels kind of profound about sadness too (maybe this relates to the sense of belonging that @cross.chrono was talking about)

i always thought i was kind of emotionally numb and performing this investigation has revealed that i am actually deeply sensitive and empathetic towards other people. i cry a lot now about the senseless suffering of others (and the useless, wasteful suffering i incurred because i did not know better). it is satisfying to cry. and i have become a lot more patient and kind with other people, which is really nice.

so compassion is beautiful, but i haven’t solved the problem because i’m still suffering, i’m just no longer suppressing it and am now crying about it :joy: and the suffering is on behalf of other people so it feels more noble

from the perspective of the one crying, full freedom is pretty scary because you aren’t bound to other people by any emotional threads at all. the (conditional) warmth of social affirmation and other rewards of the heart are gone. then what?

2 Likes
17

I think this is worth discussing because the investigations in actualism have their place and yet they are used in a specific way, not as an end in itself.

They can even be quite seductive at times, one could continue swimming in those psychic waters forever and painting a richer and richer picture, to what end?

How I see it these days is that investigations are there so that by demarcating and understanding reality, I am allowing the possibility of locating something outside of it.

You explore your reality and you see that it is very painful, that it is very senseless and that it can never deliver the goods. So something has been done and yet no resolution is found, yet.

And in fact many philosophies have attempted something similar, and by going ‘inside’ and looking for the answer there they simply spun around in circles.

The thing that does deliver the goods is located outside of the human condition, ‘I’ will never find it ‘inside’. Perhaps this is why one of the first things Richard recommends is to remember a PCE, because then one has confirmation of the fact that perfection and purity actually exists.

So then what ‘I’ do with it, is set ‘my’ antennae towards this purity, in whatever degree. I remember when first starting with actualism it was difficult to do this because I only had very faint memories, yet I had this sense of ‘I know there is more to life than this’.
Once the antennae are set then ‘I’ do whatever ‘I’ can to get as close as possible to this purity each moment again. ‘I’ imitate the actual by being felicity/innocuity, by being sincerity and thus unlocking naïveté and by marvelling at the ‘wonder of it all’.

Ultimately it is this movement towards purity which will begin to change ‘you’, bits of this worldview which you are now demarcating will begin to fall off as something better has been located. In the end all those precious realities must be extinguished anyways.

18

It’s kind of cool to read this and realise that I can no longer relate with that, this noble and beautiful aspect of sorrow is no longer attractive at all. All that game is eventually seen as a pathetic substitute for something that is so wonderful and pure that it leaves no space/need for any of the old ways.

1 Like
20

I made this diagram a while back which demonstrates how this purity of the actual trickles down into ‘my’ experience - Depictions of Pure intent

‘Reality’ is far far removed from purity, as children we are more naive so reality is not so concrete yet and so purity pokes through more.

As adults though the conditioning is very much set and initially the closest approximation to this purity may be sincerity, as in ‘I know there is more to life than this’ and ‘I’ set a sincere intent to locate it.

Then ‘I’ have a good reason to allow felicity and innocuity, and even in this feeling good ‘I’ can begin to notice a flavour of the purity that ‘I’ deep down know from somewhere.

1 Like
21

There is one bit in that diagram that really just grabbed my attention, about the part of oneself that one locks away for fear of appearing foolish. I have read this many times but I was always kind of slippery around locating this part of myself.

I have the crosshairs right on it now though, I can see how this part of myself is somewhat like a guardian to naivete. This fear of appearing foolish is what makes me swallow up and then even defend reality, what makes ‘me’ so cunning.

And the way out seems very simple actually, this guardian can be removed by utter sincerity, and then the way is made clear for naïveté.

3 Likes
23

The identity is present in some form or another across all levels of experience prior to the PCE. The PCE is the only time that the identity goes into abeyance and now there is only a flesh and blood body being aware of itself and the world around.
Although to my understanding there is some kind of a faint shadow cast by the identity (now in abeyance) which disappears in actual freedom, but I guess that is not so relevant at this point.

So in terms of naiveté, it is not the same as the innocence of the actual, rather it is the closest approximation that ‘I’ as identity can have to actual innocence. I observe naiveté when I visit my little brother and see him running around in wide eyed wonder, delighting in the magic and fun of being here.
This is a state that we all experience as children prior to the self becoming more concrete, hence most people have memories of childhood having this magical component that is now lost.

Yes although I would change the word silencing, because something more profound happens in a PCE. In the PCE ‘I’ along with the ‘real world’ are temporarily seen to have never actually existed in the first place. It is the most freeing experience because it is not just that suffering has been silenced, rather you find yourself in a world where it simply does not exist (and never did/could).

The reason to ask the question is more to become intimately aware of your moment to moment state of ‘being’, which means you are always aware of any feelings which stand between you and allowing the PCE.

1 Like
24

I guess another good way to look at naiveté is that it is a state of ‘being’ that allows the most purity to shine through. So reality would be a grey screen, spirituality would seek to place a rosy screen, naiveté is this super clean and fully transparent screen that allows one to peek out at the actual with minimised interference.
But even in naiveté there is still the screen, it is not a direct experience yet. It becomes direct in a PCE when one finds oneself teleported outside of the room from which one was peeking previously and now one is actually walking around in that world that was previously ‘out there’.
Looking back both the room and the ‘self’ that was peeking from it have disappeared, there is no longer any inside/outside dichotomy that could apply.

5 Likes
25

Man I’m having a lot of fun writing this! The more I write and the more I contemplate what I wrote the more this purity becomes apparent, a moment ago this flipped all the way through to an actual intimacy but only super briefly.

3 Likes
28

Hey @MattWG23 have you had a chance to read Richards journal yet? If not I would highly recommend buying it on the AFT and giving it a read. There is a ton of writings on there dealing with these very kinds of questions and how Richard eventually went beyond enlightenment.

1 Like
29

I haven’t! I will do that now. Ty for the suggestion.

30

Hi Matt,

If you haven’t yet I strongly recommend you read Richard’s examen of The Invention of ‘Heterosexuality’ (Part 1) .

Maybe it will help you navigate the feelings and issues you are currently having surrounding same-sex & other-sex attraction!

It is very dense but, highly worthwhile, IMO.

Cheers,
Claudiu

1 Like
32

After reading the Examen mentioned in my other post, I have come to see it like this:

These religious beliefs essentially arise out of the facts of human reproduction. Sexual intercourse – between a man and a woman – is how the species is perpetuated. So other-sex attraction and copulation is vital for the continuation of humanity.

Same-sex intercourse can never be fecund, as in producing a child – in a sense they only ever are imitative sex acts, replacing the phallus or the vagina with different and various implements or orifices.

These are the facts, and as such have no moral weight to them. Religions make values out of these and damn the same-sex imitations as “wrong”… but this isn’t really necessary for someone who sees the facts of the matter.

With the facts in mind any individual can make a choice, if they want to personally contribute to propagating the species, or not. If few enough people make the choice then the species will end. It doesn’t look like humanity is in any trouble with this regards, seeing as how the population now is 3x larger than it was 70 years ago ( World Population by Year - Worldometer ) .

From what you write, it sounds like you may very well enjoy other-sex attraction and intimacy, if not for the repressive upbringing you had. It certainly sounds like it holds some appeal for you. So I would certainly encourage you to explore it :grin: . Either you will like it and you have a new avenue for enjoyment of life, or you will find you don’t and you can make the choice to continue pursuing same-sex coupling, now with full knowledge of what the alternative is.

Personally I see no issue per se with consenting adults choosing to do whatever they like with each other. There is not really any official “actualist position” on anything, there’s just facts and then people can have different opinions on matters of preference or what the case may be when the facts aren’t clear.

Cheers,
Claudiu

1 Like