Notes from meetings

I took some notes from our meeting with @geoffrey Friday July 29, figured I’d make a new topic if anyone else wants to post notes for future meetings~


  • I desire oblivion to escape from suffering
    This way I can use my desire to escape from suffering in a productive way - on the one-way ticket.

  • Am I more addicted to the escape from suffering, or to the suffering?

  • There is a ton of information on the AFT (and now on the forum and simpleactualism.com) and you don’t have to use all of it, just find what works for you and do that. All roads lead to Rome with this process anyway - there are lots of things @geoffrey never used or even read.

  • Out-from-control is like a decision to be in an EE all the time
    Fear is there, but is expressed as thrill - all emotions present, but everything is directed to freedom via intent
    The entirety of ‘me’ as a feeling being going for it - full commitment, sincerity

The decision to go for it
I bolded this because it seemed to be an important moment. It has to be a sincere decision, with all parts of me in agreement. But freedom doesn’t happen until that decision to go for it happens, as a simple decision. That’s what makes ‘I’m going to enjoy + appreciate no matter what’ happen, which leads to out-from-control and then to freedom

  • Pay attention to what you do when you get out of the PCE. Use that time to cement intent, because you won’t be able to remember the PCE. But you can remember what you think and decide right after.
    PCEs aren’t like normal memories because the important aspect is the lack of ‘being,’ which can’t be directly remembered. It’s not so important what you looked at, what you were doing, who you were with, as it is to understand how it works, how ‘being’ works, and to get to the point where you have the intent to go for it.

  • That’s how you can generate pure intent - it’s the connection between the PCE and the experience you’re having right now - an awareness of the purity. Keeping it as ‘just a memory’ keeps it at a distance. What you want is to recognize that there is something actual happening right now, and the PCE was a window into that. You can tap into it now, by recalling the ‘fragrance/flavor’ of it.

  • Even thinking in terms of ‘progress’ is history, you’ve brought time into things = identity.
    Focus only on what is happening RIGHT NOW, what is the emotion right now, where is purity right now. This now is all that exists. Right now is where you’ll become free.

Intent

  • Out-from-control seems to be a necessary step which happens automatically toward the end. It also seems it’s possible to lose out-from-control, as Irene/Devika did.

  • Ramp up the pure intent (connection to purity) as much as possible
    The more naive I am, the more pure intent is operative & dynamical
    Naive = less sophisticated, less imposing an agenda
    Benevolent = wishing well

  • You want a genuine decision (to go for it, but also as an outcome of investigations in general). When it’s made it will seem sensible, not something that is forced at all. It’s important to not rush yourself. Rushing/forcing creates tension, it’s much better to allow any parts of yourself that may be ‘holding out’ for some reason to resolve themselves however they need to. @geoffrey cites Vineeto saying, ‘go out and get that boy/girlfriend,’ basically go ahead and resolve whatever real-world thing you need to.
    If these things are not resolved, it results in a ‘split’ within you where one part of you is trying to force another part of you to become free, to ‘behave.’ This won’t help you because it’s still you on both sides. By being gentle, by exploring, these things can be resolved. It can and will take time for this to happen

  • This decision to go for it, to go out-from-control, to let the momentum take one, will be made with the entirety of oneself. Very straightforwardly, sensibly. @John describes what this type of decision looks like well here

  • “You just have to chill”
    It’s easy to take all this too seriously, a light touch & relaxed attitude goes a long way

  • Don’t be hard on yourself! Be your own best friend.
    You can’t help that as an identity you will dissociate, you will moralize, you will have a strong social identity.
    Unify yourself as much as possible (this goes back to the not ‘splitting’ thing. Resolve whatever issues you have as much as you can)
    Just grab onto that pure intent when you can and figure it out as you go

  • Admit that I am in charge of my own feelings. It’s all me - I am the only one who decides how I feel
    Steer toward feeling good!

  • You can ask yourself - Am I committed to feeling good?
    The whole of myself has to be committed for anything to happen
    Whatever part of me isn’t ready, is something to resolve.

  • “Feeling beings always are the ‘special one’”
    Whether that is in the positive, or as in ‘I am especially cursed’

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This is my underestanding of parts of the meeting :

  • List item

A trigger causes a feeling…the feeling makes me angry…this means that an external factor has turned me upside down with my emotions, as if it is a chain, a chain is connected together… But ,As you progress a bit, you will see in actual that there is no chain, there is no trigger , only feelings and yourself… and little by little after that you will realize that you and feelings are one…
so instead of three things, There is only one thing… and that is " you" …

and he said that after that, with pure intent, you don’t even need to bring yourself back to feeling good, because this happens automatically…
but before pure intent, because you already include yourself. You can see all three things, that’s when you can really choose which emotion to be…joy, sadness, or anger? And this will make you trust yourself, because you are no longer a toy of triggers and emotions…and you can do whatever you want.

and you can choose this moment how to live without needing to worry and plan for what will happen in the next hour, or in the next day, or in the next month. Instead you feel good in this moment, , because worry is equal to fear of future events and feelings…

Because emotions are mixed with social beliefs and moral or religious beliefs, they unconsciously divide us into several parts…assuming we have a desire, but that desire is contrary to social values and these two opposite things cause different feelings. one is desire and the other is fear or anger… but by being open and fully feeling all these feelings towards a subject, it makes us fully recognize and accept ourselves and those feelings, without wanting to judge ourselves. and look at it through the lens of moral or social principles…

Geoffry said about not expressing and suppressing feelings… a third thing that we do with an emotion which is even worse than expressing and suppressing ,is that we validate and give value to our feelings via our beliefs which makes the intensity of the feeling much greater and will prolong the suffering from that feeling into a much longer time period… this point is very important…

he said, when you look at the trigger and want to investigate, don’t imagine all the possible trigger in your head right now ,because you will create fear for yourself. …dont tell yourself what if this happens , what if that happens ? see what is your feeling or trigger is at this moment…

If something makes you angry, ask yourself this moment, what does this anger do? What problem does it solve? What is the use of this anger?
And in this way, you might be able to return to feeling good when you realize that there is no trigger now, except that you are choosing to keep that trigger alive in your mind… Storytelling and weaving a story…

Because you imagine that the trigger has hit you emotionally , and you are extending and stretching it, making it bigger ,magnifying it and confirming it…

When you see that you are your emotions, you can choose how to feel again, and hopefully as a sincere actualist you will chose to feel good again …

A person felt guilty because he did not introduce a good person to his friend because he was afraid that they would become more friends and that he would be left out and receive less attention, and this situation made him feel guilty… when he asked Geoffrey . Geoffrey said: Now that you have that feeling of guilt, there is no one around you… and you feel guilty because of one thought about the subject, and it is preventing you from feeling good at this moment.
Not only that, but this feeling of guilt prevents you from being able to solve this problem of yours correctly…
So at the same time, you are making two mistakes, you are not feeling good and you are paralyzed, you don’t know what to do. …but you prefer to stay with your emotional habits like feeling guilty and continue.

and the only way is to look inside yourself with complete honesty to know yourself and your own social and moral beliefs and to come to the conclusion that these social and moral beliefs are contradictory and make us divide ourselves into a few parts.
The situation you are talking about with your friend is not a problem, the problem is your thoughts and beliefs that make you feel guilty. you need to deal with this issue correctly :
It means that you get back to feeling good first and then search within yourself and accept your beliefs and thoughts clearly and overcome this problem. The next time a problem or something like this occurs, your emotional reaction will either be completely removed or much weaker.

because you can think about the same situation without having that feelings… and you can be in a good mood and think about the same issue, and in this way you will probably find a much better solution because you are not burdened with guilt and negative feelings… …

Many times, contradictory beliefs and desires cause us to be in a situation where we have no solution left for ourselves… that is why any choice we make will cause us discomfort… because we consider these beliefs as truths for ourselves and we don’t want to remove them from their place or change our beliefs… and we throw these beliefs in the middle of the situation we are thinking about… to that situation which is neutral, but with beliefs We are giving it a thousand colors and so on…

Most of the time, there is no urgency situation for which we need to do something, but because we have very bad feelings, we turn the situation in our head because we want to get rid of those feelings, but until we return to feeling good , we cannot think properly about that situation.

there is no urgency in the actual world …it is in your head…

Geoffry suggested instead of starting to resolve complicated social situations about family ,friends or coworkers , it is better to start with a simpler conflict resolution that has been caused by a trigger and our emotions :
If we start from a simpler situation… for example, in a shop, a person comes in front of you in line, then you get angry and by not expressing and suppressing your feelings and not approving your anger, you return to feeling good , and you realize that if you are angry You could have done something useless and harmful…

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i added this part to my above post :

Geoffry suggested instead of starting to resolve complicated social situations about family ,friends or coworkers , it is better to start with a simpler conflict resolution that has been caused by a trigger and our emotions :
for example, in a shop, a person comes in front of you in line, then you get angry and by not expressing and suppressing your feelings and not approving your anger, you return to feeling good , and you realize that if you are angry You could have done something useless and harmful…

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an example of why not repressing and not expressing emotions is important can be seen in the following : Parents suppress their feelings in front of the community or their spouse or family, but these feelings accumulate little by little, and it may cause the parents to hit their children, and this is a small example of the damage that the entire human society received from suppressing and expressing feelings… …

That’s why you don’t even need to be in the actual freedom path to benefit from not expressing or repressoing feelings …
When your emotional acceptance of yourself increases, you can tolerate more and more of your feelings without harming yourself or those around you.

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I’ve wanted to make a comment on this aspect for a few days now. And this seems like a decent place as long as people don’t mind a cluttered thread.

I’m gonna rewrite the bold parts to my own satisfaction. FYI, I’m the one whole highlighted these parts. Here it goes.

I need to take the time to allow the parts of me holding out to come forward. They come forward on their own accord when I quiet myself enough and ask the pertinent questions. The right questions seem to come forward on their own accord.

So far, I see myself holding out because I want to remain a unique player in the game of humanity. Even though I’m not much of a combatant compared to many others, I still relish being a combatant. I seek praise from others and vindication. I seek gratification from jobs well done.

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A mix of notes and my thoughts :

Allow yourself to be what you already are (with all the awful impulses and thoughts etc that we are socially / morally conditioned to suppress)

Better to acknowledge to yourself that you have an awful impulse eg to hurt someone , then to suppress it and pretend to yourself that you don’t want to because you’re a ‘good person’ etc. BUT don’t express it :smile: keep hands in pockets

This is being sincere. Once you’re fully sincere then it is all ‘you’, no conflict anymore , and then you can choose what to do / to feel good.

I think part of sincerity also is recognizing it’s better to feel good. But I think this comes only after you recognize you’re feeling bad or malicious or sorrowful. Don’t pretend you aren’t … then when you see you are, you need “decide” what to do, and then you can see it’s better to feel good (or not , it’s your choice I guess). And then that is what will happen , because you see it …

Ultimately the only reason you don’t do it (feel good, or self immolate) is because you don’t. You just don’t. You make up excuses and reasons and then chase after those , but the reason is just that you don’t. So, sincerely seeing this … seems to really cut to the heart of the matter. But this advice might not be helpful for everyone.

For me it’s coming to accept that I don’t do it because I don’t. This reflects extremely poorly on ‘me’ - how could I be denying ultimate perfection and purity for no reason at all? And that’s the point of it , to see this fully , see ‘me’ for what ‘I’ really am …

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geoffrey of SINCERITY :

Sincerity means “you don’t bullshit” yourself ( and geoffrey claims he was the King of that :smile: ).
Bullshitting yourself mean Intellectualizing, you have to undo this and get to the
root of things, which means to the feeling level and fully feel it ( not just think it :smile: )

Sincerity is the ability ( and willingness) to acknowledge things about yourself
that you wouldn’t normally dare to acknowledge to yourself. Like the examples in above post by
Caludiu.

When all feelings, even opposing feelings [ e.g. love and hate toward the same person or feeling angry in a given situation ] are acknowledged and experienced and accepted as you, without repressing or expressing those feelings; then everything is becomes one field and in the same plane.
And this causes you to lose your self concept . ? I guess geoffrey means the way you “define”
yourself, for instance as a “good person” or other attributes that pins you down?
And by doing this you have “2 guys” in your head opposing each other, by Sincerity
and Benevolance, you make the “2 guys” into One Guy and any decision that you
make then would be o.k. ( conflict free ).

That is the problem with Regret :
Regret ruins you enjoyment of this moment.
Regret is the problem of not being good enough ( according to standard “that YOU set for
yourself”, and then you judge yourself for not reaching those goals. Thus setting yourself up
for failure - and this is the Drama you run in your head and you get to suffer for it.

Above: And losing your self concept [ unifying, un-splitting yourself] will lead to Naivete .
But why? Investigate that!

Bonus: People have no idea that It is always now! And not as a concept

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I asked geoffrey , I have progressed in the last month or so, but I feel like
I have not progressed enough.

geoffrey:
To explain my “dissatisfaction” with “my progress”, he used the example of Master and Slave.
You have master and slave both working inside of you and against each other ( split you ).
The master is never satisfied by the slave, because he thinks the slave is not working hard enough and the slave is never satisfied ? because he is being pushed or he knows he is not good enough in the
eyes of the master.

So you have to be benevolent to yourself and the benevolent will allow you to have Intent.
I had forgotten to be benevolent even thou I had “heard it a thousand time”.

Because you are pushing yourself for progress and that is the opposite of Intent.

You can not Control yourself, and if you try to control yourself, you will split yourself, into
Slave and Master. Driving ( controlling) yourself is the opposite of Actualism.

And some of us choose Actual Freedom because we know it is goal that we can not achieve
? because we know that we will be in control !

The actualism process is confusing at the beginning - But you can not force it.

Stop taking the process seriously and Allow The Body to Do It. “It’s like let the thing do it itself”.
And you have seen the results of your won progress as feedback to yourself.

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For Actualism you have to be Naïve, but we were not built like that.

Initially it may feel weird and funny to feel naive, and you may even try to
back away from feeling naive, because you might feel : “you shouldn’t feel this way”.
Also it might be easier at first to feel naive in nature and without people around you,
but then you will learn to extend the feeling of naivete into more of your life.

If you have to control yourself, you are not Safe - you can not be Naïve .
To be Naive, keep things simple, don’t over complicate and conceptualize things; which
is what geoffrey said he was doing at the beginning, then he imagined himself in an
old library, with old “Dusty Book” ( concepts ), and then he decided to look out the
window of the Library and “Saw that he could go outside” So I can experience my emotions live!".
Because Actual Freedom Process is about Experience, and you will
understand (see) this with a PCE.

There is no escape from feelings for a feeling being. So you might as well experience them,
accept them and own them; so you can choose for yourself what you want to do with your life!

geoffrey’s own main entry to actualism was via Naivety ( more than happy or harmless or
HAIETMOBA ). He said the AFT site gives you options to choose from as to how it
may best suit you to approach the process, the approach is not rigid, even though the
process and the goal is Enjoying and Appreciating This Moment of Being Alive!

Naivete is a feeling of Wonder and Implicit Safety.
Naivete is the specific feeling to get to Pure Intent, to allow Pure Intent to
come thru the body.

And you not only rememorate being happy and harmless, but you rememorate and
allow Pure Intent as a force ( like force ) to come from outside to the body.

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Wow, thank you guys :pray::rose:

Thanks for this summary, Goeffrey and Henry. It was very insightful.

This split is quite difficult to see. It’s just in the last few months or so that I noticed it this intensely. It’s like a leash you get from your “core-part”, a certain distance you can travel, before it blocks again. It’s strange that I have not noticed it directly before. I knew of the concept of fragmented parts from J.Krishnamurt. He stressed this point endlessly. Get all the parts together, which for him was the summation of all energy. With that energy freedom becomes possible. Though he meant it rather psychologically then psychically.

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How do you differentiate between the two?

From my own experiance it is difficult to seperate them. I also don’t think it’s important to do that constantly. They both come together anyway. One has to work on both, while the feelings behind a belief or habit have priority.

One can notice both are in a constant battle, friction, conflict etc. Though it doesn’t necessarily mean that the psychic or psychological part cannot be in conflict with themselves alone. The psychological part represents habits, beliefs and social conditioning, while the psychic part is the real deal: emotions, feelings, intuition.

Krishnamurtis work was directed towards the psychological framework, the conditioning, while the psychic part (ground of beeing) was the thing to arrive to. A centerless, boundless, ocean-like feeling of togetherness, which implies the aloness of the self not perceived as such, but as reality itself.

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If you don’t mind, could you please elaborate on this?

One is perceiving oneself as being everything, not aware that one is not “perceiving everything,” one is perceiving oneself projected everywhere

(This is describing the unitary enlightened state)

Wow Frank, great notes, thanks Geoffrey… ! This unifying of the field of emotions, couldn’t stop thinking about it … It works wonders, how it dissolves the inner tension, all these feelings just want to be felt, not suppressed not ignored - then I’m still the same emotional being but somehow a burden has been lifted off my chest (literally:)) , I just want to feel, everything. I’ve been so emotional these few days , but fuck it , thats me.

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From Richard on naivete:
seeing the fact (that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’/ that it is ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment) enables sincerity, as to be in accord with the fact/ being aligned with factuality/ staying true to facticity is what being sincere is (being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous), and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté … an aspect of oneself locked away in childhood through ridicule, derision, and so on, which one has dared not to resurrect for fear of appearing foolish, a simpleton.

Yet without naiveté – the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ – pure intent will remain still-born.

It relates to some of the notes in this thread, I’ve been wondering - is this seeing the fact (that i = my feelings) an ‘advance’ thing or it’s a basic thing a novice actualist can grasp/experience?
also, is it a one time realization or do you have to rediscover it each time [there’s a ‘split’] ?

comments will be welcomed!

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Anyone can see it! No need to feel like you have to wait until you are advanced. That is just an excuse not to see it :smile:

It’s an ongoing experiential thing I’d say. It’s very simple. Essentially comes down to acknowledging and accepting that I am indeed these feelings that I feel / that are being felt by me. It’s nothing more or less than that. The feelings don’t come from outside … they aren’t external or even internal ‘things to deal with’… they aren’t ‘caused’ by things outside of me … it’s just that I am my feelings !!

This is very freeing.

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lovely to read claudiu, what if I don’t really know what it is i’m feeling but i’m feeling something and I let it be (in a sense), does it qualify as feeling it fully? do I have to make sense of it?

I wouldn’t say you could acknowledge the feeling fully without knowing what it is. But it’s ok, take your time with it. Once you see it you see it. Until then, recognizing that you don’t see it is what the sincere step is.