Pelagash's Journal

Journals
1

Hi guys! I’ve decided to start my own journal here and share some of the experiences I’ve been having these last few days. So last week I read a very interesting post on @Felix journal, especially this part

This made me realise that I had also been distracting myself and trying to push my negative feelings away, which is probably why I haven’t been experiencing much success with the method in the last few months. Every time I felt angry, anxious, or sad, I would try to feel good instantly, or force myself to ‘see the silliness of a particular emotion without much success, and it always felt like I was faking it. After reading this I immediately could notice the emotion I was feeling, and instead of seeing it from the outside, I could clearly experience myself as that current emotion. From that shift in my perception (going from seeing my emotion to being my current emotion) I could easily experience the intention to be happy and harmless, without forcing myself to feel good instantly. This lead me to perceive things around me differently, everything started to look more beautiful, and it was really easy to go back to feeling happy anytime I felt an unpleasant emotion.

Anyway, last Saturday, which was three or four days after I started allowing myself to be whatever emotion I’m feeling, I was watching a film called Memoria, which is a very contemplative indie film that is very slow, with a lot of takes where nothing really happens. Watching it I got into a contemplative state, which was really enjoyable. However, it’s a pretty long film, and while watching the ending sequence I started to feel bored, and a bit annoyed. As I noticed this swift from feeling good to feeling bored/annoyed, I started to see myself as that emotion, instead of repressing it. While being this emotion, the intention to feel happy and harmless arouse in me in a spontaneous way, and after seeing how silly it was to be feeling that way, I started to enjoy the moment again. As minutes passed by, my enjoyment increased naturally, and I started to notice a shift in my experience. Things around me started to look different, everything started to have a kind of glow, and I felt that sense of familiarity that I had felt in the past as I was entering a PCE. Suddenly, while delighting in my senses, I could see my own mind in a way, not see as in having a mental image, but it was more like I could sense a stream of mental activity operating. More fascinating arouse from this seeing, and after this, there was a definite shift in my perception, and I experienced a PCE.

Everything around me was incredible, just so perfect. I couldn’t stop smiling and enjoying how beautiful it all looked. I went to the balcony and looked at the big blue sky, the birds flying by, the people on the street walking, and even the way the light shone against the buildings was captivating…All I could do was appreciate all that wonderful display. I remember that everything felt more spacious like I could suddenly notice how vast the world is. It all felt like being in a magical place, and I could notice how happiness, harmlessness and generosity of character simply emanated from me in a really effortless way. This was great because I could experience firsthand that the more happiness and appreciation you feel, the more generous and kind you are to others in a spontaneous way. While having this experience, I found myself doing things for my boyfriend like going to buy some stuff he needed, as it caused me a lot of joy to help him out (plus, going to the store while feeling like this was such a fun experience lol, I was walking and smiling and giggling). The PCE lasted a few minutes, and it then turned into an EE, which lasted probably half an hour or so.

After that amazing afternoon (it all happened around 4 or 5 pm) I had my first video meeting with @edzd @FrankN @Miguel and also with @Felix. It was really amazing to actually talk to you guys and hear all those interesting things about your own experiences, it definitely brought a lot of clarity, and I can’t wait to join one of the bigger chats one of these days. The day after the PCE, I found it much easier to feel pure intent, as I could remember some of the wonderful sensations that were experienced when I was out of the picture. I actually woke up dancing, and the whole weekend after the event was marked by a newfound playfulness that was just delightful. Today as I’m writing this, I certainly feel happier than usual, and although I have noticed certain emotions like anxiety because of work-related issues, it’s funny how easier it is to go back to feeling good if I allow myself to be the emotion itself, as once I do it’s much easier to feel pure intent in a genuine way, which minimizes the emotion or makes it go away completely.

Anyway, I’ll keep experimenting with this, and see where it takes me :slight_smile:

PS: I wrote this on Monday but its was a pretty busy week so I’ve just finished editing it today :rofl:

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Wonderful post and very informative ( new information for me ) and applicable and practical
experience that you ( Pelagash ) and Felix have shared. I hope “I” don’t forget to keep applying
this information. It seems like the fruit of the effort that we all are putting in for making progress in applying the method is being received.
Much appreciated !
:appreciation:

I can relate to what you say. Today I was not feeling well and I was searching
for an answer and a surprising ( I did not accept it at first ) a thought popped into my head :
" I don’t like myself, I don’t like how I feel and I don’t like how I push myself - without getting the result ( feeling good ) that I want ".

Then by accepting this feeling as ME, I started to relax and trust myself to be able to go back
to feeling good; and I can already sense the positive result.

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Thanks for your response @FrankN, it’s certainly amazing when resistance turns into feeling good, and you can see the actualism method in action!

I’ve had some interesting experiences these past few days. Allowing myself to experience my own feelings as ‘me’ often leads to minimizing the sense of self, which immediately heightens my senses and makes me feel happy. Yesterday, I was in one of these states and I felt like I was the sincerest I had ever been in my desire to self-immolate up to that point. It was like I became the “desire to end” itself, and everything around me was perceived as beautiful and pure. All I could think of was ‘I wish I could stay here forever’. Then, while I was having dinner with my boyfriend, I could see him very clearly, and for a moment it was as if I was seeing him for the first time, which was very strange and fascinating.

After this experience, I went to bed, and ended up having a very weird dream where I met Richard and Veneeto in Australia :joy::australia: and we were having fun together and laughing until we got into the car to go buy something and then there was this big earthquake, and people were running, there was pure chaos. Anyway, I woke up and thought that this sort of apocalyptic dream probably symbolizes my subconscious fear of ending, and although it was a pretty ridiculous dream, it made me happy cause I had never had a dream related to actualism before.

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Wow plagash, that seems counterintuitive, and that’s why it is not used unless you allow yourself to
do it, as you have described. Thanks for sharing this insight ! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Pelagash, if you don’t mind tell us how you came across actualism and what the process
been like for you .
Thanks

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Hey @FrankN, I came across actualism in 2018 I believe, I was actually googling something about Buddhism and ended up on a website called Dharma Overground and because I googled something about emotions, I ended up reading a post about a ‘group of people who say they can get rid of emotions’ lol and thanks to that post I found actualism.

For the first couple of years, I didn’t really apply the method constantly, I sort of went back and forth between reading stuff about actualism and other things that I used to be interested in at the time, like Dzogchen Buddhism and Non-duality. It wasn’t until this year that I fully devoted myself to understanding and applying the actualism method, and since then I’ve experienced some really wonderful PCE’s and EE’s that really helped me understand experientially that this is something that works. I would say that since March, I’ve been in a process of letting go of many of the beliefs I held dear, like the existence of ‘spiritual planes’ and ‘life after death’. Although I was never a believer of a particular religion, I was agnostic and would always say “well…Maybe this metaphysical stuff is true…” After a while of applying the method, though, I realized why I was agnostic. I was holding on to the hope that maybe I was immortal after all, maybe I did have a soul, maybe spiritual realms did exist. Seeing that I was holding these beliefs because there was actually an emotion operating in me (hope) that was born as a response to the fear of dying really helped me get rid of the need to believe, which was a big relief because up to that point there was always a struggle between my sceptic part and the part of me that wanted to believe. That is probably one of the most important things in my process I can think of. I still struggle to feel good every day, it’s certainly easier than before, at least now I don’t waste time blaming the outside world every time I have a bad mood, and know how to go back to feeling good, even if it takes me an hour or so. I’m currently exploring how I can access naivete and pure intent more easily, and trying to be more conscious of the parts of me that block these things from becoming apparent.

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Y en Argentina tenemos suficientes excusas para eso. ¡Así que doble mérito! :smile:

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Jajajaja totalmente Miguel!! :rofl: :rofl:

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Nice! Not the break-up of course but the effectiveness of the method in practice. I also remember about 2 years ago breaking up with my girlfriend at the time and finding something similar. The very intense waves of sorrow were definitely there, but it was in the way that I approached the whole thing where actualism really shined.

Love is not enough but in a way even being actually free is not enough! I am talking specifically about your partner never cheating on you, leaving you etc. Richard proved the impossible dream with Devika and still in the end she was kidnapped by love.

What I find is that one of the most precious discoveries of actualism is the ability to stand on my own two feet. To be self sufficient, not in a sense of farming my own food lol but rather emotionally requiring nobody in order to live a full life. Because as Richard says nothing with regards to the other person is guaranteed in life.

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@pelagash

I really appreciate you posting!

That is really inspiring.

I was literally out the back yard reflecting on how I felt more benevolent and benign after seeing through a piece of my identity.

I gave myself a virtual pat on the back as the realisation sunk in that I felt more of both towards myself.

I feel more like how the universe is towards me!

It is interesting how it can seem that we are going in the opposite direction when love is not the priority. Yet, progressively, I have found greater intimacy these days specifically because of those experiences of love informing (sometimes extremely unpleasantly) how ineffective it is as a basis of having a partner.

It’s also surprising how none of the events have turned out how I imagined, yet they have lead to more success in actualism because to whatever extent I could manage, the intent was always there to keep going.

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Yes! That is a very recent discovery for me too. It’s always been something I wondered about too.

Relationships would start, last for however long, I would try to talk about actualism thinking that would turn into something better! Yet, it would end. Then something different, someone different, another whole experience.

It was never deliberately done though. I wasn’t going through it all wanting anything to end. It was always with the best intentions I had at the time.

I often think these days thoughts like “if that hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t have looked into this or that aspect of me, or experienced this or that reality.”

It’s sounds like you have skipped many years of “learning the hard way” though! That determination to be as happy and harmless as possible sure sounds like it is paying excellent dividends!

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These days I’ve been exploring fear and things that cause me anxiety and prevent me from feeling good. While pondering on why I felt anxious at work, I realized that I have a deep fear of fear itself. Meaning, it’s not that I’m afraid of getting fired, I am afraid of what I would feel if I got fired. And this is the same for most of the things I fear, for example:

  • I’m not afraid of people I love dying per se, but rather of the set of feelings I would experience if people I loved died.
  • I’m not afraid of being cheated on, I’m afraid of the set of feelings I would experience if I got cheated on.

It’s almost like I have a belief that feelings could destroy me in some way. And that explains why I have a tendency to repress emotion, I’m deadly afraid of feeling. In fact, if I think about the previous situations and I take feeling out of the equation, I know perfectly well that I could deal with them by relying on my own intelligence. It’s feeling a particular way I’m afraid of.

Noticing this has brought a lot of clarity, and my anxiety has subsided quite a bit. It’s like I’m seeing the invisible thread that connected all my fears. It’s emotions I’m afraid of, like emotion is something different than me that can destroy me.

Anyway, maybe this is obvious to you guys, but finally seeing what I’m really afraid of felt like a revelation this morning, so I thought I’d share. I’ll keep exploring this and see where it takes me.

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I have actually never considered this before but I can see it. If I allow myself to experience feelings associated with the things I am most averse to : being seen as a failure, being completely rejected, death etc I can see that what I am averse to is the emotion itself, that rush of completely unpalatable affect.

The funny thing is, and it’s something I have been looking at recently is that those who become very good at successfully avoiding the emotion are actually worse off. I can see this is how people with severe anxiety get to where they are. Through control they essentially minimise any exposure to the emotion, which means that whatever security they generate is based completely on strengthening their aversion to the possibility of experiencing the emotion.

The better I get at ensuring that the emotion is not experienced (through control) the more fearful I become of actually experiencing it. So it’s just building this entire reactionary structure that never gets rid of the problem and actually solidifies it in the form of anxiety, neuroticism etc.

But at the same time I am definitely dubious of that ‘tried and true’ approach of exposure. If I am afraid of heights I need to go and jump with a parachute or something, this seems to have no end to it, there will always be this new fear to ‘overcome’.

So then is it as simple as allowing myself to fully experience the emotion, as in not trying to get rid of it, even by a ‘flight into feeling good’. Because I can see this being a mistake with actualism too. I find myself unwilling to experience a certain emotion, let’s say the feeling of being rejected. So then I do all these ‘actualist things’ as a means of never having to feel the emotion, or if it comes up I am trying to make it go away as soon as possible.

Whereas the emotions which I have largely eliminated from my life all left because I was done with them. It’s not that I am avoiding them or anything of the sort, I have experienced all there is to them and there is just no sense going there anymore. There isn’t this kind of desperate aversion to them, rather this down to earth conclusion that I have no need for them in my life.

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Actually I remember this being mentioned in the Australia Q and A with regards to Love. That if an actulist finds themselves avoiding relationships then that is a sign they are not willing to explore love and the associated feelings.
Essentially the point being that you do not eliminate emotions by avoidance/aversion, rather by involvement.

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I think the discovery that you’re afraid of your own feelings is a big one. I am too, and I’m finding increasingly subtle layers of this to discover. It’s uncomfortable at times, but it’s worth it, because it makes it possible to look at what you’re feeling in the moment without denying it, glossing over it, or grasping at something else to make yourself feel better. Over time, being less afraid of looking directly at it leads to more confidence in being able to see right through to the bottom of it and actually feel a lasting release from it. Each new one feels like it’s different this time, but it’s usually not.

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It’s like we are watching the same movie over and over again but each time we watch it it becomes more uncensored until you get to see the fully uncut version. Initially it’s beep this beep that every 2 seconds. Really uncomfortable and annoying to watch. Imagine watching the big lebowski with beeps every time they dropped an F bomb! That’s the human condition! Then with the uncut version you notice the movie isn’t repeating, it is never ending, and it’s perfect.

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That’s a brilliant analogy. Thanks :smiley:

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Thank you guys for all your lovely contributions, please keep 'em coming.

Now that I’m aware that I’m afraid of my own feelings - which is no different than saying that I am afraid of myself - I can stop seeing external situations like threats and start to see my own activity as the problem.

Or, in the words of a famous XXI century poet and songstress:

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me
At tea time, (and at the actualism forum) everybody agrees

This part of Geoffrey report of becoming free also comes to mind:

I was thinking about the unknown path lying before me (the path that deliver the goods – as I knew from the PCE), and realised in a flash that the unknown path is the safe path. That the known is the unsafe. That ‘I’ am the unsafe.

With this in mind, it has become easier to turn my attention to what I’m currently doing that is preventing enjoyment, and either nip it in the bud or investigate what underlying belief is present.

This has lead to more enjoyment, and less fighting feeling with feeling.

I can’t stop thinking of how ridiculous it is to be fighting parts of myself all day long. It’s like I’m both the guard and the external threat trying to get in, in a sort of eternal dance lol.

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This being afraid of ‘my’ own feelings, of ‘myself’ is an interesting thing.

To an extent is see why it is scary, this is something that Peter mentions in the actualism guide, you remove that outer conditioning and you begin to experience what is essentially a wild animal underneath.

This is pretty ballsy stuff, to experience ‘myself’ like this, but as Peter writes it is the only way to elicit significant change. To experience ‘myself’ deeply and to understand the experience fully.

Eventually it can become possible to apply a fascinated attention even to this surging flow of passion.

In fact I wrote this just now as I found myself excited to be delving into ‘myself’ in this exact way.

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Today’s :sparkles: silliness :sparkles: (sponsored by @Paul’s fantastic sentence structure):

I am the kind of person who won’t feel good because they have to work ----> I am the kind of person who can’t have fun while working ----> I am the kind of person that actively prevents work from being fun by emotionally resenting being here.

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