13 posts were split to a new topic: Harmlessness
“Now, when confronted with my fears and judgements instead of berating myself for my shortcomings one sees it as a new opportunity to investigate and explore and usually lose a few kilos of identity. Fear as an ally … who would ever think.”
-Mark
Also:
“ I have become keenly aware of the fact that my mind spends an inordinate amount of the time imagining myself to be anywhere but here and now – imagining myself in the future, imagining myself in conversation, imagining myself in a thousand different ways, situations and localities and it is such a joy to be discovering that being here takes no imagination at all!
What a remarkably simple thing!”
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I think i got all the ‘harmlessness’ ones, the last one you posted here was about ‘love’, I’ll leave it here. but if you want to have longer discussion then delete this one and make new topic pls 
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I’ve moved the the other posts related to love to Romantic Love is a fantasy construct,
starting from @henryyyyyyyyyy’s post
Romantic Love is a fantasy construct - #39 by henryyyyyyyyyy
(if you, @henryyyyyyyyyy, want that quote to stay here, please paste it again without additional text)
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RICHARD: Gratitude is one of the many ploys designed, by those who expound on the merits of self-imposed suffering, to keep one in servile ignominy and creeping despair. As strange as it may initially seem, gratitude has the same deleterious effect upon one’s well-being as the resentment it seeks to reform. When gratitude is realised as being the panacea that it is, one will gladly renounce it along with the resentment it promises to replace. To successfully dispense with the despised resentment, its companion emotion, the extolled gratitude, must also go. It is a popular misconception that one can do away with a ‘bad’ emotion whilst hanging on to the ‘good’ one. In actualism the third alternative always applies. ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’, ‘Virtue’ and ‘Sin’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Despair’, ‘Gratitude’ and ‘Resentment’, and so on, all disappear in the perfection of purity. Purity is the hall-mark of the stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe … which is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. Unless the factuality of the existence of the third alternative is firmly grasped, one is forever fated to shuttle back and forth between the opposites. Gratitude simply does not work for it draws its energy from resentment itself … and from nowhere else. Gratitude feeds off resentment – one cannot be grateful unless one is first resentful – and one cannot maintain any emotion without retaining its opposite. Neither does one adopt that other stratagem: transcendence. Transcendence is a form of sublimation … to transcend is to confirm and endorse the reality of the opposites. One disposes of all these pathetic methods very simply: By being here now as this flesh and blood body.
Being here now is to put your money where your mouth is, as it were. All other actions are methods, devices, techniques … which are, in effect, delaying tactics. The most sincere form of flattery is not, as is commonly practised, imitating all the other people’s performance of standing back and expressing a feeling. To feel an emotion or be passionate about life is nowhere near the same as actually being here now. In being here now one is completely involved. Being here now is total inclusion. One demonstrates one’s appreciation of life by partaking fully in existence … by letting this moment live one so that one is doing what is happening. One dedicates oneself to the challenge of being here now as the universe’s experience of itself. When ‘I’ willingly and voluntarily sacrifice ‘myself’ – the psychological or psychic identity residing inside this body – ‘I’ am gladly making ‘my’ most supreme donation, for ‘I’ am what one holds most dear.
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I remember telling a friend about giving up both the pair of opposites - gratitude and resentment…to which she asked for a practical example of some situation where this works…
I have to admit I couldn’t come up with an example at the time which means I was just parroting Richard at the time hehe…it seemed to me then that gratitude and resentment is only about the resentment towards the universe and then the gratitude towards it…or is there any other practical example from daily life where resentment n gratitude can be given up ?
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That is a funny question, the first thing that comes to mind is that both gratitude & resentment are happening on the emotional-energetic spectrum, so it’s not as directly applicable to like ‘practical decisions,’ except that how we’re feeling in every moment colors every practical decision we make and is therefore a very practical thing to pay attention to
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Aah @henryyyyyyyyyy I see how you mean…I was meaning it in terms of triggers/events from daily life and the ensuing resentment n grief saga.
Like for example anger and its triggers…queue cutter seen at a checkout queue > anger or partner has read the message but not replied > pissed/worried
But then I get the point about gratitude n resentment being in the affective spectrum of good n bad feelings…what’s important is instead to use appreciation as that’s more of a cognitive appraisal based on the value of something
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Oh I think there’s so many everyday examples! For example - “You should stop worrying about earning more money and be grateful that you have a roof over your head, some people in the world don’t.”
The gratitude in this example is used as a means to overcome one’s fundamental resentment - life is shit, I don’t have anything good going for me etc. It is the good being laid over the bad, thus reinforcing the reality of both opposites and keeping one trapped in the cycle of resentment and gratitude.
The third alternative would be of course to appreciate as opposed to being resentful/grateful.
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Aah yes…this is a good example…going to remember it so that I can one-up in my actualist discussions 
Giving up resentment necessitates giving up comparison, the emotional component of it. Can you sincerely say it to anybody and not draw criticism?
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Certain times I realize something, but may not have fully actualized it, but I’ll still go ahead and reveal such things to people sincerely…although mostly people will not buy such things if I’m not living that realization…so yes - criticism is very much possible…
A somewhat perfect case in example of such criticism I experienced few weeks back :
I was telling this friend about Actualism and PCE…to which she tells me to first achieve that final thing and then tell her about it because she thought its sounding impossible…she thought that Richard was a unique quirk of nature and it may not be possible for everyone
“He may be. But this is not about you either get a trophy that Richard got or you get a big zero. Your sincerity will be rewarded incrementally and increasingly more. That incremental reward is not a quirk for I am a proof to myself.”
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MARK**:** I was ‘putting under the microscope’ yesterday my previous attempts (and their seeming importance at the time) at discovering the ‘meaning of life’ and upon reflection of my most memorable PCE I saw that the only meaning was simply that it (life, the universe and everything) is happening and the ensuing wonder at its glorious perpetuity was in fact, its meaning, no more or less.
RICHARD: Yes, the put-down of the universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as it can get – and so immense in its scope – eternity being as immense as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable in? It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be so … one can have confidence in a universe so grandly complex, so marvellously intricate, so wonderfully excellent. How could all this be some ‘ghastly mistake’? To believe it all to be some ‘sick joke’ is preposterous, for such an attitude cuts one off from the perfection of this pure moment of being alive here in this fantastic actual universe. When one takes one’s mental ability back from the decrees of the real world – to which one has surrendered – one has taken a courageous step. For here in the actual, this miraculous world as-it-is, is the secret to life. Here lies a healthy mind, for here only sagacity exists. Living here, where perfection and purity abounds, one experiences what is precious in living itself. Something beyond compare.
Something more valuable than any ‘King’s ransom’. It is not rare gemstones; it is not singular works of art; it is not the much-prized bags of money; it is not the treasured loving relationships; it is not the highly esteemed blissful states of ‘Being’ … it is not any of these things usually considered precious. Here is something ultimately precious. It is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe … which is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. The limpid and lucid perfection and purity of being here now, as-I-am, is akin to the crystalline perfection and purity seen in a dew-drop hanging from the tip of a leaf in the early-morning sunshine; the sunrise strikes the transparent dew-drop with its warming rays, highlighting the flawless correctness of the tear-drop shape with its bellied form. One is left almost breathless with wonder at the immaculate simplicity so exemplified.
When one lives the magical perfection of this purity twenty-four-hours-a-day; when one has ceased being ‘me’ and is being what one genuinely is, one directly experiences that there is no separation from this something which is precious. The purity of life emerges from the perfection that wells up constantly due to a boundless stillness which is utterly immeasurable in its scope and magnitude. This stillness of infinitude is this something which is precious. It is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent. This stillness happens as me. This stillness is my essential disposition, for it is the principle character, the intrinsic basis of everything. It is life at its genesis. It is not, as it might commonly be supposed, at the centre of everything … there is no centre here. This stillness, which is everywhere all at once, is the be all and end all of life itself. I am the universe experiencing itself as a sensate, reflective human being.
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It one of the most amazing stories on the AFT, and really fleshes out the details of that pivotal start.
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Long one on sex here:
Apart from a belated thank you for your ‘welcome back’ message there is not much else to say so I will attend to your current request for elaboration on going about deliberately setting out to induce a PCE via giving oneself completely to one’s partner – totally and utterly – during sexual congress. As you have inadvertently snipped off a vital component I will re-quote the relevant section here in full for convenience:
• [Richard]: ‘Accordingly, I deliberately set out to induce a PCE via giving myself completely to her – totally and utterly – whilst hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm (something which I had discovered whilst pubescent)’.
It was only a few years ago that I found out that what I had discovered for myself, during an intensive masturbatory period from pubescence (12 years old) to my first wedding night (19 years old), had both names and descriptions … to wit (unromantic) titles such as ‘edging’, ‘coitus reservatus’, ‘orgasmic brinkmanship’, ‘peaking’, ‘surfing’ (and even ‘male continence’ and ‘coitus sine ejaculatione seminis’).
Here are a couple of examples: Entertainment; Sex Tips & Advice (Incidentally, once I had regular access to the real thing – a willing hetero-sexual partner as randy as myself – that mono-sexual practice discovered while pubescent, being devoid as it is of intimacy with a fellow human being, rapidly faded away into a vague memory where it languished unrecalled, for around 14 years, until being resurrected for the purpose of giving myself completely, totally and utterly to my first wife).
Now, to explain hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm it may be of assistance to present it graphically: as an orgasm requires building up to a peak of sexual excitation, before tipping over the other side for a glorious slide down the slope on that other side of the mountain, it can be represented by an upside down ‘V’.
As the aim is to prolong that exquisite moment prior to tipping over the other side it requires a slight pulling-back downwards, of sexual excitation when an orgasm is imminent; within seconds, once the sexual excitation stabilises, it can be intensified once more; again, upon an orgasm being imminent, another slight pulling-back downwards, of sexual excitation is required; and once that sexual excitation stabilises, it too can be intensified once more … and so on and so on and so on. What will happen, upon much delicious practice – ain’t life grand! – is that the slight pulling-back downwards, of sexual excitation when the orgasm is once again imminent, becomes both easier and easier and less and less downwards; eventually there can be an easing back-and-forth, at the moment just prior to the orgasm’s imminence, along an ever-increasingly lengthening plateau at the peak; this can be represented by that upside down ‘V’ having a flat-line where there was once only an apex.
Again with much delicious practice – my word life is indeed grand! – that flat-line peak can be lengthened indefinitely as the need to pull-back downwards decreases with experience; eventually there is the aforementioned hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm with but the slightest increase/ decrease in sexual excitation; at this stage the upside down ‘V’ with the flat-line plateau – where there was once only an apex – can be representative by that flat-line plateau disappearing off either side of this page (with no sloping sides at either end to represent the slope both up to and down from that indefinitely prolonged peaking plateau).
Please note that this disappearance of the slopes is vital as the aim is for there to be only that plateau and neither climbing up nor sliding down ever happens; there is only the hovering indefinitely on that orgastic plateau when all else drops away. Once this is established the sex takes care of itself and full attention can be paid to intimacy; with much delicious practice – oh how grand life is! – the attainment of that endlessly orgastic plateau can be obtained within 60-90 seconds after penile penetration (provided there be sufficient sexual stimulation just prior such as the oh-so-delicious soixante-neuf[
](javascript:void(0)) – which perfect arrangement of face-to-genital distancing almost makes one think those credulous persons believing in an ‘Intelligent Designer’ may have a point after all – as there cannot possibly be a more delightful way to prepare for hours of orgastic hovering whilst intimacy unfolds in all its luscious wonder).
Now, the way to have intimacy unfold, in all its luscious wonder, is to be aware all the while (with that unique human ability to be conscious of being sentient) that your sexual partner likes being with you so much that they are willing to spend their most valuable asset – their time – not only being with you but having you inside them/ having them inside you (dependent upon gender) for this most physically intimate way of associating possible.
In other words one is always aware, with that second-level awareness, all the while primary consciousness is sexually engrossed, just how precious this opportunity is as – out of all 3.0 billion women/ out of all 3.0 billion men (dependent upon gender) – this fellow human being has chosen you, and only you, to be so intimately entwined with. In short: having sex/ being intimate with her/ with him (dependent upon gender) is very special – so special as to be precious – and this very preciosity readily enables giving oneself completely to one’s partner – totally and utterly – during sexual congress.
All this while the hands, fingers, lips, tongue and eyes can roam all about with much delicious kissing, nibbling, nuzzling, fondling, smelling, listening, tasting, touching, looking and all the rest which such a physical embrace, such physical proximity so exquisitely provides for; the neck below the ear- lobe, for instance, is an especial delight and to eventually indulge in never-ending open-mouthed kissing – at the heights of sexual arousal – is to be breathing each other’s breath in a most personal way of gradually depriving the brain of oxygen as to even further increase both arousal and intimate contact (togetherness, closeness, sweetness, richness, actuality).
(Meanwhile, back at the sex taking care of itself, that hovering indefinitely on the orgastic plateau has catapulted one into what I chose to call a sexual world: another dimension, as it were, where sex and sexuality is virtually dripping off the walls; a sexual dimension where all you are is an enormous penis/ an enormous vagina (dependent upon gender) which has grown legs and feet to walk to food and drink sources to sustain itself/ yourself, and arms and hands to assist in that process, so as to have yet more and more of what it/ you is/ are here for at this particular moment (endless effortless sexual congress); a rampant sexual dimension where all other people and things have receded into the background; a dripping-with- sex-and-sexuality dimension where there is only this beginningless and endless moment where you both cannot ever possibly have enough of each other; a consummately durationless moment where all there is is you and her/ you and him (dependent upon gender) hovering on that endlessly orgastic plateau of supreme sexuality and intimacy).
And then … !Hey Presto! … no separation whatsoever.
Regards, Richard.
Might write a journal article about sex soon, not that I have pulled off what Richard is talking about here. Sex has played a major role for me in the past couple weeks. But the most recent thing that happened was a moment of pulling back from intimacy through fear, and I am hoping to sort that out soon.
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"The more you feel good the more feeling good happens; the more feeling good happens the better you feel; the better you feel the more feeling better gets … and so on and so on … gradually increasing ever-incrementally until one day you can get to the stage the identity in residence all those years ago got to where ‘he’ would say how ‘he’ had to invent a new word (‘bester’) because how on earth could best keep on getting better.
(Be warned: the sky is not the limit)."
-Richard
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