Probably the most succinct & comprehensive description of the actualism method?
Click to read full context => Mailing List 'D' Respondent No. 44
RESPONDENT: Yesterday I had some results that showed me that I was applying the method correctly. It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception. But it was brief.
I was in the kitchen and my grandma told me to clean some stuff since she was too tired to do anything. So I reluctantly agreed (I do not like cleaning the kitchen). As I was wiping down the counter tops I remembered ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’. And I was then again struck by the fact that it was this moment. Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling. Suddenly I saw my kitchen counter top for the first time. In great detail I saw everything but I wasn’t focused on anything at all. I experienced the very curvature of my eyeballs and everything became alive and three dimensional. This was in contrast to the ‘flatness’ of the real world. I found that I was delighting in cleaning the kitchen because to simply be alive was delightful.
‘I’ couldn’t stay back for long though as all ‘I’ could feel and think was ‘WOW! this is amazing!’. To think that all these ordinary things could be so extraordinary is wonderful. What have I been doing my whole life? (Subject: Re: Log, 31 Dec 2013).
RICHARD: G’day No. 44,
Your initial email – reproduced here as #161xx further above – almost prompted me to write a comment, when you posted it, as it clearly pinpoints the difference between a caused/ conditional enjoyment (‘I had a lot of fun tonight with friends’/ ‘all we did was sit, talk, and joke around’) and an uncaused/ unconditional enjoyment (‘the fascination that it is this moment sets in’/ ‘I am once more enjoying life’).
(A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginingless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event).
Your follow-up email – reproduced here as #161xx above – unambiguously indicates you are indeed [quote] ‘applying the method correctly’ [endquote] and it quite remarkably reminded me of certain everyday experiences which occasioned the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago to both devise and (successfully) implement what has become known as the actualism method.
What the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ – which ‘he’ formulated back in early 1981 – meant to ‘him’ was ‘Why is that experience not happening at this very moment?’ or ‘What is preventing that way of being here occurring right now?’ or ‘How come that wondrous world is not currently apparent?’ (and so on and so forth).
By thus being vitally interested – with that degree of fascinated attentiveness – in this moment being the only moment ‘he’ was ever alive it soon became a wordless approach, a non-verbal attitude towards life, each moment again, and ‘he’ readily developed the knack of allowing apperception to happen as it is never not this moment (as in ‘time has no duration’/ ‘time does not move’) in actuality.
(The experiential knowledge that this moment is eternal – that it is never not this moment in actuality – is the key to more instances of apperceptive awareness taking place).
Now that you indubitably know what apperception is – as per your ‘It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception’ sentence – and how to evoke it (as in your ‘Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling’ sentences) you may very well come to look back upon this day as being the turning-point of your life, eh?
Ain’t life grand!
Regards,
Richard
There are two elided footnotes in the above; in the first footnote (after “of certain everyday experiences”), he references a 1981 instance of “standing in the kitchen of my ex-farmhouse” whilst “not [being] interested in washing the dishes” … however, as what has since become known as the “actualism method” had become "a non-verbal approach to life, a wordless attitude towards being alive" to ‘Richard’ the feeling-being, he suddenly found himself sensuously delighting in that activity of washing the dishes. And then he realized the redundancy of ‘him’ and that life functions much better without ‘him’:
RESPONDENT: … feeling bad seems to be the driving force for doing various things like laundry, which I am not interested in – and the only way feeling bad goes away is by doing it … not by seeing the silliness of it … am I missing something here?
RICHARD: Maybe an example will provide the clue: back in 1981, in the early days of starting on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition, I was standing in the kitchen of my ex-farmhouse, situated on a couple of acres of land in a remote countryside location, washing the breakfast dishes; I was not interested in washing the dishes/ I had never been interested in washing the dishes; I did not like washing the dishes/ I had never liked washing the dishes; washing the dishes was an uninteresting chore, an unlikeable task, that just had to be done (otherwise I would not be doing it/ would never had done it/ would never do it) … and all the while the early-morning sun was streaming in through the large glass windows, in the eastern wall to my front, beckoning me, enticing me to hurry-up and get the uninteresting and unlikeable job over and done with so that I could scamper outside and get stuck into doing the interesting things I really liked doing/ wanted to do.
Howsoever, the tool for facilitating the actualism method – asking oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (the only moment one is ever alive) – had by now become a non-verbal approach to life, a wordless attitude towards being alive, and all-of-a-sudden, whilst standing there with my hands in the sink being anywhere but here, at anytime but now, it was a delight and a joy to be doing exactly what it was I was already doing anyway … standing in the golden sunlight with hands immersed in delicious, tingling-to-the-touch, hot soapy water.
I find myself looking at what the hands are feeling (the hot soapy water) and become aware I have never seen hot soapy water before – have never really seen hot soapy water before – and become fascinated with the actuality of what is happening: it is as if the hands know what to do without any input from me; they are reaching for a plate, they are applying the scourer appropriately, they are turning the plate over, they are applying the scourer appropriately, they are lifting the cleaned plate out of the washing sink; they are dipping it into the rinsing sink; they are placing it in the rack to drip … and all this while they are feeling the delicious tingling sensation of hot soapy water as it strips-away the grease and other detritus.
I am not required at all; I am a supernumerary; I am redundant; I can retire, fold in my hand, pack in the game, depart, disappear, dissolve, disintegrate, vamoose, vanish, die – whatever – and life would manage quite well, thank you, without me … a whole lot better, in fact, as I am holding up the works from functioning smoothly.
‘I’ was not needed … ‘my’ services were no longer required.
I also elided the other part of No 44 that Richard quoted, but you can click the first link above to read the first paragraph in it. I thought this part was particularly interesting since it parallels what works for me as well:
RESPONDENT: I’m having incremental success in my application of the method. I find that the guide that Peter put on the website matches my experience so far. When I get lost in thoughts or feeling reality then I immediately pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive. I do find that the initial layer is the layer of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. I eventually get to a point where everything seems empty. I stick with it and try not to ‘move’ anywhere and eventually the fascination that it is this moment sets in and I am once more enjoying life. Still there is more work to be done though.
Compare the above to my “From those deeper percolating passions (and the fascinated awareness thereof), I can easily segue into enjoying & appreciating ‘what is happening’” in Syd's PCE Log - #6 by syd.