From the tooltip:
Message 15710
From: Claudiu
Date: 31 Oct 2013
Subject: a summary of the entire path
[Claudiu]: Hello all,
Before going to Australia, I emailed Richard to ask him how I could best take advantage of my trip. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the position at that point to really fully appreciate it. However, I found it relevant to what we’ve been discussing recently, so I’ve asked and he has given me his permission to post an excerpt from the email he sent in reply.
• [Claudiu]: By the way, thanks (again if I previously thanked you) for agreeing to meet with me. Not only am I lucky enough to be alive during a time when an actual freedom is possible, but now I get to interact with the first actually free human, himself! The prospect of our meeting has certainly spurred my practice onward, and it seems like things are falling into place more & more.
I do want to maximize the benefit gained from this visit, so, is there anything in particular I should do up to then, besides practice as sincerely and naively and tapping into pure intent as much as humanly possible?
I think I now remember a PCE I had as a child, which was previously forgotten, during a sunny care-free day back in Romania, where I was born. (I think I had a PCE after beginning to get into (first) spiritual and (then) actualism practice, but I think the peak (the PCE proper) was brief and I think ‘I’ spent most of the time (of a few hours after the peak) hovering just on the edge, hoping to fall in, but not managing, and generally trying to maintain that state instead of letting go.)
Now, whenever ‘I’ am caught up in some emotion or thought loop or identity-creation (like defending ‘me’ and ‘others’ on the yahoo mailing list), it seems I can just advert to that memory, and the remembering of such immediately brings more clarity as to what is going on (as what is going on was so obviously totally not occurring during the PCE). So it seems all I must do is continuously incline the mind as such, and do that ‘till there ain’t no ‘me’ left. Do you have any comments on that course of action?
• [Richard]: Pleased to read of you recollecting a childhood PCE, during a sunny carefree day in Romania, and the best way to maximise the benefit gained from this trip is, of course, none other than what has become known as the actualism method … to wit: enjoying and appreciating being alive, each moment again, come what may.
It really is that simple: all the rest – such as feeling as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible, each moment again, by minimising both those futile malicious/ sorrowful feelings plus their antidotal loving/ compassionate feelings (and, thereby, maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings via this sensible utilisation of the potency of affective energy), for instance, and by being as naïve as is humanly possible, in order to be naiveté (and, hence, be sensitive to and receptive of the overarching pure intent), via being sincere about achieving one’s goal (in order to, thus, be sincerity in action) of peace-on-earth in this lifetime, for example, concomitant to coming to one’s senses both literally and metaphorically – are the various ways and means of effecting that very enjoyment and appreciation of being alive, each moment again, regardless of the situation and the circumstances.
Put succinctly: the means to the end – enjoying and appreciating being alive – are, therefore, no different to that end (the very enjoyment and appreciation of being alive) other than the former is, of course, affective in its nature and the latter is, quite obviously, actual by its very disposition.
Lastly, the actualism method segues into what has become known as the actualism process when the actualism method has become so automatic, via habituation, that one is walking about in a state of wide-eyed wonder (naiveté) simply marvelling at being alive (sensuosity) and being amazed/delighted that all this – the world about/the universe itself – is occurring in the first place; the actualism process is when it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the difference between one doing it (doing this business called being alive) and it happening of its own accord; when one becomes the experiencing of being alive/of it all occurring of its own accord one is then out-from-control (not “out of control” as in wayward) and a different-way-of-being has ensued.
It all becomes rather magical (“magical” as in prestidigitation) after that.
What stands out here for me is the idea clearly presented here is that the actualism method is enjoying and appreciating being alive, each moment again, come what may. That is the actualism method. I remember when first reading it that this pierced my worldview somewhat, because I recognized that I wasn’t doing that. That made me feel uncomfortable cause I had supposedly been putting actualism into practice for many months. Unfortunately I didn’t take the opportunity to start going about changing those things I’d need to change to get to the point where I would be enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive. Instead I remained as I had been and it took a few more encounters with this fact – that the actualism method is enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive.
The second paragraph makes it clear that everything else, all the other techniques, are ways to effect the enjoyment and appreciation of being alive. Also note that that is regardless of the situation and the circumstances. So all the things like minimizing good & bad feelings & maximizing felicitous feelings & being naivete & attentiveness & sensuousness etc are techinques one uses to effect the goal, which is enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive.
The same goes for eliminating the social identity. The social identity really prevents enjoying being alive! It’s like the first most obvious thing that is preventing it. Of course it hasn’t arisen on its own, so once it is taken care of you get to the rawer good & bad feelings, and then those must be minimized as well. But yea it’s all about enjoying & appreciating being alive!
Then Richard goes into how an out-from-control way of being occurs: it’s when enjoying & appreciating each moment of being alive has become so automatic because one has been doing it so much. And from there actual freedom is right around the corner.
Also, just noticing this now, but the way I phrased my queries were all in terms of the techniques. What should I do? Is this ok?
- practice as sincerely as possible
- practice as naively as possible
- tap into pure intent as much as possible
- notice when i am being emotional and advert to a memory of a PCE in order to see the emotion more clearly
- continue to incline the mind towards to pce
- do this until there’s no ‘me’ left
- let go in order to allow the PCE to happen/ to allow me to “fall in”.
Sounds good on the surface, maybe, to the untrained eye, but nowhere in that list did I ever mention actually enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive! It’s like I didn’t know what the point was at all. Which is an accurate way to describe it.
Hope this helps!
