Richard:
Pure contemplation is a state of unsullied wonderment: ‘how can this world happen?’, or ‘what is this universe doing here?’, or ‘where does this body come from?’. These questions are posed in such a way so as not to get a thought-out answer, but to simply wonder, in a pure contemplation of the actual. One stays with the notion: ‘I am this body’ and regards that magical world of the PCE. Opening up to that fairy tale-like world by seeing that it is indeed possible now makes it close … so close as to be already here. It is always already here. Regard the very best as possible for oneself … and for all human beings. There is a must in pure contemplation that something amazing can happen: all of a sudden ‘I’ am no more and the actual is already here. I am here where I always have been.
This is an interesting one, maybe someone could shed some light on it for me? Specifically the part - “one stays with the notion ‘I am this body’”
I have always avoided these notions as they seemed to me to be a sort of kidding myself, or splitting of myself. Because unless I am in a PCE I am not this body, I am ‘me’.
Perhaps it is a way to draw ‘myself’ closer to Actuality until ‘I’ go into abeyance, some version of fake it till you make it 
?
I suspect it’s there to counter the classic spiritual “I am not the body”
So much of the actualism corpus exists in direct relation to spiritual teachings because so much of it was sourced in spiritually-based mailing lists
Another useful quote is Richard’s “I asked not who I am, but what I am”
Yes @Kub933 is the identity, but what you are is that flesh & blood body
Right so it’s sort of rooting ones contemplation in the fact that what one actually is, is this flesh and blood body. This is to ensure that the contemplation leads one towards a PCE as opposed to ASC.
Identity can very easily take up the whole of one’s attention, it’s like the Minotaur’s labyrinth. We here probably take it for granted somewhat but it’s radical to regard the ‘self’ as insubstantial
• [Richard]: ‘… the very stuff of this body (and all bodies) is the very same-same stuff as the stuff of the universe in that it comes out of the ground in the form of the carrots and lettuce and milk and cheese, and whatever else is consumed, in conjunction with the air breathed and the water drunk and the sunlight absorbed.
I am nothing other than that … that is what I am, literally’.
Were you to hold a hand up before the eyes, palm towards the face, and rotate it slowly to its obverse – all the while considering that the very stuff the hand is comprised of is as old as the universe – whilst looking from the front of the eyes, as it were (and not through the eyes), then what I am reporting/ describing/ explaining may very well become apparent as an experiential understanding.
RICHARD: Just so that there is no misunderstanding: what really worked, when the identity was that ‘Altered State Of Being’, was
(1) a continuation of the totally dedicated and/or devoted pure intent to evince what the PCE’s evidenced … and
(2) a furtherance of the irreversible momentum, or inevitability, already set in place on day one as the process is, essentially, that of escaping from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny … and
(3) a prolongation of the attentiveness as to how the only moment of being alive was experienced … and
(4) an utter lack of dignity in being so far up oneself (narcissistic) as to render the term ‘egotistical’ a mere bagatelle in comparison … and
(5) a sense of humour which, if nothing else, made possible (6) a delightful resurgence of the earlier felicity/innocuity which again brought about, in combination with sensuousness, an outstandingly ingenuous sense of amazement, marvel and wonder.
And it was that last-named – the wide-eyed wonder of naiveté – which resulted in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception).
hi henry, just before I read your above post, I ran across this one:
Peter: 1
The method of becoming free from the Human Condition is devastatingly simple but requires a few initial ingredients for success to be guaranteed.
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A recognition that what you are currently doing is not working, an awareness of not being fully alive, an acknowledgement of living a second-rate life, the admission of failure in your relationships or on the spiritual path, an admission of not being free or maybe a haunting memory of a peak experience of perfection and purity.
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A willingness or intent to make freedom from malice and sorrow one’s main ambition in life – to become happy and harmless.
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An acknowledgement that the only moment one can experience life is this very moment.
What hit me hard, was the fact that I can only experience life at this very moment, I can not experience life in the past ( I can only “remember”/ imagine/ regret/ anger/ nostalgia etc. etc. ), same for the future ( I can only imagine it = hopes and fears / fantasies ) .
So I can choose to either “imagine” being alive – or – actually experience being alive at this very moment !
I think this will help me ( experientially ) much with applying the method 
Can you or anyone, please elaborate on this point 
Basically increasing the amount of time you spend being sensitively aware of how you’re feeling
Written by a fairly successful Actualist ( not FrankN ):
I wanted to write about feeling good - it’s probably the thing I’ve most neglected about actualism or have always found most difficult. I never even made the official commitment to “feeling good each moment again” because I basically just didn’t believe it was possible. I always thought it was so unfair - I wanted so badly to feel good yet I just couldn’t get it to happen. That was my perception of things at least .
The thing is though, yes I wanted/desired to feel good as a notion but
what I realise now is that I was not WILLING to feel good ultimately.
I was basically doubling down on existing sorrowful and malicious feelings - seeing them as impossible impediments to the feeling good which I apparently so badly wanted.
The thing is though, I was the one perpetuating those sorrowful and malicious feelings all along.
I was the one that was sustaining the beliefs behind those feelings as well.
Basically, I wasn’t actually willing to feel good come what may
- I had so many reasons why I couldn’t, shouldn’t and wouldn’t, feel good .
As a result, I also felt additionally like it was all so unfair that the actualism method wasn’t working for me!
It reminds me of this quote, which to me is just an all-time quote, from
Peter — it was key to changing my attitude about the whole thing
(of thinking I needed to find some secret method/technique):
Peter: “As for ‘one’s grip one the method’, the main difficulty with the method is its simplicity and straightforwardness – denial and obscuration being the main tricks a social/instinctual identity employs in order to evade exposure.”
It has taken me a long time and a lot of getting hit in the face and groin to finally find out that it’s possible to feel good if one is willing (as opposed to merely wanting) to do so.
This does require a strong intent I think,
enough to override the natural tendency of any feeling being to be malicious and sorrowful in many various ways. Now I want to prove to myself that it’s possible to feel good come what may as well. I am finally willing to commit to it!
[Richard]: Do you comprehend that an identity’s anger, for instance, can be affectively felt by another identity from a near-distance and, as such, can have an effect (and, quite often, the desired effect) despite the intervening physical space … and that the same applies to love (for another instance) or virtually any other strongly-felt feeling?
If so, then by experientially going deeper into those affective feelings it can be found that they swirl around, as it were, forming a whirlpool or an eddy and thus creating a centre (a vortex) which is the very stuff of the swirling as the one is not distinct from the other … ‘you’ are ‘your’ feelings and ‘your’ feelings are ‘you’.
It is that vortex – which is essentially ‘you’ at the core of ‘your’ being – that is the (affective) force known as a psychic force … it is not for nothing that I say psychic currents are the most effective power plays.
Richard This Moment Of Being Alive.
: When I am what-I-am, there is no void. By being what I actually am – this body only – I have no need for others; hence I also have no need to place the burden upon them to fulfil that what was lacking. Not only do I free myself from that perpetual pursuit, but I also free others in my company from the task ‘I’ impose upon them. Being this sensual body is actual fulfilment, each moment again. Nevermore will I be needy, greedy and grasping. Nevermore will I plot and plan and manipulate others. Nevermore will I have to pro… myself to others to assuage those main attributes of the identity within: being lost, lonely, frightened and cunning. Being what-I-am is to be free-flowing, spontaneous, delightful … and it is fun, for one can never be hurt again.[quote=“leila, post:74, topic:184, full:true”]
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Richard said: Whilst re-reading it in conjunction with my last paragraph above – allowing the details and atmosphere of that moment exactly as you remember it to occupy your consciousness fully – try reaching down inside of yourself intuitively (aka feeling it out) and go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until you come to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being … which is ‘being’ itself).
Having located ‘being’ itself, gently and tenderly sense out the area immediately below that (just above/ just before and almost touching on the sex centre).
Here you will find yourself both likeable (very important) and liking … for here lies naïveté.
Here is where you can, finally, be naïveté itself (the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’).
Now, whilst being naïveté itself – along with the details and atmosphere of that moment exactly as you remember it fully occupying your consciousness – you may very well be experiencing the softness enclosed in that shirt again (that immanent ‘purity personified’).
For here lies tenderness/ sweetness and togetherness/ closeness[
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Here is where it is possible for that oh-so-essential ‘golden thread/clew’ connection to establish itself.
Regards,
Has anyone here had any experience with this ???
Richard's Selected Writing on Awareness and Apperception.
Richard :
I have left the park and I am wandering through the village in order to reach my current residence on the other side of town. It is a delicious sensation to be here now, meandering my way through the press of life in this little town; I pass virtually unnoticed among the people engrossed in ‘being’ . Little do they realise the enormity of this moment of being alive here in this place, so enamoured are they of being ‘someone’ . I experience myself as no-one in particular; I am simply a body enjoying this exquisite motion of strolling, unimpeded by any self within. At this moment the park is but a faded memory and my residence a vague intention. Only this moment actually exists, for there is no lasting ‘I’ present which would make the past and future real . The freedom from enduring over a time known as the past, the present and the future, leaves one completely able to appreciate the impeccable purity of being here now. This appreciation is evidenced by being alive right here and just now as apperceptive awareness, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself.
Richard :
With peace comes benignity and benevolence. I simply have no desire, no urge, no compulsion – and no need – to hurt the other, or anyone else. I have discovered that it is possible to be free. I have found the joy of being me. Freed by pure intent from the very necessary social constraints – designed to control a wayward ego and a compliant soul – I can have generosity of character without striving. Pleasingly, I can take no credit for being kind, for it comes automatically. Thus I do not suffer from hubris, with its consequential need for practising humility. Altogether, it is an entirely new way of living, never before discovered, never before spoken of. It was sitting here, all of this time.
My life is now carefree … and full of genuine fun
in some ways I guess the bar to practise the actualism method (enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive), is somewhat high for someone who is not accustomed to feeling happy. To say nothing about someone who might suffer from depression, trauma or anxiety. So yes, it might be that you need to do some other things to get you to a point where you can deploy it effectively. Its a vast, complex area and quite individual so I wouldn’t want to advise.
But maybe you ( or anyone starting off really) could build up the actualism method very slowly and scaffold the process a bit. For example when I first started out I just gave myself the task of feeling good for short amounts of time - saw a few minutes. Feeling good mind you, not quite ‘enjoying and appreciating this moment’ - the actualism method lite
Then I patted myself on the back for attaining that goal. I was such a miserable sod, that I was astounded when I first felt good for a whole hour
I was like ‘man, this is the best!!’. Baby steps. A lot of back patting.
There was a lot of misfiring and misunderstanding in the early days. Plenty of dissociation and ASC type experiences. It was hardly a smooth, linear path.
Eventually it got to a point when I could remember several times during a day when I felt good. Then it reached this point where I could count on one hand how many times I felt bad. And so on.
Some days, I would focus more on investigation. Other days I would work on coverage e.g. trying to keep the actualism method going as long as I could without being too OCD about it.
In this way you could build your own individual programme. The goal should be doing it in a way where you are your best friend, you have fun and don’t make it too hard for yourself from the get go.
from the Article Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness
Apperceptiveness – is current-time awareness – in that it takes place — now at this moment in time and here at this place in space.
Apperceptiveness is the felicitous/ innocuous observance of what is happening right now, at this very moment.
Apperceptiveness stays forever current, surging perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of this moment in eternal time.
Apperceptiveness is goal-less awareness for one does not strain for results …
one is no longer having to accomplish anything.
When one is apperceptive, one experiences actuality at this moment in time in whatever form it takes; thus there is nothing to be achieved.
Apperceptiveness there is only pure conscious experience of the awareness of change at this moment that never goes away.
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Apperceptiveness is observing the moving flow of experience and enjoying things as they are changing … in full appreciation of being here and participating in this happenstance.
Apperceptiveness is seeing the birth, growth, and maturation of all phenomena … and it is seeing all phenomena age, decay and die.
Apperceptiveness is its own attentiveness moment by moment, continuously … one is the experiencing of the doing of this moment of being alive.
Apperceptiveness stops one from adding anything to perception, or subtracting something from it : one does not enhance anything for one does not emphasise anything.
One is free to observe exactly what is here – now – without distortion.
Apperceptiveness is sensuous awareness of only what is currently occurring and in precisely the way it is happening now – there is neither tolerance nor intolerance – with no (?forced ?)acceptance or prejudice.
Apperceptiveness is non-predictive observation in that it is this ability of the mind to regard experience without fault-finding feelings. With this ability, one sees things without assumption or opprobrium ( harsh criticism or censure )…
and one is surprised by everything being ***** extraordinarily ordinary. ( maybe like what geoffrey and Srinath report ??? )
In apperceptiveness everything is in equipoise ( neither good or bad ) and one’s interest in things is for them to be exactly as they are in their actual condition. One does not have to estimate or establish …
- one totally acknowledges with delight. *
* everything occurring as for the first time. *
Apperceptiveness is a dispassionate discernibleness that does not take sides nor get hung up in what is apperceived … it is a sensitive fascination.
Apperceptiveness is the observation of * everything occurring as for the first time. *
Apperceptiveness is possible because of attentiveness, which is not analysis that is based on emotional and passionate recollection.
Apperceptiveness is the immediate sensitive discernment of whatever is happening without the medium of feeling – it comes before the feeling-tones in the perceptual process – and thought may or may not be operating.
Apperception is – non-identity – awareness that sees things clearly and cleanly and purely … beyond the level of feelings and ‘being’ itself.
Apperceptiveness is the absence of the heart-felt corruption of the mind. The result is a brain which remains unstained and invulnerable, completely unaffected by the ‘ups and downs’ of life.
Richard :
The activity of attentiveness reminds one of why one is doing this: in actualism, one puts one’s attention on being here … now…
When feelings cause one’s awareness to wander from actualism’s focus, it is attentiveness that reminds one that one’s mind is being manipulated … and why one is doing this happening called being alive.
It is attentiveness that brings one back to the object of actualism: apperception.
Apperceptiveness is a very actual goal and those who seek to actualise the pure consciousness experience (PCE) may be activating attentiveness for a period of months or even years.A sincere actualist is attentive to feelings all the time, day in, day out, whether active or resting; whether in association or on one’s own; whether there is thinking as well as perceiving or not. When attentiveness is actual, one will notice when one becomes stuck in one’s feeling patterns; it is that very noticing which allows one to back out of the feeling process and free oneself from it. Sensuousness returns one’s attention to its proper focus: if one is actualising a virtual freedom at that moment, then one’s focus will be the actual object of actualism ( which is PCE ).
**VINEETO:
Here is a description I sent to Tarin about 5 weeks afterwards (29 November 2010) –
[Vineeto]: "Since then I experience myself as what I am, not just this physical body but with particular qualities to the experiencing which to my own surprise I called ‘what I always wanted to be/what I have always been’ even though I have never lived it. For an analogy of how I experience what I am at core I have to go into the Greek mythology where people’s imagination had populated nature with nymphs, inherent/chthonic to springs or trees or groves. This experience of myself is very light and playful, as if living naked in the wilderness, utterly on my own and undeniably undefined by either people or events. I described it as being innocence personified. Sensuosity, sensuality and ( se…) are as much part of what I am just as ( se…) and abundance are happening in nature everywhere. As such I am no different to a tree, a rock, a spring, a mountain or a distant star and can truly say that I am the universe experiencing itself as this flesh and blood body. I am here to play, play in this abundant effervescent universe, innocent for the first time, carefree in gay abandon, forever fulfilled and exquisitely aware each moment again of the magic of both nature and the wonderful intimacy that is possible with another human being.
Needless to say that I am having the best time of my life…"