@Kub933 Good point, I do see what you are saying.
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@claudiu I stand corrected. I am changing the word ‘could’ to ‘would’ : " It ‘would’ be different if one is af.
Good! So now you know for a fact that whatever may be happening in the gut, it does not necessarily, causally lead to any emotional turmoil, in the causal way that dropping a ball will lead to it falling to the ground due to gravity.
And you know it for a fact because you see that for an actually free person, it would not cause emotional turmoil.
Now that you know there is not an intrinsic, physical link between a gut sending a signal, and a brain receiving it and triggering emotional issues – you have to look for another answer as to what is causing the emotional issues.
In other words, it does not have to do with the physics and biology of the gut and the brain as it relates to humans. It has something to do with the particular human experiencing the gut issues.
I’ll just re-present what I wrote earlier, now that you see this salient fact:
In other words, the key is to look at how one reacts to and relates to the fact of the gut issues, as there will lie the root cause of the emotional issue – not in the physical fact of the state of the gut.
And the same, of course, applies to any physical ailment or issue.
Which is truly wonderful – we are not fated or doomed to be miserable in this marvelously grand and complex universe of ours!
Cheers,
Claudiu
Thanks @Vineeto @jamesjjoo @claudiu @Kub933 for your replies…I’m feeling additionally inspired now to look deeper into this issue while keeping all the replies in mind
@Vineeto About Richard’s pain medication, I wasn’t planning to take it myself but that was just a curiosity to know his situation…But then now I realise that there is a bit of a danger inherent in revealing those Richard’s pain meds because who knows at some point in time some enthusiastic feeling being may mistakenly take it to be a sort of a “Richard pill” to actual freedom and perhaps even overdose on it 
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Hey y’all, I might have some anecdotal information on this topic. For my entire life, I was anti-psychiatric medicine. After reading Richard’s writings I realized that I had beliefs in this area. I had made a judgement about SSRIs based on beliefs and factoids. It was this quote in particular:
I am more happy to go direct to the chemist. Researchers have sorted them all out and synthesised what is in the herbs. Live herbs – or dried herbs – are imprecise. It depends upon the growing season, climatic conditions, environmental factors and so forth, for the strength of the herb. There are many incidences of people taking herbs and finding them too strong – or too weak – for their illness … with deleterious effects. Chemists are precise and one can be assured of the correct dosage. I have nothing against herbs per se, of course they have medicinal properties; it is just that the whole business is imprecise and it is easy to over-dose or under-dose.
Western medicine is not perfect, but it is not as bad as those people who object to it make it out to be. What I find interesting is that those rich people who live in countries like China or India who get some particular disease have this remarkable habit of flying to the US or the UK to get the best medicine, the best surgery that Western medicine can provide. They know that that is where they can find a cure. I find that quite indicative. They do not rely upon the traditional healing of their own country – that ‘healing’ that is so revered by those reactionary and disgruntled persons brought up in this land of plenty.
A Lot Of Nonsense Passes For Sagacity
As you can see, this isn’t an endorsement of psychiatric medicine. However, it did cause me to reflect on my attitudes regarding medicine and illuminated that I had beliefs in homeopathic remedies that were unexamined. These manifested as a preference for “natural” remedies and an avoidance of chemical remedies.
This lead me to be open enough to trying an SSRI. The reason being was because for my entire life, as far as I can remember (I think the age of 5), I would wake up with an incredibly intense sense of longing best described as depression. As the day went on, it would subside, but no matter how good I felt at the end of the day, I would wake up in the depths of sadness and longing. This sadness and longing intuitively seemed to have something to do with existential matters - but I could never navigate to the root of the issue. I have theories, and I think I have found out why - - but I mostly want to focus on my experience with SSRIs.
They worked. I stopped waking up incredibly sad. I wasn’t “numb” as some people describe. I still had a full range of emotions and I could still get incredibly sad with the right triggers. But I didn’t start my day in that space. And since I was doing the actualism method at the time, I was able to leverage this space to make progress more rapidly.
I didn’t go in blind, however. I researched my options thoroughly, and I tried to understand how SSRIs work. It helped me have an intelligent relationship with my doctor. I had to try a few different ones, and one in particular, did make me feel “numb.” Side effects of some were more pronounced than others. The side effects of some SSRIs toned down, while other SSRIs did not. But in the end, I found something that was effective.
My current opinion is this: if someone wanted to get the most out of an SSRI, it needs to be combined with CBT, or better yet, the actualism method. They will not, however, “cure” the human condition. It would be nice if we had a somatic answer, and maybe we will one day, but as of now that is wishful thinking.
I don’t recommend Benzodiazepines and I do not think they have much to offer other than a rapid sedative effect - so their usefulness is limited to panic attacks at best. It’s easy to become dependent on them and the withdrawal can be life threatening. They will absolutely make you feel “numb” and “foggy” and “out of it.”
I personally recommend SSRIs with long half-lifes. If you miss a dose you likely won’t notice, and they are much easier to taper off of in my experience. By example, a drug like effexor has a half-life of ~10hrs, so if you miss your morning dose, you may find yourself wanting to puke by the end of the day. Prozac has a half-life of 4-6 days so you could miss doses for weeks before withdrawal symptoms appear.
I currently take 20mg of Prozac and 300mg of Bupropion (a dopamine reuptake inhibitor). I’ve quit both of these cold turkey at one point - and symptoms were easily managed by taking a dose whenever I noticed withdrawal symptoms (vertigo, weakness, nausea). It was a cakewalk to manage compared to coming off Benzodiazepines in my 20s. (also cold-turkey)
I also believe that this combination has helped me learn more rapidly than I ever have. Though if you’re of a normal disposition, I cannot recommend using them for this purpose. And it’s entirely likely that being able to learn more quickly is due to the clarity that the actualism method affords. (It’s much easier to read, listen, observe, reflect…)
I’d be happy to elaborate more in a separate thread if there be interest. For now, I wanted to offer a perspective from personal experience.
Fundamentally, however, medication cannot resolve issues with the human condition. And I often wonder if I was somehow born deficient, or if my existential sadness was caused by my upbringing in the Christian faith as that will retard someone’s development in my opinion.
I just got back from a long flight, so apologies for any grammatical errors as I do not have the energy at the moment to re-read this.
This phrase I’m finding good to instantly pull me back here because I find that often the mind just wants to fall into lower feeling places by default and get stuck in endless thought loops aka the inner dream world which lives in past n the future…It isn’t a present moment mindfulness thing though but a quick jab of sorts…
“And then I’m back here…where things are actually happening”
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Why should there be a point ? This is a good point 
So a while back I had 2 bigger breakthroughs in my sense of national identity…As I’ve found out often that sometimes it takes more “hits” to remove some particular identity
Its very obvious that belonging and being patriotic to one’s country would mean to be forever at a psychological war with someone from another country(which in turn can and does lead to physical wars with horrible consequences) but this simple observation didn’t do it for me
The first dent came about quite interestingly because of the Russia-Ukraine war…It occurred to me that what a country actually needs to have a good chance at winning is the weapons and the tech and the intelligence and surveillance and such…Just an emotionally charged chest-thumping jingoism won’t work…or in other words, more than the tribalistic feelings of patriotism, its intelligence and tech that raises the odds of winning…so there it goes - I don’t need to have patriotic passions to defend the land if it really comes to that…intelligence and tech can do a much superior job at that.
The next one came about in a bit of a deep flash of insight a few weeks back - there is this body and the national identity…and without that sense of national identity, this body will be directly with the actual universe…its a fictitious blocking presence that is felt and it has to go if this body has to be with the universe directly !
Nationalism is software organic technology after all, and it is important to get both the numbers and the talent behind the creation and execution of the IT synthetic technology. This will be less and less important though, as synthetic software (AI) and hardware (robotics) take those places in calling all the shots.
By then, war could be even more ridiculous. Could get to a point that the campaigns are so far removed from human actors, that wars might as well be played in MMORPG games and virtual realities to avoid all the costs, lol. I mean, if there are already war conventions, treaties and protocols, making war effectively some kind of game, let’s take it to the next level already. 
Identity-smashing is the game in town these days…so I was thinking on the fundamental question - why give up one’s identity ? An identity is apparently one’s protector, so here are the reasons that came up…I’ve found that there are 2 main reasons - the first angle is the ending of a delusion as in a santa-claus and the second is the removal of the suffering angle.
1). Without identity, the illusion ends
2). Without identity’s blocking presence, the purity of actual is visible
3). Without identity, suffering ends for me
4). Without identity, I have no potential to cause suffering for others
All theory and no practicals makes an identity a cunning one 
…so from my personal experience, I’ve seen that the major one that took a good blow was my belief in eating vegetarian food…and recently, the sense of national identity took a hit(but only time will tell if this comes back)
The next 2 major ones are the gender identity and vocational identity…the vocational identity is somewhat lesser nowadays once the passion I had for programming games for a living was replaced over the years with more practical considerations such as putting food on the table and saving for retirement 
… gender identity on the other hand is tied in with the belief in fairness and thats why its taking longer…for example, thinking “oh the other gender has this n that advantage, its unfair !”…took me a while to see this unfairness angle…
Richard, Peter and Vineeto - all of them have spoken a lot about the gender identity and for a good reason…Its something that cant be taken lightly when it actually shapes a large part of me and my thoughts, feelings and behaviours…but its all good fun discovering and dismantling it…its amazing to see an innocent actual body talking and interacting the very rare few brief times I could experience that…an intrinsic liking and appreciation comes for another !
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My identity at this point seems like that of an old white man.
Aah the age factor…thats an interesting one…being old, young etc…That itself can make one tied up to a certain power based hierarchy
I’m trying to recollect how age is experienced in a PCE…There wasn’t anything like age at that time…brain being aware of itself and there was no age to experience
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Yes, I don’t recall any age factor in a pce. Age is definitely a factor now. I just signed a contract for a prepaid cremation about an hour ago. I have to make payments for two years before it will pay to get me toasted. lol
Two notes :
1). There is something that was present at the back of my head which was holding me back and I needed an intellectual resolution to this .The universe ultimately created blind nature which in turn leads to life on earth being red in tooth and claw with lifeforms only being able to continue by consuming other lifeforms, so at some level I was unable to full agree to move towards the actual world(I haven’t yet 
). Now Richard had already answered to this to someone wherein he said something like “umpteen stars and galaxies are doing this n that, but you want to focus only on lifeforms feeding on other lifeforms”, but this answer didn’t do for me.
So then here came my resolution - All my life, I was happy to use several capabilities the universe gave me such as intelligence, common sense, ability to orgasm and what not, but somehow I don’t want to use the ability to self-immolate ? Like why the preference to use some abilities and not others for my benefit haha and even if blind nature proceeds with lifeform eating lifeforms, still the non-human animals have a decent deal compared to humans - they get to walk nude, not worry about a bank balance and not have existential fears just to name a few, so shut up compassion for non-human animals
2). The other thing is that I always used to think of the “benevolence” of Pure Intent in terms of “warmth” aka in a nurturing sense and this comes perhaps how I had been taught this word while growing up…I always took it to be like some warm and jovial Santa Claus or a fat happy king who throws jewels at the peasants lol…in short, I used to see in its nurturing human warmth sense…Richard had explained this to me a couple of times but I still couldn’t see it clearly…something just never clicked about benevolence…but now I get it. Benevolence is in an organic richness and abundance …unless I’m wrong even now…
This brought up another question that I’ve thought ocassionally - that festive quality of the actual world(for which there is a whole article in Richard’s Journal) - what is that about ? I’m guessing that since festivity is largely about activity as we can see during festivals, so the sense of actuality being all the time festive comes from actuality being always active as-in matter is not merely passive.
Its fun to contemplate on these !
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I think the best advantage the non-human animals have is the nice short memory… something terrible happens and 15 minutes later they’re happily nibbling the grass! It’s only we humans that have developed the ability to worry about this & that for decades after the fact.
Luckily for us that ability is also part of what unlocks the possibility of self-immolation!
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For me what makes me not stress about the eating (I’m eating some nice mystery meat dumplings right now actually… maybe pork?) is that unless you’re photosynthesizing or doing something interesting with chemicals in a deep-sea vent, you’re eating something… we’ve got our aforementioned grass-nibblers, plenty of amoebas eating other amoebas, bug-eaters and so on… it is this necessary oral calorie and nutrient acquisition which makes all this action happen. You don’t get an animal to be eaten in the first place without that animal first eating someone or something else!
The ancient nature of this mechanism forces me to accept it as a very, very natural part of life on this planet
Of course, whether you choose to eat this or that is your own choice!
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The way I have resolved (to my satisfaction) this thing of animals suffering is like so :
It is clear that animals (just like humans) posses an affective faculty, there is fear, aggression, nurture and desire in animals all over the planet. Just like there is fear, aggression, nurture and desire in all (except the actually free) human beings on this planet.
There is a difference between animals and human beings however in that our unusually powerful brains are capable of creating a brain pattern called the mind. Due to this capacity the instinctive ‘self’ becomes a cognitively backed operation and transforms into an identity. This identity not only suffers by virtue of ‘being’ in the first place but it also has the capacity to be consciously aware of it’s own suffering. The machinery for apperception is in place and yet all this is being usurped by the identity formed of the instinctual passions, with terrible consequences both for the ‘self’ and for the flesh and blood bodies.
These identity encumbered human beings naturally project the same kind of experience back onto animals. We observe the same passions in animals and thus we assume that they must experience ‘themselves’ in the same way that ‘we’ experience ‘ourselves’. This ends up with things like the documentary about the guy who became best friends with an octopus.
Yet although the affective faculty and the ‘self’ exist both in humans as well as animals, there is a difference in the way that we consciously experience ourselves. It is clear when interacting with any animal that they are not aware of themselves in the same way that we (as humans) are aware of ourselves. There is suffering happening in both and yet the awareness of said suffering is different.
I do not for a second think that a rabbit has the same awareness of being conscious as I do, so there is suffering happening in the rabbit but there is limited (if any) capacity for a conscious awareness of this suffering happening.
This is something I contemplate sometimes when I look at my dog poncho, that there is this relationship that I apparently have with him and yet I realise that this is my own projection. He is not even aware of being conscious, never mind having some elaborate affectively based interactions with me. Of course he does have a functioning affective faculty and yet there is this whole chunk of experience that I (as a human being) take for granted which he simply does not have the capacity for.
There are passions and emotions happening in him and yet there is no awareness of consciousness that would allow him to experience all this like I do.
I guess the words blind nature actually describe this situation very well. In that animals are “blind”, human beings are not. The “blind” is referring to the absence of the wakeful experience of being alive, which can only be observed to it’s full capacity in human beings. Of course the fact that I as a human being am writing on a computer, through a world wide web and on a forum designed to facilitate the eradication of suffering gives some example as to what this “wakeful experience of life” entails.
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Oh yes, having a short term memory is a really good one too…Oftentimes I’ve noticed something funny while watching those lions ferociously roaring and attacking - they are like in their full wild animal mode and a second later they turn their head around looking here n there calmly into the horizon as if nothing happened just now
Then there is the lack of any knowledge of getting a disease due to this or that…Food poisoning ? Cancer ?
I often think that generally speaking dying as an animal in their version of “animal condition” is way better than dying as a human in the Human Condition with all the burdensome existential nonsense that comes with it
But then yeah you’re right…as Humans only we have the ability to recognize the shit we are in and come out of it
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Yes, I know what you are saying…Like animals aren’t exactly “awake” in a sense lol
And this is precisely why the spiritual gurus are often called “awakened” which awakening is in comparison with the rest of the humans…but as actualists who have had a PCE, we know they are in an even more dreamy sitiuation than animals
But then when it comes to the blind part of blind nature, we as humans have the same blind heritage as the non-human animals…like for instance, getting enraged and lashing out
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Yes exactly there is those same blind (instinctual mechanisms) in humans and yet there is a wakeful experience of them happening (as well as being alive in general). This awareness of them happening is also what allows us to free ourselves from them. Animals neither have the wakeful experience nor the ability to free themselves from those mechanisms.
It seems this whole trap of compassion as it relates to animals is really just based on a limited understanding of the situation. That temptation to anthropomorphise is always there and then next comes the humility which will have us believing that an ant is more intelligent than a human etc.
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