Supplementing actualism with conventional methods

As much as this forum might have some stuff in it which from an actualism point-of-view is a bit on the “wrong” side, I think it‘s great that people are talking about their own issues and kind of putting it all out there. It is only by doing so that more experienced people, actually free people etc can help, contribute, weigh in.

Firstly, I could not agree more with agree more with @Srinath that there is an element to actualism which is tricky. I have tried nonstop for a year and a half and it has only now started yielding “stable” results (totally worth it by the way). It might sound like the most obvious thing in the world to enjoy and appreciate, but it isn‘t that easy to apply it for a feeling-being programmed to do anything but (and with daily life circumstances which don‘t exactly support that either). Even now, where I am having these intermittent periods of 15 mins here and thrtr which are full of wonder and enjoyment, it is still tricky for me to work out how to prolong these periods or reinitiate them when they come to an end. But this is nothing compared how difficult it was when I first started actualism, completely burnt out and with major chronic stress issues. Try getting back to feeling good when you live at the extreme end of feeling bad!

This is why I recommend a balanced approach for those who find themselves starting out in a worse state than the average person. Actualism is all about wellbeing, and I don‘t think there is anything wrong with doing other things which promote wellbeing. There is a risk that people who are already somewhat “messed up” then go all hardcore trying to make PCEs happen without knowing when they are going wrong, and by so doing, get themselves in all sorts of trouble. I think all or most actually free people have had panic attacks or dissociative ASCs and such along the way - and for a person whose sympathetic nervous system is constantly activated, this would not help one feel better, obviously.

Personally, I did go hardcore. I turned down SSRIs twice, I went for PCE walks despite feelings of dread/exhaustion, I followed what I perceived to be rules of successful actualism (like giving up exercise because Richard stated it distracts from the stressor within etc). On top of that I was trying to set up an entirely new career having moved back to Australia whilst corona was happening etc - there was a lot going on. Anyway, I would say my approach was misguided, and not many people would persevere through it as I did, hence my offering this advice. That being said, there were enough experiences in that period which showed me a window to the actual world and which kept me going, so I don‘t necessarily regret my approach even though it was at times painful. For other people, I would wish things to be a bit easier if they can be…

So when I talk about supplementary activities to actualism, I mean stuff like leaving your phone at home and going to the park for a few hours, spending time with family or friends or pets, doing fun stuff like going to the zoo which will get you looking at the world, taking time off from work, having a holiday away, doing yoga or some form of relaxing physical exercise, picking up hobbies like cooking or building lego etc etc. I wasn‘t meaning opening up the whole pandoras box of stuff which people use to try and deal with the human condition whether icebaths, vipassana, homeopathy, self-diagnosing trauma and running marathons (this list is not a comment on anything people have mentioned here btw).

I would also be careful about diagnosing stuff. Giving yourself a named illness, which might be reinforced by a therapist or something, might not necessarily help - it is easy to turn that into an identity thing. A friend who is a psychologist said he thought I had burn out, and so that‘s what I have called it - but I was wary about turning this into some kind of label where I was going to then try to fix some obscure illness called X, rather than just…fix the fact I felt bad.

If you are feeling bad often, or in a totally exhausted/fucked up state, I would suggest trying to remember a time in your life when you felt really well. What was your life like then, compared to now? What are you doing now, that you weren´t doing then, to contribute to feeling bad? What lifestyle changes can you make now, to get yourself closer to feeling good like you used to? This is almost like “tracing back to when you last felt good” but on a long-term scale.

Doing this, I realised firstly I was trying to get away from feeling bad using promiscuous sex and sexting - feeling aroused all the time gave me the “energy” I had to get through life. Underneath I was absolutely exhausted, but with a fulltime job and never being able to resolve this exhaustion, I was using this drug called sex to distract myself (admittedly fairly common in the gay community). Which only made things 1000 times worse of course, because sex drive was now in control - keeping me up till 3am finding a partner online, pumping myself full of chemicals including adrenalin and generally causing havoc. Hardly the way to rest and relaxation :slight_smile:

Secondly, I realised how little I was enjoying daily life. I was making actualism “rules” for myself, like not catching up with people, not wanting to use socialising as a form of enjoyment etc - going all Richard-imitative with it. Imitating an actually free person, whilst not being one.

Thirdly, I realised having a full-time job and only 4 weeks off a year is not an easy system to be a part of when one is exhausted. When I was a kid we used to have long summer holidays to recover from the school year. As an adult you are supposed to power through, and if you get anxious or depressed, they prescribe you medication. I looked for a career pathway that would enable me to get out of this (which is in digital, like many of us) as well as any opportunities I could to take a decent holiday, which I will be doing soon, as well as work hours which are flexible. Obviously there are feelings to look at here too (the resentment for having to work), but positive lifestyle changes are absolutely compatible with actualism and there is absolutely no reason to avoid them.

So that’s what I mean by doing stuff to support (not replace) one’s application of the actualism method. These days I am sleeping 8-9 hours a night, having proper REM sleep, I have appetite, my nervous system is settled (there is still the occasional trigger), I drink decaf lol, I look healthy according to friends and family. I go out, do stuff, have fun, explore the natural world. All of this really helps with actualism, which is probably why these wondrous experiences are happening occasionally. But even without those, the effort and perspicacity required to get oneself from feeling bad to feeling pretty good (for a feeling being) is really worth it. It facilitates discovery and experience of the actual world. The great thing is as well, there is a whole forum of people who can help support each other in it.

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I wholeheartedly agree. Let me elucidate my situation and thinking a bit more.

Firstly, I guess I should have been more explicit about my situation than this:

I’m definitely well in the traumatized and anxious camp.
I discovered actualism years ago, when trauma was something I was only vaguely aware of whilst still being pretty shure there was something seriously broken in me. At the time actualism seemed like a ticket to the better better side of normal. I remember one PCE, but it was very brief and I still haven’t been able to start consistently applying the actualism method. I’ve only recently(several month’s ago) started earnestly exploring my traumas, and methods of dealing with them.
It is my intuition that as actualism becomes more popular, more people in my situation will try it as a solution and subsequently find they need something more to “get there”. What I wrote is for that kind of person. Through applying these practices, I have become able to start facing my feelings, and on occasion be able to practice the method and experience periods of felicity.

I agree, when I’m being sincere and not too stressed, I cannot disagree that fundamentally, ‘I’ am the one wreaking all this havoc, and the more I’m able to face my feelings, the more I’m able to acknowledge that yes, “I am doing this”(the bad feeling), which more often that not results in the end of said bad feeling.

The ‘self’ needs to be accessible though and why not harness physiology to that end.

@proporcrutch 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 :slightly_smiling_face: 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 :rofl: 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.

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@Srinath This is super inspiring/reassuring to read. Sometimes reading Richard’s experiences it makes it seem like applying the method should be so very easy and I am somehow wrong if I cannot just simply enjoy and appreciate each moment over. It is good to read the words of someone who has attained Actual freedom but did not have such an easy time applying the method from the get go.

I can %100 relate to what you wrote and this is exactly how I have experienced the whole journey in myself. Going from being a miserable sod and just trying to be less miserable, slowly building up a scaffolding of different tools and approaches and eventually things starting to come together until I finally arrived at a point where feeling good comes a lot more naturally and things click.

I think for guys getting into Actualism this is something that is really worth mentioning and talking about.
I also remember the first couple of weeks of applying the method and having some initial success for a bit, I remember going to the park and simply feeling good which now is normal but back then it was like I have just discovered fire for the first time, it was so amazing that I could actually feel good for a few hours whilst walking in the park. I guess everyone starts where they are and for some people that might be from a place that is pretty messed up like it was for me.

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Yes, I actually agree now that trying to find similarities is a mistake. Meditation is meditation, actualism is actualism.

To give some explanation of my motivations for seeking a supplement to actualism in the form of a 10 min Meditation / CBT / EMDR session:

  • My health issues are largely caused by stress. My doctor had suggested the techniques due to their ability to strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system and minimise the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and threat centre in the brain. This should help my adrenal system to recover by minimising stress and increasing relaxation.

  • I’ve had a lot of stress and neurotic thoughts related to the mating game over the course of the past month. It put me into a bit of a tailspin. Previously I’ve had some success with actualism and have utilised investigation well to overcome issues. But I’ve investigated and investigated from multiple angles (like 6 different underlying beliefs, feelings etc) which give a reprieve for a while but it keeps cropping up again. So, I’d started to feel stuck and frustrated, especially since I could see this causing my health issues to deteriorate, which made me have less energy / confidence, which made the mating game problems worse. Vicious cycle.

The CBT / meditation has actually been more successful in the short term by curbing the neurotic thoughts and removing the stressful feelings. I know that the only way to truly eliminate them is to eliminate being, but that feels like a long way off, hence why I was enquiring about supplementing.

My intent is still to practice actualism - I still go on PCE walks each day and try to enjoy and appreciate each moment as much as possible at all times of the day, other than the 10 minute meditation session. But partly I started the thread because I was worried about a conflict - and that seems to have been confirmed.

I will definitely drop the meditation practice when I feel I no longer need it.

I hope this answer is useful. If something is not understood (which is common in my english writings :grimacing:) or some clarification is needed, please feel free to ask.
It is good to clarify that what I am telling here is descriptive and not prescriptive: I am not saying that the same could not be achieved in another way; I am saying that I couldn’t:

When I took MBSR in 2012 I was repeated: “practicing Mindfulness is easy; the hard part is remembering to do it”. I could not help thinking that it was the same thing that had happened to me with AF: the intermittency of my practice because “I forgot”.

And not because it was unsuccessful. In 2001 (31) and 2002 I experienced (besides the sporadic extra-ordinary states of consciousness) my mood improved, conceptual and behavioral changes and growing cracks in my ego.

But I reached a ceiling that became a plateau. Then, slowly, a downhill. I felt guilty then for not dedicating myself as I should to AF, for not asking myself HAETMOBA to achieve EAATMOBA (days, weeks), for not reading (weeks, months), for not participating in the forum (never), for suffering again from moods I thought I had overcome. But, in addition, for the privilege of having lived wonderful states (as long PCEs) and, nevertheless, not doing anything to approach them definitively to make a better world without “me”.

Necessary summary of my state between 2003 (33) and 2011 (41) -I omit details that I can include in the journal-:

  • I had long left Buddhism and Logosophy (another spiritual discipline) which had radically improved my life; married to a logosophist; with two daughters; with ethical, social, existential, family and work dilemmas; I left for that reason computer science at the end of 2011, in spite of being one of the best programmers in the country in certain language, and internationally certified network administrator; I turned to secondary and private teacher with more satisfaction but a fraction of the money; I was still addictively dependent and abusing psychotropic drugs from psychiatric problems in my youth, and painkillers related to old and new physical problems.

  • By 2012 I was clear on the causes of why I was not getting better with AF:

  1. Attachment to my ego despite the aforementioned cracks (I wanted to “be” someone or do things for which “I” was recognized, regardless of all I had already accomplished).
  2. Fear of losing my self despite knowing, thanks to the PCEs, how wonderful it was to live without it.
  3. Veiled hope that I would somehow continue after death.

They generated a dilemma that was the main source of my conflict and suffering. After enough years I noticed a recurring dynamic: periods when I returned to AF and obtained its benefits (even EEs or brief PCEs), were followed by “forgetfulness” due to the avoidance that those three causes produced in me, since ultimately AF demanded that I ceased to exist.

So, in late 2012 I tried MBSR. I practiced formally (sitting) daily for a while, then periodically, finally only informally (no sitting).

Results: my stress decreased due to deeper levels of relaxation, even during daily activities; my attentional level improved; I felt better in mood; decreased my headaches, muscle aches, stomach problems (including hiatal hernia) and panic attacks -the ones you think you are going to die from-. The disabling waist pain related to two lumbar disc herniation was much improved (one of which in 2003 -oldest daughter of 1 year- had extruded, spilling the contents of the disc onto the sciatic, confining me to bed for days, weeks or even months on several occasions, in addition to permanently numbing my left foot, causing constant pain in my leg -which I still experience-, work and family problems, etc.). As a result, I could return to previously impossible tasks -including sitting more than a limited amount of time in the PC-. Also decreased and finally eliminated my dependence on and abuse of painkillers.

Why did I accomplish this by paying attention to my breathing, observing thoughts and feelings non-judgementally, “engaging but not identifying” (as we were instructed to do)? After all, in informal meditation I also had to manage to remember these questions during the day:

  1. Where is the mind? [see if in the past, present or future].
  2. What is it doing? [see if there is attachment or if there is rejection]
  3. What is it saying? [see the thoughts, listen to “the voice”]

If “practicing Mindfulness is easy but the hard part is remember to do it”, why did I forget so much less than, for example, HAETMOBA? Because I could practice Mindfulness without feeling threatened, since it was not looking for “my” elimination. I think this difference was key and explains why I had not been able to succeed in trying to improve these same problems for years using AF. At best I ended up doing nothing; at worst, it was like throwing fuel on fire.

Meanwhile, Mindfulness inadvertently strengthened the process of returning more and more often to my attention and enjoying the senses more often.

I attribute to this strengthening that on October 2/12, while walking around meditating informally, I began to reflect on the similarities and differences of means and ends with respect to AF (specifically comparing it to HAETMOBA plus EAATMOBA). When I got home I resumed reading Tolle’s “The Power of Now”, just where he proposes -as one of the “gateways to the now”- to pay attention to the whole body instead of just the breath.

It was the beginning of a process that unexpectedly escalated to the 3-hour PCE I mentioned to @Kub933 in Thoughts meandering - #4 by Miguel, in which I managed to observe again and register in greater detail my perceptions of emotions, senses, inner voice, thoughts (including the aforementioned meandering in the context of the weakening and disappearance of thoughts at the beginning of the process, and in their reappearance and strengthening at the end).

In December (two months later) I wrote in my diary: “Since that experience, I’ve been living what I can describe as a new stage with respect to my general state of attention and consciousness”. I also emphasized the weakening the experience produced in my attachment to the achievements of the ego, in the fear of losing my ego, and in the hope of continuity thanks to regaining the sense of well-being, joy and felicitous feelings of the early days of AF, “which it seemed I would never experience again”.

Consequently, from then on I started to practice AF in a different way and with renewed conviction (regardless the problems that I experienced again later on, but not because of those three resistances -I must amend this: the third disappeared; the first one became much weaker; the second persisted-).

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Thanks for the explanation Miguel. It resonates with me in the sense that I feel like meditation can help me come to a stable point, health and ego-wise where I can practice actualism better.

I find it interesting that Richard became enlightened before AF and often wonder if he had an easier path to AF because of this. His writings on the AFT certainly make the method appear easy :grinning: (note: I don’t have any intention of attempting to become enlightened first!)

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@Srinath thanks, I’m indeed scaffolding the process this way, except my starting point was becoming comfortable with feeling feelings, rather than pushing them away / shoving them somewhere.
@Kub933 it’s indeed reassuring that you can go from being habitually miserable to nothing but perfection. After having read the previous sentence, ‘reassuring’ seems to be the understatement of the century :slight_smile:
Re: “brief” periods of feeling good
A month ago I had my first solid hour or so of feeling nice(maybe not good good, but definitely better than neutral), which was very big for me and my reaction was: “Even if only this is possible to be permanent it’d be a massive improvement and I probably can’t even imagine what’s possible”. (I did have a very brief PCE years ago, but the memory is pretty muddled).
@Kub933 seems like you’ve gone a long way from where you started and a biig pat on the back is in order.
Also, I’ve been under the impression that it was relatively easy for you to start. I think that this type of actualism rags to riches stories are motivational indeed, and if more are shared in the future it would be pertinent for them to be compiled somewhere so people don’t beat themselves up thinking that everyone that is successful did so overnight.

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What is EAATMOBA?

Oh, it’s Enjoy And Appreciate This Moment Of Being Alive

Hey @Miguel,

You seem pretty set on your “established” three reasons why you find AF hard to practice (e.g. attachment to ego, fear of losing yourself, hope of continuing after death). Are you really so sure these are the reasons? To me they sound like analytical/post-rationalised answers.

I’ve found it has helped me to clarify that there are two main goals of the actualism method. One of those is about ending Being by a remarkable and one-off self-immolation, the other is eliminating good/bad feelings in the meantime (and maximising the felicitous ones) so as to facilitate a virtual freedom. I don’t think it is a bad thing per se to keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to end being, however, at the end of the day you are a self as long as the instinctual passions are in place. So if you are already a self by default, you might as well be a happy one, right? Jumping to the end and getting oneself worked up about the possibility of not existing is counterproductive to both goals anyway. I know that from personal experience :grin:. But also - it definitely is not application of the actualism method (how could it be - actualism is about feeling good).

Because I could practice Mindfulness without feeling threatened, since it was not looking for “my” elimination. I think this difference was key and explains why I had not been able to succeed in trying to improve these same problems for years using AF.

If you were feeling threatened practising actualism, it was surely not the actualism method causing that, but ‘you’ causing that. Which is great - it means it’s just another bad feeling to deal with, just like all the others! For you to let this one feeling or cluster of feelings turn you off the whole method, and on to mindfullness, is cunning indeed. In that specific instance it may be true to say you have a vested interest in sticking around, hence the avoidance - but it’s no reason the actualism method can’t be followed still. You have simply chosen to react to and act on this fear, rather than seeing it as silly.

About HAIETMOBA, you say you kept forgetting it. How though? I would advise that initially HAIETMOBA is just about being aware of when you are feeling bad. Are you really not aware of when you are feeling bad? Maybe you just don’t really get how to deal with it yet.

I think HAIETMOBA kind of has 2 functions. One is enabling you to feel reasonably good as much as possible, by getting back to feeling good once you get triggered. This is really the first thing to get started with (and that’s how Richard started i believe). If I were to put the process of dealing with a feeling into monologue form it might be: “Oh I am feeling bad now, I realise. How come? When was I last feeling good? What happened to end that? What beliefs are perpetuating it? Man it is silly to feel bad when I felt good just earlier. Man it is silly to waste this moment because of a belief.”

The second aspect of HAIETMOBA is more to do with apperceptive awareness. It’s a “waking oneself up”, from moment to moment, so as to become aware of exactly how one is experiencing this moment of being alive, in this place and space. It has a sensory aspect to it by default. It facilitates PCEs when one is already feeling good.

My understanding is that both of these are really the same thing, the latter is just more microscopic. My advice to anyone coming from a place of feeling bad is to aim for the first one initially - the macro feelings which are causing you to feel bad. Eliminating feeling bad is an “easy win” on the way to feeling good more often. Needless to say, when feeling good, by all means enjoy and appreciate, or go for a PCE walk, or explore naivete.

I just think that people who feel bad often (there are many people in that camp in the world) and who have discovered actualism can get too caught up in the “spooky” part of actualism, about not actually existing or by trying to concentrate on the senses all the time etc etc. By doing so, they create internal mindfucks and are really going in the opposite direction, whilst pretending in their minds to be scared of not existing.
Again, that’s my personal experience and other people may disagree.

For me, my actualism practice is now split into two parts in a way that works for me, and may work for you:

  1. The part where I am just a normal guy who does not have the usual bad attitude which people carry around with them. It is silly to feel bad because one is tired, or because some “bad thing happened” or because I want X and can’t get it right now. This is just being a happy person basically. This is me at work or with family members.

  2. The explorative part, which I pursue when feeling good (or which starts of its own accord when feeling good). These are shorter periods, where I go out in the world to enjoy and appreciate this moment with all my attention/energy focused on that. This is me in the park or walking around the city streets at night.

Regards fears in general about not existing: it’s not really true IMO for a feeling being to claim they do not exist. As long as you are made up of instinctual passions which are currently at play, you exist as a self. If you were feeling good, the intellectual knowledge of your illusory nature would not bother you. It’s only bothering you at that moment because considering this is triggering fearful/unpleasant/dreadful feelings, which is silly, or because other feelings are causing you to feel bad.

If you are at the stage of feeling bad often, I would not try to jump to feeling good each moment. A reasonable goal would be to not to feel bad each moment (which gets you a decent way to feeling good anyway). Then, in intense sessions, you might see if you can feel good for a period of time.

I am doing the same thing with this up-levelling: I am feeling reasonably good for most of the day these days (my new “chill” approach to actualism has helped with this immensely :sunglasses::grin:). However, I definitely do not “enjoy and appreciate” most moments of the day, which is a good notch above. I save that for intense sessions, for now.

So I’d say it’s just practice/habituation to become a happy and harmless person. You don’t need to even consider self-immolation to achieve that. And it will facilitate the PCEs and stuff anyway, circumnavigating the whole fear aspect you describe.

haha I am not sure how I gave that impression but my journey with Actualism definitely didn’t have an easy start. I still think it is the most challenging task I have faced in my life. I think maybe what gave the impression that it was an easy start is that from the beginning I had the approach of finding a way no matter what. When I came back to Actualism after a 5 year layoff I had very much the attitude that it must happen and will happen this time. So far it’s still no cigar as I am not free but things are going pretty great these days so there’s plenty to be pleased about.

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I am sure you mean well, @Felix, but also that you have not read my post with the proper care, attention or perspective.

However, I don’t want to/can’t invest time in showing that “paragraph by paragraph” (for example, responding in what way is useful or honest a coment like “If you were feeling threatened practising actualism, it was surely not the actualism method causing that, but ‘you’ causing that”?). But I don’t think my post is worth that trouble, anyone can read both posts and draw their own conclusions, and I don’t want to get into one of those endless debates to prove who knows more about Actual Freedom…

But it may be useful (for you, or at least others) to point out that the person who raised this topic asked for “Supplementing actualism with conventional methods” because of the difficulties he/she has in solving certain health problems by applying AF exclusively. Some members expressed similar difficulties (as in Slack, as in Zulip, even here in other topics).

@Srinath said that

“it might be good to discuss the difficulties that people are having applying the actualism method. We have a habit over here of saying how great the actualism method is and so on, but not so much is said on how difficult it can be to apply it in practise. Its so simple and open that it can actually be quite tricky to apply. As a feeling being I often found it difficult. Maybe we can have a discussion, a clinic if you will about this?”

I think he asked me to talk about MBRS in that spirit, and I answered in the same, reconstructing the difficulties of the Miguel of that time (I even quoted my diaries with date), because it seemed to me more useful to show how I was then, how was that context, and how I managed to move forward with the problems and the tools that I had at that time.

That’s why I included dates and how much years old I had, so that it would be understood that this happened almost 10 years ago. And I closed my post saying that back then began a new stage or phase in my practice of AF.

Of course, I could have responded from who/what I am today, describing what I do now to face even worse objective problems that back then (with my health, with my sick daughter, even with a worse political, labor and economic crisis in my country). Do I resort to mindfulness or abuse drugs? No. I practice AF much better.

And I could have prescribed that to @carpe_vitae and others, may be even using some of your concepts and words. But I assumed that they had already received enough of that…

Hey, I am not in any kind of debate with you :sweat_smile:. Nor did I think I had written some sort of “takedown” post as your response seems to indicate.

I am totally on board with the discussion of people’s difficulties with the “challenge” of actualism. The quote @Srinath quotes as Noe on Slack was actually me:

In a way with actualism it’s a double edged sword - on one hand, it’s better if the people come to it are well adjusted (which I wasnt). On the other hand, the people most motivated to leave the human condition are probably not going to be those who are loving life.

Given where I have come from with this (stuck in feeling bad), and knowing some of the difficulties and traps in getting out of it, I write generally about it for others and for my own clarity/journalling. It seems it has touched a nerve that I wrote to you or about you (and especially that I was responding to references to the past) but this was no challenge on my part.

A lot of your conclusions and statements were still phrased in present tense, hence why I responded to them as if they were still valid convictions for you (eg your conclusions as to why AF didn’t work, but mindfullness did, your beliefs about what is and isn’t stopping you). In any case, despite my questioning of some of those conclusions, my post was otherwise just general advice to anyone who feels stuck feeling bad. If you aren’t in that camp then I’m only glad to hear it Miguel :slight_smile:

I would say this group is here especially for this kind of questioning/sharing/vetting, at least for myself that’s why I write here. We aren’t in each other’s brains, we are just typing asynchronously: so misunderstandings of each other’s positions and moods are bound to arise, but it’s always a good opportunity to explore one’s own feelings whilst involved in that process. Ie. Did I threaten some part of your identity perhaps?

I always liked that Vineeto and Peter were willing to do that with each other: just put it all out on the table, with nothing to hide. Funny as it is to say, there is truly nothing personal about the human condition.

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Some thoughts about this without necessarily saying something final or definitive …

The modern mindfulness movement in the West, of which Kabat-Zinn was a prominent founder of, uses quite a different definition of mindfulness (‘awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally’) to right mindfulness proper which is a far more complex construct and involves subscription to a number of Buddhist precepts, doctrines and views. More on this here in the first part of the talk if anyone is interested:

Modern mindfulness and MBSR probably has more to do with learning to relax and not be reactive than to Buddhist meditation that I was doing back in the day, which was a pretty intense affair. So if @Miguel found that it helped him when times were tough ( i.e. it ’ resolved rather than solved’ the pain of the human condition like just about any other human activity including therapy or a chat with a good friend) - is that such a bad thing? Especially when one needs to defuse an emotional or situational crisis in which one has not been able to deploy the actualism method and not for the lack of trying?

At the same time Western mindfulness even if it has little to do with Buddhism, trades on its legitimacy and is promising at least to soothe the human condition, if not to cure it. Like fibre its one of those things these days that’s universally supposed to be good for you :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: There are references to research, a vaguely ‘Eastern’ aesthetic and no doubt many people benefit. But there are some gateway drug aspects. And it is more ideologically loaded than having a glass of milk or even therapy probably. You may pick up bad habits that will be hard to unlearn when you try and move from the mindfulness into the actualism method paradigm.

But if people are struggling to apply the actualism method, could more be done to support them? Could we get a bit more nitty gritty? Are we setting people up for failure by hiding the struggles and promoting the successes too much? Because ‘enjoying and appreciating the human condition’ is the actualism method it can make ‘not enjoying’ and ‘not appreciating’ an awkward thing to talk about and own up to. I do think at times we sound a bit smug over here and those who are seriously struggling with understanding and applying the method may feel silly to bringing up their problems.

The upside of having a lot of people on here now that know and can apply the method is obvious. The amount of accurate advice one can get is unprecedented probably. But when I first got on here, everyone was struggling to understand and apply the method. So that was talked about a lot and we all learned from each other. Of course misinformation was rife too, so that wasn’t good. Can be find a better balance?

The DNA of actualism if quite individualist and hands-off. You read the AFT and start applying it. Nothing else is needed, yada yada. Mostly I think that is a good thing. But perhaps there are those who would benefit from a more supportive, involved, coaching approach. NB: I’m not offering to do this :sweat_smile:, at least not right now.

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@Miguel like @Felix I too found this interesting. I don’t remember having anything like this. If I did it wasn’t very prominent and perhaps only towards the end. There can be all manner of emotional fantasies and constructions around self-immolation and it sounds like you were in the grip of them then. Want to say more?

@Srinath I actually related to this one and I will explain why. The way I see it is that at core Actulism is about changing myself, in the end it is about ending myself but even from the get go it is about actively challenging myself. Because it is my beliefs and feelings, my whole reality which stand in the way of enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. So it seems with actualism from the very get go I am challenging the very ground on which I stand as an identity. This might not be an elimination of ‘me’ in my totality but even from the start by challenging my beliefs and values I am eliminating parts of myself. Bits of my reality are falling off and to begin this process it can stir up resistance.

This is in contrast to other methods which often endorse and gloss over the sense of self with good feelings or various beliefs dressed up as truths.

This is why when I read what @Miguel wrote I could immediately relate, not so much that from the start I was afraid of self-immolation but that from the very start I knew that it was me that had to change and this process would inevitably stir up resistance and threaten ‘my’ security.

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Yea I can relate to it as well. Reminds me of something Vineeto said to me when I told her I was feeling fearful/anxious as a result of some conversation she was having. She said that’s a good sign because it means I’m sincerely considering what is being talked about. That is to say, I recognized it would spell the changing and the end of ‘me’ and the natural reaction to this is fear.

Basically everything besides actualism is a ‘coping’ mechanism, just to help one deal with the awful ‘reality’ we find ourselves in. Actualism is the only thing offering a way out of it… but that is scary. So before leaving the comfort zone, maybe something can be said of getting to a conventionally happier place before ‘trying’ actualism…

That being said that sounds like the advice is to not utilize actualism, which doesn’t quite sit right with me. I think a better approach is to simply say look, let’s not be silly about it. Although exercise might detract from the culprit, ‘me’, it is silly to stop exercising if it makes ‘me’ feel better. So the advice rather is do go full on, do everything you possibly can to improve your mood, don’t rule anything out per se - exercise, socializing, dating if you are single and want a partner, going to parks, going for walks, going to the beach, eating out to break up the monotony of eating in, eating in to break up the monotony of eating out, get a dog (:smiley: ), etc. etc… live your life to the fullest… and while doing so consider what is on offer with regards to actualism and begin implementing it. And as you do so you will see what works and what doesn’t, what is a coping mechanism and what is meaningful change, etc., and then you can decide when and where to stop doing things and start doing other things, as you go.

The one caveat I would add though is to avoid spiritual practices, just because they are so antithetical to actualism. As Srinath said, modern mindfulness probably does have more to do with learning to relax rather than any truly spiritual approach… but in that case, simply learn to relax, count your breath, etc., without doing ‘mindfulness’ per se. Tai Chi and Qi Gong might be beneficial as it is exercise and exercise is good for you… but in that case just exercise without the spiritual trappings of Tai Chi or Qi Gong.

Just some not necessarily complete thoughts.

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EDIT: I’ll start a new thread because I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent

Yes, I could say more although it would be off-topic here.

But one of the main threats for “me” from the very beginning was the love related to wife and children: not wanting to hurt/“betray” those who wanted/needed me to love them, and not wanting to lose their love for me (despite the writings of Richard, my reasoning and evidences of the harm I caused with my love, and that their love caused to me -and, in response, I caused to them in turn, etc.-).