This implies outside circumstances have no bearing on feeling-being feelings, which is false.
To feel good, it’s good to not do things that can stir feelings. We already have plenty out in the world and encounters with people that can stir feelings.
Relaxation(unagitated mind and emotions) is feeling good.
Of course.
No, I’m aware that thinking has nothing to do with feeling good, unless it’s compulsive thinking in which case it’s brought about by feelings.
By a quiet mind, I mean unagitated. Music tends to stir feelings.
There is no “should” or “shouldn’t”. I never say that.
I don’t see any contradiction. Nothing is “conditional” in what I said; I am talking about conduciveness. And there is a condition in actualism. Every method has conditions. To get back to feeling good is the condition, which includes whittling down “me” and creating excellence experiences. I just wonder how many people here had EEs while listening to sad music.
If intention had the power to not induce feeling bad and such intention could be brought out by will, how easy would actualism be?
Most people are on autopilot, so they perpetuate their “me” by preoccupying themselves with one thing after another. I just meant to say, I’d like the music we post here discourage such behaviour.
What is “fun”? Stirring emotions that create good feelings? Fine, if you are feeling bad. Getting pepped up is a good way to feel good again.
Anyway, music is abound. Music recommendations are abound. But the music that doesn’t stir feelings is not. Atleast such recommendations are not. Why not post such music in this forum? If you want to listen to emotive music, such music is abound, why post the same music here as well?
This implies that doing things out in the world is an unfortunate chore or ordeal that we have to put ourselves through, only to be able to feel good once we are away from it all and retreating to our inner chambers.
If that were the case how would actualism be any different from being normal? 
It also implies actualism is about avoiding feeling (by eg not doing things that stir feelings)… also not the case.
Finally it implies that if only one had more free time to not be doing things to stir feelings, one would be a better actualist. Quit your job, move somewhere further away from people, just take long walks every day , eat bland food in moderate amounts , your mind will be so unagitated that you’ll be the best actualist ever. And If you don’t have a wife or girlfriend then lucky you! Never get one because that is just bound to stir feelings.
Of course obviously not the case. It may seem paradoxical to you, but the MORE things you do that have the potential to stir feelings, the better actualism works - as has been in my experience. Because it makes it impossible to hide.
No… you can be feeling good while relaxing. You can also be bored and get restless while relaxing.
And You can be feeling good while not relaxing (eg out in the world doing things). So they are not the same.
This is the case except such intention is brought about by sincerity rather than will. But yea it is that simple. How easy it is is a factor of how sincere you can be.
Isn’t it a bit strange that this can be so tricky?
“Fun” is having fun. Like doing something you like doing. Enjoying being alive. Having an unmitigated blast. If the definition of “fun” is under contention then that might be a more productive thing to be discussing 
In this case I was talking about what somebody who is already feeling good would do. So your response is a non sequitur. The point was that if you’re already feeling good then you basically can do whatever you want, and you end up doing the things that are the most fun cause why not? And what that is varies from person to person. But why would you be stirring good feelings if you’re already feeling good?
I have mentioned before that in my first exposure to AF, the first 2 years were spent attacking and trying to refute it. The aspect of it that triggered me most was my emotional love of the creative forms of expression, music, art, literature and any other form of self expression. This thing AF was a horrible threat to all that I enjoyed most about this universe.
What I found in patches of felicity and EE that I could still enjoy all of these expressive forms in a new dimensional quality either sensory pleasures (art/music) or fascinating contemplations of ideas, stories/films and that I could find them extremely funny as well in a new way, seeing through the bullshit of identity and the human condition. I thought that I would have this sense of never reading fiction again that only non fiction would be worthy.
Wow, music has never been just about passing time for me, whether back in the emotional influence to now a more sensate one, it is more just like sensory pleasure. It was always something fascinating and fun, all the possible sounds, timbres, pitches, tones fusing together into something different. Like eating, lately I have had a lot of EE’s when just eating, which is new for me, the heightened sensations of all the subtle flavours and textures in my mouth being amazing.
Music just is, it is a sensory experience available, and we are fortunate enough to live in an age where an incredible variety of sounds and options are available to us at the click of a button.
Mine is definitely getting better, massively so after recovering from depression/anxiety. Though I would said it had nothing to do with music, though when depressed and anxious I had absolutely no interest in music or anything.
Again, I would reiterate that the sensory pleasure of sounds is totally idiosyncratic, i.e. subjective, I don’t believe there is an objective quality to the pleasure of sounds, as there isn’t for taste, sight, smell or touch.
In the same way that seeing an old location made @Shashank mention the sorrow that can be associated with locations, is one to never ever walk and go near a location that might trigger them emotionally. Of course, we can’t deny that we are feeling beings surrounded by feeling beings making forms or art for feeling beings but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the sensate qualities of these things. My dad was a huge music fan with a serious eclectic taste, there was so much music I couldn’t listen to for years due to emotionally triggering the grief and sorrow. Now, this is only a select few songs triggering me this way and people playing the bagpipes (my dad was half Scottish and we had bagpipes at this funeral) but rather than hide away from this music I am now more fascinated and curious to see how it triggers this sorrow and grief, to see how it operates in me. I am grateful for that opportunity to try and see what is in play in me.
Of course, we are going to be influenced by the language and culture we are born in, that is inevitable. In the same way that the languages we speak deny us certain words and concepts unless borrowed form another language (like de ja vu or karma). Unless you are exposed to, worked hard on or have a natural predilection towards learning other languages and curiosity of other cultures, you are most likely going to be influenced by your own culture. I personally have liked bands and songs from languages I don’t speak. I love instrumentals a lot too, which has no language. When I was younger I hated instrumentals, I had to hear somebody singing because the story of the song and the content of the words really mattered to me, rather than as a sensory experience.
That is a bit of broad statement, it kind of reminds me of Srid deciding that nothing of value has happened here, arrogantly deciding nobody has become free and nothing of value has happened for the individuals involved. Accept the fact that experientially you can’t know how or what has been evoked by anybody else on here. You can only know your own individual experience and relevance of music to you.
But more importantly…how can you not love the Coconut Song? Are you dead inside? 
I am at a point where i fluctuate, a moment a music or song can still “affect” me emotionally, to moments where it is just pure sensate pleasure. However, whether affected or not, I found that now I am fascinated and that fascination of what is happening to me helps me get back to naivete and felicity much quicker and to a current time awareness.
Yes, but I think this again will just be totally subjective and idiosyncratic, that there will be no objective way of what works.
For me, it is just totally a mixed bag, random, I have not seen any definitive pattern.
I can relate to this but at some point this changed for me. Like the current time awareness so acute that I become more aware and perceptive of what is happening/triggering me. Again a fascination is starting to kick in as often as subtle emotional reactions, a turning point perhaps.
I for sure am. The levels of enjoying this moment of being alive (and of enjoying various things on top of that, such as music) that occur in actual freedom (and more and more further into it) are just unbelievable. The appreciation of that enjoying occasionally takes the character of an astonishment, I want to say a ‘wow’ - but not the ‘wow’ that the identity in abeyance delivers in the PCE, something like a ‘pure wow’, a jaw-dropping amazement at the wonderfulness of it all, that is merely exemplified in the particulars of a thing, like a sound or a sight.
This is not by any means restricted to music. This just happens to be a music thread. If someone wants to make an art thread, a photography thread… Or if it were possible to somehow make a smell thread, a taste thread, a proprioception thread (the enjoyment that is in such things as posture, as movement!)…
I see my posting in this thread as an expression of my appreciation for the amazingness of the universe, just exemplified in some of its particulars (e.g. music) that happen to particularly evoke amazement in me (this particular human body).
My mind shoots fast with thoughts and ideas and always has. I think in part this type of thinking style poses a risk for depression and anxiety because you can quickly build these thought cycles and loops of negative thinking which become like a vicious circle and keep you trapped in feeling bad.
In all of my EE’s and PCE’s my mind has been somewhat quieter but the sharpness and speed of my thoughts are still there and kicked in when needed, just not the affective edge to them. In fact, it has shocked me the potential to think and process with so much more clarity. As well, I find I think up so many more hilarious things in those states, like I will have myself gut laughing crying.
Yes, though nobody in my house had musical talent, music was everywhere and constant in my house growing up. In my whole life, music has been a constant other than the periods of depression and anxiety where it just seemed futile and meh to listen to anything. I wasn’t even triggered by music, I just couldn’t care for it at all. But the same was for eating, reading, learning or anything.
I do like to explore how it triggers me, though as I mentioned in the other post, grief/sorrow is the hardest area to deal with. Though I see value in exploring that now, since the grief/sorrow without music only arises randomly, it is interesting to be able to poke at it and see what is happening there. At first, I couldn’t even get close it was just too intense, like anything it starts to weaken and change.
My mind is never quiet, always thinking of programming, creative ideas, linking facts, exploring scientific ideas, etc. I don’t really have a quality system regarding my mind having to be quiet. It is more so how those thoughts trigger me than the nature of thinking itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU837aUvjs8
- instrumentalist in a joyful mood: check
- actualist-sounding title: check
- bird chirping: check!
We good 
These are the lyrics to the Hiatus Kaiyote song Molasses I posted.
I enjoy the “hopeless” chorus, “Might not get any better”. I feel encouraged by it. That hoping for better in the normal scheme of things is silly. It mocks the hopeful “try harder” ethic of normal. That if I just change X,y,z, things will “get better”.
By which standard?
My favourite lines are;
“Running with my eyes closed, blinding the lens with the focus
Running with my eyes closed, finding omens in the woodwork
I see cold, cold brail, mechanical and frail
How do I tessellate? Built to the rage”
These words remind me not to hyper-focus, but to be open to other options.
I love how she writes enigmatically, with almost free association of words and concepts.
The song lyrics.
"Might not get
Might not get any better
Might not, might not get
Might not get any better
Might not, might not get
Might not get any better
Might not, might not get
Might not get any better
You’re the one on top, relic with an armored heart
Color of sulfur banished to a single arc
Porcelain smolder, and don’t forget your state of the art
Buried deep in the soil, selfless or daft
You could be a compass rare and so bountiful
You could be the opposing opinion
You could be the point of traction bound to all
You could be the point of letting it go
It could be a compass rare and so bountiful
It could be the opposing opinion
It could be the point of traction bound to all
It could be the point of letting it go
Running with my eyes closed, blinding the lens with the focus
Running with my eyes closed, finding omens in the woodwork
I see cold, cold brail, mechanical and frail
How do I tessellate? Built to the rage
This line to me is lyrical genius.
She can only see cold brail( something she can only feel) and finds mechanical and frail answers in her feelings. Then she blurts out “How do I tessellate?” which is to divide something into facets, like a gem stone; to see all the nuances. But she laments she is “built to the rage”.
I think I may have serendipitously solved this discussion once and for all…I was having this super long PCE this morning, I got in the car, switched on the radio to hear probably the least actualist song of all time - Nicki Minaj - Super Freaky Girl (Official Music Video) - YouTube
I can confirm I had an absolute blast listening to it 
That’s really cool that you mentioned the proprioception thing, because this is precisely why my enjoyment and appreciation of martial arts never stopped as I continued applying the method, it only became more fun and I bet there is so much more to be had there.
To be able to experience the body synchronising so many processes in order to complete a martial arts move in real time is incredible and it’s so much fun. Of course as a feeing being I cannot experience what you describe directly but I get inklings of it, the sheer wonder that all this complexity is somehow happening and this can be experienced in listening to a song just as much as launching my opponent through air and landing in a submission!
Also I remember the sheer fun of doing parkour when I was younger, the body being able to be so razor sharp and on point with movements that I was able to link them together effortlessly even at heights etc, it’s really incredible.
Ps sorry mods if I’m veering off a little here 
Good to see the thread being hijacked for investigation and discovery.
It’s the whole point, apparently.
Keep em coming @geoffrey This thread is fast becoming my top source for new music 
Loving this Vangelis soundtrack for Bladerunner. Since we are awarding actualism points, I’d say C- for dark and dystopian themes 
, but an A+ for gorgeous rolling synths and expansive soundscape 
. Very much recommend listening with some good headphones or on a nice Hifi if possible
Yes agreed! few of the latest ones are on my playlist already 
I like the electronic ones especially like the last few posted.
Alright I will jump on the bandwagon too 
I remember I found this one when I was on my way out of a LSD trip a few years back and jumping in a nice hot shower with my GF at the time, there is a certain vibe that has stuck with it, a magical one.
Contrary to the discussion lately I shall be posting all my ‘actualist’ tracks 
Although they are simply the tracks that seem to get me to a place of delighting and EE’s, I seem to be able to ‘go’ with that magical vibe that I get from them :
This one screams naiveté for me, I heard it first on a trip to Norway years ago during a pretty happy period in my life, I think ‘something’ happened during that trip that I have always associated with this song but I cannot remember it. I just know the delight and gay abandon that I taste every time I hear it :
My current favourite song.
