The Psychic Battlefield

Actualism
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I’ve been thinking about the psychic power-battles a lot this week.

@Elgin wrote a really great description of the psychic web a month or two ago on here (excerpted):

One begins with a random emotion/feeling (my sarrow) which appears as an individual “string” (think guitar). Then you follow that feeling/string further/deeper, which then exposes a different layer or stronger quality of it. The further/deeper you go, the more potent these feelings/strings become.
At one point, you realize that these feelings/strings are in no way individual anymore, but are collective feelings swirling all around, creating different little and greater swirls, and then finally merging into one enormous swirl-humanity. This is not a gradual transition anymore, but more like a river suddenly flowing into or becoming a huge ocean. It is a shift in perception.
In this collective area, you see that all feelings/beings are interconnected and form this enormous psychic construct.

An intuitively accessible structure is, of course, beyond the normal perceptible threshold.
It cannot be sensed with the “normal” senses, but its affective surges are felt throughout the body.
These deeper/collective surges can be enormously potent and easily overwhelm an individual if careless or ill-prepared.

This structure has a hierachy to it. It’s not just the fantasy/feelings of one mind. It’s the fantasies/feelings of countless minds/beings, compressed into some form of structure. I have no clue what that structure consists of, how it came into being, or where it is located, but it’s most definitely there.

Constantly we are using strategies to try and improve our standing in the psychic hierarchy, whether that involves shoring up the position we already have, attempting to improve our standing, or shooting down someone else to climb past them.

I began to notice this in me at work, a coworker and I began disagreeing on a few trivial matters of how the work should be completed, and I have found myself constantly trying to come up with ways to prove her wrong, and there is always a psychic ‘sting’ attached:

“I got you! How dare you think that you know better than me!”

or she might counter-attack and I feel a rush of shame that she has gotten the better of me

and I’ve begun seeing the same thing in everything I do

With this recent boat purchase I’ve been predictably cast into a storm of emotions and as I began to investigate I wondered, “why does this issue carry so much power in me?”

I discovered that I was fearful of ‘screwing up’ the project

Which was attached to a larger ‘screwing up my life’ via financial recklessness - something I have substantial experience with

Why would I ever put myself in these risky positions? And it hit me - it has always been to climb the psychic ladder.

I believe that owning a boat will improve my status, just the same as I’ve previously risked my security in the past for cars, relationships, moving to new cities, going to certain parties, or even for clothes.

All things that ‘I’ link to some form of ‘being successful,’ of being high on the psychic chain.

And the whole content of relationship issues is tied to this psychic power battle as well - I want to be dating the most impressive possible partner… several times in the past I have noticed myself feeling prideful in public with the ‘impressive’ girl on my arm

or, ashamed when she wasn’t

Each ‘psychic blow’ delivered is carried on a moment of emotion, whether good or bad - positive or negative.

Richard’s excellent description here:

RICHARD: I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here in this actual world (if that is what you mean) … there are no psyches, and thus psychic webs, in actuality.

Which is not to say they have no reality for either the purveyor or the recipient … on the contrary it is quite real, so very real in practice, as to have more significance/consequence than ‘facial expressions, voice inflexions, choice of language, bodily movements’ and so on. For just one instance of this I can recall, many years ago when this flesh and blood body was possessed by a ‘being’, another person smiling in a jovial manner, with a relaxed posture, delivering a psychic coup de grâce … which decisive finishing stroke put an abrupt end to any further discussion about the non-viability of a particular course of action they were adamantly proposing must be carried out.

It was this, and many other such instances, which showed ‘me’ that, for as long as ‘I’ continued to exist, ‘I’ was vulnerable to the dictates of a more powerful purveyor (unless ‘I’ were to become the more powerful of course) … and ‘I’ could remember many such episodes going all the way back into child-hood.

The psychic ‘blow’, so to speak, came in through the solar-plexus (a complex of radiating nerves situated behind the stomach), about four-finger widths below the navel where one’s very ‘being’ is felt to be located, as an energetic current and inexorably travelled swiftly up the spinal-column whereupon, reaching the nape of the neck/base of the brain, it branched out to either side via the limbic system and (presumably) activated the amygdalae – two almond-shaped organs in from and just behind-below the ears – thus pumping fright/freeze/flight/fight chemicals throughout the brain and crippling rational thought.

Which is why I say that the psychic currents are the most effective power plays. Vis.:

• [Richard]: ‘All sentient beings, to a greater or lesser extent, are connected via a psychic web … a network of energies or currents that range from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. Feeling threatened or intimidated can result from the obvious cues – the offering of physical violence and/or verbal violence – or from the less obvious … ‘vibe’ violence (to use a ‘60’s term) and/or psychic violence. Similarly, feeling accepted can occur via the same signals or intimations. Power trips – coercion or manipulation of any kind – whether for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ purposes, are all psychic at root … the psychic currents are the most effective power plays for they are the most insidious (charisma, for example).

They have no existence outside of the psyche – which includes the imaginative/intuitive faculty of course – and whilst the psyche is in situ the psychic currents reign supreme … albeit behind the scenes, as it were, and most often overlooked/unnoticed.

Hence my observation regarding them being the most effective power plays.

I’m still observing the repercussions of all this, but it’s present on my mind at this moment

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Emphasis added.

Always? You didn’t ever purchase something because it appealed to the 10 year old in you?

No doubt it has status implications. How about playful implications too?

I experienced this with my Alfa Romeo. Yet, I remember really loving this brand as a kid. The one I own was designed by Guigario and it’s lines are impeccable. Absolutely amazing to look at.

It’s steering geometry, the high quality leather seats, the lowered suspension, 6 speed manual which shifts effortlessly…I could go on.

Obviously, there was status feelings about it. However, I was thinking about whether I would sell it the other day, and I simply get so much enjoyment out of driving it. It costs me a lot to maintain, but anything exotic will.

I am not discounting your investigation, but encouraging a broader appreciation of the naive and felicious landscape.

What would a 10 year old Henry think and feel about owning a boat?

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There is no issue with the boat (or Alfa!) itself, but the presence of emotional struggle in me has revealed the larger psychic struggle occurring in me and ‘humanity.’

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The other thing I noticed, even though I was aware of “status” and still feel it when driving, is that is mostly in my own head.

No one really give a hoot about who I am. If they like the car, they are liking the car.

The belief that I am somewhat more liked or powerful or whatever based on a purchase is not worth the psychic paper it’s written on.

It’s not unlike the discussions on makeup. It’s not automatic because one looks prettier that a) people care b) they like you more or less c) they think about it for more than a split second.

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Sure, I am not seeking to invalidate that. Just a reminder that there is a version of you that would be over the moon as well. Has the frisky lamb become a docile sheep?

Or perhaps I am skipping ahead too. When the storm of emotional considerations has revealed what it reveals, perhaps Captain Henry will be free to enjoy it. ,:sunglasses:

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It may be sensible to hire an expert to give some guidance. Fear as a feeling is hijacking the enjoyment of the project.

Personally, I find it really pleasurable to be meeting and talking with mechanics. I’ve owned 3 exotic vehicles, and they inevitably need fixing.

Each stage of the project can be enjoyable, in fact I think that these insights you are having are all part of that enjoyment. You wouldn’t have seen them had you not bought the boat.

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I may be focusing too much on the word “always”, in that sentence, and riffing off that. It’s a habit of reading I picked up off Richard.

How many times he would pick up on the word “just” in front of a phrase?

“I just bought this car to be liked”

The word “just” and “always” et al, trivialises the whole endeavour being talked about down to a single (often negative) conclusion.

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@henryyyyyyyyyy

There is another possible connection between the boat issue, and the battle at work over trivial stuff.

Perhaps there is the thought/ feeling that with your new boat, the income from the work isn’t going to cut it. On your part, maybe it’s because of this, rather than a power play, as such.

There is maybe a feeling of wanting to “move up” earn more, or otherwise push harder to earn more, which is translating into being more particular about how the work is done.

As if by the work being done more efficiently, it will solve the income issue.

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Yes this is fair, though I think it gets away from the topic.

It’s accurate that I have a lot of delight involved with this project and many others. And all this power nonsense has been happening in me.

I’ve experienced this before in a different context. No one cared about the thing that I thought was proving something

It’s not watertight because sometimes people do care, they will give that reward, think you’re ‘great.’

And it is in my head - and my heart - that’s exactly the issue!

So it requires something bigger to satisfy.

It has indeed :grin:
Now engaging operation: Frisky Lamb II

This was useful to hear. It seems I’ve had some version of masculinity that requires that I do all the work myself. You’re right, it can be delightful to get help from others. Even paid help. I’ve always considered that a failure or it would raise alarm bells that something was going wrong.

Which brings us to…

Yes, this is accurate, but…

It is still about power/status, just in a larger sense. The concept is that if I’m able to be successful with this project, it ‘proves’ something about ‘me,’ that I am ‘good.’ And it’s not just about the project itself, because the success or failure of any particular project brings in the involvement of my income, my upraising, my family situation, my friends - my whole life. This isn’t a power play to do with any other particular individual, but has to do with my place among other men or even humanity at large.

I’ve just had an excellence experience by myself at the beach in the dark considering the actual world and all this power stuff

Upon getting home, I realized that the emotions I’ve been having relating to my ex and her new partner / old friend of mine has everything to do with power

Essentially my belief has been that she ‘won’ by breaking up with me and still being with someone

Further to that, my friend ‘won’ by dating the girl who I desire to be with

In this situation, I am the loser - on two fronts.

However, this investigation as well as the excellence experience at the beach put paid to that belief: there is no power in the actual world. It is apparent.

Any power dynamic exists only in my belief. I’m feeding a false narrative, which exists only in my heart (and in the hearts of all humanity) by continuing.

Already there’s a new lightness. I’m interested to see how far it goes.

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This was precisely the case with me too in my first breakup…What had upset me the most was that I felt I had lost…in the sense of how one would feel bad when losing a sports game.

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It’s the same because the core feelings of power / powerlessness are the same

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I can relate a lot to this post. A similar situation happened with me. A girl I was interested in chose my friend and I had a feeling of “I lost” for a long time. But when I looked at the facts, it turned out to be a relief that we never got together. My friend ended up wasting 8 years of his life with someone who wasn’t the right match for him and she wouldn’t have been for me either. The feelings were also compounded further as my friend and I have a friendship with competitiveness as one of its aspects. But despite these facts, I still had those feelings of “I lost” as it was the bond and the nature of the relationship that kept it alive. This and many of my relationships are only now becoming revealed in a different light. It’s blind nature in operation.

I wrote recently about loyalty. I think it’s loyalty to the bond between me and others that keeps these hierarchical shenanigans alive. It’s loyalty that activates them. I don’t think I have any relationship where those feelings of power and status don’t surface in some form or another. From what I gather now, the loyalty to the bond is in-built and would need another alternative to break free from. The feeling is that without this loyalty, I will be alone and miserable. Not to mention that it would mean that I would automatically be at the “bottom” of the totem pole. I’d lose out on the reward of the warmth and “closeness” of the relationships, even though they seem to always become dysfunctional in some way. What I also can’t deny anymore is also that I enjoy the mayhem of this dysfunction because I’ll also gain “power” through some one-upmanship and feeling superior or whatever else.

I’ve dimly seen this for a while now, but have not been successful in extricating myself from it. The answer that’s starting to emerge is that I can’t extricate myself from it. It’s my very nature. I’ll always have a bond to others in some way or another. The only way out is to have a “loyalty” to the actual. I’m just trying to sift through all of my excuses not to do so. It’s great that your excellence experience allowed you to see the outside of this.

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This aspect of loyalty is interesting, I hadn’t thought of that.

It’s true, I have that with my friend as well… there has been something ‘bugging’ me about all this and I think it has been the loyalty.

I’ve run into this once before when a friend of mine treated me really poorly and I didn’t want to hang out with him anymore, but I found that I was really troubled because there was a big part of me that felt I ‘had’ to keep being friends, to keep hanging out.

There’s something interesting about friendships vs. romantic relations, I’ve found it’s considered much more acceptable to end a romance than to end a friendship.

But when I realized that it was the loyalty keeping me uncomfortable I was able to move forward and relax… no one has a ‘right’ to my time/attention/attendance. There is peace in that freedom.

So in this current situation it doesn’t matter that we’ve ‘been friends’ or anything like that, in the end he is just another person that exists and it’s my choice to hang out or not hang out. It’s not about loyalty. Loyalty is really about love, forming and maintaining a ‘connection’ in me.

This has been an aspect of our relationship as well

This is interesting because there’s ‘small loyalty’ to an individual or smaller group, but then there’s ‘big loyalty’ to all of humanity, where we feel connected and responsible to act in a certain manner in relation to all humanity. The hierarchy only makes sense in relation to me including myself within it, which is the loyalty

This is tricky territory for a couple of reasons I think

One is that being happy & harmless isn’t a zero-sum game, it is useful even if you can be a little bit free of something or feel a little bit better. We don’t have to erase that progress. Another example is that Richard reported he’d become free of outright anger mere weeks after starting using his newly-invented method. These incremental steps exist and are worth appreciating. It’s true that at the more subtle level there is ‘anger’ running in the form of minor irritation etc. just as more minor forms of loyalty may occur, but it’s worth working on the expressions of it

The other aspect is I’m not sure about having loyalty to the actual, there may be potential that that’s similar to ‘believing’ in the actual world, which subtly prevents the actual from becoming apparent. There’s a different kind of confidence which doesn’t depend on loyalty which can be the lodestar, and which keeps one much closer to the actual itself

Words like integrity, facts, evidence, experience, all describe the probity which is effective for clearing out any falseness.

It’s an interesting question though because there’s also an aspect of using ‘whatever one is’ for energy to go in the direction of freedom. I suppose that’s a question for oneself, determining where the energy is at any one time and using that to go forward.

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This is where it becomes evident that loyalty is really for ‘me,’ I’m only being loyal because I think I have something to gain (or ‘not lose’) by maintaining it. Whether that’s to an individual friend, a group, or to all of humanity.

That’s very interesting because anything they can give me from loyalty does not remotely compare to the PCE…

That’s what all the ammunition of the psychic battlefield is too, “I can give you something” or “you’re going to miss out on something” “You aren’t safe” but none of it compares to the actual…

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I’m wondering if being happy & harmless is not maintained by having some amount of pure intent and choosing to remain that way. The reason Richard was able to do it was that Richard had pure intent by the bucket-load (as he describes it and the way I have been understanding it). Isn’t it only in an out-from-control different way of being as described on the website where it really starts to happen on its own? Until then, couldn’t you potentially always fall back into old habits? So it was with that thought in mind that I referred to “loyalty” to the actual. By loyalty I mean an active choosing to be happy and harmless or allowing pure intent. Which choosing can be more easily facilitated with the seeing of how I have been loyal to these relationships and bonds which do not bring happiness or harmlessness. And I’d say the seeing itself has lessened the grip that the feelings have. In this case with having seen this loyalty, perhaps nipping it in the bud now when it arises? That’s my approach and understanding right now. I’d be interested to see if someone else sees any holes or mis-understandings in it.

Can you expand a little more on this and how you’ve used it in an example? It makes sense theoretically, but how do you do it?

I’m wondering if that seeing that none of it compares to the actual is a genuine total seeing. I ask this of myself too because then why do we run through the same feelings over and over? I can only say that ‘I’ at root am primed to want those things. With Richard’s first PCE it seemed to have been a total enough seeing that he was able to easily dedicate himself to peace-on-earth. Maybe I need a very long PCE or something to see the totality of it :thinking:. One aspect that I’m feeling as I’m typing and reflecting on this is loneliness and death. To contemplate turning away from humanity brings about deeper feelings of bleakness and grimness.

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Bingo.

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I think this is accurate but the other side is it should be no surprise when we slip up.

There is a major advantage though to catching the slip-up immediately, because you can stay in that magical zone and everything comes easier. It does seem that’s what Richard managed to do. I’ve had phases like that of maybe a couple of months.

Yes this has been my experience

I see what you’re saying I think, I’ve used the word ‘fidelity’ before to express something similar, having ‘fidelity’ to the actual or checking if this or that has that fidelity. Not the perfect word but we are limited for word choices since AF is new.

That loyalty we have to human bonds is interesting because it’s so instinctual, it happens whether you think about it or not - it’s the default of all beings. It takes something big to challenge the automatic nature of the self. That’s the role of pure intent, it has this nature of ‘whispering in your ear’ reminding what the right direction to go is.

It’s almost shocking to me that I haven’t become free long ago with that in mind, but that’s a demonstration of the strength that the being has. I’ve kept finding other issues important enough to get upset about or excited about and zooming off for however long.

Which brings us to:

It’s related to something @geoffrey talked about on a chat, which was ‘unifying’ the self.

Basically something identities like to do is split into ‘parts,’ where one side of oneself wants one thing, while another side of oneself wants the opposite or is scared of the same thing.

Becoming free is like that, where some part of you might say “this Richard guy really gets it! I’d definitely like to become free!” while meanwhile some other part of oneself- usually suppressed out of view - has definite misgivings, and has some other mission which is directing a large amount of action, or interrupting at the critical moment.

For me, that suppressed part of myself has had to do with love/desire - I’ve been wanting to become free since about 2015, before I knew about actualism, but whenever I’d start to get close that other part of me would grab the reins and I’d find myself charging straight back into the murky depths of humanness for awhile.

So unifying is basically about finding that one has some ‘split’ like that, and figuring out how to get these disparate parts to agree on what a good course of action is to take (or to ‘be’).

What that has looked like for me has been essentially taking apart the workings of love/desire, figuring out what bits I’m really interested in, and then looking at actualism/PCEs, and figuring out how they’re potentially compatible in a way where now the whole of me is wanting to go the same direction.

It’s important for this to be a really sincere process. If it’s just the ‘pro-actualist’ part of yourself trying to yell at the ‘pro-love’ part of yourself to ‘get in line,’ it’ll never work. Because you still have that ‘pro-love’ side of yourself that still exerts power in the shadows, like a saboteur in a resistance. By being a friend to all parts of yourself, you’ll find that there’s a sweetness in recognizing what that ‘pro-love’ self wants, and figuring out how that intelligent part of yourself can actually help to give ‘you’ what you’ve always wanted - in this case, intimacy & sweetness.

Once this is complete & genuine, you have a unified self, who is far more motivated & energized to accomplish things - in this case, becoming free.

This unifying has been my focus for the last 2 months or so, with good results. And lots of interesting investigations discovered once I stopped trying to suppress the desires.

Ha, I’ve been asking myself the same question the last couple of days. So many times I’ve thought I was past something, only for it to return.

I do think that maybe Richard had the most Pure Intent of anyone ever, because he was the first and only had himself to direct himself toward something only he could see. He was the first to pierce the psychic bubble that all of humanity has always lived inside of. And all living beings, if you want to get really big.

There are a lot of ways to generate pure intent. Just reading about these subjects helps. Reflecting on the relevant issues. I generated a lot around the New Year by reading history. Humans are capable of - and regularly perpetrate - terrible, terrible things. That’s motivation, too.

Having more PCEs never hurts though :grin:

Part of what’s great about ‘unifying’ is that you get to use whatever happens to be important to you - the real you, the one that mindlessly thinks about this or that thing - to become more dedicated. Because actual freedom really is win-win. There are very, very few downsides, and the downsides that do exist (such as being different than others) are balanced against the tremendous upsides (don’t you want to be different than others?). So just sitting here and having whatever complaints, itches, bothers, desires, whatever, there’s potential additional dedication there.

That’s ‘my’ projection of what life looks like without humanity - loneliness, darkness.

Loneliness & darkness are completely human beliefs - you haven’t left humanity at all, if you’re feeling bleak & grim. You’re right there in the fold with the rest of us :stuck_out_tongue:

The genuine outside of humanity… well, Richard puts it best:

…as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is … and one is the experiencing of what is happening.

If you’re feeling bleak & grim, you’re merely on the dark side of the moon - keep going!

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This grim bleakness can be unified too -

These forbidding presages are there to warn us: something terrible is going on. Get the hell out of there.

The simplistic version of that would be, “this actualism is bad news! No way am I leaving humanity!”

But with a little more context, it becomes clear: it’s not the actual world which is at issue, it’s not dangerous, it’s not forbidding.

All these ominous omens are coming from ‘me,’ from ‘humanity’

The call is coming from INSIDE the humanity!

If I really want to ‘get the hell out of here,’ which is precisely what ‘I’ want, then there’s only one thing to be done - which is, leave humanity post-haste.

And on the way I’m doing my bit to save future humanity from that very same suffering - exactly what those instinctive drives were put there for in the first place.

Being alive really is a miraculous machination.

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I think it probably has to do with what you mentioned further below about “unifying” the self. Not all of me is entirely sure about actuality being the best there is. I think I need to allow that purity more and more in order for more of me to see it.

Also I’ve been thinking about how sick Humanity is, yet I stay on-board. I ask myself why would I not leave it? The answer seems to be that I’m not too sure how leaving Humanity would help it. It’s cause deeper down part of me wants to help Humanity. Does becoming actually free have any effect on the collective psyche? I’m not entirely seeing the link between me and Humanity. I can see the bonds I have with those I know and am close with, but not the collective part of it. That also seems to be part of the confusion and causing the ‘split’. Maybe I’ll try the following the feeling experiment that’s suggested in the first post.

Actually what you’ve written here has been helpful for me. It made me see that I do have a part of me that desires actual freedom (as weird as that sounds). One part of me feels like I am fooling myself. That’s the part that’s not entirely convinced. But there is pure intent operating to some degree. Otherwise, why would I be here? So today I allowed this part of me to take charge. I became curious about all of these other parts of me and I wanted to listen.

So I had a nice little glimpse. I was speaking with my parents (the true test on whether what I am experiencing is genuine or not lol) and I noticed my usual tumultuous feelings associated with this bond surfacing. Then it was a simple matter of asking, why go along with these feelings if what I want is to be happy and harmless? I really wanted to know in that moment. I was able to stay with them instead of being convinced or carried away by them. Then they all just stopped for a few minutes. I instantly felt good while I was with them! I was able to have a fruitful conversation and left feeling good.

I like what you’ve written here so I’ll try it more.