I’m glad this topic has been brought up. @JonnyPitt I think the dichotomy you are falling for is something that I have been contemplating recently in myself.
Essentially it goes that ‘I’ either worry about things so that “I can get shit done” OR I adopt some kind of ‘don’t worry, be happy’ mentality.
The mistake is confusing the ‘don’t worry, be happy’ mentality with what actualism and actual freedom is all about.
The thing is that both options within this dichotomy are two sides of the same coin, as in whether ‘I’ choose to ‘worry and be productive’ or ‘don’t worry, be happy’, ‘I’ am still trapped in a worldview where emotion is primary, as in ‘I’ never get to see the actual situation for what it is.
‘I’ end up confusing worry with caring and happiness with lack of care. I guess this is a fundamental feature of being a ‘self’, that the actual situation is never seen and instead everything is enmeshed with emotion.
I notice in myself that once I am caught in this dichotomy I will end up coming up with all sorts of weird ‘actualist rules’ for myself, for example “I should be happy instead of thinking about X” but then again since when is feeling happy and harmless at odds with thoughtful consideration of whatever topic?
The point I am trying to get at is that once care and consideration is disentangled from both emotion and belief then it is absolutely sensible (as it always has been) to apply ones mind to whatever situation is at hand.
This is what I notice (with delight) whenever I have an EE or PCE, that I don’t stop being me, in the sense that all of a sudden the bills don’t get paid or I don’t turn up at work or I don’t go to train BJJ. It’s not as if ‘I’ go into abeyance and some alien is dropped in ‘my’ place. And the same with feeling good, I still care about the same things, I am still the same individual, it is just that now a burden has been lifted.
So when ‘I’ disappear there is no void, instead the genuine me as-I-am is discovered, of course he does not stop caring, he actually cares, whereas ‘my’ care is forever tangled up with emotion.