The meaning of the title to this post just hit me: ‘This moment has no duration.’ This is no beginning and no end to this moment. It just is.
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Sorry Claudiu, I’m not seeing it. Looks to me like a tiny little nothing burger.
Hi Jon,
Ok, as it appears you don’t have any interest in writing sincere and accurate reports, and writing insincere and inaccurate reports is “a tiny little nothing burger” to you, I will take that under consideration when reading what you wrote in the past and what you have to write in the future.
Cheers,
Claudiu
Hi Jon,
Thank you for the welcome.
@JonnyPitt: My experience of late has been rather wonderful. It may be an ASC. If I were to call a PCE foreign then that would be clue. Because that would be impossible. PCEs aren’t like that. Nor are EE’s or IEs. This I know from experience. But examining my objections while being temporarily free of my normal anxieties did lead me to a place that seemed both foreign and a lot closer to the actual world than I am normally. I thought that foreignness might be an objection a lot of us have. And I was keen on conversating about that if anyone was interested. And if not then I was happy just putting it out there. [link]
Lately there is a new kind of ASC amongst people who come across Richard’s writings which could be called actualism-mimicking-ASC.
However, experiences of unreality have been quite common within the human condition. Here is one Richard’s described and another one from Peter –
[Richard]: I have written before (on my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust website) about personally experiencing a major dissociative state, of an extended duration during a period of my life in a war-zone as a youth, which was not unlike being in the centre of a cyclone – all about raged fear and hatred, anger and aggression – and in that unreality all was calm, peaceful (and ‘fearless’). (link) (List D 12)
Peter: Another doubt that emerged about this time was that if I was to throw out spirituality could it be that I would just end up back where I had started, but without love, trust, faith and hope: the very things that made life at least bearable? Would I find myself in some bleak awfulness, some grey world, empty of everything? One day I had a flash of stark barrenness, a glimpse of stark reality – but I knew from my peak experiences that this was simply fear and, sure enough, being only fear, it did not last. (link)
Besides, your very description of the experience is rather revealing:
JonnyPitt: I just experienced actual not as something that is more real than real or Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive. Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just experienced. A synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was […] (link)
You can’t have it both ways – either your is ‘actual’ is used synonymous with real or it is “so unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive”. Neither of these two descriptions reflect anything of the actual world. As such your very claim that this is why you have objections to an actual freedom are simply a red herring, a “nothing burger” (link).
I also look askance at your statement that “lead me to a place that seemed both foreign and a lot closer to the actual world”. It may be your subjective impression but the way you write shows no indication that you are “a lot closer to the actual world”.
JonnyPitt: Leading others astray didn’t occur to me.
You also said:
JonnyPitt: I simply lack the leverage to do that. [link]
Who are you kidding – have you forgotten the Cause of Bias thread which generated 219 posts, caused a stir and a rift in the halls of the Discuss Actualism Forum and was merely based on a strawman and a red-herring carelessly introduced but fervently defended by you?(*)
(*)[Richard]: JonnyPitt’s “Cause of Bias” thread is flawed from the get-go inasmuch his basic premiss regarding bias not being a product of ‘self’(1) is a premiss based upon calumny thence traducement (i.e., upon a strawman and a red-herring thence flat-out lies about “bad arguments” and “cognitive limitations” similar to “tone deafness” or “dyslexia” plus further lies, built upon those flat-out lies, about Richard and Vineeto being “stubbornly irrational”, and (allegedly) on the record with some “verifiably bat-shit crazy” opinions). [link](tool-tip after “flawed-from-the-get-go”).
(1)Footnote:
Cause of Bias? Message № 01; JonnyPitt; 6 Feb 2023.
What causes bias? I don’t think it’s self. What else can it be? [link].
[Richard]: Incidentally, and just in case it has escaped any casual reader’s notice, the entire “Cause of Bias” thread at the Discuss Actualism Online forum is rendered null and void by the marked absence of examples of bias from those in whom identity in toto is extinct [link]
And now you have started another red herring/nothing burger with this “unreality”=PCE. Can you comprehend that with such a history your claim of “lack of leverage” is rather unconvincing and that therefore your assertion that your “inaccurate” information would cause no harm to anyone is equally erroneous?
JonnyPitt: The actual world is pretty foreign when you’re not in it. When you still have access to all your anxieties yet see a world where those anxieties don’t exist and it’s like well i can stay here or go back – I think some interesting thoughts occur, some conversations can take place where words like unreal and foreign are bandied about. But maybe this an ASC.
Those statements are very clearly not made while in a PCE, in an EE or even when feeling good. They are made when in the grips of the ‘self’, which is “a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning” identity –
[Richard]: Wherever there be no underestimating the extent to which a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning feeling-being will go in order to remain affectively-psychically in existence – millions upon millions of years of blind nature’s successful perpetuation of the species via its rough-and-ready instinctual survival passions blindly dictates no other course of action can ever instinctually come about – is where there be far less likelihood of ascribing to nescience that which quite properly has its roots in the visceral wiliness of the wild which has so successfully proliferated the species thus far.
It is no-one’s fault if they be more cunning – more instinctively wily – than the norm as it is genetic inheritance which determines the degree to which instinctual drives, urges, impulses, appetites, and all the rest, are operating. [link, Footnote [1]]
Hence my previous suggestion that “it’s more fruitful to examine those fears and objections from a more dispassionate perspective, i.e. after you get back to feeling good first.” [link] and I add a suggestion to only write on the forum when you are feeling good.
JonnyPitt: An objection must remain, right? Otherwise, I’d have immolated, no?
Ha I think you fallen for James’ simplistic formula – What I had said was –
Vineeto to Claudiu: Become more and more friends with ‘me’ in that ‘I’ agree on more and more points that ‘I’ am indeed redundant to the stage where ‘I’ joyously acquiesce to lay down ‘my’ burden (it is indeed experienced as a burden) and fulfil ‘my’ deep-down yearning to finally go into oblivion.
When there is no objection left there is only joyous anticipation and no fear at all. [link]
This is when one is out-from-control, in a different way of being, in an ongoing excellence experience. Your next step is to recognize that fear is a burden, not a necessity for survival.
JonnyPitt: I think living without fear is an objection I have. I think the danger of having no fear is the objection. However, the foreignness I described has lessened. It feels more normal to have this level of reduced defensiveness, this level of reduced boredom, this level of assuredness that everything will be fine, this level of reduced responsibility and neediness. It’s still not totally normal though.
Ok, now you are getting closer to the real cause of why you introduced this thread but you are still defending the feeling that you feel. You are defending your ‘self’, the human condition. You haven’t decided yet that you want to live life without this feeling hampering you.
The way the actualism method works is to get back to feeling good before investigating any aspect of the trigger that made you feel bad.
Once you are feeling good – which may take some time to accomplish – look at the trigger (if it was an intense feeling which in your case it is) in a dispassionate way. Don’t embrace it, don’t defend it, don’t object to it, be as honest as you can, in other words, don’t feed it. When you stop feeding it, it will automatically shrink to at least half its intensity, if not more. Feelings can’t sustain themselves unless ‘I’ continue to feed it.
Then you can begin to contemplate in a rational manner, perhaps gather some information, for instance [link]. See what the fear is about – ask yourself some questions. Can you really not live /survive without it? How come other actually free people can and you think you cannot? Is fear attractive for you, does it have any endearing features (apart from being real)? Can you perhaps see that fear is there in order to keep you trapped within the human condition so that you stay as you are, that you do not have to change? Is it perhaps the fear to change? Do you want to change despite the fear? Do you want to perhaps be able to enjoy and appreciate being alive?
Btw, enjoyment and appreciation is not the same as you termed it – “wonder and satisfaction” [link]
JonnyPitt: I’m not used to thinking that everything will work out and I really don’t need to worry.
That is not what an actual freedom is about, even though it’s true that without instinctual passion is it much easier to meet the challenges that being alive presents. (See how you water down the magnificence of experiencing being pure intent personified as a flesh-and-blood human being, even the possibility to living peace-on-earth, by defining it from the myopic ‘self’-centred perspective of ‘what do ‘I’ get out of it?)
JonnyPitt” […] It’s just different thinking like that. And I think that’s still an objection. Maybe I should worry more. Ya know. If I don’t worry then christ shit might hit the fan and I won’t be prepared.
Ha, do you really think, if you worry enough those things won’t happen, and if they are happening, you will be prepared for everything? I guess you do think that, but you do so because you are not yet feeling good – life looks a lot different when you allow yourself to stop feeding the present feeling and allow a bit more naiveté to flourish. It will not automatically pay your electricity bill but you have been able to pay so far whether you worried about it or not.
Look at it this way – the universe has kept you alive and well so far, given you your skills and talents to accomplish staying alive, whether you additionally worried or not. Your ‘self’ and your feelings have not contributed, on the contrary, they have stuffed up a lot and caused a lot of unnecessary problems. ‘You’ are not needed, ‘you’ are redundant.
RICHARD: Yet all sentient beings are a product of nature. Nature endows all sentient beings with the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, right? You are suggesting that this nature might be better of scrapping human beings for some other ‘less aggressive’ being. Yet it was nature that made human beings aggressive in the first place. Do you see the circular nature of what you are saying?
RESPONDENT: I am not so sure. Fright is the intelligent response to danger.
RICHARD: Not so … fright is the instinctual reaction to danger [and a lot of imagined danger at that]. You are still believing that instincts are intelligent. Instincts are killing people. [link]
Cheers Vineeto
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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.
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Just some notes I want to write down before I go about my day. Disclaimer: At the most this is merely a conversation starter for anyone who wants to chat. At the least, it’s just the place and time I chose to jot a thing down so I don’t have to worry about remembering them.
When a particular bad feeling arises the mechanisms of dealing with it:
- Validate it: Normal
- Dwell in it: Abnormal
- Reason or distract yourself out of it: Suppression
- Notice it and allow it to go away to be replaced by a felicitous feeling. Actualist?
- Think of it as something separate from you: Detachment/dissociation
- Repression: What’s the action of repression? I can’t think of one rn. If I do I’ll come back and edit.
10 minutes later: One of the most persistent bad feelings I get is boredom. Here I am sitting in front of my computer trying to learn a thing or two that will help me with my finances and I feel boredom. Okay. No problem. Been here before. I pause from my work. Allow the boredom to pass and it’s replaced by something very good. I marvel for quite some time. And then I get back to work and by golly two minutes later boredom and repeat the whole damn thing. And now it’s time for me to get up and make some actual money but before I do that I come on here and write this…So there’s a few less minutes working/learning. lol- coming on here probably fits #3 in this case, suppression - distracting myself out of it. Oh well.
I suspect the boredom is a resentment and maybe I should proactively cultivate some felicitous whenever I sit down to work. Hopefully not in a #3 type of way reasoning myself out of it. Hopefully within felicitousness before boredom arises, I can just kind of acknowledge how good it feels to sit down and how amazing it is to type with two hands and see the words come across or how cool the thing is that I’m learning. Maybe. Not a recommendation or anything. Just something I’m gonna play with in the coming days.
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Disclaimer: Just a guy, most likely clueless and foolish - cunning, lonely and afraid - self-centered and dishonest - jotting things down.
I want to embrace the ‘wow’ moments today. I want to put them on a pedestal and see them as my reason for being alive. Maybe I’ll try to see everything else as background. It’s either what is necessary or what is leisurely but either way I want to see them as merely the stage for experiencing more and longer ‘wow’ moments.
Just jotting things down. This isn’t an exhaustive survey of everything I have to say on this subject. Nor is every word carefully chosen. And some words that were carefully chosen may have been influenced by personal preferences over a desire for clarity.
5 days ago i decided to stop doing 4 specific things. Since then I’ve had the space to recognize how those 4 things were just coping mechanisms. By not doing them i have had space to examine what i was coping with.
The 2 biggest takeaways so far have had to do with rage and boredom.
(Interestingly boredom often works to distract me from a very unpleasant buildup of rage. Funnily enough one of the 4 things boredom triggers me to do only exacerbates the built up rage.)
Having forbidden myself from my 4 main coping mechanisms, i am left with only one viable option. And that’s to minimize then examine.
After doing so, i am often left with no where to go. When working i can return to my work. But when by myself i have no where to run to. No choice but to reside somewhere more-or-less near the actual world. It is more near it when i am experiencing some part of it like sweetness or a more still, quieter atmosphere. And it is less near it when i am examining some generalized anxiety. I say generalized because i haven’t found a specific source. In both cases, i am farther away from the real world and those real concerns.
It seems those so-called real concerns are really just an accumulation of unexamined stressors. And one can drain them from the psyche before they build up.
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Things are much better. I see an urge to do one of the 4 things as an alarm bell that something is wrong and i identify the feeling, minimize it and then allow myself to feel good and then enjoy that feeling for as long as possible. Sometimes purity becomes accessible but other times an existential anxiety pushes me away from feeling good.
Lately I’ve been seeing my inner monologue as yet another way i avoid bad feelings. It works the same way those 4 bad habits work. I get the urge to restart a familiar inner monologue in order to avoid a bad feeling. However, unlike the 4 other bad habits, i find it impossible to completely stop running over the same old inner monologues. Probaby better to work on recognizing that the monologue is just a way to avoid bad feelings (boredom mostly) without trying to shut it down completely. Lots of times when I approach it like that i find myself finishing my silly and unnecessary monologue much much much more quickly than I usually finish it. And from there i can identify the anxiety that compelled me to create said monologue and either enjoy and appreciate or sit with the anxiety until i am comfortable allowing myself to feel good again.
(Just jotting things down. All the usual unspoken caveats that are freely applied in normal conversation are applicable here)
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