Actualism makes sense to me, especially after watching the videos. I feel more connected to it now.
However, I struggle with how to incorporate this into my daily life. I want to be happy and harmless, but I’m unsure how to achieve that. It’s easy to say I want to do this, but how do I actually make it happen? How does this lead to a PCE?
There’s so much text on the main webpage that I feel overwhelmed. Should I read it from A-Z, or do people search for specific topics? What’s the best way to approach it?
Are there any simple guides for beginners? Maybe someone has asked this before, and I could look up that thread.
I find audio and video easier to understand. I’m glad the videos have been released, as they have helped me a lot.
Could someone help point me in the right direction?
I have many questions, but I usually move slowly. Is it okay to start topics in this category of the forum, or should I open a journal thread?
Small tip for reading the website. You can increase and decrease the font size by pressing
ctrl + or ctrl - (cmd + or cmd - for mac)
If you’re not sure where to start or restart, you could navigate from the main page to:
Third Alternative → Various Articles → This Moment of Being Alive
A good way is to begin incorporating actualism into your daily life, and then searching for your questions that inevitably arise from that attempt. If you forced yourself to read the entire website A->Z before making an effort you’d probably never get around to starting.
The pages titled “Selected Correspondence by Topic” can also be good places to visit in lieu of doing a search. They will provide a list of topics that you can scan and some may pop out as relevant or interesting to you.
Rather than give you a run-down, might you elaborate on the challenges you’re currently facing? I’m curious how you would describe what you’ve been doing thusfar.
You’re correct to note that it’s easy to say. You will have to do more than just say you want to do it and venture into the land of effort and application - which is where the fun is.
Getting a good grasp on the This Moment of Being Alive article and trying to put what you understand into practice - moment to moment - would be a great place to start. A sincere attempt will inevitably illuminate what may be preventing you from feeling happy and harmless, and thus give you something to look into.
And if you have questions you could certainly ask them here.
Great to hear you’re interested in practically applying actualism!
This is a great question. This flow chart might help. It might seem a lot at first glance but just start at the top and follow from there: Actualism Diagrams Hub - #3 by claudiu (direct image link: here). It will tell you what to do at each step.
I remember Richard saying at some point that he tried a few times to make a “start to finish” guide to actualism, starting at ‘the’ definite starting point and going from there, but he never could do it.
The way I would put it is that actualism is all highly interconnected with itself, as is life in general, so it’s just a matter of starting where you are at.
What I’d give as very starting advice is this: just ‘wait’ until you find yourself in a normal, regular, run-of-the-mill ‘good mood’. As in, lead your life normally until you find yourself in a good mood. This happens to everyone at some point.
Now once you are in the good mood (as in basically feeling good), then feel out the mood. Feel out what it feels like to feel good. It feels nice, doesn’t it? Allow yourself to appreciate this and even maybe start to luxuriate in it a little. A good mood basically seems quite normal while you’re in it, and it’s easy to ‘overlook’ it. Easier when in a bad mood to feel bad and wish you were in a good mood. By actively appreciating the good mood you help to solidify it for you.
Then here is the key, is consciously initialize a general affective awareness of how you are feeling. When in a good mood it is as simple as actively feeling that you are in a good mood.
Inevitably (at first) you will find that the good mood has diminished. Now you aren’t feeling good anymore. Oh noes! Not to worry, this is all normal.
What you do now is trace back to when you last remember feeling good. The more active your affective awareness is, the shorter a time-span this will be. Then when you have that solidly in mind, go forward a little until you find you were not in a good mood anymore. Right around there is the trigger, it is what got you out of that feeling good mood.
Now you learned something about yourself – that trigger, that normal event that happened, takes you out of a good mood.
At this point you have something to investigate. The advice is to get back to feeling good first, and do the investigation while feeling good. The ultimate goal is to see that it is not worth letting that thing take away from enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. But you have to actually see that. If you do think it’s worth it then you will let it take away from feeling good. But if you are able to give up whatever aspect of yourself it is that lets you do that, then when that trigger happens next time it won’t take away from feeling good anymore.
At the beginning stages it is essentially just about doing this, over and over, repeatedly, and as you do it you will more consistently be in a good mood. This is how you establish the baseline of a generally feeling good.
There is more to go from there but this is the first stages… I’d suggest that you read all the above, take it in, start trying it out, and if you like you can start a journal to detail how it’s going, giving opportunity to other actualists on the forum to chip in and share notes. Of course if you have specific questions about this or that then creating new topics in this category is the way to go.
Thank you for that detailed and useful reply Claudiu. I don’t think I’ve done it quite so literally before to go back and look for the specific trigger that caused me to drop out from feeling good. I just went through a situation that had a specific point where I started feeling bad and it took me over. I could clearly see that I didn’t want to feel bad and could see that it was a silly thing to do, but the bad feelings had a life of their own and it was dificult to let go of them.
I’ll print that flowchart you linked and give it a try.
I’ll also start a journal and see if that is a good way to stay with the method and not fall away as I tend to do some times.
Thank you Edzd,
I think the vast overwhelm of information and unfortunate disproportionate amount of visual and audio material (which I have an easier time assimilating) makes it dificult for me to fully understand exactly what I’m supposed to do, even though the concepts of actualism make sense.
My current challenges is that I will run into a situation in daily life that causes me anxiety and then I sometimes have a hard time getting back to feeling good. This can affect my life in many ways and can cause a downwards spiral even though I’m usually able to prevent that from happening.
I’ll open up a journal and share my journey there to see if that is a good way to get into practicing the method.
