These are good questions. Keep in mind, when reading my thoughts, that I never listened to the Hurricane Ranch discussions. (On reflection, pretty strange for someone interested in the subject.)
carolin varley:
I listened to the Hurricane Ranch talks yesterday. Super interesting!
One of the things Tarin said that I have been thinking about a lot today is how the first time he tried AF he dropped it because he reached some dead ends, like wanting to be happy but not really caring about harmless (or something along those lines).
This worries me a bit as I can definitely see that as a potential barrier for my future practice. I am pretty new to AF but have enjoyed getting into sensuousness and cultivating felicity. I realize that what attracted me to AF in the first place is the idea of this fairy-tale adventure and complete enjoyment of life that I have been reading about. However, to be honest, my main motivation is my own happiness.
Speaking only for myself, I found that the only reason I ever intended to harm anyone was because of my own unhappiness...and so harmlessness follows automatically from happiness.
However, the opposite relationship holds, too...to the extent that I allowed myself to feel ill-will (of any kind), I was not able to be happy. So, steering away from those kinds of feelings (and, to whatever extent possible, situations that generated those feelings) was helpful in terms of my own welfare.
However, a more general point is, there's no need to worry about whether 'you' have a messiah / bodhisattva complex and feel the need to save the world or not. If 'you' have one, you should harness it. If not, then that's simply the way things are. What 'you' think is besides the point...it is enough to resolve to be happy and harmless, for whatever reasons work for 'you', be they egoic or altruistic or some combination. (To expect sainthood from yourself is an unrealistic sort of thing.) Perhaps you will think differently about things when there is less of 'you' around.
To the extent that 'you' are motivated by altruism, think about how much better off everyone else would be if you were a happy person, freed from whatever neurotic stuff you have. And think about how good it would be to share this practice with them (should they be interested), once you understand it and can speak from personal experience about it. Those are just two (very general) ways to appreciate how the benefits to yourself will carry over to others. Depending on the specifics of your life, you can surely think of more.
carolin varley:
Also, I am pre-path and I'm still not 100% sure where my practice is going at the moment. I am tempted to go all AF with some continued samatha sits (have been getting into some jhana-ish states recently), and drop noting for the time being because trying to fumble my way through dark night in my sits seems to make off the cushion AF practice harder afterwards. BUT I have been advised to get stream entry before fully pursuing AF and although Tarin said in the talk to start practicing AF as soon as possible, he seemed to have problems when he approached it pre-path, and Daniel was saying how much easier it was with path. Thing is I DON'T FIND GETTING PATH EASY!

Any advice?
Unless you have tried this strategy already and found it unhelpful, or have some unique reason for thinking that getting path would be especially hard for you...if you have time to set aside for a vipassana retreat of reasonable length, that is a good way to increase the chance of getting path (and getting the whole thing over with quickly).
Another possibility is to conceive of the goal of your practice as
paying attention rather than cultivating felicity. Paying attention is a kind of attentiveness to sensuousness that doesn't have feeling any particular way as a goal (though it can often result in felicity / EEs / PCEs despite that). If you can lessen the need to feel any particular way, you may be able to find a way to merge this practice with a kind of vipassana, so you could pursue [what you conceive of as] two separate goals simultaneously.
How is your attentiveness to sensuousness during the day? Could you accurately estimate how close you are to applying that 24/7?