| | Hi guys,
I haven't been on here in a while. I left a while back because I realized I wasn't adding much to the forum, but I'd like to rejoin the community and try to make some useful posts since I've found so many on here over the past year.
Something I've noticed about Actualism is that there isn't a great variety in the way it's presented, and this is, maybe, what leads to so much confusion about it. I've spent a lot of time over at the AFT website recently looking things up as I encounter them, and I've really come to enjoy how lucid and simple a lot of it is. My hope for this post is that I can help more people benefit from the ideas, and maybe give any practicing actualists a new set of ideas to work with.
Anyway, the way I've come to see Actualism is that it is a set of tips, ideas, and practices aimed at dismantling the "guard", or the habitual reactionary process that happens when we experience things. This guarding, or tension, is both physical and mental, and it's always related to self-protection. As we go about our day, there is an alertness sitting at the back of our minds that is actively scanning for dangers, and a person's personality is, essentially, the result of how many things they see as dangerous, and the way they've come to protect themselves agaisnt these things. An anxious person sees danger in saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, making mistakes, etc, and protects himself by avoiding and running away from situations that might present these things. An angry person sees danger in having their ideas, authority, or power challenged, and deals with the danger by making himself large and loud to scare off the threats.
Actualism, then, works in a two fold manner to disable the guard in the short term, and then remove the triggers that cause the guard to appear. After a bit of practice, the ongoing question in the mind of an actualist is whether or not they see danger in anything in their experience. When something is encountered that trigers this guarding mechanism, it is examined until it is seen that this thing doesn't need to be taken seriously, and the emotional negativity is resolved. This weakens the reactivity each time it's done until the reaction simply doesn't happen anymore.
This often turns into a philosophical and ethical examination, and this is where the PCE is important. After either having or remembering a PCE, a person will realize that the very core of human nature, when it's been stripped of all defense mechanisms, is a mind that is both benevolent and content. This benevolence is born from contentment, so it's effortless and needs no "guard" (or morality) to persist, and the contentment is so perfectly satisfying that it is known, viscerally, that the mind truely needs nothing.
All moral or ethical guards, like guilt and shame, are seen as pointless because the mind can actually FEEL a perfect kindness towards all things without effort. Guilt and shame also have negative side effects, like resentment leading to harmfulness, whereas the "check" on our malevolence in the PCE is the contentment that comes from needing nothing at all. It's only logical to conclude that there's no reason to take guilt and shame seriously.
Anger is seen as pointless because, not only does it feel bad compared to the PCE, but it destroys interpersonal relationships and tends to prevent us from living well with other people. There is also no need for it because, as seen in the PCE, we don't really need anything to be content - there are truely no threats to protect against.
An interesting realization for me, personally, was how useless anxiety is. I was laying in bed worried about money, and I had thoughts about how, tomorrow, I would work harder to finish my project so I could become more prolific and maybe scrape by. These kinds of thoughts were looping in my head when I suddenly realized I had spent most of the day thinking about the same things rather than working. The irony of the situation was so ridiculous I lost the anxiety completely. If we were to spend all our time in a PCE, we'd easilly be able to work 12 hour days no-problem, and we'd enjoy the work!
So, at it's core, Actualism is the process of learning to trust spontenaity. It's about going through your problems, piece by piece, and realizing that none of them are actually serious or important.
But what about the good emotions? This is something a little harder to understand, I think, but emotions like love and compassion are also reactionary and defensive. There's a self absorption that is intrinsic to emotions (and I mean that in the normal way, not in the buddist "self" way). When we experience love, it is a tension, both physical and mental, and it causes us to take possetion of another person. Most importantly, it causes us to guard against anything that might hurt the feeling. Compassion is a defense mechanism where the mind learns to enjoy sadness. In fact, most positive emotions have a negative counterpoint, which is why the emotional experience can be so volitile and confusing.
This way of talking about positive emotions can be very confusing, though, because the PCE is often described in emotional terms like "delight", "wonder", "felicity", etc. I've found it's best not to be too involved in questioning whether or not I'm experiencing an emotion in particular, though, and instead focus on whether there's any part of my experience that is unpleasant. This allows the mind more freedom in what it examines, because there's no lable like "love" to skim over. What I've often found is that, once the negative aspects of a positive experience like love are skimmed away (jealosy, fear of loss, desire to be closer, desire to possess), you're left with the simple benevolent contentment of the PCE anyway. The love isn't gone so much as transcended. A good analogy to this is that, because everything is perfect in the PCE, art loses all it's meaning. That's not because the art-object has dulled, but rather because everything else has increased in beauty to meet it. Even the idea of beauty is transcended. The art and the wall behind it are both perfect. As an artist, I have to say that I think the PCE is where our idea of beauty actually comes from.
The PCE, then, finally happens when the guard is down long enough for the mind to become thoroughly fascinated by the senses. This fascination takes the mind completely out of the guarding mechanism, and this gives the PCE a "now" and "here" feeling. It's perfectly possible to think, but the thoughts aren't coming out of that danger-seeking alertness, so even the most inflamatory ideas and events no longer carry emotional weight. The mind is finally at ease.
I see the PCE, rather than "Actual Freedom", as the goal of the practice. The reason for this is because the whole purpose of the thing is to let go of that tendancy to watch experience like a hawk. I've been launched right out of PCEs by trying to figure out why they happened. I've also wasted a lot of time rehersing negative feelings and trying to stop having them. It can be helpful to know that there are Actually Free people in the world if you're going through a difficult time and need inspiration, but it's always better, as a practice, to look for freedom now rather than in the future.
I hope this is helpful to people and maybe serves to displace some of the misconceptions there are. A few of the misconceptions I've had are:
- Actual Freedom is about becoming emotionless. While it's true that the PCE is emotionless, it's not because the person experiencing it tried to get rid of their emotions in some way. Anyone who is experiencing a PCE has temporarily let go of their defenses, which is the opposite of suppression. I used to call it "acceptance" except you aren't accepting the negative emotions, you're accepting that there's nothing you really need to worry about, thus erasing negative emotions.
- PCEs are caused by paying attention - i.e. bare awareness. I spent a lot of time doing a kind of zazen earlier this year, and while just sitting CAN lead to a PCE, it isn't because of deep concentration but rather deep appreciation. Concentration is always going to be an exercise in suppresion, and that isn't going to make any deep changes to habitual patterns. Eventually, even the most concentrated bliss becomes unsatisfyting, whereas the PCE is, itself, satisfaction.
- I must pay close attention to how I feel. This one is a particular problem for anyone practicing any kind of mental development. There's no bigger trap than ruminating about feelings. I've been there a lot in my life, so I understand it. The actualism method can often sound like rumination, as well. We're supposed to examine our feelings, no? But that's why I like to make the particular distiction that actualism is about letting down the guard. It's impossible to ruminate about that, and it points directly to the problem - which is rumination itself. By examining emotions dispassionately, we can sort out the the triggers that cause them, but searching wildly for some cause of a negative emotion in the moment is just a waste of time. It is expressing the negativity to panic and look for a cause. A better response is to neither express nor suppress the emotion - which is letting down the defenses. I've found the best thing to do if you're ruminating about something is to distract yourself. Do something physical or go be social for a while. Come back to the problem later when you aren't so embedded in it.
I think that's it. I'm on my tablet right now, so I probably have a lot of spelling errors and typos. Hopefully that doesn't grate on anyone too much. :3 |