carolin varley:
This has been very interesting, and worked particularly well in the beginning at weakening the affective layer, even if only momentarily, but now it's become less effective and my feelings are harder to deal with. Could this be because I want/ expect feelings to drop away?
The method has become less effective because now you have started to deal with harder feelings, hence they have become harder to deal with (instincts are harder than everyday mundane feelings, sunbconscious feelings are harder than conscious ones).
carolin varley:
Also, on a side note, could anyone give me any tips on tracing emotions/ if and how tracing emotions has worked for them? I'm finding it hard to pinpoint the incident that lead me to drop out of sensousness, and placing the last time I was happy, because it all seems relative and sometimes blurred by memory.
I was at a similar position that you find yourself in now. I could not find out what made me start to feel bad. Having had no luck with Actualism method (HAIETMOBA) from that time on, I turned to Vajrayana. The advice that I got from this forum at that point was that it is not necessary to find out what caused me to start feeling less than good. It was very difficult for me to get out of the pits and it would take me a very long time before I could get out.
Now I can exactly pinpoint what went through my head which made me lose my awareness of sensations. And it hardly takes any time. The moment I become aware of all the sensations (with no residual gross sensations) in my body, there is no affective layer at that very moment.
Actualism method is not powerful enough to get to the level of the instincts. There are residual instincts left, that is why AFers sometimes talk vaguely.