| | William and Cladiu,
Thank you for the considerate responses. I am aware of the low success rate. Yes, I was thinking of the exceptions, as well as the differences in outcomes. Of the people who claimed AF and later withdrew it, the was wide range of results, cirumstances, personalities and original goals. That said, I understand the confusion when I use a sentence like this:
"...I respect and admire some of the heavier hitters on this forum for attaining AF so completely and so quickly..." when I really mean: "striving for certain high ideals in an honest, diligent, and skillful manner (as is consistent with the spirit of this forum), and bettering themselves through the endeavour"
I'll clarify with the following points: -It makes sense that practicioners are developing an inhibitory mechanism, in addition to various ways to script/interpret experiences. -Daniel's original line with regard to emotional perfection models is pragmatic. -I still find the method useful. I'm learning, and developing an intuition for working with my emotions and experiences. I could say I've seen benefit in every area of my life, but I think seeing how "this moment is great" covers it all. -Standard motivations for wanting to go on retreat apply. -I welcome any feedback now that my goals aren't as ambiguous.
Comments on motivation: -I didn't think there was a reason to do this 1 year ago because I thought if you wanted to "seriously do the AF thing", it wouldn't make a difference if you just chilled out for a few weeks and didn't keep up with friends and family. -There were unaddressed notions of "attaining AF", retreats being this big investment I needed to arrange my life around, and stories I didn't know I was telling myself about trade offs, opportunity cost, and identity. As others have said, "interrogative work with a social identity" stuff on this forum is pretty good, and helped in ways some of the AFT writings didn't. -Fast forward to now, I've got some free time inbetween longer term commitments, and I feel like "hey, this is not a big deal, I could try it out and see if the environment helps". After all, I'm just developing a habit, like throwing frizbee or learning how to juggle. It's like of deciding to get better at juggling for a few hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon, on a different timescale.
A few points about where I am at now: -I routinely fall in and out of really strong PCEs throughout the day, but the novelty has become routine. I work a lot, making most of this progress while being really busy (basically doing the opposite of sensible advice to disengage from the world for a bit and chill) and just sort of fell back on basic mindfulness when things got stressful. -I'm generally much happier than I was two years ago, in every sense of the word. I don't see this changing. I understand myself better, interact with others more skillfully, etc.
I think that's all that comes to mind right now. |