I've come to realize via my Buddhist practice and now my actualism practice that all happiness, suffering, feeling, pleasure, pain, manifest as physical sensation. PCE happiness doesn't seem to be a physical sensation, so via what mechanism is PCE and AF enjoyed?

I'm beginning to think that all my so thought PCEs must have been EEs because there was felicitous feeling tone. So now I'm curious, what is in fact so nice about lacking feeling tone, even the supposedly pleasant feeling tone? I need to know what to aim for.


thanks :0

IDK, maybe a feeling tone requires a relative value system which is discouraged. From reading other threads, it seems that relative value system is inevitable i.e. hunger is less comfortable than satiation even if both conditions are satisfactory. So I can't speak to this claim that there is no feeling-tone within a PCE.

Your post just hipped me to the term EE. I looked it up and, most certainly, my experiences have been EE's rather than PCEs although the experience itself may alternate between the two depending on the abeyance of Self. But Peter says that it's a necessary prereq before attaining AF so consider an EE to be just as good. Even if meditation has made clear anatta, I would be happy with continuous EE's.

Tarin Greco explicitly states the lack of feeling tone, the lack of all affect, as Daniel Ingram puts it attention wave.

So I guess... EE is the lack of all feeling tone except felicity and PCE is the lack of all feeling tone at all.

p.s. I think we should make some sort of posting "diary" each day describing experiences relating to practice of actualism, I need something to read and discuss, I think I've gleaned all I can from the AF site, it's very repetitive.

Feel free to share mine or make your own. There's not much you can share, however. Intellectual insights aren't really it, though people are kind enough to read them. I had 3.5 days of consistent happy and harmlessness. I felt like I was able to will it. Today, however, the need for purpose was pretty potent and happy degenerated into content for minutes at a time. I wasn't able to will happiness like I had been the whole weekend. To get past it, I willed sensuousness and that was pleasant. The happiness came back. It seems the two work together. You can will happiness by refusing to give legitimacy to anything that will cause depression or anxiety but you need sensuousness to sustain it.

have you yet had a PCE? I feel like I'm lost, without knowing what PCE is like firsthand it is sort of difficult to know what to aim for, I;m mostly working on social identity and felicity. I've been really focusing on not feeling any desire to get other people to like me even in the slightest way.

Seems like an excellent place to start. Something clicked in that regard last Friday. Haven't felt the slightest social anxiety since then....well maybe only the very slightest and that is of short duration. Not sure how to teach someone to be less insecure; not sure if my insecurity won't come back. Keep posting and keep working at it. My guess is that it's a trial and error thing: Eventually the process of being learns something so subtle that it can't be verbalized yet is still very very valuable and that subtle insight weakens the proverbial chains.

I did alot better today not thinking about PCE at all. I focused not on trying to be happy, more on try to not suffer. I scrutinized every thought for any trace of social fear/desire/nurture/aggression and for any trace of instinctual fear/desire/nurture/aggression. I realized that almost every single thought I have has some element of an unconscious trace of this. I guess repeatedly calling them out as silly and ridiculous should cut right towards freedom. I'm just keeping in mind that perfection not existing occurs only through emotion, and emotion occurs only through social/instinctual identity.

Got the cause & effect wrong, there. First are the instinctual passions, on top of which is built the social identity. That is what identity is - a set of beliefs, which are thoughts backed by emotions.

Also you seem to be leaning towards denying your thoughts and emotions - that is silly! stop it! you have to not only repeatedly call it out as silly, but investigate why it is silly

hmm, I think you are misunderstanding me, I didn't say that social "instinct" causes animal "instinct" just happened to list the things in that order.

and when I say call out as silly I mean recognize why it is silly and be aware of it, investigation being part of that, not just doing something like noting "silly"

recognize any identity/emotion backed thought/impulse/action and understand why it is silly, on a case by case basis, this is what I'm doing

best not to get caught up in all the terms

Just to be clear -- beo is saying that that inner monologue which says "that is silly! stop it!" is insufficient and in my own opnion counter-productive. Say you go to school and discover that you wearing no pants and instantly feel mortified. It's not enough to simply tell yourself not to feel mortified. You also have to understand why you shouldn't feel mortified.


edit: you already replied and seem to know what he meant.

but they can see my underwear =/

oh I understand that inner talk is no good, pretty much all inner talk is just a manifestation of desire/fear/aggression/nurture

a general resentment of the present conditions of the universe, an imagined imperfection created by either instinctual or social self.

considering that helped me today too, I was just aware that there is no such thing as good or bad. and whenever I perceived good or bad I traced why I had that perception, it was always because the perceived imperfection was seen as harmful to instinctual/social self