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Daniel on Actualism

And then there was Actualism...

Well then, if you live long enough you may learn something, or so I hope.

What to do with Actualism?

I wrote the Emotional Model section about 10 years ago, or most of it, and revised it around 2006 or so, and then, in 2010 February two friends claimed to do something that now directly contradicts what I wrote there, and then shortly thereafter two more claimed the same thing.

So, at this point, this is what I know:

These people claim to have no emotions of any kind ever and yet say they are perpetually happy. I know some of them quite well, so this claim is a very interesting one, and I knew them before they would have made any similar claim, so this gets more interesting, and I have spent a bunch of time with some of them before and after, and they are different.

That said, they do seem from outside observation to have emotions, and they write in ways that can seem to be based on emotions, and I am not the only one to observe or comment on this. They say that this is my projection, and that no emotions need be felt to seem emotive. Fair enough, perhaps, and we will see.

They say that not only are things like anger and sadness eliminated, but love also, compassion, and all and every other feeling of any kind. Thus, this is not a model involving the elimination of just the bad emotions, but a total emotional elimination model.

One has speculated that this must be something very physiologic and measurable, as they say that their body and mind respond very differently to things before and after.

They say other things about this Actual Freedom they claim, including the following:

  • No jhanas are possible anymore
  • No powers or energetics are possible
  • Dreams rapidly fade and sleep becomes just a vanishing of consciousness
  • The need for sleep goes down to a few hours
  • Jet Lag doesn't seem to occur for them, even after long days of trans-oceanic travel
  • Orgasms do nothing at all for them
  • There is a marked increase in mental silence
  • There is an appreciation of "the infinitude", which they say is as it implies
  • There is no sense of agency at all, meaning that the universe feels like it is happening on its own
  • They describe the final transition to this as "psychic suicide", but with a smile, meaning that they feel this is the final elimination of any residual sense of a self, as their motto is, "I am my feelings, and my feelings are me," meaning that, from their point of view, if you feel anything at all ever there is some distortion or residual delusion in that.

Then there becomes the sticky question of how this relates to traditional claims regarding enlightenment, and whether or not this is something new, as Richard, founder of the Actualism Method, claims.

Much more interesting than that is how to do it, and for more on that, I point you to the source material.

I find the possibility compelling, as well as the methods straightforward enough, with them based on directly perceiving one's sensate experience and appreciating the positive aspects of it, as well as noticing one's feeling as they are, and sincerely wishing to resolve any mental tensions that one finds therein, as well as working with something called the Pure Consciousness Experience, or PCE, and letting the wondrous nature of that experience serve as a guide to what is possible and what to look for, with the qualifier that Actual Freedom, this condition my friends describe, is slightly less cool and the PCE, but has the benefit of not fading.

Having had quite a number of PCE's at this point, I can tell you that they are both compelling and impressive.

There is more I could say at this point, but it it late, and I will continue this some other time.

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