Hi everyone my name is Matt. I have been reading the AF trust website on and off for a year or so although have only recently started to develop the drive required to actually do this thing properly.

I am seeking advice on my current practise and whether there are any holes in it or things I should be paying more attention to. To date I have had only limited success due to lack of intent but this has been building (but has a long way to go in order to do this moment to moment all day everyday).

I would also like to note that this forum has been helping me to understand the practical side with better clarity and I am grateful for this.

My current method looks something like this:

-HAIETMOBA to build attentiveness if it is lacking (most of the time)

-feel what I am feeling, if it is good then continue feeling good, if not then…

-find the event that caused the feeling

-find the belief that caused the feeling

-ask myself whether this belief is silly or sensible given that this world is perfect already (sometimes difficult as this is still a belief having had only flashes of what I guess is EE)

-if I nail it, I feel release from that previously bad feeling (me taking credit) sometimes marked by hyper awareness of the senses as in a feeling of actually being alive for a moment.

I haven’t been investigating the nurture feelings as I tend to deny them before they occur or see straight through them as they arise or before they occur.

My ongoing experience is characterised by feeling somewhat glum, anxious, worried about the future yet intrigued by being here.

My biggest flashes of intrigue have come from noticing that trees and bushes and all sorts of stuff grow out of the ground and that time is one big non-moving moment ‘an arena’ as someone put. These 2 are pretty awesome.

Hi Matt. Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'drive'?


I find it fascinating that we are all here together in this moment. People often think of themselves as being so separated and so different. But really that is only a small fraction of the equation. We all share this moment in time. Keeping this awareness has been invaluable to me, and it seems to be providing benefit to you as well. As a professional plant scientist (which is one way to describe my professional work) I am constantly intrigued by the workings of these essential organisms. One day while sitting out on a summer day I pondered photosynthesis to an extremely penetrating point. It was as if all of my book studies were brought to the forefront of my mind and I could use them to further appreciate was I was then experiencing. I watched the clouds drift towards me from over Pike's Peak, and saw the leaves of the nearby junipers sparkling in the sun. Looking at the slender leaves of one juniper in particular opened up a world of wonder for me that did not go away easily. Although now I see that it quickly devolved into a long-lasting ASC not dis-similar to spiritual enlightenment. This degradation was most likely because I did not want to live in the moment; I wanted to live in that past moment (the silliness of which is clear to me now, but it was not then)

It sounds like you are coming along well with the practice. What do you think it would take to want an AF every moment of the day?

hi matt,

how have things been going in the four days since you wrote?

welcome to the dho, btw.

tarin

Hi David. I meant intent, I still feel funny about using the AF 'jargon' words although their practicality for describing states is very useful. So I meant the intent to become happy and harmless and no longer be involved in contributing to malice and sorrow.

The specifics of building that intent have been to recognise the source of violence and rape as being the instinctual passions and recognising these in myself through memory and observation (biggest motivator), the feeling of being half-alive or glum a lot of the time, as well as the knowledge from a 'spiritual awakening' that vastly different states of living as a human can be possible.

I have small glimpses of wonder daily at the moment when being very attentive, and these serve to build confidence in the experiences that I read about.



Gee, that is a massive question that I haven't really considered, yet it is such a very obvious one so thanks for asking it to me. I think a PCE would go a long way to proving to myself that it is possible to live in AF, and that this would make it easier for me to want AF every moment of the day. Although having said that, 'me' does like to warp experiences when they're recalled in memory. I will have to mull this one over at length I think.

Hi Tarin and ta for the welcome.

The four days have been interesting, this stuff certainly can make things interesting. I have been consistently applying the method outlined. I am getting an understanding of what it takes to be attentive enough to slip into contemplation and then wonder....although I cannot maintain that wonder, like I begin to reach for it or make it solid or mine.

Some highlights have been:

i) Sitting in the park and noticing that the way I relate to people is through being rather than noticing that they are actually humans. For example I look at someone and feel a mix of aggression and fear a lot of the time. After looking at this for a while I realised that we're actually humans and slipped into wonder at the fact.

ii) Maintaining attentiveness around my girlfriend rather than just blindly being. Some wonder ensued, although it was being swamped by feeling that I am betraying the relationship.

iii) Tonight I was lying on the couch getting bored with tv and was looking at my legs. This led me to notice that not only are other people humans as from i) but that I am one myself. Now of course i) and iii) are both intellectually obvious, but I have never really noticed them.

iv) Discussing time with friends who have the real experience of time and noticing beliefs in action. The feeling when I reflect on this is that it was slightly malicious to discuss actual time and see people defend beliefs, although I was very conscious of any malicious intent or belief defending (the rise of aggression in me) and couldn't notice any at the time. Out of this experience I can notice the warp that is affective memory.

Does it sound like I am on the right track here?


edit:

Oh and one more! v) Most of my life has been based on competitive sports (big part of my identity) so this was a fun one. I am relatively unfit compared to usual and went on a 14km run on Sunday. At the half way point I stopped to catch a breath and was struck with wonder while walking along the riverside looking at the sunset. This wonder waxed and waned (but was most pleasant) on the way home...anyway the run home was going really easily so I sprinted the last 500m or so and noticing that it was really easy I wondered why then I realised I was not experiencing affective pain, only the pain that the body makes when exercising intensively. This was quite awesome as I had never clued up to why this type of thing would happen now and then, but now I know.

to me it does.

regarding i: have you considered that other people may similarly be likely to often feel a mix of fear and aggression when they look at others?

regarding iii: what is noticing that you are a human like?

regarding ii and iv: what do you make of the feeling that you are 'betraying the relationship'? and what, in your subsequent reflection, informed you that it was 'slightly malicious to discuss actual time and see people defend beliefs'?

tarin

Yes, most definitely. I take it this way of looking at people is the everyday way of looking at people, only I hadn't picked up on the fact until it was pointed out to me through reading on the AF/dho websites.

It is exhilarating, quite amazing and I would say had a component that was curiously spooky/eery (but not affectively so) as in 'is this really happening? really? holy crap'

Regarding the feeling of betraying the relationship: I feel as though by taking these steps towards AF that I am breaching some unwritten code of relationships that says you must be nurturing/empathising/sympathising and other assorted affective vibing feelings. And when I am being attentive and as 'here' as possible, watching for emotions and beliefs that 'I' am coming up with, I tend not to be that nurturing side. Caring in the practical sense yes, but not in the feeling sense as most people define care. I fear that I won't be able to maintain the relationship in this way as I am not the same 'me' when being attentive/in this moment and on the watch for emotions/instincts and beliefs.

Regarding the feeling of having been malicious (in hindsight) by discussing beliefs around actual time: the feeling is that it was malicious to uncover a person's belief as it caused them to become aggressive when trying to defend it. I don't want to cause people emotional harm (evidenced by aggression manifesting), and it seemed as though they were being harmed by passionately defending their beliefs around time.