Hi all,

So, I've been having these experiences, when I go out walking in the park, particularly when there is sunlight. I wonder if they are PCEs, because they fit on some things, but not on others.

It works like this: I am walking around, and I notice something wonderful, like a tree (more precisely, the symmetric layout of a tree, or the way the sun casts light on a tree, or the texture of the trunk, or a specific patch of leaves, or the contrasting colours of the tree, or the snow laying on the tree), or the sound of a leaf scraping through the floor, or my two legs walking, etc.

This brief moment is wonderful perfect, and lasts maybe one or two seconds.

I will get this three or four times during a 40m walk.

Now, for most of the walk, I am really having a great time looking around, and I have a sense of wonder (feeling excelent, so to speak). But I do notice that annoying "sampling" sensation, the fluttering vibrating distortion we refer to as "the attention wave".

And I can't really do anything specific to get those wonderful perfect moments to prolong themselves, as they always catch me by surprise --- I am casually walking in the park and then something strikes me as particularly wonderful; then it's there, and then it's not. Sometimes, if I look intently at an object (ideally one that contrasts with its surroundings), I come close.

Are these PCEs? Are PCEs the moment of perfection? Am I off the mark? How can I prolong that amazing way of looking at things?!

Bruno

PS. (although I haven't specifically stated it here on the forum, I'm into this AF thing for good. I've had enough with suffering, and AF started making a lot of sense after I stopped evaluating it with my feelings.)

Sounds like PCE to me Taking a walk out in the snow today I figured out two good ways of prolonging the PCE. The first one is time, I often get PCEs when walking: there's a unconscious step, and poof! suddenly it's like I'm living reality in real time. I became aware that in order to perceive time you need to either be in the future or the past, when I'm 100% now there can be no time (or 'self'). When I hit the PCE I notice if time tries to sneak back in, and when it does I try to adjust back to being utterly 'live' (live as in live-tv). - The second thing I noticed was I could do the same adjustments with stillness: the closer I am to real time (as in no time) the more stillness becomes apparent. All this being said it's still hard as hell to hold on to the PCEs as my psyche desperately wants to jump back in and tear that perfect moment into smithereens.

Hi Bruno,

I am inclined to think that those 1 or 2 seconds of perfection you describe are PCEs.

Here is a section from Richard's correspondence where someone asks him how to induce a PCE:

RESPONDENT: Richard ... I have a question. How do I induce a PCE?

RICHARD: The most simple (and thus mnemonical) answer to your question is: by allowing it to happen.

RESPONDENT: I ask and ask myself how it is I’m experiencing this moment of being alive and still there is no pure consciousness experience. I haven’t had one yet. How can I go about bringing one up?

RICHARD: It takes the felicity and innocuity of naiveté to bring about a PCE: where one is happy and harmless a benevolence and benignity which is not of ‘my’ doing operates of its own accord ... and it is this beneficence and magnanimity which occasions the PCE.

The largesse of the universe (as in the largesse of life itself), in other words.

RESPONDENT: Should I try and focus on what my senses are experiencing (i.e. paying attention to colours, noises, smells, textures, and such) and ignore feelings?

RICHARD: As what you are asking is, in effect, whether a PCE can be induced by focusing on sensate experience with a bored, nervous, scared, regretful, and etcetera, attentiveness the answer is: no.


(http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-pce3.htm)


While you did not ask about inducing a PCE per se, I included this quote here because prolonging and induction seem (to my mind) related. The answer about prolonging the PCE and inducing one, then, might be the same; the PCE can be prolonged by allowing it to (continue to) happen (as opposed to making it happen).


Stefanie

My turn:

My experience was no more than a second long. Like you mentioned Bruno, it fits on some things and not on others, which could be down to the brevity of the experience. I've never seen anyone describe it quite the way I do, yet others who have had PCEs say it is the same experience.

I was playing football (soccer) in a park with friends. Suddenly my head felt hollowed-out. Where before there was 'something' back there behind my eyes, now there were just the sensations of my head. Everything became direct and immediate. Immediate vision, seeing from the front of my eyes. As if I was - for the first time - directly exposed to the 'raw' universe. There was only physical reality, whereas normal experience - relative to this - must have something more in it.

And that's about it, I have nothing to say about wonderfulness, colours, happiness. 'Perfection' fits only in the sense that nothing 'bad' or 'wrong' can physically exist there, there's no room for supernatural or spiritual things.