I think I had my first PCE yesterday after a year or so of practising actualism (about time eh). I was walking down a country lane and suddenly the drive that I was going somewhere completely disappeared, my slightly brisk pace was replaced by an ambling forward and I was delightfully surprised by how I just really wanted to be here.

The genuinely and completely wanting to be here instead of having a slight drive to get somewhere was such a contrast to the usual experience of having at least a slight resentment. Even when usually cultivating felicity there is a slight holding back, a half-heartedness, a putting up with it, or making the best of it, some vague dissatisfaction which vanished in this experience.

Another effect was that everything, although quite vivid already in day-to-day life, became crystal clear.


Well, as it took nearly a year and a half to have one pce I'm probably going to get AF in about 15 years ;);)

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Practise

What helped to have the experience was to maximise felicity in order to eliminate being. Keeping in mind the purpose of felicity, was somehow helpful. By 'being' I partly mean the good and bad feelings, which includes all the passionate imagination and swirling vortex of calenture. With the activation of felicity, all this stuff doesn't get a look-in. By 'being' I also mean the feeling of being, which somehow is something more than can be dismissed as just a feeling or just a part of the package. It seems to be at the core of the other stuff, it's what I feel myself to be right at my core. This quote by Tarin was helpful:




Today I'm working on this quote from Richard, hopefully it will lead to some more pce's!:




Note to self: Keep in mind the excellence of non-being, and remember to activate joie de vivre


- Martin

Congrats! How often do you feel felicitous and innocuous? I am asking to know/guess the level of felicity required to make PCEs more likely.

I haven't had one myself, still working on increasing felicity.

Generally speaking the evenings and weekends vary between slightly bad and very good, work sucks (so I'm feeling bad for most of the day), bus ride to and from work and lunch time walk is very good to excellent, and being in the garden is also excellent. I mostly feel best when I'm outside which isn't a big percentage of time.

- Martin

Quiet outside areas, IMO, are the best places to get into a happy and harmless state. One thing I thought helps is that harmlessness can be seen as a platform to build felicity. Its a bit more difficult to build felicity when one isn't harmless so first one kind of mellows out into feeling OK and then builds felicity from that platform. Much much easier to build felicity in this way as well as trying to cleanly and clearly sense without internal proliferations aka grooving on the senses without peaking inside all the time.

What I find really helpful is to look at animals really closely as they're moving around, like dogs, cats, squirrels, pigeons, etc. even people, though people are harder a bit at first cause there is some reluctance to stare at them intently. it's easy to be fascinated and naive since you really don't know what the animal will do. and it's fun to look at it's separate body parts like a head and be like 'hey that's cute, it's a head!', like not so different from our own heads =P.

another thing i noticed that helps me is to realize that people and the things they are interacting with are not attached. e.g. looking at a bike rider, i normally perceived it as 'dude-on-a-bike', one entity. but then realizing that it's just a person who is mounted on a device and pressing its pedals, and they aren't actually attached in that way, is both entertaining and fascinating.

in particular, it seems the closer i get to a PCE, the cleaner and more separate each separate little entity is, to the point where (the closest ive got) each thing is in its own place, not attached to the things its touching. it was as if there was absolutely nothing in the air, whereas normally there's some undetected thing in the air that murkies everything up.