There is a problem when I cultivate felicity: there is a desire to cultivate it in order to reach a state, that if i just practise the right way I will find out what Richard et al. are talking about. So, felicity is tangled up with 'me' and 'my desires'. Hearing about AF generates hope which is desire.

Desire conditions being which conditions suffering. So when I cultivate felicity and there is a desire as in 'I want something' then the felicity is tied up with worry and doubt, i.e. will i get it; and frustration because i want it now.

I cannot cultivate felicity without activating desire, because there is a goal involved. So being arises and suffering.

Currently I am just watching the movements of desire instead, seeing how wanting something causes the problems, including anxiety and everything (I want people to see me a certain way, or I want people to like me). Wanting something is at the root of all of it. UG Krishnamurti is great at pointing out the desire to understand, the desire to achieve, the desire to get rid of suffering. Even when I'm posting this I want something: I want answers. Seeing what I want in each moment (including wanting to see what I want, and wanting to cultivate selflessness because someone has said it's good) can cause being and the burning discontent to drop away temporarily, althought it doesn't result in what Richard describes (lively, sparkling), more like an equanimity or nothing at all (just senses), almost lifeless sometimes.


How to reconcile Actualism practise (felicity) with this?


- Martin

Is felicity occurring when desire is activated? That those are not happening at the same moment, how is their oscillation made apparent to the perceiver (you) in the senses?

My opinion? It's not a problem, there's nothing to reconcile, it's just stories about things you've read spinning in your mind.

Of course you want to be happy! And that is great! Why else would you be doing this in the first place?

Instead of thinking about a state which others have talked about as a goal, a very uncertain goal, instead look at your experience right now, and find the aspects with in that which are most preferable. Where you should look within that experience is at your sensate experience, within your sight, taste, touch, smell, and hearing you will find peace and freedom, when you look at the apperceptively perceived aspects you will see that there is no compulsion there, no coercion and no hesitation, utter freedom. Focus on this free and peaceful aspect of your experience merely because it is free and peaceful. I would say that felicity is actually something which you can not desire, and instead you're desiring a sort of giddy happiness easily confused with felicity. Felicity is simply the desire for things in general to remain as they are, which is the closest thing to having no desire at all.



All you really need to do is look at this desire and look at the free and peaceful aspect of your experience and simply acknowledge that the process of moving from the desire to the freedom will happen itself if you remain attentive and sensuous, mindful of the free and unfree respectively, and keep noticing that the free is better for the universe.



If you were truly content then you would see no problem with your senses being "lifeless." Keep on working with all the slightest pricks of discontent, keep on viewing the free part of your experience and keep on realizing that if your experience was only the free part, you wouldn't be able to find any problems with it and so it wouldn't matter what it was. The only way you won't find problems is if you are "in oblivion" keep recognizing that the universe is perfect without the problem finder, send him to oblivion.

Another way of saying most of what i just said, stop trying to make your experience better and instead focus on getting rid of the parts of you that are believing that it could be improved upon.

Tarin's comment helps in this line of thinking "there's no conflict, there's just what is."