Hi everyone. The thing's getting really close. Hard to tell at this point - there's bugs to work out - but here's what I've come up with.



A few phrases that have been running through my mind a lot recently are Tarin's advice from the HR discussions about "Letting your desires find their fulfillment in what is already here" or something to that effect. The other is Stephanie's advice to Daniel about AF being the opposite of achieving anything. These have both managed to steer me in the right direction.

The essential difference, for me, it in how the attention wave manifests. If I use it, without thinking, to "investigate" my body or any particular object of awareness then it seems to fuck everything up big time. I get incredible pressure in the ajna region, a general sense of dissociation, and it's hard to think straight. In other words, I feel stupid.

On the other hand, when I "Back off" and relax and mellow out and just generally operate more normally but in a laid-back fashion, then things tend to run really smoothly and I slip in and out of PCE pretty easily.

The first spiritual book I ever read (And still one of my favorites) is "Remember, Be Here Now" by Richard Alpert. In it, there's a page where he relates life to surfing and says something to the effect of "Either you're doing it from UGHHH.... or you're doing it from Ahhhh..." That seems to encapsulate the whole thing pretty well, actually. The more you can really just mellow out and enjoy life in the most down-to-earth, ordinary everyday sense, the easier it is to "be", which is the whole point - gradually moving towards greater ease of being.

Hope something here helps. Oh, one last point - The closer you get, the more apparent and important the factor of altruism becomes. There is a great pull towards intimacy with fellow humans; I am becoming more motivated by the fact that a big part of what I want is to be fully "with" everyone else. I want to be able to be with people, ANY people, without the constant need to use them for my own sake. Just to enjoy them as they are, without wanting to change them. To live peacefully with others, to share "my" peace with them. I think reflecting on this is extraordinarily helpful.

ciao!
-kevin

Hi, Kevin,

Thanks for your words. They are refreshing and inspiring as always.

Would you say you are virtually free right now? How would you describe your way of experiencing life in a common day?

No, not VF. I'm pretty much picking apart the instinctual passions at an insane rate - what I'm finding is that once you figure out the "Formula" for dropping a block, they get a lot easier from there on out. the basic key is to allow yourself to see the really stinky parts of you, the stuff you would never want to investigate, the really dirty horrible stuff deep down, and just letting it be, being honest, and owning it, i.e. understanding that that IS you, "you" aren't separate from it, and it's okay to see those things through to the end because you're going to be a much more complete person for it.

Another aspect I forgot to mention is that true fulfillment in an ultimate sense is to get over everything. It's essentially like... being done with life, in a way. seeing that everything you can get, everything you can do, is just never going to be enough, no matter what. and discerning the difference between being serious and being sincere here makes all the difference.

as far as me, i'm in EE / PCE territory for maybe 60% of the day. It still depends a lot what I do; some situations still lend themselves more easily to it than others. One cool thing I've found though, is that with the advent of my realizations about fulfillment, work has gotten much easier and more enjoyable - i don't resent being there anymore, or wish i was somewhere else, or anything of the sort. i just enjoy the handling of the food, the cleaning, etc, the interaction with my coworkers. it's all good.

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This is interesting. After experientially understanding the importance of sincerity, everything is getting easier for me too. However, if I am 100% honest, I have a lot of work to do. One challenge in particular is the one of enjoying (quantitatively and qualitatively) any moment of being alive. That is: I feel that I have a lot of mindless times when everything just is and not precisely being enjoyed. For example, at work, I remember to be attentive occasionally and have glimpses of enjoyment but most of the time I don't experience this pleasant affective tone. Perhaps I can exemplify quoting Peter:



I don't know if I'm noticing the desert because of the constant raising of the bar. So, this could be a natural phase in progress where I'm (with this healthy obsession of getting rid of "me") constantly comparing the peak experience with the normal one, but I have to ask if you have any tips to expand that enjoyment in potency and duration, even while in traditionally boring or annoying times like working, cleaning the apartment, etc.

Cheers!

Felipe

Yeah. You have to see clearly that boredom, annoyance, and that subtle, chronic "flat" feeling that is often present during times like work is, itself, an affective feeling and stems from your desire for something "more" or to get to the next thing.
Basically, fulfillment only happens when there is no "next thing". When there is nothing left in the future for you. when THIS is IT. That's what I mean by allowing your desires to find their fulfillment here and now.

This can sound hard at first so here's a tip: Every element of affect contains in it the wish for fulfillment. Desires want you to "get" something, but what they really want is to be fulfilled. Once you learn to spot this, you can "jump" the object of desire and go straight to the fulfillment, which is actually just the disappearance of the desire and not a feeling in itself. And remember that you ARE desire, so the end of desire means that you are full, you can push the plate away and say "no thanks" to extra helpings.

What the self really wants more than anything is to be satisfied, and all its movements are towards this end, and the satisfaction means the end of self. Any time you're not experiencing this, it means there's something present - right here and now - that you are not being honest with yourself about in terms of what you want.

The wikipedia entry for 'boredom' has some excellent points in it. One of them confirmed something I had independently discovered, 'boredom' is the centre of 'me'. It is the core of my being. 'I' really am that shallow! It is why i never felt that much of the classical emotions, I just don't have them, only a handful of bittersweet ones but mostly just this bored frustrated mess. I was expecting more, but I don't think it is there.

if I had been nurture more, and had more examples of 'emotional heath' i may indeed have a full range of all these 'deep' feelings. turns out they have to be instilled for them to be there. I could well be wrong, but it explains so much about my life (never knowing what others where truly on about emotionally and why they spent s much time rejoicing in 'love' etc)

boredom is being inattentive and uninterested in the activities available in that moment. hence i am 'unattention and disinterested' any effort made on the actualist method in and of itself (the effort alone) challenges the core of 'my' boring being. It gives me hope that this can be done extremely quickly once i go beyond boredom, as all 'I' seem to be, at 'my' core, is boredom.

i'll certainly keep you posted. perhaps tomorrow i will discover some depth to 'me', i mostly doubt it though.