Hi,

The "gut" that says otherwise (along with some nasty heart/throat ache) is exactly what I had to push through to get my first real results. In the end it just needed more 1) consistency and 2) sensuousness (revelling in the sensations of moving around, feeling body heat, slowly taking in colours, savouring the caffeine high, feeling and hearing my tongue moving around inside my mouth/head etc.) Note: I work in an office, doing usual admin stuff.

1) Richard experienced enlightenment and then AF 11 years later. Peter and Vineeto went the "direct route" i.e. self and Self gone in one event without prior enlightenment, albeit after a lot of PCE experience and work. I believe Tarin and Trent both experienced enlightenment prior to becoming AF. Actualists generally don't seem to be fans of enlightenment, although accept that it can happen on the way to AF.

3) I wasn't really practicing HAIETMOBA, but just really driving a calm loosely-concentrated yet consistent attentiveness and infusing it with sensuousness. I built up the practice based on reading and re-reading http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/attentivenesssensuousnessapperceptiveness.htm. This is my little AF bible and I highly recommend it.

My first impression was quiet awe. I simply didn’t realise how much of “my existence” - what I considered to be reasonably objective perception - was actually “my feeling” until that element went into abeyance and I was living in a previously unknown world of magic, a whole new order of clarity without the volatile energy of the affective system flying everywhere.

I don’t recall slipping into the PCE all of the sudden like some people seem to (although this has happened once, before I heard about AF), but sustained the practice to the point of reflecting at the end of the day and thinking "too good to be true.” When I usually think "too good to be true", there's this emotional downer in the gut that follows. But the attentive momentum accumulated throughout the day had knocked that function out of order. It just didn't happen. Fine, I carried on! Unbelieveable.

Unbelievable because at that point - after a day or so of practice, where things were near perfect at the peaks - I wasn’t trying to "stop" or even disidentify with the emotions. Sensuousness had triggered apperceptiveness and with self in abeyance the affective charge just wasn’t an issue. With being in abeyance, the root was cut, and what remained was an astonishing glimmering stillness. This gave me a lot of insight into the actualist line about my feelings being me, and me being my feelings, in that ultimately you can’t remove the feelings and keep the being – it is being in abeyance which comes first and sets the scene and standard. The charge wasn’t there to jump onto sensations, so it just wasn’t a problem (at least for as long as I could maintain the attentiveness)

When I was really in the groove I would test the waters more by thinking of something uncomfortable and waiting for that familiar emotional tension around my lower chakras signalling the beginning of an affective feeling, as a kind of test/bait. But it just wasn't happening. Fine, I’ll carry on! Grooving on everything, gradually loosing myself in the sparkling clarity.

I remember getting home that evening and noticing how I was almost totally free of the usual aches and tensions I'd feel after a day in the office. Reading Daniel's account of his PCE work days in the Cycling vs PCE mode thread reminded me of this. For someone deeply interested in the human body, general well-being and a training massage therapist, this was a very unexpected result i.e. near zero tension, not just an impressive reduction. So much of that tension was caused by my emotional struggle with the trivial aspects of everyday work.

Just writing about all this now is once again inclining me towards that way of experiencing, and I’m thankful for that as the last 2 months have been tough and testing.

(I’ve thought about whether the above experience was PCE proper or an EE, but either way it was a whole new order of well-being for me, and has left a considerable imprint. I have detailed notes roughly typed up covering the 2/3 day experiment where I got these results, including more descriptions and comments on issues I had to get past. If you would like to hear more please say, or I could start a new thread as I’d originally intended to a few weeks back.)

4) Personally I think that, based on comparing Richard’s dramatic and seemingly over-the-top accounts of enlightenment and post-enlightenment with my own experiences, things can be done in a slightly less BOOM! POW! total belief annihilation way. I don’t know though, I do find the social identity deconstruction / laying bare powerful at times, and can see how it forms an important part of the path. I sense it will become more important the further along I go.

Practice questions.

1) Your description generally matches my experience, re: the initial sensuousness often ending with “awareness” being dragged “inward.” I also often get resistance in the chest/heart and throat. From there I usually practice a kind of letting go where I purposely “reside nowhere”, or focus on the constantly crashing ever-evolving wave of present experience with the gentle inclination/intent to drop any future grasping or past reflection, but with plenty of steeping in the utter novelty of each new movement. Beginners Mind in zen talk, naivety in AF terminology. Other times reminders about pure intent will help. Or just a little smile and a deep breath :-)

2) I only really ask it at random intervals, or when I stop feeling good. It usually gets me back to feeling good, and from there I tend to stick with attentiveness and sensuousness. Occasionally HAIETMOBA will propel me straight into feeling brilliant. Even then I still have to maintain the soft un-gathered awareness to level up and get being to quiet down for a while.

3) Not sure what this is. Either way, is it making ya happy now? If not, then you better move on!

Hope this helps, good to share notes.

progress through the actualism process does shift the identity away from the thinker and toward the feeler more and more - it is essential to understand how 'i am my feelings, and my feelings are me'.

finally, though, the end of the thinker and feeler happen concurrently. even what the enlightened identify as the thinker/the ego is not actually eradicated by the process of enlightenment (it just moves closer to its true home).




well, actual freedom or not, i think personalities change over time all the time.. for instance, i am under no illusion that any of my friends and family are the exact same people i knew them as in the past. that said, i am now never callous, nor irritable, nor impatient, nor anxious and worrisome, which, by any reasonable measure, is a big change from how i was before. else, my personality is more or less the same as it was (immediately prior to actual freedom).




after my first pce, i understood that, to put it simply, 'this is for real'. furthermore, i understood how felicitous feelings - as in genuinely feeling very well - were the feeling-states most similar to the pce, and so were the most conducive to the purpose of bringing pces on.




i would recommend, as the main practice, the latter (just keep aiming at the pce). however, if you are sincere, then along the way you will almost certainly find that your various beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, and superstitions (and all your other schemes and dreams) are worth having a close and honest look at.

when this happens, and you do have a close and honest look, you will be better able to discover your own heart's various desires, as well as to discern if they are really serving the purpose(s) you would like them to serve. and if you discern that they are not, then you will be in a better position to bring them (and thereby, yourself) into alignment with what you sincerely desire.

further, if what you sincerely desire here is the end of suffering's cause, you will find it.


*




in general, by remembering the last time you felt good/felt fine, and in that remembrance, getting a clear sense of what it is to feel good/feel fine (which is a visceral experience), and inclining your mind toward it. it may help to here consider what feeling good is worth is worth (it's worth a lot), and to compare it to the unsatisfactoriness you were just experiencing (it compares favourably satisfied).

more specific a solution to the situation you mention (in which you are briefly aware of sense experience and then feel 'pulled' 'inward' to feelings at your chest or head) might be to just re-attend to the sense experience again and ignore that pull inward (just pretend that it's not there). in my experience, this was more helpful to do when i felt fine already than when i was feeling bad or troubled in some way.



hmm.. here, try asking instead, 'what is this fear i am feeling?'



i don't know. when you are 'unable to simply "Get back to feeling good as soon as possible"', what is it that is happening to prevent it? that is, what are you doing instead?




this part's up to you.. if it makes sense to keep asking when you are feeling good, go for it. if you do, the important thing at that point is for you to genuinely be into it, rather than just repeat it (whether verbally or wordlessly) listlessly or conflictedly.

it's the nature of your intent that matters most.. and if you're feeling good (as in feeling felicitous), then your intent should be united with these feelings.



yes. gently, sensitively, carefully.. alertly, intently, attentively. this really matters.. nothing (else) matters.




maybe. does it inspire you to live free from being compelled by some force or pushed around in some way by something which now seems unnecessary?




the immediacy which you experience at any given moment before feelings kick in is a pce[1]... hence, the question 'how am i experiencing this moment of being alive?' is, in a way, the most direct route to one.




sorry for my delayed response.

tarin

[1]


http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/attentivenesssensuousnessapperceptiveness.htm