Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘D’ Correspondence

January 2 2014

Re: Log

RESPONDENT: It’s strange that I can’t remember the times that I had fun. Can’t remember as in feel the same feeling now. I had a lot of fun tonight with friends. All we did was sit, talk, and joke around. It was fun. But once I got back home or started driving the less festive atmosphere started to set in. It feels as if I lost a part of my life because as much as I try to think back on tonight it’s like I just wasn’t there. It feels like life is passing me by and it is always a bit disconcerting to me. This particular sequence of events has happened to me before, but I usually find that the crash back into my less festive world is hard and heavy. I get lost in my cynical or glum thoughts that life isn’t always fun. But not so this time as when I realize this is happening I remember and pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive.

And just the fact that this is the only moment of being alive is enough to dispel all of those thoughts as I realized at one point that to go anywhere else is to go into the world of imagination. Still I’m maintaining persistence in getting this thing running so that the momentum can build because there’s really nothing else that I want as much as this.

I’m having incremental success in my application of the method. I find that the guide that Peter put on the website matches my experience so far. When I get lost in thoughts or feeling reality then I immediately pay attention to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive. I do find that the initial layer is the layer of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. I eventually get to a point where everything seems empty. I stick with it and try not to ‘move’ anywhere and eventually the fascination that it is this moment sets in and I am once more enjoying life. Still there is more work to be done though.

There was something else I wanted to write but I can’t remember. Specifics....hmmm .. will have to come back to it. That’s all for now. (Subject: Re: Log, 30 Dec 2013, Message 161xx).

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RESPONDENT: Yesterday I had some results that showed me that I was applying the method correctly. It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception. But it was brief.

I was in the kitchen and my grandma told me to clean some stuff since she was too tired to do anything. So I reluctantly agreed (I do not like cleaning the kitchen). As I was wiping down the counter tops I remembered ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’. And I was then again struck by the fact that it was this moment. Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling. Suddenly I saw my kitchen counter top for the first time. In great detail I saw everything but I wasn’t focused on anything at all. I experienced the very curvature of my eyeballs and everything became alive and three dimensional. This was in contrast to the ‘flatness’ of the real world. I found that I was delighting in cleaning the kitchen because to simply be alive was delightful.

‘I’ couldn’t stay back for long though as all ‘I’ could feel and think was ‘WOW! this is amazing!’. To think that all these ordinary things could be so extraordinary is wonderful. What have I been doing my whole life? (Subject: Re: Log, 31 Dec 2013).

RICHARD: G’day No. 44,

Your initial email – reproduced here as #161xx further above – almost prompted me to write a comment, when you posted it, as it clearly pinpoints the difference between a caused/ conditional enjoyment (‘I had a lot of fun tonight with friends’/ ‘all we did was sit, talk, and joke around’) and an uncaused/ unconditional enjoyment (‘the fascination that it is this moment sets in’/ ‘I am once more enjoying life’).

(A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginingless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event).

Your follow-up email – reproduced here as #161xx above – unambiguously indicates you are indeed [quote] ‘applying the method correctly’ [endquote] and it quite remarkably reminded me of certain everyday experiences which occasioned the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago to both devise and (successfully) implement what has become known as the actualism method.

What the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ – which ‘he’ formulated back in early 1981 – meant to ‘him’ was ‘Why is that experience not happening at this very moment?’ or ‘What is preventing that way of being here occurring right now?’ or ‘How come that wondrous world is not currently apparent?’ (and so on and so forth).

By thus being vitally interested – with that degree of fascinated attentiveness – in this moment being the only moment ‘he’ was ever alive it soon became a wordless approach, a non-verbal attitude towards life, each moment again, and ‘he’ readily developed the knack of allowing apperception to happen as it is never not this moment (as in ‘time has no duration’/ ‘time does not move’) in actuality.

(The experiential knowledge that this moment is eternal – that it is never not this moment in actuality – is the key to more instances of apperceptive awareness taking place).

Now that you indubitably know what apperception is – as per your ‘It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception’ sentence – and how to evoke it (as in your ‘Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling’ sentences) you may very well come to look back upon this day as being the turning-point of your life, eh?

Ain’t life grand!

Regards,
Richard.

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