Can someone explain to me again what "pure intent" means to them?

Specifically, why use the word 'pure' there and why use Richard's phrase at all (why is it appropriate)?

I've been looking on the AF site and there's very little information saying what pure intent is, there's no page with a definition as far as I can find.

The who and how of Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness

"The intent is you will become happy and harmless. The intent is you will be free of sorrow and malice. The intent is you will become blithesome and benign. The intent is you will be free of fear and aggression. The intent is you will become carefree and considerate. The intent is you will be free from nurture and desire. The intent is you will become gay and benevolent. The intent is you will be free of anguish and animosity. The intent is that, by being free of the Human Condition you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body ... as is evidenced in the PCE."

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

That pretty much defines it for me.

Not one mention of the word pure. Why 'pure intent'? Why don't you have your own phrase for it?

pure intent is the connection to the purity and perfection of the actual world. You tap into pure intent by fostering naiveté and then one's connection to the actual world via sensuousness is pure intent. Staying connected to actual world, that connection being pure intent, increasingly weakens the social and instinctual identity and brings one more and more the delight of the actual. As "you" increase felicity and sensuousness, one experiences the actual more frequently and deeper.

By fostering naiveté, and becoming sensuous, you establish a connection to the actual, which you want to maintain; this is pure intent. Things, such as beliefs, ideas, emotions get in the way of this connection. Feeling an emotion weakens the connection to the actual. Therefore, by getting rid of the emotion, you are strengthening pure intent by creating a stronger connection. One wants to keep pure intent because the stronger the connection (with felicity), the less suffering can sneak its way into "you".


note: when i speak about naiveté, i mean fostering the "sweet spot" as well as actively promoting felicity and what it means to be felicitous.

Hi, can someone post a link to information about the 'sweet spot'?

You've given a lot of what the AF site already has, information about what you can do with or how to get 'pure intent' but only one vague word in definition of pure intent. It is, apparently, a "connection". Can you elaborate on what "pure intent" - this 'connection' - is?

Also: in your understanding, is the word 'pure' there just because the actual world is 'pure'?

Sweet Spot:
http://nickdowntherabbithole.blogspot.com/2011/08/conversations-sweet-spot.html#more

I repeat things from the AF site for good reason. It is an extremely helpful guide to understanding the AF method and what may occur along its process. It is, IMO, the end all and be all of knowledge you need. Of course, it is helpful to compare notes and ideas on the dho but the AF site really has got it all.

Pure intent is keeping sensuousness (a connection to the actual world) while simultaneously freeing yourself from the human condition via attentiveness (naiveté, sincerity, felicity). Incorporated into pure intent is the freedom to become happy and harmless since pure intent proves life is much better with sensuousness, naiveté, and felicity and not wallowing the sufferings prevalent by living the human condition. Life is good, the human condition is affliction.

I think pure intent is called pure intent because one is connecting to the purity and perfection of the actual world. I think the intent is also pure because it is a "intent" to live peace-on-earth, which is very easy to do when one applies pure intent.

My other advice is figure out what pure intent means to you, right now, in your practice. Pure intent may change/increase throughout your practice as different "feelings/ideas/insights" arise but by applying your version of pure intent right now, your version of sensuousness/attentiveness, you are making your own pure intent and not just reading about it. It is up to "you" to be sincere, unlock naiveté, and consistently with effort foster sensuousness.

I am looking for a definition of pure intent, not a series of actions which qualify as pure intent. If it doesn't have any definition then I'm sure you could just say that.



I've thought about that. Why isn't it called 'purity intent' then? Or 'purity and perfection intent'?



You're saying it's pure because it's an intent to live peace-on-earth ... the obvious question there is: what, about an intent to live peace-on-earth, makes it 'pure'?



So, there can be different 'versions' of pure intent? And still no definition. Sounds more typical of a vacuous term that can mean various things to various people, depending on what works for them... like 'faith'.

There is a handy little section on the AFT front page called "Library and Glossary".


http://actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/intent.htm

I don't mean "versions of pure intent" as in different types. More like the amount of pure intent accessible (degree of happiness and harmlessness) changes with application and the getting rid of/weakening beliefs, desires, feelings etc.

Is that what it means to you aaron? Intention that is 'pure' because it's not selfish and not of 'my' doing?

Nad,
My understanding of the difference between “intent” and “pure intent” is that “intent” is something that “I” can have. Pure intent is not something that “I” have; rather it’s what drives the identity free part of this body/mind toward an Actual Freedom. It’s labeled “pure” because it’s something that is controlled from actuality, not reality by me. Having a PCE activates or strengthens this “pure intent”. I’ve read something to this affect somewhere on the AF site or book. I’ll look later. I’m short on time now.

Take care
Ed

pure refers to qualities of the actual world, as opposed to the 'real' world. a pure experience is one that is actual, e.g. a PCE:

[link]

pure intent comes from the PCE:

[link]

furthermore, pure intent itself is an actual quality - one that is there in the actual world:
[link] (emphasis mine)
thus it is pure intent and not 'real' intent or 'affective' intent or anything like that. i suppose you could call it actual intent, though i find the phrase pure intent more evocative when talking about the path to an actual freedom.

though i can't yet speak from personal experience, the impression i get is that pure intent is automatic, effortless, and impossible to not be occurring, once one is actually free.

pure intent is what allows the process to happen. because an 'i' cannot end an 'i' - it has to let itself be ended, i.e. seen through. the seeing through happens on its own (and it is actual) and is fueled by pure intent (which is also actual).

i was wondering recently what keeps 'me' going closer to self-immolation.. why the vast majority of my day is spent thinking, reflecting, contemplating, meditating, with the goal of getting closer + closer to actuality.. even when i wonder whether that driving force is just 'me', just 'real', i look to see it and drop it, knowing that when the 'me' that is the driving force is dropped, still 'i' will keep going closer to self-immolation.. so what is that quality? i guess it's pure intent. i know actual freedom is possible.. i have glimpses during near-PCEs and the one PCE.. so what there is to do is to just get the job done.

does that help any?

Right, and is this your experience too, at this stage? Are you reporting what the site says or saying what it means to you, from your experience?

Thanks, helpful quotes.

So you're not sure that you've experienced pure intent, you just guess/infer that it's what is motivating you? Can you confirm from your own experience that it is a "palpable stream of benignity and betterment that is intrinsic to the physical universe"?

I know you didn't ask me this question but I figure I'll say what pure intent means to me. I prefer to avoid a lot of the AF terminology unless I need to use it so I don't know if this will be of any more use to you. Also, just to clarify, I am confident that I 'have' pure intent and there has been a distinct difference in my experience of the world and practice since this clicked into place.

"Pure intent" fits the bill perfectly as far as labeling this thing goes; if something is pure then it is not mixed with anything else, and an intent is something you want and plan to do.

In this case, my intent is to become happy and harmless and I pursue this outcome to the exclusion of everything else. Pure intent feels like every part of "me", every remaining mask of identity still to be dismantled, every belief as yet unquestioned, every single aspect of this thing called "Tommy" is on-board and headed for perfect annihilation. There are no doubts any more, any of those little worries or irrational fears I had are gone completely and now the process of putting an end to becoming is an inevitability, not a goal[1], not something to aim for, it's just the way it is and "I" can happily step into oblivion knowing that "my" presence here is no longer required.

There's still work to be done before I'm out, no doubt about it, but when I notice things are anything less felicitous, or that I am no longer happy and harmless, I can reconnect with the sincerity and naivetè of the actual world through the "sweet spot" and bring the attention back to this immediate sensate experience. I don't know how useful that is to you but I thought maybe a subjective description with minimal AF-talk might help. I also stand to be corrected on any points above.

[1] The use of words like "aim" and "goal" are linguistically convenient but they imply an affective striving which does not happen with this practice, as far as I can tell anyway.

hmm.. it's not so much an experience as a state of mind, like Tommy put it. i was being diffident when i said "i guess", but i do think that's what pure intent points to. as Tommy put it, i stand to be corrected on that point and any other point.. so the rest of my answer will do away with phrases like 'i guess'.

since my MDMA-triggered A&P of january last year, i suspected: "there must be something more to life than what i previously thought." since stream-entry of december last year, i knew: "there is something more to life than what i previously thought, and i have seen a glimpse." since starting actualism practice, i wondered: "perhaps this sensual clarity[1] points the way to what life is about." since the PCE that really propelled my practice forward, i knew: "this sensual clarity[1] is what life is about, and that is where i am headed."

those suspicions were confirmed.. and every time some part of 'me' falls away to reveal peace, relaxation, and clarity, i am reminded that actual freedom is indeed where i am headed. no matter how much i have struggled with any issue, once it was fully seen for what it was and dropped, every single time it has happened, there has been revealed peace, relaxation, and clarity, without fail.. such a brilliant track record is hard to refute, and the more it happens the less and less doubt there is. the lack of doubt comes not from 'me' believing in something, but from actual clear seeing.

even in the darkest most painful times, when i thought this practice sucked and everything sucked and why can't everything be nice, the tone of the experience was defined by thinking like: "why can't this pain go away so i can practice well?" i didn't realize that practicing well was dealing with the pain directly.. but still the intent was there - to be happy and harmless.. just with a pall of ignorance over the whole thing which made it difficult. but such is the nature of suffering.

but yea, pure intent is definitely behind the whole thing. and the more it is allowed to shine through (by being as aligned with disappearing/self-immolation/seeing clearly as possible), the more effective and rapidly (meaning without undue delay) one's practice/the process will happen.



i have had a few interesting experiences. one of them was in the middle of my yellowstone trip, when, for some time when being outside, it's like the world took on a wholly different flavor. i wasn't in a PCE.. but my mind was tuning into 5th jhana, i think, and it's just like.. everything was really nice. it wasn't like there was nothing in the air, which is what often happens when tuning into actual space, but there was something additional, a flavor to the whole experience, which reminded me of when i was on MDMA (during the trip i was wholly sober). it was like a benignity.. kind of a knowing everything would be OK, but that knowing not being 'mine', but something in the very air. 'i' couldn't fully get into it and it faded after a bit. but, perhaps a hint of what Richard meant.. it was certainly palpable, and a different flavor than a regular affective feeling (it wasn't from within but from without, so to speak..), but no guarantees it wasn't entirely affective (instead of something actual, but affectively tinged) as it wasn't a PCE.

EDIT: ah i realized that talks more about the benignity and not the pure intent. but it definitely seemed like connecting with that experience would aid the process remarkably - being able to always find it in the here + now. thus i can see how pure intent is the connection to that.. the more intent/the purer intent, the stronger the connection, the closer one is to actuality in the here + now.. though most of the time my experience isn't like that.

generally, though, my own experience of pure intent has just been whatever has been keeping me on this path, without fail, not taking a break any day, even when on vacation (which i just took as a wonderful opportunity to practice more consistently + focused and with less interruption).



[1] i'm using 'sensual clarity' as a short-hand for 'experiences that are close to actuality'

It's very much welcome.



Well couldn't anyone have "pure intent" to do anything? If that's why it's perfectly labelled, couldn't someone have "pure intent" to maximize emotional 'being'?



But aren't all feelings by their nature opposed to 'self'-annihilation? 'I' as anger or whatever other emotion, want to feel what I feel and want to survive as the 'being' I am, no? So how are those remaining parts of your identity on-board with the mission?



Do you recognise the 'palpable stream of benignity' definition, from what you've experienced?

No, I don't "feel" pure intent (if that's even possible for "me" to do) and wouldn't know how to distinguish it from "peacefullness" or anything else I might feel. More importantly, I don't control it, so why focus on it. What I percieve to have some control over is Being happy and harmless. So I relentlessly question beliefs with the intent (not pure intent) of letting go my habitul concen of "my image", "my value", me, me, me, me, me. Let it go. Stop believing in the need to protect me and how I am percieved by others. Often the answer is not analyizing what I'm thinking about to let it go, but just refocusing on the senses, what's real, what is in front me and ending the stream of thoughts about me.

I'm just begining to follow the advice Jill/Nick on sensation awareness. Can't really comment on that with experience, but it's very practical and would seem to have clear value in "making progress" in the elmination of "me".

Good luck
Ed

I get where you're coming from, but remember that "pure intent" is just a phrase and not the experience it labels. The use of the phrase "pure intent" in an AF practice thread carries the assumption that those reading it will understand that what's being discussed is something specific to the goal of becoming happy and harmless. What you're saying is absolutely correct when it comes to everyday conversation but this all comes down to the context in which it's used, and the use of the phrase with regards to AF refers to a specific and mutually understood aspect of this practice. The choice of words used to label this in an AF context is, in my opinion, perfectly descriptive and wonderfully uncomplicated.


Until the moment when "I" cease to be, I am still a feeling being and to deny this would be foolish. Until then, cultivating felicitous feelings, sincerity and naivetè will allow "me" to remain as close to actuality as it is possible for a feeling being to be. By having pure intent (AF context), one can constantly bring the attention back to the senses as if anything other than this was nothing more than a minor distraction.


Yes, but only in a full-blown PCE, otherwise there's an affective coating to it which can turn into anything from compassion to pity.

Well if "pure intent" can apply to other things in other contexts, there is nothing actualism-specific to it. So why needlessly invent and use a new phrase? Why not just use various words like 'determination' and 'single-mindedness' interchangeably (which would be best for maximum understanding)? The fact that the one phrase "pure intent" is used so strictly and consistently makes me think it must have actualism-specific meaning.



I don't think you addressed the question. It seems like it's an interesting line to go into - how much an identity can 'have' pure intent. Ed said he wasn't sure if it's possible for an identity to feel pure intent, you put 'have' in quotes when you said you had pure intent, and ed said earlier that pure intent is not something that an identity can have and that it only drives "the identity free part of this body/mind". There seems to be a need for clarity there.

Again, you said "every single aspect of this thing called "Tommy" is on-board and headed for perfect annihilation".

I thought every single aspect of "Tommy" is the 'being' that wants to 'be', which is the opposite of it being on-board and headed for perfect annihilation.



So, there is pure intent in a PCE?

I remember Tarin telling me that one had to get one's whole being on board to walk towards oblivion. He referred to the sense of 'being' being the pure intent to move in that direction (self-immolation). That type of intent entailed putting into use all of the actualist practices at all times. 'I' became pure intent due to the first full blown PCE I had, as it showed 'me' what this life could be like without 'me' there. So, 'I' took on all the practices to start moving 'me' towards my own oblivion willingly. The pure intent to walk into oblivion began to grow and the closer 'I' got to said oblivion the more pure the intent became.

I remember somewhere Tarin also saying that impure intent was anytime 'I' stopped moving towards the goal of complete oblivion and pure intent was only when 'I' moved towards it, whether it was asking HAIETMOBA, dismantling the social identity, attending to sensuousness, or cultivating felicity. All of these practices were aimed in one direction: 'me' walking towards oblivion.

If 'I' was not doing this, then impure intent had arisen. If 'I' was doing this, then pure intent was taking hold. 'I' became the pure intent to walk towards oblivion. My whole 'being' moved towards that objective. The intent was pure because it was aimed in one direction. When not, it had become impure.

That is how I saw and recognized pure intent. I took on the notion that 'I' was pure intent and pure intent was 'me'. I also took on the notion that 'I' was impure intent and impure intent was 'me' every time my practiced waned.

It finally worked out 6 weeks ago.

While in PCE mode, 'I' was not there. But when 'I' interrupted a PCE, 'I' reminded myself to move towards my own abeyance via becoming pure intent again. If I stopped this movement towards my own oblivion, then impure intent took hold. This is how I saw and used the term 'pure intent'. Even if it isn't what Richard meant by it, it worked for me.


Nick

I don't disagree with you, but I see no value in allowing such matters to take up much space in my thoughts. If you choose to use other phraseology then it's your choice, the only downside I can see is that it may require more explanation and justification than using map-specific/agreed-upon terms would.


I was rushing a bit and I agree that this needs clarification.

Pure intent can only be understood through experience, anything other than that requires affective terms to be used which are not accurate and descriptive, and can quickly lead to misunderstanding. I'm not here to defend the terminology, I'm trying to offer a description based on what's happening right here and now so the words I use are only as accurate as my understanding of the territory.

A few months ago, when I thought about the prospect of getting rid of "me" I would feel a subtle fear, an anxiety and notice my mind would spin out scenarios aimed at trying to get me to stop thinking about this. It created a loop which, if I didn't catch it as it started, could potentially cause further unpleasant feelings to arise. Now, thinking about the same thing immediately draws the attention to the sensate experience and felicity arises, from here I "feel out" the "sweet spot" which causes a rising, light and almost angelic feeling which extends above my head and shoulders, but I recognize this as an affective feeling and bring the attention to the actual aspects of this moment. I suppose you could call it a re-wiring of the circuitry, the signal no longer goes down path A, it bypasses this and goes down path B which is more conducive to the intent "I" currently have to become happy and harmless. That's what this feels like for me.

As for "being that wants to be", this is what gets dismantled as you go along and you quickly see this underlying sense of not wanting to be here at all. To be honest, it's something you really need to experience for yourself to make sense of it.


There's no intent. Just the purity. Once you return to 'normal' the intent to get back to the purity comes back tenfold.

I'm more interested in discussion of practice, the theory and linguistics doesn't interest me half as much and I see very little value in it so my input will likely be minimal from here. I don't think I have enough experience of this to be able to provide accurate information and I don't want to mislead you through my own lack of understanding.

Out of curiosity, are you actually practicing any of the techniques talked about on here?

Thanks Nick. That take on pure intent makes a lot of sense to me.

Just one thing: from what you wrote I can't really tell if you experienced pure intent as a noticeable phenomenon at the time... or whether Tarin's comments were conceptual classifications made in hindsight: 'this part must have been pure intent operating', 'that part must have been impure intent'... etc. So when you reminded yourself that you had become impure intent, and shifted to being pure intent, was this any different from, say, someone studying for a test realizing they'd not been reading the last page fully? In the substance of your experience was it any different to just getting back to work?

Also, did you experience pure intent at the time as something like "a palpable stream of benignity and betterment that is intrinsic to the physical universe"?

I meant this definition of pure intent: "a palpable stream of benignity and betterment that is intrinsic to the physical universe". Have you experienced that? ...or do the PCE's confirm to you that your pure intent was that palpable stream of benignity?
(found here http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/peter/selected-correspondence/corr-method4.htm)




Not right now, they haven't been working for me. At the moment, in the context of my PCE-replication strategy, I'm just sifting through my understanding to see if there's any useless parts I can jettison.

Dear Nad,

For a few moments, I'm going to ditch the particulars of actual-speak, to see if it will be more helpful for understanding the general idea of what to tune into.

Since I started practicing all this stuff about a year ago, no matter how much progress it seems I've made, there has been at least some doubt that crept up every.single.day. Seriously, everyday. It's fine and totally natural for this to happen. As long as the doubt isn't completely brushed aside, but looked at closely to see what its triggers are and what happens when its there, it will gradually lessen in frequency. I'm pointing out doubt specifically because I've noticed it seems doubt about AF and related stuff in general has been a theme of other posts I've read of yours. What keeps one practicing despite this sometimes overwhelming wall of doubt (and sometimes so subtle it's barely recognized, and sometimes not there at all) is the tangible proof one has that happiness is a way funner and easier way to live, through the first hand experience of it in real time. It's pretty easy common sense to know that happiness is the preferable way of being, right? Knowing how amazing happiness is and using everything you have to be that happiness every single moment is honestly pretty much it.

To put a finger on what we're going for with the whole innocence/purity thing, here's a (true) story. Sporadically a memory has popped into my head, but it's first a feeling memory followed by a mental picture. It's the deja vu of a very specific type of happiness I remember feeling at certain points in my life, followed by the mental memory of Summers spent at my Grandmother's house in New York. It wasn't until looking more closely at these memories that I realized it might be tied to a really joyously playful type of happiness, when my boundaries of the world were far more fluid. Yes, these memories and feelings are affect, but remember - use the affective happiness as fuel to keep going.

I'll tell some memories of being at my Grandma's house to give a better idea. She lived in the suburbs in Long Island, New York. It was the same house where my Mom grew up and her childhood best friend, that my sister and I called Aunt, still lived across the street. My Grandfather used to own a Greek diner in the town too. That's the kind of small town it was. Looked really quaint and charming too – that colonial style East Coast architecture with lots of arches, porches, columns, deep red brick and white washed wood. Giant trees stood everywhere and the streets were wide. The afternoon sky was endless blue with cotton puffs floating just so. One of my favorite twilight memories is chasing fireflies with my sister in my Grandma's yard. She had a trellis over the car port with white roses that perfumed the summer air so sweetly. In a far corner of the grass there was a tiny pond with fluorescent orange fish bathing around. In the evening the crickets chirped their song – we sang back with our cheerful laughter – the breeze carried our music down the way, harmonizing through the quietude. The fireflies jittered to and fro, flickering their golden halo. They lit up our faces, as the street lamps lit up the neighborhood, and far up above the white moon lit up the world.

Do you have any memories that resemble this wonderful happiness, where it was so effortless and natural? Do you remember the sensibility of that and how to tune into it right now – as a springing board for more general all around well-being? To be clear, I'm not suggesting to revert back to your childhood, I'm simply suggesting that the boundaryless, playful wonder is something that can still be tapped into. The difference now is you have the added benefit of having the life experience and reasoning abilities of an adult to combine with those sensibilities. Fuse them all to carry forth your practice.

Warmly,
Steph

Hi Nad,

Disclaimer: I did not immerse myself in all things Richard nor AF, but picked and chose what I thought helped. You can see all the few things I took on board from the AF Trust site at my down the rabbit hole blog. What I may explain is perhaps my own take on certain things. This approach worked for me.


I experienced pure intent as literally a strong intent to move towards 'my' own oblivion. Simple as that. It was 'me' feeling motivated to put the practices into action continuously at every waking moment. That is how I recognized the 'pure' part. It was a tangibly felt sense of moving in the right direction (toward AF). When 'I' felt caught up in unpleasant emotions, and I was not doing anything about it I was experiencing a tangible impure intent. 'I' was not fully on board for those moments and not moving towards AF. I knew I was faltering so I would often remind myself with the mantra 'pure intent', 'pure intent', and then put into action whatever actualist or other techniques that seemed to fit the moment, whether it was HAIETMOBA, directly calling up felicity, attentiveness to sensuousness, actualising jhanas etc. As soon as 'I' started moving towards AF via these practices again, 'I' felt once again onboard and walking towards AF: pure intent was tangibly experienced in this way for me. This was my own take on it.

In answer to the reading test example, you could have a sort of 'pure' intent to read as carefully as possible. But I think 'pure' in an actualist sense is more the complete movement and intention towards self-immolation (which entials all the actualists practices of refining the flow of 'being' via felicity, being happy and harmless and attending to sensuousness continuously).

I hadn't read Richard's "palpable stream of benignity and betterment" before but that certainly sounds like what one experiences as 'I' get on board the whole self-immolation trip and move continuously in that direction. Constantly moving the sense of 'me-ness' towards happy, harmless, felicity, benignity, 'me' thinning out, 'me' walking into oblivion, the pure experience of actuality.

Nick

Why didn't you go for some other deluded happiness cult like scientology then, if you can throw doubts away so casually?



That was mainly a description of scenery, not happiness, so I can't be sure... but it sounds closest to EE's I've had, not to any memories of childhood happiness.

It feels like I'd prefer to hear of being happy/felicitous in normal or less-picturesque surroundings. Not in traditionally idyllic situations.

Was it an intent that came from within (like normal strong intentions) or was there a sense of it coming from outside? Or was there no sense either way about that?

I'm not sure how to respond to the part about Scientology. I don't see the relationship between Scientology and actualism. I'm also not sure about the impression of "casually throwing doubts away" either. To clarify, despite doubts about "myself" that are related to social identity things that still haven't been entirely dismantled, I continue to practice... because I have seen doubts and other "issues" that were formerly present continue to dwindle away as a result of applying this method... as in, it's obvious this is working... and I don't expect all doubts to magically disappear on a whim... it takes consistent attention, so I keep going to reduce further and further.



Right. I was trying to illustrate a sensuousness, naive awareness of the world around one, that is often occurring in childhood. The way to EE's and PCE's isn't just the "intent" discussed in this thread... but also having naive wonder, which allows sensuousness to be the primary experience.



Fair enough. Right now I'm at Starbucks and drinking a cup of pumpkin spice flavored coffee while typing this. The girl and guy behind the counter are chatting together. The girl at the table in front of me is reading a book. Out the window I can see cars stopped at a light. I'm happy/felicitious about nothing in particular. It's just there.

Steph

I didn't mean to imply any relationship between scientology and actualism beyond the focus on happiness. I was saying that if someone were to consider the only thing that mattered to be whether they were getting happier then scientology or another deluded belief system might also be a good option for them.

Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said. You were talking about noticing "doubt about AF" in my posts and it seemed to me that you were saying that increasing happiness was the answer to that doubt, the proof of the pudding, what it's all about.

You talked about looking at what the "triggers" for the doubts are and "what happens when its there"... which (while assuming you were still discussing doubt-about-AF) sounded like you were treating doubts as an irrational emotional reaction, rather than as potentially valid objections to investigate and reason through with intellect.



Yes, well perhaps I didn't have as much of that EE kind of happiness as other kids had. My happiness tended and tends to be 'about' things, rather than the seemingly simple automatic/effortless EE happiness. Always been a worrier, maybe that got in the way.

It might be useful to mention that the methods of Scientology are not directed towards happiness and harmlessness but to the goal of becoming "clear". Exactly what that consists of is very different to the outcome of AF practice and I don't think it's helpful to anyone to even mention that particular organization in this thread, regardless of its usage.

And now for something a bit more helpful....


Nad, you're a smart guy and it shows in your posts. You ask a lot of good questions and make a lot of sensible points, but I wonder if maybe your tendency to over-analyze this and intellectualize it is contributing to your difficulties with getting these practices to work for you. I mention it only because I've had similar problems myself and have always wanted to find a way to describe these things in simple terms with minimal terminology, in fact it was a post of yours which originally gave me the idea of doing this "Down to Earth Dharma" blog and videos.

That "EE kind of happiness" wasn't something intrinsic to my childhood either, and I don't know many people who would say that they had a lot of that sort of feeling in early life. Even now, that EE happiness is something that requires work by constantly paying attention to what's happening at the sense doors, but this process gradually removes and dismantles those parts of us which prevent this from being the baseline while working towards the endpoint. Holding the belief that this sort of happiness is what everyone else felt in their childhood will do you no good, all that's important is what's happening right now.

How many times does it happen that what you're worrying about is actually happening here and now?
Anxiety is always, always based on something that has happened in the past or might happen in the future but never right now. Constantly remembering this helped me eliminate anxiety when combined with locating the emotion within the body, feeling it as a bodily sensation in the same way you feel a cramp in your leg, and grounding it there. Use your analytical abilities to break down the cause of the anxiety, see what different parts make it up; the thoughts, the bodily sensations, and the emotional patterns. See how each of them last less than a few seconds at most, pay attention to them, don't push them away or cling to them, observe them and watch how they are constantly changing. I know this probably sounds like self-help bullshit mixed with a bit of Buddhist hoodoo but I recommend this approach based on my own experience, not on something I read somewhere or by someone else.

I really hope you crack this and make some progress, it's really not difficult and over-thinking it does nothing helpful.

All the best.

Well I can think of at least one case of anxiety based on something happening at the time. I see how most anxieties will relate to something past and future but could you go into why this helped? Why do you find it noteworthy when anxiety is about something in future? What's the significance?

Would you agree that, in the case where the anxiety was based on something happening at the time, the feelings were being caused mainly by thoughts about what could happen as a result of whatever was happening at the time?

Seeing how anxiety is based in a past that can't be changed and/or a future that hasn't happened yet means that you can focus on what's going on right here and now. If something has already happened, or hasn't happened at all then what is there to cause anxiety or worry to arise other than thoughts about it?

If you can't change what's gone before then why let it affect what's happening now?
If the future hasn't happened yet then there is no reason to be anxious about what isn't happening right now.

Easier said than done, I know, but it's possible to get to a point where you can use this information in a practical way and break down the feeling itself, see what it's all about and what lies at the root of it.



I'll give you an example from my own experience, about two months ago a situation arose in work which could have led to me being fired. Due to me publicly disagreeing with, and openly criticizing, the management I was told that they would basically find, or manufacture a reason to sack me which led to me becoming incredibly anxious. I ended up going to the doctor and getting signed off from work as I was in a state of anxiety from the moment I set foot in the place, constantly worrying that there were just waiting for me to trip up so that they could get rid of me. Now, although my meditative practice over the years has allowed me to objectify and disembed from these emotions there were still feelings of fear and anxiety coming up, I could deal with them as they arose but it didn't stop them from happening or from having an adverse effect on me if left unchecked.

I sat down on the first day I was off and examined these feelings in real-time. A year or so previously I had been in a situation where I had no employment or income whatsoever, my house was about to be repossessed, there were bills left unpaid for months and, partly due to the financial situation, my relationship had collapsed. With this in mind it was clear that I didn't want to repeat the same situation yet the past still had the potential to inform my current experience, the fear of falling back into this sort of scenario was a big part of what was causing the anxiety to arise. Each time a feeling arose which had the potential to manifest as anxiety, I would pay attention to what was happening at a sensate level right here and now, seeing this made it clear that the anxiety was being caused by mental phenomena and nothing more. It had no existence at that moment in time beyond the thoughts in my head and the patterns of sensations in my body - tension in the chest, a jagged pain in the solar plexus and a sense of constriction to name a few - so constantly bringing the attention back to this moment and observing these sensations in real-time as they happened caused them to lose their ability to affect me. When future-based thoughts came up, potential scenarios and mind-loops informed by previous experience, the same applied. It's not that you're dismissing the feelings, or repressing them, you're just seeing them for what the actually are which allows you to then investigate what lies at the root of anxiety and fear itself.

In my case, the majority of the problem was rooted in unhelpful beliefs, perceived social expectations and the idea that I, as a man, must be the sole provider for my family and shoulder all the responsibility. If I lost my job I would be unable to provide and therefore I would have failed as a man, based on the social identity constructed around this belief. If I lost my house then I would be unsuccessful and ashamed of my lack of social standing, whatever I thought that was, as I would no longer own a house. All these little bits and pieces gradually build up into big towers of anxiety but their foundations are made of sand. By breaking them down a bit at a time they can be entirely eradicated and this has been my experience of it so far.


If the anxiety is based on something in the future then, just like past-based worries, it has no existence beyond your thoughts about it. For me, this was a big thing as the majority of my concerns were about what could happen in the future, particularly during the time I've mentioned above, but what helped was to see that none of the potential outcomes were happening right now. Yes, I could have lost my house, I might have ended up losing my job but none of this is actually happening right now, and if they did happen then I would have to deal with it if it happened but, until that became what was actually going on, there was no point in allowing it to prevent me from being happy and harmless right now. When feelings arose which prevented this from being the case then, and only then, did I examine them and dismantle their structure so that they no longer came up, or were at least attenuated enough to allow me to return to being attentive to the senses.

Any fear based in the future only exists in your head, regardless of how high the probability of it actually occurring is, until it's actually happening. People say things like "Well, you could cross the street tomorrow and be hit by a bus", which is true but where's the value in living your life waiting for that to happen? If you live your life in a state of fear and worry about what could happen in the future then you're basically standing in the road, waiting for the bus to hit you.

The whole point is just to bring attention back to this immediate sensate experience, as in what's going on at the sense doors right now, and maintain this constantly. If you find that you are unable to do so, investigate why and examine the feelings occurring at that moment in time, future and past thoughts are not who you are, nor are they factual representations of what will happen in the forthcoming moments of this experience. I know this is easy to say and that it can be difficult to put into use while feeling that way but it's well worth the effort to do so and it is incredibly simple in practice.

Any better?

Hi Nad,

It was an intent that came from within the mental landscape, as the sense of 'being' manifesting as the motivated feeling to continue to put into action the appropriate actualist practice (HAIETMOBA, cultivation of felicity, actualising jhanas, vipassana, attentivness to sensuousness, dismantling the social identity) at the appropriate time at all waking times. There was no sense of anything coming from the 'outside'. It was all 'me' and 'I' was never outside, but manifesting 'my' illusory nature within this mind/body organism. 'I' was pure intent.

Nick

Not really, the kind of example I had in mind was a social anxiety case where there is confirmed social disapproval happening at the time. It could be someone you know you'll never ever meet again, but they're openly disapproving of you now and the anxiety is flowing.



Preparation. Anxiety before an event has happened may lead to beneficial preparation, avoidance of danger, contingency plans. Doesn't make anxiety sensible but I don't see how the fact that it's about future things makes it any more silly.




It's just not incredibly simple in practice for everyone. I can tell you that from experience.

Even in the case of social anxiety it's all based on what you think people are thinking about you, or what their opinion of you is, not on established facts. How do you know that someone is "openly disapproving of you"?


Do you like being anxious? Is it pleasant or felicitous? Does being anxious make you happy? If it does, fair enough but I'm inclined to believe that anxiety is not something that you enjoy experiencing, hence why you continue to ask these questions. However, from what you're writing I get the impression that this anxiety is part of your identity, along with your cynicism and rather defeatist outlook. You seem to be continually justifying these feelings of anxiety and trying to tell me that anxiety is something beneficial when it's clearly not. Anxiety before an event may lead to beneficial preparation or it may not, but how are you going to know this until after the fact?

Preparation and contingency plans are not caused by anxiety, although I'm not knocking the value of utilizing anxiety as a tool in certain situations, but when it becomes problematic and prevents you from being happy then it is beneficial to examine it.


So what is it that you find difficult? Where are you getting stuck? If dozens of other people on here and elsewhere can make progress with meditation or AF practice then surely that indicates that the problem lies with your application of the techniques. If you can talk more about what it is you're actually doing rather than your thoughts about it then it would be easier to offer more practical advice.

In all of your threads I hear a guy with a genuine interest in what's being discussed here. What is it that you want to achieve? You do a lot of talking and questioning but it'd be good to see some evidence of your attempts at practice, otherwise we'll go around in circles trying to find out which words we can agree on to describe the same thing. I'm really trying here to give you some real-life information based on real-life situations along with some practical advice but you don't seem to be trying any of it, instead you'll tell me what you don't agree with and dismiss what's being said. It doesn't really matter to me what you do, neither of us have any knowledge of each other outside of this forum so it's of no consequence to me whether or not you choose to try what I'm suggesting. What does matter is that there is a way to end suffering if you're willing to do the work and that the methods of getting there are available on this site and elsewhere if you're willing to put them to work.

This is completely possible and it will be far easier to offer some help if you can be clearer about what you're finding difficult in terms of the practice itself, not in terms of intellectual understanding since a lot of this stuff only makes sense once you've experienced it for yourself. It's up to you, but from this point on I won't be entering into any further non-practice related discussions.

Insults will do fine, I think.

Anyway, wouldn't you say that this would be a (rare) case of anxiety about something happening 'now'?



The same applies to 'sensibly thinking about / intelligently planning future events', not just having anxiety. To bring you back to the subject, I don't see how the fact that anxiety normally relates to things that might happen in future makes it any more silly than it already is. Your reason: that the event has no existence outside of our thoughts about it, would also suggest that planning for future events is silly.



It doesn't indicate that at all. You don't know how many people are not posting here who have tried actualism and also found it to be ineffective.

Hi Nad,

Why did you call your thread "magic intent"?

What are your thoughts regarding "pure intent" now? Single-mindedness (your point)? Connection (Adam's expression)? Something else?

Also, your comment from one of the 'white bears' threads (excerpted below) - is this still a fitting description of your experience at the moment?



Thanks,
Katy

Because "pure intent" is a vague, mysterious force which is supposed to be coming from the apparently "benevolent" universe. It seems like an empty term that individual practitioners will find a way to fill. Count the different definitions. It's quite possibly just another way for Richard to fraudulently claim ownership of a 'new' method, the way he does with 'attentiveness' (see the very interesting current discussions at the yahoo af group).

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/actualfreedom/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/actualfreedom/message/10433



Generally, yes.

I believe I was the one who posted about this first (on KFD, in my practice journal). Assuming that, I hope whoever began this discussion credited me, as otherwise they would be fraudulently claiming my own research as theirs. Which would be ironic.

If "pure intent" isn't something you can fathom, or isn't helping you, but you're still interested in AF, why not approach it a different way? Experience seems to be showing that there are many paths to it.

EDIT: For clarity, "this" means Richard's interest in Bhante G's writing (to the point of apparently copying it).

Ah, ok. Well, if coming from a place of boredom or depression, then a shiny, pure, perfection toaster with electricity may seem magical, too. *

Going back to the Je Tsongkhapa quote from one of the white bears threads, the advice given regarding fear of non-existant snakes in the east was to think not on the non-existant snakes in the east, but to think on the tree existing in the west.

It is noteworthy that it is not a pure or pleasurable or perfect tree in the west. Just a tree in the west.


So, how is boredom and depression? I ask sincerely, not in jest. [See Simmer-Brown excerpt under Mahasiddha in wikipedia, beginning "Under charnel ground..." and mahasiddha itself]

Or, are you in the dharmazone in an effort to move psychologically elsewhere? [There are many ways to move and be moved that feel authentic and satisfying, change perception of events, life, etc. Depending on when you ask me, I have gotten more from the writings and work of one large-animal behaviouralist, for example, than any dharma or (no)self-writings.]


[Edit: *and questioning these descriptions provided by persons in affectless states is understandable]

[Edits: clarity, format, brackets]

I understand not wanting to be taken advantage of by any fraudster. If Richard has no hold on you, then you are free to dispense with words he claims, etc. If I name you the tallest person on planet Earth, everyone reading can rally and declare the falsity. Or, they can just see my phenomena of speech and content as something I produced and harmed no one.


This sentiment might benefit from care, then. There are plenty of people who do fine/exceptionally fine in depression (re:above Mahasiddha comment). You seem to be experiencing the knowledge of suffering via dissatisfaction and disorientation (i.e., you mentioned you were happier when you were a progressive humanist). What has changed that you are no longer a progression humanist/no longer in that particular perception and way of living?

You'd be interested then in the conclusion to the question of alleged plagiarism (Richard's, not Nad's):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/actualfreedom/message/10448

Could you explain which way doesn't include "pure intent"?

I believe that you're asking this sincerely but I don't know what else to say other than that it's not very nice, it's boring and depressing.




To be clear, my views still technically fit with progressive (liberal) and humanist (atheist)... I'm just not so passionate about those issues that I feel almost always happy/content, as I did for a time. I'm not always depressed, just relatively more empty and prone to boredom than I used to be. As to what changed, the glorification of the feelings involved in being passionate about those causes came to seem more silly and ... contingent/conditional/temporary.

Ok.

Got it. So, depression is not glorified or perceived as permanent either.

I noticed a month ago you mentioned ("Direct Pointing (no self) and AF" thread) that nothing was really working, but that memory of PCE kept nagging you about actualism.


[Edit: what do you do as a humanist/practicing humanism?]

Nothing, it's a set of views.

I do not consider this to be the conclusion to the issue of alleged plagiarism, even if you do.

However, I see the issue as quite pointless. What matters is the end of suffering. Richard has done a great deal of work (in his own bizarre way) to successfully promote that end for many people. With this in mind, I find his copying or non-copying of Bhante G's work to be irrelevant in context of what matters.

Similarly, I find Nad's apparent non-citation of my original research to be surprising and ironic, but irrelevant in context of what matters...except that the general issue of Richard and Bhante G seems to have become an enormous distraction for the participants on the yahoo group. I will consider this matter settled just as soon as the bickering and time-wasting concerning those two comes to an end.

You may be interested in examining the approaches that Jill, Nick, or I took, if you haven't already.

As there is nothing exactly analogous in Buddhism with actualist pure intent (and the disanalogies likely concern the parts of pure intent that you find troubling or incomprehensible), that would be the direction to look in.

Ha, I thought you were joking when you mentioned the idea that there was plagiarism of your 'research'. Why would I or should I cite your research? I have never seen anything you've written on this matter, never been to the forum where you say you posted it. I didn't copy anything except quotes from a site I found on google with Bhante's words on it and the attentiveness article of Richards (edit: and I cited both pages)... I did that 'research' after Aaron on the group mentioned that Richard plagiarised Bhante's text.

I find it surprising that you would assume I had seen your research.

Well since Nick was posting in this thread talking about his pure intent, then I considered pure intent to be involved in his way. Wouldn't you?

Nad, if you re-read what I wrote, word for word, without projecting anything onto it, you will see that I did not accuse you of anything. (Such is the value of being a careful reader.)

So, you learned about Richard's apparent copying of Bhante G from another source. So, that connection was not discovered by you via original research, but was a product of someone else's original research. Did you cite your source? If not, were you trying to be ironic? Or do you think that such actions are not a big deal after all?

As for Nick...did you find his definition of pure intent troublesome or incomprehensible?

As for Jill or me...is there a reason you did not address the possibility of using either of our methods?

I take my claim about careful reading back. I could have worded my original post about this topic more clearly. It appears I am not a careful writer. As you can see, I hedged my original statement, but did not do so as thoroughly as I ought to have. Please accept my apology.

For reference, here is what Nick said to you about pure intent when you asked him a question:



I find this to be very easy to understand, and thought you might be interested in a practice that requires this sort of understanding and application of pure intent.

Note that some of the items Nick mentions are not part of "classical" actualism...hence the invitation to consider doing those things.

I am learning that not being explicit leads to confusion. So let me be explicit. I assume you didn't cite your source because you thought your post was informational, and that its informational content was the important thing about it. Similarly, might the same not be possible in Richard's case (putting aside the question of why he chose to apparently use Bhante G's work as a template, and / or copy it, whichever the case may be?) If so, does it really matter in any practical way for you? (The latter question is rhetorical.)

Perhaps because the more I'm read from AF people recently, the less attractive their state of mind becomes to me. I'm considering how the delusion that you're free of malice, free of delusions and free of insincerity may be just as harmful, if not more harmful, than operating with a normal 'self'.

Nad, if you believed that AF would make someone behave skillfully at all times, it's good that you see that it isn't a reasonable expectation.

If you are no longer interested in AF, it seems that there is no problem after all.

However, to the extent that you disapprove of my inferred state of mind, if that is truly the problem for you, I would offer to skype with you sometime so as to allow you to make a more informed judgment. (There appears to be some kind of unexpected interaction between this mode of experience and my writing style.) I assure you that I'm very pleasant in person or over the phone, in some ways more so than I ever was in the past.

Is it useful to start afresh, from exactly this point in your assessment of AF.

At one extreme is your initial interest in AF, what is interesting about it, what piques your curiosity?

At the other extreme is where you are now, what specific items are pushing you away from AF. Can you look at them objectively?

I first came across the AF website, and rejected the whole idea. It was too offensive to my thinking, and did not look at it again for months. When I finally re-read it, it was with the intent of proving to myself why Richard was wrong. After all I had read a lot of metaphysical books, so I thought knew everything. The more I explored the AF website to prove Richard wrong, the more my inner dogma was exposed, and it was not pleasant. In the end, I proved my own conclusions were wrong, not Richard's. After that I was able to start remembering a lot of childhood and teen PCEs, I had completely forgotten about them.

Now for me, being able to start afresh is a key benefit of trying to practice Actualism, starting afresh in being in the present moment every time I realise I'm distracted, and starting afresh in the sense of seeing the grubbiness of some part of me, seeing that that particular ugly bit of me is getting in the way, and is something I can do without. I can start afresh without that piece of baggage.

It's all about noticing my frame of mind. Something I noticed about myself recently was I go around all day with a script running in my head, something like "what is going to keep me happy or gratified in the next few seconds". I realised this was a stream of thinking that is stopping me being with other people fully, it actually stops me appreciating the pleasant circumstances of my life, because I had to be in control all the time, otherwise I might risk being unhappy or disturbed.

This script in my head has been running for most of my life. Funnily this script resembles the AF "how am I experiencing this moment of being alive", but its the opposite. After I started looking at my script "what is going to keep me happy or gratified in the next few seconds", I'm slowly finding that it is making me unhappy, and is the opposite of AF. Everytime I notice this script is running, I can start afresh and get back into the present moment.

hope this makes sense

John, EiS, and everyone else here,

AF is a great idea in theory. I've only ever found the idea appealing. I'd been quite reductionist & materialist in my thinking before encountering actualism so I already had roughly the same view on what the self, morality, spirituality and feelings are.

My doubts have been the same: that it could be delusion or deceit, not genuine freedom from the human condition, or that it leads to delusions about reality. When I last got back into actualism, around the time Vineeto & Peter got AF, I came bearing most of the same doubts that were part of the reason I gave up years earlier. I was advised to stop thinking/worrying about them and just practice. That was my fresh start. Well a year of that and I still saw the same problems with AF.

AF makes quite an extraordinary claim. Shutting off the parts of the brain associated with the 'human condition' without impairing the rest of the functions of the brain, it's an extremely lucky situation if that is possible. The saying goes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof... I'd just say extraordinary claims require evidence and an absence of evidence to the contrary. AF as it currently exists fails on both counts. I was able to swallow rationalisations regarding the evidence to the contrary, and allow the fact that it makes sense to me in theory to override the lack of supporting evidence. I guess the continuing lack of progress makes it easier to stop doing that.

There is a chance of another fresh start for me. It will probably depend on whether I come to find "stream entry" attractive and depend on how much dissent from Richard's actualism there turns out to be from the new AF people. At the moment, there's not enough sign that the problems of Richard's actualism are absent from this neo-actualism.

If there really is a secular, totally non-spiritual approach to enlightenment then I hope neo-actualism turns out to similarly be the theology-free version of Richard's actualism. No claims of experiencing the universe's infinitude - rather than just experiencing boundlessness, no absolute claims about being physically free of malice/insincerity/deceit - so no need for the cognitive dissonance and rationalisations in the face of your own malice/duplicity, no 'psychic' revelations of being the first one - check... one down, no claims that the universe is benevolent unless you can explain why it is benevolent intellectually - not just dismiss questions with advice to experience it yourself. I'll give thee the rest of my commandments when I've finished engraving them.

But I think I'm ready to step away again, for now. I'll stick around to answer if there are any replies to this. Oh and get your brains scanned, for humanity's sake! Science is your friend.

Thanks for all of your time and good luck.

Hmm... ultimately, you have to see for yourself. It's very much like the scientific method in that sense. Someone tells you about electrolysis, and you can either believe that it works or believe that it doesn't. Yet you can do the experiment yourself and see that it does indeed work as described. Likewise with actualism: Do this practice, get these results. You can listen to people talk all about it, but you won't see what it's about until you see for yourself.

Luckily, you don't have to make a permanent shift - you can glimpse what AF would be like in a PCE. So, the best thing to do is: write out a list of all the things you find wrong with Actualism. Get a PCE. Look over your list and answer your own questions. You will be in a better position to see for yourself whether it is a delusion when you actually experience that state that you think might be delusory.

I assume you've heard this before. What prevents you from practicing diligently enough to get a PCE? Is it just these intellectual doubts? Or something else? If it's the doubts, then notice how the best way to resolve them is by practicing. You can always stop after the PCE. And I'm not saying that just to entice you into the delusion - Richard's first wife never got AF, though she had plenty of PCEs and hung out with Richard a lot. (EDIT: Note I'm not saying to stop thinking/worrying about them, in the sense that they don't matter... you really should investigate them. Just that the best way to answer them is to actually answer them for yourself.)


Do you realize that it's the same condition? It's not "Richard's" condition or the "neo-" condition. The same end state. But again, this is better seen for yourself.


I don't know why Richard refused to get his brain scanned, but I am certainly getting mine scanned (tomorrow) and plan on doing it again once I'm AF.

An interview with Judd Brewer, a neuroscientist at Yale University. Many yogis like Claudiu and others are participating already. Me in november.

http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2011/08/meditating-in-big-magnetic-tube-part-ii.html#comments


http://medicine.yale.edu/psychiatry/YTNC/index.aspx

Another article mentioning Judd Brewer, the researcher at Yale:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/09/21/eat-smoke-meditate-why-your-brain-cares-how-you-cope/


Nick

Nad, I would suggest that it's more helpful conceptually to think of this in terms of the end of suffering (the traditional Buddhist goal), rather than "freedom from the human condition" (Richard-speak).

In any case, good luck with whatever else you choose to pursue.

I've had one PCE but I understand all the new talk distinguishing 'full-on' PCE's, mine was only a second or two in length.



You imply that I didn't practice diligently enough to get a PCE. I practiced as diligently as I could for years, or at least one 'years-worth' out of the total years spent, months at a time with no doubts. I had random EE's which kept my motivation and effort up. "Get a PCE" you say, oh well if only I'd thought of that, eh? Perhaps I've had a mild depression (or "dark night") throughout my actualism practice which has always made felicity harder to come by, I'm not sure.



Yes I am assuming it's the same mental state.



Do you really not know or are you rationalising that 'it must have been something else'? ... because Richard gave his silly reason why he wasn't submitting himself for scans. Maybe you missed the proceeding posts after yours in the thread: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2129052

I'm glad you're going to get the scans, the before- and after- is a great idea. I'd be very interested in the results.

Thanks for the links, great to hear. I'm mainly interested in the AF results as the absence of all feeling would seem to imply (and Richard outright claims) physical changes.

That's a more realistic claim which would be more credible to me. I'm not sure where you'd depart from Richard's 'human condition' term. So what claims do you make about your potential for malice/deceit and how do they differ from any of Richard's claims that you're aware of?

Clearly said. You are on to a freedom that is less loaded with words/concepts as left by Richard and Gotama or created in their wake.

So, developing on that, what if the universe is just out there?
For example, when you sit and stare at the starry night,
[indent]do feelings arise (like the universe is ambivalent to you and that is irritating or lonesome) or[/indent]
[indent]just thoughts ("there is Cassiopeia...kepler had sooo many kids...gosh: starry") or [/indent]
[indent]just eye sight (eye sight)?[/indent]

What if I am just here? What does that mean? What is useful for "I" to know in order for... what ? I have found it is relaxing to not be like a tire lunging back-and-forth on the emotional rope-swing. For example, I care about my partner and my responsibilities, but there's no tension or fixity there. (i.e., he is also not "my partner", "my responsibilities" may also cease or become someone else's responsibilities).

What would you like to get out of a Way of practice, how would you hope to eventually be, Nad? [How do you "be" now?]

Thanks for your posts.

Hmm yes, sorry to imply that. You have many posts on how to apply the method. I had a lot of trouble getting a PCE as well. And I only had one and only for a short bit. I don't know where I'd be if I didn't get stream entry and later technical model paths, but they definitely help my current practice. I guess I should ask, then: why are you deciding to stop practicing now? Stopping to practice won't get you a PCE or resolve your doubts... ah ok, you said:



I would recommend going for stream entry and not worrying about the latter for reasons already given.



From memory, when I wrote the post you're replying to, it was because he didn't see how it could be useful. I meant that I didn't know why he thought it wouldn't be useful.

Woe...why so complicated?


what happened to the most literal, obvious, straightforward dictionary meaning?

i thought the word "pure" just meant "untainted" or "unpolluted" or "uncontaminated", so "pure intent" just means the intent to be happy and harmless totally untainted by any intentional malice or motive to harm oneself or others, as long as it's in your power and discernment to avoid the harm. choosing to be happy and harmless and free from suffering to the fullest of your ability, even though you can't help if the malicious and unhappy flow of being is still present with all its habits and baggage (which is why it's called "pure intent" and not "pure conduct" ). a substitute might be "sincerity of practice" or "honesty with yourself about doing all you can to become happy and harmless"


i'm sure we could dig up some Buddhist lingo to match it.
-sila (honesty, not hurting or harming others)?
-strong determination?
-faith in practice?
-the intention to end suffering?
-fighting off Mara to keep practice pure?
-desire for deliverance?
-and that whole list of all the Right Things--that sounds to me like keeping practice pure, uncontaminated and on the Right Track.
-oh, thought of another one: Goenka: "mental action leads to verbal action leads to physical action, so the mental action is of utmost importance..."--sounds like it all starts with the intent!

moreover, the whole philosophy of this forum looks like an embodiment of pure intent. like many pragmatic, practice and result-oriented dharma teachers, the collective voice of this forum asks the question, "do you want to sincerely develop your insight, explore our human potential, and experience more and more freedom from suffering, or would you rather play intellectual games, win philosophical debates, shoot down stupid-sounding traditions because those people deserve to feel bad, etc."--which sounds better?" pick your intention...


as long as your intent is not to seek what Peter assumes that all Enlightenment seekers seek, then your intent to become free from suffering/malice and sorrow/the human condition/distortion should more or less match what he calls pure intent:



the pce helps one to be totally confident that it's possible to be free from malice, sorrow, self-identification, and affective perceptual distortion and shows clearly exactly what conditions of experience are possible, but in my opinion a sincere vipassana practitioner should also be able to gather pure intent simply from seeing one's direction of growth and change--seeing that if clearer perception, less suffering, and less harm towards self and others is possible, why not keep going?

i see much evidence of members of this forum exhibiting the pure intent/sincerity to become free from suffering despite not having had a pce, and (with the support of this community) they seem to make progress towards more freedom just fine.

jill

Not sure that I know what you're saying but I'd say it may not mean much at all if a neuro-physiological system has evolved creating an elaborate pleasure/pain/survival experience over the top of reality.



I like the idea of ending the persistent delusions that inhere with being human. That would still include the vast majority of the delusions actualism and the AF Trust talks about. I don't disagree with the AFT on the regular delusions of humans experience.

No practice got me my PCE.



I'm still not satisfied by the resources I've found and had recommended to me. Nothing anywhere near secular or beginner-oriented enough for me so far. There's a limit to how much 'translating' I'm willing to do, when I haven't yet been given a reason to desire the goal the books are trying to talk about. If you know any fully-secular materialist resources about stream entry which explain why a normal materialist person would want to read further in the first place, let alone begin closing their eyes and focusing on the breath for hours and months at a time... I'd be all-ears.

what do you mean by secular? it's pretty straightforward: there is no permanent, separate entity that 'you' are; there is no self. noticing things closely enough will lead to you seeing this for yourself. notice stuff until you see it. cause + effect. scientific method. at some point you will have a fruition. then you will know you had stream entry.

instructions for beginners: sit down, close your eyes, and label everything you notice with a one- or two-syllable label. do this until the fruition occurs. watch out for side effects (dark night) that are signs of progress.

why would you want to do it? to get insight into how your mind works, in order to reduce (and eventually eliminate) suffering.

Just the normal dictionary definition








I don't think it is so straightforward.

My first brief foray into trying to see that there is no 'self', just before actualism, came from reading about 'advaita vedanta', which matches pretty closely what Richard says about spiritual enlightenment in general. So first of all I'd want to know that there won't be some delusional 'THAT', 'Awareness' or 'Self' that will replace 'me'. From reading here it seems the majority opinion is that Richard was generalising out of ignorance or misrepresenting the various states. However, the attainment of 'seeing' that there's no self will leave me in a state that you would consider to still have a 'self' operating. It'd be remiss of me not to want to apply more scrutiny before embarking, knowing that.

I'm not up for potentially wasting more years of my life pursuing delusions, so I do need to be able to discern whether a course of action is worth beginning. That's especially true when the reason for it all is just to test whether a "PCE" satisfies my concerns.

Here's my take:

Any state of 'being' is ignorant, be it unenlightened or 'enlightened'. In either state, you can have right view or wrong view. This leads to four combinations (roughly... there are different grades of them, but here is just a rough sketch):

unenlightened and wrong view - I actually exist. Feelings actually exist. Things happen to me and I control things from a little spot inside my head.
unenlightened and right view - I cannot find evidence for a separate 'I'. Feelings are impermanent. Things happening are impermanent. Intention is causal, just like anything else. It feels like I am controlling things from a little spot inside my head, yet, whenever I investigate it, I see no 'me' there, though I still assume a 'me'.
enlightened and wrong view - I am God/Awareness. I am That. Things happen, be they 'suffering' or not, but that doesn't affect 'me', what 'i' really am (Awareness), thus it doesn't matter.
enlightened and right view - There is this Awareness. Yet, I cannot find a 'me' there. Awareness is impermanent, causal. It seems I am far less affected by whatever happens in Awareness... yet those things still are suffering, and they still cause me to do things that hurt others. 'I' don't actually exist.. every compounded thing is impermanent, causal. There is more to be done.

Given your extensive history interacting with Actually Free people and Enlightened people alike, and hearing all the warnings about Enlightenment from practicing actualists/AF people... it seems like you have a very small chance of mistakenly interpreting enlightenment. You will be enlightened. Then you will see why people might mistake Awareness as them. Then you will see there are still feelings, thus still things to be done.

The benefit of enlightenment is it makes the mind more powerful, more equanimous, easier to investigate phenomena, etc...

But, there is no going back... no getting unenlightened once it happens. So, once the route is taken, either you stabilize in some enlightened state - which might certainly be more pleasant than your current experience.. it might be unpleasant for a bit but eventually you'll find some equanimity - or you take it all the way to AF.

Its eerie to think about how our minds used to work and then realize that those are how the minds of most if not all of the people around us work.



Adequately summarizes "my" current experience. Right view is vital because it keeps one effortlessly moving in a progressive direction, where right conduct can then make the physical improvements. They work together simultaneously. Without Right view, one can easily wander into "I am God/Awareness. I am that," which has occurred a lot for me in the past few weeks. Also, my experience is as if the "I" presents itself emerges (as images) only through manifestations of "me" (the me being desire, which leads to a desirous image), which belongs to a blank sheet of awareness. The "me" manifests from awareness but the two are separate "sensations." Keeping attention to pure awareness, while being sensuous, can stop more "me" from occurring. Its like there are two layers, awareness and then the instincts. Keeping awareness constant lessons instinct.

Hi Nad,
You may find Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's Joy of Living useful. Mingyur has also had his brain activity measured (something you mentioned above). He is very simply spoken.


So as you know the buddhist "take" on feelings and objects is that there must be a mental reception in order for them to exist.

So a cup of "hot cocoa" exists because we have the sensory distinctions of distinguishing sight sense (object: brown), distinguishing smell sense (object: cocoa), distinguishing taste sense (object: sweet), distinguishing feel sense (object: heat), distinguishing hearing sense (object: "hot cocoa's ready"), and the mental assemblage sense which conceptualizes "hot cocoa" into an object of fixity. In Western science, this is a brain on chocolate.

The five physical sensory factors are often compared to streams, which flow into a single river (mental sensory factor) which flows into the ocean (base consciousness which becomes discernible when the first sign of form-distance-other-being (awareness) initiates).

In the placid ocean of a person whose awareness perceives their awareness with complete knowledge of how awareness may obscure reality there are no waves (such as: emotional upset and mental fixity) in response to arising forms. Here there is no
nirvana or samsara.

In the ocean of consciousness of a person who is not very familiar with how awareness works and reifies objects (like desires, aversion, emotional tendencies) then the ocean of their base consciousness may cast a lot of waves: some waves are fun (waves of bliss), some waves are misery (depression). Here there is nirvana and samsara.

Back to hot cocoa:
[indent]if there were no nose sensory factor, hot cocoa would lose its smell and be a drink without this attribute;
if there were no eye sensory factor, hot cocoa would lose its appearance and remain a drink without any coloration;
if there were no taste sensory factor, hot cocoa would lose its taste and become a hot liquid
if there was no feeling sensory factor, hot cocoa would be something that perhaps caused coughing, sputtering and trigger the epiglottis to shut[/indent]
For a person without the above sensory factors, there would be no mental sensible object "hot cocoa" reified in the mental factor's arena to cause waves of desire or aversion. Hot chocolate is truly created by the mental and sensory factors conceptualizing hot chocolate and fixing it permanently.

For the person who has persistent depression or boredom, there has become, for any number of reasons, a fixed mental sensory factor of depression and boredom which then adheres to the mental objects "depression" and "boredom".


In actualism lingo, this is "I am my feelings and my feelings are me."

A person who has formed the mental object (from the mental sense) "Richard is full of gibberish" (for example) could definitely pick another study. For me, some of Richard's words made sense when I read them sometimes on the DhO. The above quote is one of them ("I am my feelings and my feelings are me") makes sense to me. For the rest of the words on the AFT and, frankly, quite a few words in buddhism... so be them. Maybe they are useful to others.

A point of buddhist meditation, and particularly the jhanas, is developing the ability to see the exact moment of arising distinction. To see this one's meditation must enter into neither perception nor non-perception, from which the wink of mental form would be discerned. Some people can sustain this place of neither perception nor non-perception for as many as six hours, and there are probably reports of more.

For a majority of people there are multiple tools* for understanding "apperception" - awareness of one's own awareness, and using this apperception may be for temporary stabilizations during stormy seas or as a complete transformation for living at all times.

Best wishes with your efforts here.

{edits for typos, clarifications}
{*Sādhanā...sādhanā may include some conventional exercise.}

I don't appear to be able to generate the feeling of malice towards anyone, for any reason. I can occasionally experience a "shadow" version of this, but it is felt as tension in my body, and does not result in actions for the sake of harming others, nor in the desire to harm others. (I have not experienced this "shadow" version of malice for some time, so it may be completely gone for all I know.)

(EDIT: Dipa Ma was a well-known practitioner in the Theravada Buddhist tradition who claims an attainment which may be identical to this. Here is what she says about anger:

"What do you do when you begin to feel irritation or anger? Anger is a fire, but I don’t feel any heat. It comes and dies right out."

This is a fair take on it. Imagine a truncated experience of malice that has no "burn", no motivating force, and which dies before it develops into anything. That is a good description of "shadow malice".)


I can go through the motions of behaving with malice if I saw some reason to do it.

I can go through the motions of deceiving someone (and thus actually doing it) if I saw some reason to do it.

My behavior is what would be expected of a thoughtful and considerate person who happens to be adapting to a new mode of experience and experiencing some difficulties with that. As I continue the practice that got me this mode of experience, it appears that the thoughtfulness and consideration is slowly increasing, as my old residual behavior patterns are rejected and slowly fall away, and this new mode of experience becomes less "clumsy".

I don't really know what other claims Richard makes, as I have not made an extensive study of the AFT website.

I would not say that this attainment has much to do with "practical" perfection. I have a human mind, it makes human errors, and probably will continue to do so forever. But to the extent that my behavior in the past was conditioned by the desire to harm, that behavior no longer arises. I believe most people would be fundamentally kind and caring were it not for their own suffering and existential unhappiness, and to the extent that those things come to an end, the inclination towards compassionate behavior becomes all that remains.

I do not claim to be fully liberated, and so do not claim to have only compassionate intentions in every possible situation in life. But the cases in which I do have only those intentions has grown enormously compared to in the past. I would say that the thing I've learned most clearly from this change in myself is that it is existential unhappiness which is the cause of much of the selfishness and evil in human behavior, on all levels (from interactions between individuals to interactions between large groups). One regards others with care and concern, and thinks genuinely about their welfare, to the extent that one's own selfish concern for one's own needs is not woven into every moment of one's life.

I honestly have no idea how this mode of experience would play out for someone who was deeply abnormal or disturbed or antisocial in the first place. The suttas suggest that many "evil" people could be reformed through the cessation of their suffering (e.g. Angulimala). I am inclined to believe it, at least in many cases, but am not sure.

Keep in mind that I have never supported AFT "dogma". I accept that Richard's experiences are accurately described, and have used them as a guide to what is possible in terms of the transformation of my own experiences. His interpretations are his own and I have never been especially interested in hearing what they were, apart from the cases in which they might have been relevant to me in some practical way.

Honestly, to the extent that you are concerned with how this mode of experience could worsen your behavior, that is commendable. I have been more sensitive to the fact that "normal" experience (even when one feels quite positive or blissful) appears to be utterly miserable compared to this mode of experience, and so made a mad dash to what I considered to be respite and succor. In some ways that was quite a rash thing to do, despite the fact that it seems to have worked out well for me.

i'm pretty evil, so in a while we'll know

Before or after Halloween?

Or live with a AF person in an intimate relationship for a month and find out the fraud of it all !!

What about, for a while, taking Skepticism as far as you can. Apply it to the inner world as well as the external.