In addition to the shift away from fundamental discontentment towards a fundamental sense of okayness, changes related to moving in the direction of Fundamental Wellbeing include:
- There is an underlying sense of okayness or peace beneath whatever turbulence is arising on the surface.
- A deeper sense of contentment, wholeness, completeness – you no longer need to add things to yourself or your life. You don’t need to accumulate things materially, psychologically, experientially. You may still do all the same things, but as part of experiencing the world, not out of a need to add anything to yourself or for other people to see you in certain way.
- Less reactivity and better emotional regulation. For example, in an emotionally charged situation you might notice that you have a very different, less charged, reaction than you would have in the past.
- Thoughts and feelings having less power over you. Thoughts, memories, and emotions can still arise and pull you in, but this may happen less, and (especially negative ones) will often fall away much more rapidly.
- A reduction in self-referential thoughts. Thoughts about you, or what others think about you, may arise less frequently and/or affect you less.
- Shifts in how you feel about other people – you may find you have an increased sense of understanding for others and their situation, rather than judgement (not that you can’t still be discriminating).
- Placing less importance on your own personal story. You may also see how much of the world is based on story, and these stories may become less interesting to you.
- A quieting of the critical voice in your head.
- A greater sense of presence or being in the moment. This may also lead to fewer memories from the past arising, and/or their feeling less relevant and having less emotional charge when they do arise.
- A reduction or disappearance of the need for existential meaning or purpose – to a greater or lesser extent depending on where you’re at in Fundamental Wellbeing, it feels like everything is complete and perfect as it is, simply by virtue of its existence.
- Trust in what is – there can be an increasing sense that everything is unfolding perfectly despite appearances (this sense may or may not be correct, but it certainly feels that way).
Experiential qualities that you may encounter as you transition to and deepen into Fundamental Wellbeing include all of the above, plus the items listed below (though, this is not a comprehensive list). The items in the previous list are common to all individuals who experience Fundamental Wellbeing. However, the ones in the list below are more hit and miss. They may or may not be experienced, depending on how deep someone is in Fundamental Wellbeing. For example, some may be experienced by those on the more shallow end, others by those at medium depths, and still others by those who are deeply experiencing Fundamental Wellbeing.
It's also important to note that these qualities are only knowable experientially. Although they are typically difficult to describe, when you experience them you’ll know it. These aren’t designed to think about or try and understand with your mind – that won’t get you anywhere. They are here to help you recognize experiences that may be very new to you, when they happen for you.
Again, it is not necessary for you to experience all or many of these, nor for them to remain constant in your experience. They may move in between the foreground and background of your subjective experience, or they may shift from one to another as your system explores the depth and breadth of Fundamental Wellbeing.
- Beingness, Presence, Isness. Fundamentally, before you are this or you are that, you simply are. This includes the experience of pure being prior to any definitions or need for definitions.
- Stillness, silence – these may be experienced as a quality of stillness or silence that somehow exists simultaneously with movement, possibly somehow containing or permeating all movement/activity.
- Spaciousness, space – a sense of inner spaciousness that contains all thought, all experience, all objects, everything. It may feel like the space in which all these arise, and it may feel like you are that space, as opposed to being the content of the space.
- Witnessing, consciousness, awareness – you may begin experiencing yourself, not as the content of your experience, but as the consciousness in which it all arises. For example, you may witness your thoughts and emotions arising but realize you are not your thoughts and emotions, but are that which is aware of them, that which was there before they arose, while they are there, and after they disappear. No matter what arises, the awareness is untouched and unchanged.
- Underlying Peace – a quality of peace that exists at a depth of your experience that is unaffected by what happens at the surface. The surface level of your experience may be disturbed by whatever is happening at the moment, but deep beneath it all, there is a level that is unmoved and at rest. It can be a bit paradoxical, like knowing you are perfectly okay despite not feeling okay at the surface level.
- Expansiveness beyond the body – you may have a sense of your sense of self expanding beyond the boundaries of your body, or somehow not being contained or limited to the body.
- Connectedness, unity, oneness – this can show up in many ways, but is fundamentally a sense of greatly reduced or total non-separation from your environment or life in its totality. One way this will often be experienced is that as you look out at your environment, instead of having a distinct sense of a point behind your eyes from which you are seeing, everything is just somehow showing up without a clear separation between the observer and the observed.
- Compassion and love – this may be experienced as love exceeding anything you have ever felt in intensity, or it may feel like love or compassion that is impersonal, or even universal or divine in nature.
- Uncaused joy – a sense of joy, happiness, or bliss that is unprovoked, meaning it is not caused by anything external that has happened but arises spontaneously from within.
- Timelessness, eternity – this can feel like there is only the present moment extending infinitely, and past and future have no relevance. It can also feel like what you are is changeless, and while all phenomenal experience comes and goes, that alone remains. It can feel like what you are has no age, no beginning, and no end. This can significantly reduce the fear of death in people, and even go as for as to feel like death is an impossibility.
- Invulnerability and changelessness – it can feel like there is a dimension of your being which is somehow changeless and invulnerable, untouched by all experience, which is all impermanent, while what you are is always here.
- Perfection – a sense that everything, no matter how it appears, is perfect and complete. You may also experience a sense of the innate beauty and perfection of existence itself.
- Centerlessness – any sense of having a center can fall away, and only an experience of all-present awareness or reality remains.