by Dr. Jeffery Martin: The core characteristic of Fundamental Wellbeing is the experience of a fundamental okayness beneath all other experience.

This first shows up in Location 1, where it is often experienced as a background sense, and continues to deepen with each further location.

From Location 1 on, each location has a central experience to look out for that defines that location, and says “Okay, now this isn’t Location 1 anymore, now it’s Location 2”, or “Now this isn’t Location 2 anymore, now it’s Location 3”.

For Location 2, that is something that has traditionally been called nondual perception in some religious and spiritual systems. Usually this is most easily noticed through the senses, and especially vision and hearing.

So, for example, when a person in Location 2 looks out at the world, instead of feeling like there’s something inside their head that is looking out their eyes, their experience when they open their eyes is that everything is just somehow there, that it is just showing up. It doesn’t feel like there is an “observer” or “looker” or “seer” in there that is looking out. Instead everything is just there as a singular expression. It’s all one thing, including them as part of it. Nondual literally means “not two”, so it refers to this kind of oneness in perception.

One interesting thing that happens in Location 2, is that a person is more likely to feel that a particular path or decision is the right one to take when they need to make a choice. It is like an intuitive or sixth sense that people in Location 2 have. It doesn’t mean their sixth sense is actually correct, however. It just means it feels that way. Often the pull of this sixth sense is so strong, that even if a decision makes no rational sense, a Location 2 person will still go for it.

Other changes in Location 2 relate to a deepening of many of the changes that first show up in Location 1…

The fundamental okayness moves more into the foreground, and peace is increasingly difficult to have be suppressed by psychological conditioning.

Emotions become more and more positive until, if someone has fully deepened into Location 2, only very positive emotions remain.

Self-referential thoughts (thoughts about oneself) continue to decline, compared to Location 1. These types of thoughts often relate to a negative internal narrative that someone has about him- or herself, and may simply arise less frequently, be less compelling when they do, or both.

This results in Finders placing much less importance on, and having less interest in, the story of themselves. Their personal story, and stories of any kind, simply aren’t as compelling as they once were. This can even make it difficult for Finders to maintain their old relationships, since they are just no longer interested in anyone’s stories, and so much of human interaction is based around them.

No longer being caught up in stories, Finders in Location 2 experience 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.

People in Location 2 experience a deeper sense of contentment, wholeness, and completeness. They no longer feel an urgent need to add things to themselves, their life, or their life story. They don’t need to accumulate things materially, psychologically, or experientially. They may still do all the same things, but as part of experiencing the world, not out of a need to add anything to themselves or for other people to see them in certain way.

All the changes we’ve described are often accompanied by changes in goals and motivation, since prior to Fundamental Wellbeing, a person’s goals are driven by the sense of incompleteness, inadequacy, discontentment, anxiety, and so on, that underlies most people’s internal experience. When that goes away with Fundamental Wellbeing, it can bring changes to their motivation and goals, because many of these may no longer seem relevant. Because of this, many Finders, at least for a period of time, experience a drop in motivation. This typically frees up resources that eventually allow for their intrinsic motivation (sometimes referred to life calling or life purpose) to emerge, and it is common for Finders to change life tracks and pursue this.

Tendencies of Location 2

• Location 2 is like a sweet spot on the continuum where one really can maximally experience the peace and depth of Fundamental Wellbeing and remain highly functional in the world.
• This is in part because all the layers of depth in Fundamental Wellbeing are readily accessible from Location 2. This range of depths can give Location 2 Finders a very comprehensive experience of Fundamental Wellbeing, and at deeper layers, a great depth of peace without the limitations of later locations.
• It is the best location to maximize both peace and functionality.
• Location 2 also retains access to a complete range of emotion, and the richness of human experience that it enables.
• It still has a strong capacity for personal love, which becomes increasingly impersonal/universal in Location 3. For this reason, some Finders prefer Location 2 for personal relationships.
• The full range of emotion and access to the mind makes Location 2 great for dealing with people (though Finders who really isolate deep in Location 2 tend to lose this).
• The emotional system is less biased here than in Location 3, so this is a better place to do things like run a business (Location 1 is also fine).
• There can be more challenges with motivational changes here than in Location 1, especially if a person deepens in it.