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 really 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”.

In Location 3 that involves a significant change in emotionality.

Deep in Location 2, more or less, only positive emotions remain, though a person can still have some deep conditioning arise that triggers a negative emotion or reaction. In Location 3 that goes even further, to an experience of a continuous, single, positive emotion that is a combination of universal (divine or impersonal depending how someone experiences Location 3) compassion, love, and joy. There can be other facets of this unified expression of emotion depending on a person’s culture, but it typically includes at least those three. At any given time, a person may be primarily experiencing one of the facets, but it is still felt as part of that single positive meta-emotion.

Location 3 is the classic end of the Abrahamic mystical traditions, such as the Christianity mystics and Sufism in Islam, as well as some of the Eastern traditions. It is a profoundly rich way of experiencing life that in many ways feels like it is the absolute pinnacle of human experience, so it is not surprising that some religious and spiritual traditions would have picked it as their end goal.

In Location 3, there is a feeling of union or merger with the Divine, or, with an all-pervasive consciousness. Those are two different things. Some people get the divine version of the Location 3 experience, and others get the all-pervasive consciousness or “panpsychist” version.

One thing that comes with this sense of union, is that unlike Location 2, this is not a nondual experience of the world. It can’t be nondual if there is a you, here, and something out there that you are merging with. That is a dualistic form of perception.

In Location 3 the sense of fundamental okayness is almost always in the foreground, and is a very deep and rich experience. There is also often a deep sense of perfection, and peace is even harder to suppress than in Location 2.

In addition, all the general qualities of Fundamental Wellbeing continue to deepen in Location 3…

Self-referential thoughts (thoughts about oneself) continue to decline compared with previous locations. These types of thoughts 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 interests in, the story of themselves. Their personal story, and stories of any kind, simply aren’t as compelling as they once were. In previous locations, this can create issues with relationships, which are largely story based. This is less the case at Location 3, where the immense amount of impersonal love Finders feel often leads them to have very caring relationships with others.

No longer being caught up in stories, Finders in Location 3 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 3 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 3

• The constant experience of love, joy, and compassion makes Location 3 an amazing place to live from. It truly feels like the ultimate human experience.
• It is an incredibly healing location to experience. That universal love/compassion is very nourishing and can feel like it somehow redeems everything.
• The good access to the mind combined with the very loving disposition makes Location 3 people great to be around. Social functioning is usually not a problem here.
• The generosity brought about by the strong positive emotion doesn’t make Location 3 an ideal location for having responsibility for managing resources, such as in running a business or being a steward of finances.