how do i search the active discussions

At the top right of the Discussions page is a Search Communities field.

And so the question remains, how to search ACTIVE DISCUSSIONS, such as the one you are browsing in and not the whole support site??

Mike, you can restrict your seach to just one forum, thus excluding the rest of the support site.

After entering the Search page, there in the search dialogue page, is a small window Restrict to a Community. As you start to type in a keyword there, you will be automatically shown options of the various forums (now called communities).

Select one of these forums and your search keywords will be restricted to hits from that selection, as shown from this screenshot made as an example of a poor choice of search going to the 10.3 forum. The iPhoto forum would have been a more sensible selection but I chose the odd location just to illustrate what is possible.