GARY: The only other thing I would mention is that there is another easy way of understanding the nature of the animal instinctual programming that I have run across and that is to observe children. Granted that the children that I work with as a social worker have, in many cases, been horribly abused by their parents and caretakers, but they seem not to have developed the internal controls that are inculcated by society as morals, ethics, and values, and the underlying instinctual package is plain for all to see. The malice and sorrow of these little people, their fights with one another, their pain and suffering, is readily apparent. The children are very obviously in a primitive survival mode almost all the time. The destructiveness of these self-centred passions is something I wrestle with everyday in my work.

RESPONDENT No. 28: How do you wrestle with this? From a pure AF point of view, nobody is helped by empathetic responses to these painful situations, but the program runs deep.

GARY: I meant the word ‘wrestle’ both figuratively and literally. In a figurative sense, one is helping the children with their feeling responses to situations, whether by using a sort of Cognitive-Behaviour therapy (learning to think about what one is doing rather than blindly react).

But I also meant quite literally I ‘wrestle’ because sometimes physical restraint is applied if the child is physically out of control. Wrestle is really the wrong word. We call it ‘therapeutic holding’, which is a way of pinning the child on the floor when they are punching, kicking, throwing things, etc. It is designed to be a benign use of force to get them to calm down. As soon as they stop fighting and begin to relax, you begin to relax your hold on them progressively. I must say I have had mixed feelings about this holding activity. But it serves to point up to me that in our society, in childhood, one must learn ‘self’-control early lest one learn it later in life at the point of a gun. In this type of situation, one must monitor oneself constantly to ensure that one is not overreacting. Empathy is rather hard to muster up when someone is spitting in your face or trying to bite your hand off.

I think you are right that AF could be interpreted as cold detachment. However, there are other responses to painful situations besides empathy. One does not abandon caring for others by seeing the futility of empathy. It has taken me awhile to sort out these things for myself.

Working in a profession that stresses the value of empathy so much I have had to really think deeply about this all. By observing the other people that work with, I don’t think my response to these situations is markedly different than others. If my emotional reactions to highly emotional situations is attenuated or diminished, I think it has some real value in the situation in helping to calm things down. I think it is a big strength in dealing with highly enraged individuals. 12.1.2002

PETER: When I read of your recent job change, I was wondering how you would go working with young children.

GARY: I was wondering the same thing. I feel a bit hypocritical at times as I find myself falling back on what I learned and was taught in dealing with situations, and I think what I learned and was taught was based on the same values, morals, ethics, etc., that constitute the ‘Tried and Failed’. So there is this hypocritical feeling often. But I seemingly do not react to emotionally charged situations and I am not intimidated by people whose aim is to push other people’s buttons. That doesn’t mean I stick around to become their punching bag, it just means that I can be level-headed in a situation.

I see it is proving to be a wealth of information while no doubt being a handful at times. I also gleaned a wealth of information from my work in the market place during the actualism process, as well as being able to observe how I was experiencing a challenging and changing kaleidoscope of people, things and events. What I found was that as my malicious and sorrowful feelings diminished, I was much more able to easily do what was sensible and appropriate for the situation and that this sensibleness and appropriateness eventually became effortless.

PETER: As effortlessness set in, ‘I’ was more and more redundant as ‘I’ was no longer needed to be ‘in control’. When this stage is reached there is a delicious ‘slipping out from control’ that happens and then I really get to have fun being effortlessly happy and effortlessly harmless.

GARY: ‘Effortlessness’ is a very good way to describe it. Once one grasps the folly of remaining a passionate feeling being, the emotional faculty seems to just run out of steam or fall flat from lack of use. One is no longer pumping up one’s emotional muscles. A curious change begins to take place. I am still in the midst of this change and so there are certain parts of it that are not entirely clear to me. But the daunting or fear-evoking elements of it appear to be subsiding, being replaced by an increasing sense of ease and comfort. My experience of emotions, if they do arise in the head and heart, is that they are recognized at once and fall flat, without needing to be expressed or suppressed. It is indeed a process that involves no effort from ‘me’. Indeed, if I get hooked by an emotion, it is ‘me’ in all my glory, and the experience can be pumped for all the information possible about this particular emotion or feeling, and the corresponding belief or attitude that may be associated with it. 16.1.2002

GARY: Yes, there is a tremendously expansive sense of freedom when at first the bonds of instinct appear to be loosening and then one realizes that they are really disappearing from one’s life ... perhaps forever. I say ‘perhaps’ because, as you, I have not experienced anything like ‘self-immolation’. There is nothing ‘mystical’ about this process – it all seems incredibly straight forward, at least at this point.

PETER: The way I investigated the business of ‘perhaps’ was to ask myself if I could ever turn back to being how I was, or ‘who’ I was, before I started this process. When the answer came ‘no way’, the ‘perhaps’ disappeared and I knew there was only one way to go – forward. There is nothing ‘mystical’ about the process of actualism and yet it is magical – for to experience and be aware that the human brain can not only think, plan reflect and communicate but can also delete its obsolete social programming and its redundant instinctual program is breathtakingly magical ... and yet so ordinary and incredibly straight forward, as you said.

GARY: This was the most helpful part of your post to me. I had not been aware of the full implications of that modifier ‘perhaps’. It indicates a holding-back and a fear of proceeding, I think. But I can honestly say that I could not go back even if I wanted – and I do not want to. Because these ‘bonds of instinct’, even though they have not been completely and totally eradicated, have been so weakened and the benefit is so tangible from this that there is no comparison to before.

I was reminded of this yesterday. We had a mass staff gathering for the purposes of having a corporate retreat to discuss work issues. To make a long story short, the powers that be made it perfectly clear that they expect and recommend an approach to problem solving that says ‘If I have a problem with you, I’m going to tell you about it’. I was reminded of the drab results that I personally had always gotten from this confrontative approach, and how many times it backfired and made things worse. I was, at the same time, reminded of Vineeto’s recent remarks on this approach to ‘letting it all hang out’. Not only has this interpersonal approach of confronting others not worked for me in the past but also it was always governed by the unspoken expectation that the other change their behaviour to suit me and my whims.

If I have a problem with someone else, first of all it is my responsibility to do something about it, not expect the other person to change. I think that approaching a co-worker and speaking to them about their behaviour is almost always motivated by irritation, annoyance, resentment, fear, etc., all emotional states that one can do something about to eliminate from their life, yet people never carry this work through to eliminate the source of the ‘problem’ with other people, and the reason why we cannot get along with others. 22.1.2002

RESPONDENT No. 27: Lastly, I’d like to learn more about what is meant by ‘not suppressing or expressing’ strong emotions. Normally, the example given is anger. We commonly make a division between the feeling of anger and taking it out on someone – so that seems an obvious example. But what about emotions like empathy or compassion or feeling beauty? Take playing the guitar for example. The feeling of beautiful music while playing is the very same as it’s expression. I don’t feel the beauty without actually playing the musical instrument. So it’s difficult to divorce feeling and expression in a context like that – so that it seems like not expressing in that context is none other than repression – which would mean NOT to allow oneself to pickup the guitar or be ‘tempted’ by beauty. Or do you mean by ‘expressing emotion’ – ‘to take it out on somebody or something’? Also, with empathy – are we to hold ourselves back from expressing empathy because we don’t yet know the dividing line between ‘feeling empathy’ and ‘being benevolent’? That to me, seems to verge on repression. I suppose I’d like to see a little more carefully detailed explanation of what exactly is meant by ‘not suppressing or expressing’ emotion – since it seems to me that some emotions only arise when expressed – or are in danger of being repressed if not expressed in some way.

GARY: This last paragraph here contains, I think, the most interesting questions in your post.

I think a number of things are meant by ‘expressing’ emotions. Taking it out on somebody or something is a drastic example of emotional expression, but an all too common one. Emotional expression is primarily a way that human beings communicate with one another. Emotional expression is the raw alphabet of what is commonly referred to as ‘body language’. We both sense and respond to other people’s body language on a regular basis. It is very difficult, don’t you think, to have an emotion and not express it? One doesn’t have to take it out on somebody else to express an emotion. The emotion is signalled through one’s body posturing, the expression on one’s face, one’s tone of voice and inflection, etc. One can read other people’s emotions through similar means.

It is interesting, isn’t it, how we read other people’s moods and emotions. We all signal our emotional state through subtle cues that are communicated nonverbally. The more primitive areas of the brain, those where the primary instinctual passions emanate from, are a kind of quick scan to detect these moods and emotional conditions in others. This part of the brain we hold in common with our household pets who, interestingly, are extremely adept at picking up on our moods and emotions.

There is a very thin dividing line indeed between feeling a feeling and ‘expressing’ that feeling. When I started to investigate the affective feelings, I saw number one the demand that ‘my’ moods and emotions place on other people around me. They always do and they always will put that demand on others, whether it be for attention, sympathy, love, distance, etc. One’s emotions are essentially self- centred in this way.

Empathy is not a feeling. Rather, it is the ability to project oneself into the feelings, emotions, and thoughts of another. Like compassion, empathy promises much but delivers little. Maybe a more basic question is: does the experience of empathy make one benevolent? If so, how? I don’t think we are to hold ourselves back from the experience of empathy. But I think the experience of empathy can be investigated into. Does one help others through empathizing with their pain? By sharing in another’s pain, how does that help? It may momentarily assuage the feeling of loneliness and isolation that the other feels, but what does it really do to help another?

Questions like these, and perhaps many others, might lead one to investigate the experience of empathy more closely and find out for oneself what it is all about. 2.1.2002

RESPONDENT No. 32: I notice a recurring theme for me that takes me away from happiness and well-being seems to be when I feel physically crowded, excessively warm, + certain noises (i.e. car alarms, certain people’s voices). I notice I am tense, uncomfortable and feel very aggressive & violent. I don’t notice any beliefs or thought streams outside of wanting the interference to stop. I’m always ripe for an upset when I’m overtired. I really don’t know what beliefs are present outside of the world shouldn’t be like this. Any comments welcome.

GARY: It seems to me that you are well on your way to investigating what stands in the way of perfection.

I can well relate to what you write as I have had these experiences myself many times. I find it interesting what pushes me to become ‘overtired’, as you say and I think the condition of ‘overtiredness’ results in many unhappy consequences oftentimes, including aggression, anger, moodiness, etc. Speaking personally, the overtiredness results from my social identity, that part of ‘me’ that relates to my ambitions, my aspirations, my ‘work ethic’, my compulsive need to be busy, etc, etc. The further I delve into the social identity, the more I run into beliefs and ideals that ‘I’ try to live by, like ‘You’ve got to keep your nose to the grindstone’ or ‘You’ve got to work hard and be a success’ and other like statements. These inner beliefs sometimes almost take the form of parental admonitions to do such and so. I can almost hear my parents saying these things inside my head sometimes.

To give a personal example, when I am tired, often I just want to be left alone and I tend to isolate myself. But a more basic question is why am I pushing myself to get into this state of being overtired in the first place? Many people, including myself, have very busy jobs where there are almost constant demands on ‘my’ time and ‘my’ attention. I find that there is a part of me that craves this constant busyness but there is a downside too in terms of exhaustion, moodiness, and other negative states, what most people call ‘stress’ or ‘burnout’.

I can add to the states that you mentioned – like feeling physically crowded, certain noises, certain temperatures, etc- that sometimes I feel uncomfortable with people coming up behind me: I sometimes feel cornered, especially when I think that people are sneaking up on me.

I think these are basically emotional reactions that stem from the primitive survival mechanism of the human creature, in this case ‘me’. I think the old ‘flight or fight’ survival instincts are being triggered, sometimes by emotional memories. It may not be an actual conscious memory of something but it may be non-verbal. I think for instance my uncomfortableness with other people touching me has to do with the emotional memory system pertaining to physical touch. Many people, including myself, were touched in some very hurtful ways, and all these experiences are in the emotional memory centre and can be triggered by things, which seem to have no connection to what is going on in the present moment.

I think the important thing to realize is that these are emotional reactions, and as such they can be investigated and pumped further for information about yourself and how you react emotionally and what makes you tick. We have often talked on this list about the difference between ignoring or suppressing an emotional experience and experiencing one’s emotions and feelings. With further practice and dedication to the method of actualism, these reactions clearly diminish in strength and intensity.

In short, what I am trying to say is that, in my experience, there is always a primitive ‘self’ behind emotional reactions, and this is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and it requires the ‘nerves of steel’ to stick with your investigations into the instincts. Obviously you have to find ways of dealing with feeling ‘very aggressive and violent’, as you put it in your own words.

When that happens to me, I have to examine very closely what is actually happening in the situation. When I look into it further, I find that there is no actual threat to ‘my’ survival, I only think or imagine that I am threatened. Strong emotions of fear and aggression really cloud a person’s judgement of what is really happening in any given situation.

Given that there is no real threat, I may have to find other ways of dealing with these emotions and feelings. A hot bubble bath might help or a walk in the woods. Anything to keep you from reacting in a knee-jerk manner to the upset of the moment and getting back to being happy and harmless as soon as you can should work just fine. Of course, some things that I used to do are not helpful at all, like sedating myself with chemicals or praying and hoping for relief. Often though just the simple realization that there is something that is taking me away from enjoying the present moment and that that ‘something’ is in me and is ‘who’ I think I am, but that this ‘me’ is not what I am. Nobody can change that but me.

Nobody is getting in the way of my happiness and harmlessness but ‘me’ and this is where I crank up my pure intent to be free forever from the pernicious identity that inhabits this flesh and blood body. 9.5.2002

RESPONDENT No. 46 (P/V): But, I do precise that I don’t refuse past and future as destructive fakes, as I know there are only constructs of thinking, they are both imaginary, and useful if one is very cautious to mix no emotions and feelings with them. So, I agree with actual freedom when they say, it needs an effort to refuse in my mind to be caught by emotions and feelings and instead to choose the present experience.

GARY: Yet I cannot seem to help getting ‘caught’ by feeling-backed memories and beliefs sometimes. After all, I am not living in a state of Actual Freedom and emotions and feelings seep through from time to time. Perhaps I can help it and it has been just a failure to maintain an alert attentiveness to what is going on. In any event, rather than being cautious not to experience my feelings and emotions, I find it more useful at this point to experience them as they are and probe into the experience and compare it with non-emotive, pure sensual experiences. This way, I do not end up trying to avoid feelings and emotions all the time, which would be a spurious Actual Freedom. It is only by deliberately experiencing first-hand the passions at the core of the Human Condition that an alert attentiveness and a freed intelligence can release one from the stranglehold of the instincts. 23.9.2002

RESPONDENT No. 46 (P/V): I am progressing slowly within the material related to feelings and emotions and to clarify the method for myself, I want to relate you what I have done with a woman friend of mine. She phone called me in tears and completely disoriented and overwhelmed about what to do. So, I have explained her to focus on a part of her body, what she sensed very precisely in relation to this emotion in her body, what place exactly. It was interesting for me to see that she associated the emotion with successively various parts of her body: she was going to the body and then returning to the emotion, but in between the location of the sensation was varying. I asked her meantime to describe the process, and when she returned inward to the emotion I asked her at each time to repeat the process in going to the body. Finally, she became more calm. During the process, a thing struck me vividly, she associated emotion and a part of the body saying ‘I feel annoyed in my belly’, and I said her: it’s impossible, you sense something (a tension, a pain, something warm or cold) in your muscles of your body but you cannot say that an emotion is in your muscles or in your belly or your head.

GARY: However, I find for myself that certain emotions are quite easily perceptible in certain parts of the body. For instance, strong anger is accompanied by a clenching of the teeth, a very definite sensation in the pit of the stomach, a pounding of the heart, etc. These are emotional reactions mediated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, the familiar ‘fight or flight’ reactions, that are purely emotional and instinctual.

Far from it being that an emotion is nowhere, I find it quite the opposite: to be somewhere – chiefly noticeable in certain bodily changes. These are definitely perceptible, although certain emotional states I find harder to stay with and flesh out as far as what is happening in them. Some emotional states are so aversive and so powerful that it seems no matter how hard try to stay with them, there is a counteracting desire to escape from them. I think it is common convention to speak of emotions as located in the body and thoughts in the head, although the situation is obviously much more complicated than that. It seems that as a living creature one has this radar, this quick-scan survival system operating most all of the time, even during sleep, that is constantly scanning the environment for signs of danger. It even operates subliminally, without us being aware of it most of the time.

RESPONDENT No. 46 (P/V): Is this process related to the method of AF? It seems to me that the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ breaks the inward circle of feelings and emotions, and bring the attention not inward but outward to the senses. Can you describe precisely what happened when you experienced a clearing of an emotion or a feeling in using the method, I want to have a very precise description step by step, if possible, to understand how to use the method.

GARY: There is a very precise description of the method contained on the Actual Freedom website at the following address: ../actualism/path1.htm . It hardly seems necessary to go into the specifics to a greater extent or to re-invent the wheel. But suffice it to say that the essence of the method is to thoroughly examine and investigate everything that gets in the way of being happy and harmless. This includes every affective experience, emotion, feeling, and belief.

Just to give an example: in the morning I was on the way to work and my partner, in saying ‘goodbye’ to me, stated ‘I love you’ and lightly caressed my hand. In response to this lightly spoken endearment, I experienced a feeling of sadness mingled with regret. The feeling hit me between the eyes, so to speak, and I was interested to look into that feeling and see what I could find out about it, as it would reveal much about ‘me’. One of the things that I came up with was the realization that love in any form is always accompanied by sorrow and sadness, as for instance when love is lost. I think I also experienced a momentary feeling of pity for my partner whose expressions of ‘love’ to me are usually not reciprocated, perhaps in they are in tender expressions of caring but certainly not in word, as I never speak the ‘love’ word anymore. I think there was an irrational belief operating in me at the time that went something like this: ‘What kind of partner are you after all – you should be telling your partner that you love her’. One could easily substitute any number of words in the place of ‘partner’ such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘friend’, ‘co-worker’, etc. The irrational belief that I ‘should’ be expressing love to these people caused me to feel momentary sadness, regret, and guilt.

I have, since I started using the Actualism method, been most interested in examining my attachments to others. I use the word ‘attachment’ as being somewhat synonymous with ‘relationship’ as it is commonly used. By this I mean an emotional connection of some sort or other. It is always an emotional issue of some sort or other that binds me to another person or group of people. It of course starts in the dependent relationship of the mother and infant, is nurtured during the long period of childhood, and may grow into more stable ‘attachments’ in adolescence and adulthood. I think that one of the effects of practicing the Actualism method has been a great loosening and weakening of emotional attachments of any kind for me. I experience at times feelings of dread and angst that I am not ‘normal’ in the sense of wanting to attach myself to other people emotionally.

I seem to have no drive to form friendships in the conventional sense or to identify with other people on the usual levels. I have found it most interesting and fruitful to examine my emotional attachments to others, which all involve clinging, fear, loneliness, desire, dependency, and domination in one way or another. In short, by examining my attachments to others, I feel I have hit upon something very intrinsic to the Human Condition: those emotional ties that bind me to humanity. Loosening and eventually eliminating those ties completely is my aim but it is a most daunting course. Because in so-doing I am turning my back on those things that once gave me comfort, and am liable to experience pangs of anxious apartness, even the dread occasioned by losing large parts of my identity.

Just a quick note: when I say in the sentence above that I am ‘turning my back on those things that once gave me comfort’ I am referring not so much to deliberate repression or suppression of an experience, but as with this as well a process of finding out experientially what binds me to the Human Condition. For instance, I have found that it is not necessary for me to have ‘friends’ in the usual sense in order to be happy and harmless – quite the opposite – I have found that maintaining this system of alliances and affiliations most definitely gives sustenance to and fuels ‘me’. 4.10.2002

GARY: I was wondering about the part where you say ‘This is too serious a business to let down the guard too far’. Because I have found that ‘letting down the guard’ is precisely what is called for in order to investigate one’s identity. It seems that one’s morals, ethics, values, beliefs, etc. are the ‘guardian at the gate’ so to speak, holding down the base instinctual passions which are ‘me’. Investigating these passions is not possible unless one is willing to ‘get in there’ so to speak and experience a definite taste of the instinctual passions. It seems that keeping one’s guard up might prevent this very experiential examination of base instincts, which is why I wonder what you meant when you stated that this is too serious a business to let one’s guard down. I would re-state the case almost directly the opposite: that this is too serious a case to keep one’s guard up. Clearly, this is where it takes the nerves of steel.

RESPONDENT No. 28: On re-reading my original post, I realize I used the term ‘guard’ poorly, especially in light of the recent ‘Guardians at the gate’ thread. I should have perhaps used ‘monitor’ or some such.

GARY: I have considered before the use of the word ‘monitor’ in such contexts, and I think that it has similar connotations to the idea of guardedness. If one is monitoring themselves, then there is a ‘self’ that needs to be watched and guarded against. The strict dictionary meaning of ‘monitor’, as a verb, relevant here is (for you dictionary checkers out there):

1. to watch or check on (a person or thing) for some reason;
2. to check on or regulate the performance of (a machine, airplane, etc).

Webster’s New World Dictionary I recently located the following quotation about the difficulty of alternate meanings of words from ‘A Skeptical Manifesto’ by Michael Shermer, PhD:

‘It may seem rather pedantic to dig through the dictionary and pull out arcane word usages and histories. But it is constructive to know how a word was intended to be used and what it has come to mean. They are often not the same, and more often than not, they have multiple usages such that when two people communicate they are frequently talking at cross purposes. One person’s skepticism may be another’s credulity. And who does not think they are rational when it comes to their own beliefs and ideologies?’

I remember someone told me at work that they thought I ‘monitored’ myself well. I thought it a bit ironic at the time as I did not have the experience of holding myself in check that the word ‘monitor’ implies, although outwardly it may appear that way. This caused me to think about what monitoring oneself implies – I think it implies a kind of watchful guardedness. You might disagree with this, and that is OK, but this is what it means to me.

Within the Human Condition, the best one can ever do is to keep a check on oneself, lest one run amok due to unrestrained passions and instincts.

However, I think when one is practicing an alert attentiveness that something entirely different than this monitoring process is occurring. We have spoken before on this list about ‘nipping it in the bud’. I believe I have heard you use this expression as well. When I have nipped a feeling in the bud, so to speak, the feeling or emotion does not even get off the runway, to use an aeronautical analogy. If, for instance, anger arises in regard to some interaction I have had with another person, I can nip this feeling in the bud by noticing the feelings and thoughts that are arising, but there is no need to monitor by keeping in check or controlling the particular feeling, as the feeling does not gain momentum and energy.

Rather, one’s native intelligence can go to work investigating this feeling, if investigation is needed. The mere presence of the feeling means I have something to look into. If anger continues to cruise down the runway, so to speak, gathering a full head of steam, then I really have my work cut out for me. If not, then voila! ... there is nothing further that I need do.

RESPONDENT No. 28: Early on in this process, I was made aware repeatedly via posts and reading on the site that it is vitally important not to suppress the emotions et al, but to thoroughly feel and explore them, otherwise their true nature could never be ferreted out. While that was initially a very difficult thing to do (requiring ‘nerves of steel’), over time it became easier, as I realized that these responses were those of my identity, an entity to which I need not be beholden. Curiously now, when these emotions and reactions arise, I actually welcome their intrusion, as it is yet another opportunity to eliminate them, and their attendant misery. I don’t take them ‘personally’ anymore.

GARY: I like how you described the intrusion of feelings and reactions as ‘yet another opportunity to eliminate them’. This is what is entirely new and radical about Actual Freedom. Short of self-immolation, all one can do is endlessly rehash the same old issues, and practice the same old failed strategies. Eliminating the source of humanity’s inability to live in peace and harmony down through the ages began for me when I abandoned all spiritual belief, superstitions, religious dogma, faith, hope, trust, and other feeling-fed mumbo-jumbo. Recently, when examining the present Iraq crisis in the world, I discovered another needless impediment to peace and harmony: holding opinions. When I examined where ‘I’ stood on the issue of a possible US attack on Iraq, I found myself vacillating between any number of opinions about the matter, including worn-out pacifist ideals, all of which were completely needless, as these opinions only serve to give one an anchor or a position from which to haggle and argue with others with differing opinions. I eventually ended up realizing the futility of feeling that it is necessary to hold a position or an opinion on these grave matters in the world of today, something that I have never quite experienced before in the past. What I am describing is not the same as sticking one’s head in the sand and avoiding looking at the deplorable state of humanity and what is happening in the world. It is not a form of escapism that I am talking about, but it is a process of separating out what is factually known from what is speculation, and what is firmly grounded in actuality from what is opinion and belief.

*

GARY: This is a finer point of the Actualism method that bears further discussion ... something I have often contemplated: Is experiencing the instinctual passions the same thing as exercising them – giving them a work-out? For instance, if I enjoy reading a good novel, and I find that I am forming mental images and imagining ‘in my mind’s eye’ the things that the author is describing, obviously imaginary and fictitious, is this very imagining exercising, strengthening, reinforcing the imaginative faculty, or is the very act of alert attentiveness to the imaginative faculty whittling it, reducing and eliminating it?

I don’t think it is helpful nor consistent with HAIETMOBA to revel in instinctual passions, or indulge in flights of fantasy, or swoon and bask in grandiose passions. But it is important, on the other hand, to directly experience these passions, and it is this that requires one to burrow past the ‘guardian at the gate’ and sit in the feelings and passions for long enough to get a distinct taste of what they are all about.

Personally speaking, this is very daunting work. It is clearly not going to be possible for someone to do this if they are mentally unstable, have a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder, paralysed by fear and anxiety, or other mental difficulties. It could be downright hazardous to undertake this journey into the instinctual passions unless a person understands what they are getting into. This is one of the things that I think is invaluable about this list – the sharing of information here, the comparing of notes on experiences ... this is all very important.

RESPONDENT No. 28: Very true. This takes some real guts, to really get to know the nature of your beast. I have been determined to do so, as it is unequivocally clear to me that there are no other alternatives. The emotional pain has never been too too much, and the results have decidedly made it all worthwhile.

GARY: It would be interesting to hear from you more about the ‘worthwhile’ part. Like yourself, any emotional pain that I have had has never been more than I could take. Most of it has been related to atavistic fears of eliminating that which binds me to humanity, as well as fear of being an ‘outcast’. That I am an outcast is abundantly clear to me...not something to any longer regret, although regret it I did in the beginning of all this. Since I am no longer busily searching for meaning and a sense of ‘belonging’ in life, I no longer crave attention or seek to ‘affiliate’ with my fellow human beings.

Since I am no longer driven to seek comfort from or belong to the herd of fussing and fighting humanity, I am free to experience and sample the sensual delights of this actual world, and I can give as much free rein as I desire to my intellectual and rational capabilities.

RESPONDENT No. 28: I do know that I would have been incapable of this effort even 10 years ago ... aging has few positive characteristics, but taking full, active advantage of your experiences is one of them.

GARY: I personally would not go so far as to say aging has few positive characteristics. But I tend to agree with you as to taking full, active advantage of experiences. However, I am not sure that this is due to aging per se but rather due to the active dismantling of the identity. Since there has been no time in my life when I was not aging, it is rather difficult to discern the effects of what this aging process is on about without engaging in a kind of comparison of the quality of one’s life before and after. I am now 52 years of age. And I can honestly say that I am not driven by ‘my’ impulses to the degree that I was even 5 or 10 years ago.

When I look back at my childhood years, I was on full automatic, with scarcely an evaluative or rational thought that entered my head. The crude biological survival program was ‘full-on’, and my behaviour was driven to the extreme. Since I have practiced Actualism, my drives, impulses, feelings, and passions have been all whittled down to an incredible degree resulting in an increasing sense of ease, comfort, and satisfaction with being here. It seems I could hardly ask for anything more. 21.2.2003

GARY: Recently Peter wrote to you, responding to a post of yours, which occurred last year. I found myself puzzling over what you said in a particular paragraph of that post. You said:

RESPONDENT No. 18: On the contrary this ability to interact with the ‘psychic web’ may well be the opportunity to tap into any emotion (or instinctive reaction) to experience it learn from it and neutralize its harmful aspect, next feeding this neutralized energy back to the web this may cause a momentary flash of awareness; i.o.w. it may raise the consciousness of that particular ‘social circle’ in which one is resonating.

GARY: In order not to pick over the carcass of a long-dead e-mail, I would appreciate some clarification from you as to whether you still hold with these views or not. Given that this post is rather dated at this point, you may have changed your opinion of these matters. There is indeed a ‘psychic web’ connecting all human beings, and it is most obvious when interacting with people in the social environment. This web consists of the ebb and flow of emotional feelings, as well as the easily observed ‘vibes’ that people get from one another.

The thing that I find confusing about what you are saying in this passage is how a person can both interact with this ‘psychic web’ yet do so from some position of being immune from the emotional currents. Not only that, but you intimate that it is possible for a person to learn from their emotions, and once having learned from their emotions, pass on this learning in some sort of mysterious process which you dub ‘neutralizing’ the harmful aspect of the emotions.

The reason I ask you about this is that I find it to be so contrary to what I myself have experienced that I wonder if I may have missed something. It seems to me that the ability to tap into the ‘psychic web’ is an innate ability of all human beings, since all human beings are innately endowed with emotions, imagination, and are connected to other peoples via this intangible but nevertheless present cord of emotion from birth through to the grave. But then to say that a person could neutralize the harmful aspects of emotions and then pass this on to other people, it strikes me that the only thing that could then be passed on to a person is the emotion, only this emotion would be cleansed or purged of the harmful elements. I am afraid that it is all a bit unclear to me what you are saying here.

The main thing that I have learned about emotions during the time that I have been practicing Actualism is that they are a complete liability. Whether the emotions experienced are the so-called positive emotions like love, trust, faith, etc., or the so-called negative/invidious emotions of anger, rage, jealousy, etc. and the like, they are still emotions and as such they are what prevents the ongoing experience of the actual world. If one only ‘neutralizes’ the so-called harmful aspect of emotions, essentially what one is stuck with is still an emotion, only this time it is the apparent helpful aspect of emotional life. I think Peter has fundamentally hit the nail on the head when he describes this process as an accurate description of the self-aggrandizement at the heart of spirituality. To want to eliminate the harmful emotions yet hang on to the positive emotions is what spirituality and spiritual teaching and teachers aim at.

Then there are the lessons taught by therapies of various sorts, whether psychotherapy or any of the modern variants such as the numerous New Age therapies. Taking psychological therapies as a starting point, as I am best acquainted with what they are both able to offer and what their critical limitations are, I would say that the lesson of therapy is to ‘control’ and ‘regulate’ one’s emotions through a process of reasoning and ‘self-control’. This is accomplished in most talk-therapies by discharging the energy of dammed up emotions in the therapist’s office. In more progressive therapy, such as Cognitive Behavioural therapy, one learns to recognize one’s distorted thinking and dispel negative emotional states by a process of learning to recognize how one’s irrational beliefs perpetuate negative and self-destructive actions. But even with CBT, I find the focus to be on eliminating the worst excesses of emotion whilst hanging on to one’s emotional life in a more measured, ‘appropriate’ and normal manner. Actualism is radically different from these approaches as the aim is self-immolation: the radical extirpation of one’s rudimentary sense of being root and branch.

There can be no question of interacting with any ‘psychic web’ unless one’s identity is fully intact. Apperception occurs when ‘I’ cease to be, as temporarily occurs in the PCE.

In virtual freedom, one lives virtually all the time free from being a hostage to one’s own as well as other people’s emotional state. One then has nothing of a psychic nature to feed to other people, as there is no psyche in existence. 25.3.2003

RESPONDENT No. 30: I think I finally understand that feelings are a different mechanism and happen before thought.

So far I had been under the impression that every feeling has to be mediated by thought: IOW thought is the only mechanism by which feelings are triggered; which is the eastern viewpoint: thoughts create feelings.

Though I had bought the explanation in actualist writings that feelings are independent (though interwoven) with thoughts (this difference is important to actualism) which is consistent with LeDoux’s findings, this is the first time I have experientially understood and dropped my viewpoint that thought is the mechanism for feelings.

It is true that thought can trigger feelings; but feelings happen before thought. This I noticed when I had a jealousy reaction and the thought came afterwards explaining it. The thought fills in the gap of this ghost process of feelings and takes all the focus. So one ends up blaming thought.

So I now view feelings as a ‘black box’ mechanism of invisible, instantaneous response to stimuli (including internal stimuli such as thought) in the presence of which thought is subservient to the feeling’s goals. In other words, thought is shackled by feelings.

I just wrote down my understanding to open it for feedback and criticism. 19.4.2003

GARY: That is why I say it vital to make the differentiation for oneself between what is a fact and what is a belief, and by extension, an opinion. If decisions are made on the basis of emotion, as they frequently are, it begets more of the same confusion.

RESPONDENT No. 41: So if a decision is made without emotion is that acceptable?

GARY: Decisions made with emotion are not intelligent, despite what many think and write about the ‘intelligence’ of emotions.

RESPONDENT No. 41: In this case I have to admit to having emotions about the US/ British war. I have feelings of nurturance toward the innocent Iraqi people, and displaced Palestinians and others in like circumstances, including those in the American ghettos (by the way, I lived in the black ghetto of San Francisco for 10 years.)

GARY: I would think that if you are sincere about wanting to learn about Actualism you would want to investigate your emotions, including any ‘feelings of nurturance’ towards anyone, Iraqis included. Everything you have said would be fertile grounds for your ‘self’-investigations.

Incidentally, I would recommend that you read under the term ‘Innocence’ in the AF writings. Innocence is something entirely new in human affairs.

RESPONDENT No. 41: So that sympathy I’ll have to discount.

GARY: I am not sure why you would want to discount your feelings. Feelings and emotions are a potent source of information about the Human Condition. Any sympathy, nurturance, feelings of affection, affiliation, compassion, empathy, etc, of any kind, again – towards anyone, can be fertile ground for investigation. I sincerely recommend to you investigating the tender passion of nurturance as well as the so-called negative feelings.

RESPONDENT No. 41: I have feelings of resentment toward the powers that be in the US for their lying and double standards.

GARY: As with the tender passions, so-called negative emotions of resentment and anger need to be thoroughly examined with the end aim of eliminating malice and sorrow. My own personal experience is that I was filled with feelings of resentment towards authority from a very early age. My question for you would be: is there any difference between the resentment that you feel for the powers-that-be and the resentment that propels human beings to war and destruction?

RESPONDENT No. 41: However, I don’t find any twinges of emotion when I think that there could/should be an international decision making democratic entity, such as the UN, and that the US, Britain and everyone else would be best served by forming and subscribing to international law.

GARY: I don’t know what to make of that, other than to say that every human being experiences resentment and anger and not always for the same reasons. I would think that since you are evidently experiencing strong resentment that it would be relatively easy to uncover the malice behind such feelings.

If one justifies their resentment, and by extension their malice, by resentfully focusing on what someone else has done or said, nothing is to be gained. But if you would like to rid yourself of your malice and sorrow, and I don’t really know if that is what you are doing, then every trace of resentment no matter how slight will need to be looked into. It does no good in my experience to justify resentment by pointing at the actions of others.

*

RESPONDENT No. 41: As you said, ‘international law will not prevent rogue nations from taking it on themselves to violate the rights of other nations.’ International law enforcement could have an effect. As with criminals in our communities, we want laws and police forces to keep them in check as much as possible. And we want the police to be governed by rules of law and fair conduct.

GARY: Also keep in mind that some of the most law-bound societies are also the most dangerous societies to live in, and the most likely to suppress individual freedoms, such as the right to assemble and speak one’s mind plainly…

RESPONDENT No. 41: Well, now we need to define what law is. I’m talking about laws that guarantee freedom, protection and fairness, not laws that allow for the opposites. I’m assuming that law will protect individual freedom as much as possible and that law will be flexible to adapt to changing circumstances. Repressive laws are another issue. Doesn’t the underlying peace in this universe peek out from time to time within human affairs.

GARY: ‘I’, and my precious feelings, are the only thing that is preventing the underlying peace and harmony of this infinite universe to be actualized in this flesh-and-blood body. As ‘I’ am my feelings, and my feelings are ‘me’, ‘I’ am literally standing in the way of peace on earth. There is no difference between my resentments and ‘me’. I am literally my resentments, in those terms.

But speaking more personally, what I have done, like the other dedicated Actualists on this list, is to turn the emotional energy of the feelings and emotions that prevented and spoiled the purity and pristineness of actuality into a burning passion to be free from the Human Condition. This has always been an exciting adventure, never a dull moment.

RESPONDENT No. 41: I’m saying that some progress has been made over the centuries in spite of the instinctual passions and that supporting such progress is a useful activity.

GARY: Oh yes, progress has been made alright. If you have not already noticed, mankind’s wars are more destructive, more numerous, and in spite of all the progress, people are still being raped, tortured, sodomized, etc, etc., on ad infinitum. The Human Condition is rotten to the core. 19.4.2003

GARY: Recently you wrote something in response to No 60. To reproduce the context, here is what you wrote:

RESPONDENT No. 60: The preliminary method is simplicity itself, and it works pretty well.

RESPONDENT No. 28: Good advice. Here’s another trick that works for me. Be aware of your past and future, relative to the present moment. Gradually shrink their respective limits, starting at birth and death, to yesterday/tomorrow, to last minute/next minute, until they disappear. It then becomes very obvious that time is a mental construct and all our feelings etc only exist on the basis of our history and aspirations, hence also have no actual substance.

GARY: I don’t see how you could say that ‘ignore everything that isn’t actual’ is good advice.

It seems to me that persistent, unremitting attentiveness to one’s identity in action is the hallmark of the actualism method. This is quite in contrast to ignoring one’s feelings and emotions. Ignoring one’s identity, both ‘who’ I think I am in my head and ‘who’ I feel I am in my heart, can only produce dissociation and delusion. This is the opposite of attentiveness. In attentiveness, one is heedful, alert, and intent on observing exactly what is happening in one’s inner reality. Attentiveness does not shrink from or avoid what is going on.

So instead of saying to ignore one’s inner reality, I think the actualism method is to persistently attend to one’s feelings, thoughts, emotional reactions, affectations, and imaginings. I only say this because it has been my experience that ignoring what is going on in my head and/or in my heart, while that may be comforting and provide momentary relief from whatever is troubling me, has only led to more of the same. Whereas persistently digging into, being aware of, and practicing unremitting attentiveness is what eventually whittles away at the feelings that prevent one from being happy and harmless, and leads ultimately to apperception.

RESPONDENT No. 79: What is the difference between ‘nipping it in the bud’, and suppressing a feeling?

RESPONDENT No. 30: As I understand it, in suppressing you use control/ will/ force/ aggression based on no/partial/intellectual understanding of the feeling. You try to change the course of the feeling recognizing its harm (or for whatever reasons) using control/ will/ force/ aggression. What are the advantages? One can stop the crisis. What are the disadvantages? It doesn’t end the matter fully and still all is a mystery.

Though this can be called nipping it in the bud too, in actualist terms (feel free to correct, anybody): happens really after an experiential understanding – by fully feeling the feeling without controls (in a safe setting) and seeing where it will take one. How does one do it? I don’t recall it doing it myself... though I have experienced a lot of feelings fully... I see that such an understanding takes the momentum off the feeling when it re-occurs. The understand allows one to change the course of the feeling by seeing its futility, seeing where it will take one and what ensues. I think one undergoes a change of heart/mind at the moment of feeling rather than forcefully changing it. Force might have its use too as one is dealing with ‘instinctual forces’ here and actualism being a practical business, focuses on workability rather than on morals and concepts. But the point is that suppression is using force primarily whereas actualist method is to use experiential understanding (feeling completely) primarily. Another point is that, actualism is not about ‘don’t feel’ but rather ‘feel fully’ and study it. 16.4.2005

RESPONDENT No. 30:

• To have compassion is to throw the torch one has that can get one and all outside of the darkness – in order to hold hands with the blind; I have chosen freedom and intelligence over compassion many a times in the recent past (compassion seems to be the natural course) – the results were much superior. To have compassion is to feel care affectively; the alternative is to actually care (how easily the mind jumps to the opposites – callousness!)

• Actual caring is superior to feeling caring; actual caring is a direct caring for the other, with intelligent long term insights; a feeling caring is an indirect caring of others, often short term, as the objective of such a feeling is to make oneself happy (or to eradicate the linked unhappiness) by making other happy – still within the narrow bounds of the self; the best of one and the other does not come out until one actually cares

• It is not to replace a good feeling with its opposite or a non-feeling cold state as the imagination tends to project when reading about actualism/actualfreedom: what takes the place of the feeling is delight, intelligence, sense etc. The void of non-feeling is not actuality. One’s intelligence and appreciation of life is much better off without the passions.

• I used ‘reductio ad absurdum’ (and ‘law of excluded middle’) to break the barrier of vagueness, doubt that I faced on every crucial question. If I could not conclude a certain thing, I asked myself if the opposite was true. By grilling thus, I was able to engage intelligence and reach a clarity on these important matters. If one is uncertain on these issues forever, one is not closer to the freedom than before. All the sacred cows need to be questioned and the resistance that the mind produces (self-survival?) on addressing the key issues needs to be intelligently overcome.

• Freedom and happiness are invaluable as rare precious stones or more. How easily I substitute them for cheap goods like principles, values, morals at the drop of a hat. Actualism method is about recognizing the value of this happiness and finding the first moment of losing it and seeing the silliness of it. To give up happiness, intelligence, delight and freedom to exchange it for shoddy righteousness, anger, malice, unhappiness is silly – no matter what the reason is. How many times must a man lose happiness before he realizes that it is silly?

• I am engaged and getting married in couple of months; I am thankful for actualism – Richard/Peter and Vineeto – I think I am a much better person because of all this. I am willing to give total commitment to the relationship and it has been great so far. She has shown interest in some of the observations/ conclusions of AF (maybe not all at this stage). But I realize totally that actualism is unilateral, it is about one living happily and harmlessly in the world as it is ... any co-operation from the other is a bonus and a multiplier of the already existing peace/happiness. 24.6.2005

RESPONDENT No. 60: Richard, you are right. I am wrong. This is one of those occasions when I am happy to be an ass. I am my feelings, my feelings are me. And most importantly: yes, I can choose how I feel.

RESPONDENT No. 27: This sounds about right to me. Also, I’ve been wondering why ‘practicing actualism’ hasn’t changed me fundamentally for a while now – such as, where’s virtual freedom – why do I understand so much more about the human condition, yet am not personally yet happy and harmless?

How long does it take? Well, I think this post contains the essential answer. What I now understand is that actualism is the moment-by-moment saying ‘YES’ to life regardless of what ‘I’ feel or think. Up to this point, I have been investigating, being attentive and such with less than desired results. Now, I see that putting ‘pure intent’ into practice is to opt ‘each moment again’ to be attentive and elect to be happy and harmless – as such it is not intellectual at all.

Essentially, it is the stubborn will to be as happy and harmless as humanly possibly regardless of what happens – that eventually results in an actual freedom. Previously, I often wondered whether some thought, idea, belief, etc really was ‘silly’ and how I could know that it is silly. Now, I see that judging anything that causes suffering, such as beliefs, feelings, etc. as ‘silly’ is one and the same mental disposition – aka, ‘pure intent’ that is the unqualified ‘YES’ to life and will to be happy and harmless – no matter what. So – thanks, No 60. That is the last piece of the puzzle for me. 31.10.2005

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