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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 16
Hi, I do understand sorrow. Good. Because when you understand sorrow utterly and completely, it disappears. I am sorry that I have ever tried to have a discussion with you. It has been a total waste of time and I feel sorrow over that. Ah, but that is not an understanding of sorrow but passing the blame for your own sorrow on to someone else. I understand now why you said to Peter –
The ‘first base’ for comprehending and becoming free of sorrow is to understand that sorrow, just like any other feeling, has its source in one’s own instinctual programming – regardless of whoever or whatever is the trigger for one’s feeling. To make someone else responsible for one’s own feelings only serves to multiply and perpetuate sorrow and adds feelings of malice such as frustration, condemnation and accusation to the equation, which in its wake brings one even more sorrow. Given that the topic of our discussion has been your theory that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ and the fact that ‘at root fear is the most basic of all the instinctual passions’ I might add something that is essential to understand fear. Fear in human beings is the direct result of ‘me’ wanting to survive – ‘I’, the passionate alien entity inside this flesh and blood body, will do anything in order to stay in existence. Thus the only way fear can be diminished is to diminish the ‘self’ – the weaker the ‘self’ becomes, the less fear there is. There is simply no other way to permanently decrease and eventually eliminate fear because ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’. The magic ingredient for diminishing the ‘self’ is altruism. Obviously, when my intent is focussed on a goal greater than ‘me’, ‘self’-interest and ‘self’-centredness then play a minor role in the game – that’s what actualists mean by ‘pure intent’. Contrary to the traditional idea of battling and transcending fear via ‘self’-enhancement, the fact is that only an altruistic pursuit can reliably reduce and eventually eradicate fear because only altruism can break the instinctual ‘self’-centredness that is the very root of fear. The traditional honourable goals have been to battle malice and sorrow in other people through political, religious or therapeutical pursuits – thus everyone meddles in everyone else’s life and is busy trying to solve everyone else’s problems. For an actualist the altruistic pursuit translates into actively eradicating malice and sorrow from his or her life in order not to burden anyone with his or her sorrow and not to hurt anyone with his or her malice. Fear then disappears on its own accord because the more faint the ‘self’ becomes, as the ‘self’-serving emotions are progressively investigated and eliminated, the less there is for ‘me’ to control, deny or defend. And as the shackles of malice and sorrow and its accompanying fear disappear, a whole magical and sensuous actual universe becomes readily apparent. This is more of your useless bs. Given that your aim in life is completely different to my aim – you want to become free from fear while I am becoming free from malice and sorrow – it is no wonder that you consider the sharing of my discoveries and experiences as ‘useless bull shit’. No where did I say that anyone else is responsible for my sorrow. This just shows the utter futileness of trying to have a discussion with you or Peter. If you don’t feel that I am responsible for your sorrow, then what was the purpose and significance of complaining to me that you feel sorrow about our correspondence? I only have one question left: Is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter? This question shows just how an un-investigated belief can easily tie one up into knots and bounds. Despite a long discussion with Richard on this particular subject in July last year you stubbornly stick to your concept that actualism is a restricting cult and a religion.
You further maintain that this list consists of a bunch of ‘religious devotees’ and now you even imagine that it is ‘the Peter and Vineeto show’ –
Now, according to this fantasy you conclude that you have to ask Peter and Vineeto for permission to talk to other actualists. It has always been made clear that this mailing list is un-moderated, free for all and set up to explore and share how to become free from the Human Condition. Everyone who is interested can write or read as he or she pleases. However, you had the confirmation from Richard that this is an un-moderated list more than a year ago –
Therefore I can only read your question ‘is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter’ as a request that Peter and I should keep our mouth shut whenever you write to someone on the list. I do find it quite amazing that on one hand you suggest that actualism is a cult and that the AF mailing list is controlled by ‘religious goons’, while it is you who now request that this list be moderated according to your conditions – that certain people should not have the right of comments to your posts that you write on this list. You posted your correspondence on another list describing how you are being ‘bullied’ here –
Just for the records, it was you who began this line of communication by asking Peter and Gary a question as to whether ‘sorrow comes from fear’. Vis –
As this is an open mailing list, I joined the conversation. You very quickly discovered that neither of the observations and experiential reports from Peter, Gary or me supported your opinion, but you continued to write to us anyway. I still fail to see in which way a report of personal experiences and facts can be interpreted as ‘I was bullied to see things their way’. How can someone on the other side of the planet bully you into doing something you don’t want to do simply by stating facts and reporting his or her personal experiences? Is it not rather that the facts and experiential discoveries don’t comply with your theory that ‘sorrow comes from fear’ and now you are asking that Peter and I should stop presenting you with inconvenient facts? If you don’t like what is being written, why do you continue to talk to us, whilst requesting that we don’t talk to you? However, your question ‘is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter’ sheds some light on your first statement ‘no where did I say that anyone else is responsible for my sorrow’. If you don’t reckon that I am responsible for your sorrow about a discussion you consider futile, then why ask that I shut up whenever you write? You seek to stop your sorrow by attempting to change someone else’s action – asking me to shut up – instead of finding and resolving the cause of your sorrow in you. The sensible solution for me was to discover and sufficiently investigate the source of sorrow in me – my beliefs, values and instinctual passions – which then enabled me to live happily and harmlessly in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are. It is an eminently sensible and enjoyable way to live.
This is more of your useless bs. Given that your aim in life is completely different to my aim – you want to become free from fear while I am becoming free from malice and sorrow – it is no wonder that you consider the sharing of my discoveries and experiences as ‘useless bull shit’. Nowhere did I say that anyone else is responsible for my sorrow. This just shows the utter futileness of trying to have a discussion with you or Peter. If you don’t feel that I am responsible for your sorrow, then what was the purpose and significance of complaining to me that you feel sorrow about our correspondence? I wasn’t blaming or complaining. I made a simple statement about my own sorrow: ‘I do understand sorrow. I am sorry that I have ever tried to have a discussion with you. It has been a total waste of time and I feel sorrow over that.’ When I investigated my sorrow, the initial trigger of sorrow was only the entry into the deeper realms of my psyche to find the underlying causes of my sorrow – my expectations, my beliefs, my values, my ways of relating to people, etc. – until I found the original source of sorrow in the instinctual passions all humans are endowed with. People, things and events are always only the initial spark for the sorrow that is part of everyone’s social and instinctual programming. Provided you find the core of your sorrow that was triggered by some event, then that sorrow disappears. * I only have one question left: Is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter? This question shows just how an un-investigated belief can easily tie one up into knots and bounds. Despite a long discussion with Richard on this particular subject in July last year you stubbornly stick to your concept that actualism is a restricting cult and a religion. <snip> You further maintain that this list consists of a bunch of ‘religious devotees’ and now you even imagine that it is ‘the Peter and Vineeto show’ – <snip> Now, according to this fantasy you conclude that you have to ask Peter and Vineeto for permission to talk to other actualists. It has always been made clear that this mailing list is un-moderated, free for all and set up to explore and share how to become free from the Human Condition. Everyone who is interested can write or read as he or she pleases. <snip> However, your question ‘is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter’ sheds some light on your first statement no where did I say that anyone else is responsible for my sorrow. If you don’t reckon that I am responsible for your sorrow about a discussion you consider futile, then why ask that I shut up whenever you write? You seek to stop your sorrow by attempting to change someone else’s action – asking me to shut up – instead of finding and resolving the cause of your sorrow in you. The sensible solution for me was to discover and sufficiently investigate the source of sorrow in me – my beliefs, values and instinctual passions – which then enabled me to live happily and harmlessly in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are. It is an eminently sensible and enjoyable way to live. I said I feel sorrow over that. I didn’t say that you caused my sorrow. I don’t have time to waste addressing all the other things you said in your last post. Hopefully, you can understand this one simple fact. Please don’t write to me anymore. No, I don’t understand ‘this simple fact’. You say I am not responsible for your sorrow – then why do you seek the solution in telling me to shut up? As I said in the bit that you didn’t ‘have time to waste addressing’ – ‘everyone who is interested can write or read as he or she pleases’ and I might add that the word ‘un-moderated mailing list’ also means that there is no authority who can stifle anyone else’s communication. It is impossible to have an in-depth discussion about facets of the human condition that are usually considered too heretical or too close to the bone unless the conversation is unfettered by cultural moral and ethical restrictions and unless it moves beyond the limitations of personal sensitivities. Is it really so hard to comprehend that the key to your happiness lies in your hands and your hands only? If you are not happy with the conversation, you are free to stop conversing at any time. The key to understanding the method of actual freedom is that everyone is solely and unilaterally responsible for cleaning up their own malice and sorrow in themselves. As such, applying the method of actualism enables me to live happily and peacefully without having to request that anybody change their behaviour and/or their actions to suit my particular emotional demands, needs or whims, whatever they may be at the time. If peace in the world is conditional on other’s changing it is worth remembering that there are reportedly over 6 billion people in the world and that’s a lot of people to change if ever there is going to be peace and harmony in ‘my’ world.
I only have one question left: Is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter? This question shows just how an un-investigated belief can easily tie one up into knots and bounds. Despite a long discussion with Richard on this particular subject in July last year you stubbornly stick to your concept that actualism is a restricting cult and a religion. <snip> You further maintain that this list consists of a bunch of ‘religious devotees’ and now you even imagine that it is ‘the Peter and Vineeto show’ – <snip> Now, according to this fantasy you conclude that you have to ask Peter and Vineeto for permission to talk to other actualists. It has always been made clear that this mailing list is un-moderated, free for all and set up to explore and share how to become free from the Human Condition. Everyone who is interested can write or read as he or she pleases. <snip> However, your question ‘is it ok to come here without talking to you or Peter’ sheds some light on your first statement no where did I say that anyone else is responsible for my sorrow. If you don’t reckon that I am responsible for your sorrow about a discussion you consider futile, then why ask that I shut up whenever you write? You seek to stop your sorrow by attempting to change someone else’s action – asking me to shut up – instead of finding and resolving the cause of your sorrow in you. The sensible solution for me was to discover and sufficiently investigate the source of sorrow in me – my beliefs, values and instinctual passions – which then enabled me to live happily and harmlessly in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are. It is an eminently sensible and enjoyable way to live. I said I feel sorrow over that. I didn’t say that you caused my sorrow. I don’t have time to waste addressing all the other things you said in your last post. Hopefully, you can understand this one simple fact. Please don’t write to me anymore. No, I don’t understand ‘this simple fact’. You say I am not responsible for your sorrow – then why do you seek the solution in telling me to shut up? As I said in the bit that you didn’t ‘have time to waste addressing’ – ‘everyone who is interested can write or read as he or she pleases’ and I might add that the word ‘un-moderated mailing list’ also means that there is no authority who can stifle anyone else’s communication. It is impossible to have an in-depth discussion about facets of the human condition that are usually considered too heretical or too close to the bone unless the conversation is unfettered by cultural moral and ethical restrictions and unless it moves beyond the restrictions of personal sensitivities. I didn’t tell you to shut up. I made a simple request. I said: ‘Please don’t write to me anymore.’ You then lied once again about what I said. If you say I lied then that is so for you. For me, if you ask me to stop writing to you then I understand that as the equivalent of asking me to stop talking to you, i.e. to shut up. But I am all too happy to rephrase my question in less loose terms –
In principle, the question stays the same. Is attempting to remove the trigger – my writing – the solution for ending your feeling of sorrow? What I have found is that asking someone else to change their behaviour to suit me was certainly the first move that came to mind when sorrow was triggered, and yet I found that this reaction only increased the problem for me. As long as I attempted to change other people to fit my needs, I was then busy with trying to convince them in one way or another to do so and was continually worried and frustrated by the fact that I often failed. * Is it really so hard to comprehend that the key to your happiness lies in your hands and your hands only? If you are not happy with the conversation, you are free to stop conversing at any time. The key to understanding the method of actual freedom is that everyone is solely and unilaterally responsible for cleaning up their own malice and sorrow in themselves. As such, applying the method of actualism enables me to live happily and peacefully without having to request that anybody change their behaviour and/or their actions to suit my particular emotional demands, needs or whims, whatever they may be at the time. If peace in the world is conditional on other’s changing it is worth remembering that there are reportedly over 6 billion people in the world and that’s a lot of people to change if ever there is going to be peace and harmony in ‘my’ world. You are right here. You are free to lie all you want about what I said and I don’t have to answer. I remember the time when I felt the need to be in control of what other people thought or said about me and it was certainly disquieting, in fact this need or desire consumed a great amount of my thoughts and feelings. That is the very reason why I keep reporting that I’ve used Richard’s method to become free of exactly those concerns – the habitual yet futile propensity to change others. I stopped searching for the solution in that direction, turned round 180 degrees, and began to fix up myself. It is a decidedly liberating experience to say the least.
I can’t see any use in putting any energy into even thinking about trying to have any further discussion with you. Understood.
Welcome back to the Actual Freedom mailing list. I have been wondering what’s missing for me? I completely understand how all this works yet there is some missing ingredient. For example, I am involved in a situation that is causing constant fear and worry in my life. I see what is causing the fear right to the core but it still doesn’t go away. I am working on the cause by seeing what my options are and taking appropriate steps. The only way the fear would stop is if I extricate myself completely from the situation but that is not something I want to do. What I am trying to get at is: Is something missing because the fear won’t stop unless I stop what I am doing or in a situation like this is it better to just stop even though I don’t want to stop? Iow, if I see the cause of the fear and the fear doesn’t stop is it better to stop the cause altogether? I know what’s not missing are the instinctual passions including fear as ‘me’ but in the meantime how do I best deal with a situation like this? Do I keep working on the fear (‘me’) or do I get myself out of the situation that is causing the fear? I guess to answer my own question I would do what’s sensible. Obviously I don’t want to do the most sensible thing because of greed which is tied to the fear (‘me’). If I see that it is greed which keeps me in this situation and is causing the fear then it would be prudent to stop. However, I’m back to square one which is ‘I’ don’t want to stop. Can I stay in this situation and use it to get free of fear (‘me’) or is it better to cut and run? You might recall that you had a conversation with both Gary and me about this same topic on this list some 18 months ago –
If you already know that the most sensible thing would be to stop doing what you are doing –
– then why do you ask what to do? To stop being silly is a DIY project – doing what is sensible is in your hands and in your hands alone.
I have been wondering what’s missing for me? I completely understand how all this works yet there is some missing ingredient. For example, I am involved in a situation that is causing constant fear and worry in my life. I see what is causing the fear right to the core but it still doesn’t go away. I am working on the cause by seeing what my options are and taking appropriate steps. The only way the fear would stop is if I extricate myself completely from the situation but that is not something I want to do. What I am trying to get at is: Is something missing because the fear won’t stop unless I stop what I am doing or in a situation like this is it better to just stop even though I don’t want to stop? Iow, if I see the cause of the fear and the fear doesn’t stop is it better to stop the cause altogether? I know what’s not missing are the instinctual passions including fear as ‘me’ but in the meantime how do I best deal with a situation like this? Do I keep working on the fear (‘me’) or do I get myself out of the situation that is causing the fear? I guess to answer my own question I would do what’s sensible. Obviously I don’t want to do the most sensible thing because of greed which is tied to the fear (‘me’). If I see that it is greed which keeps me in this situation and is causing the fear then it would be prudent to stop. However, I’m back to square one which is ‘I’ don’t want to stop. Can I stay in this situation and use it to get free of fear (‘me’) or is it better to cut and run? You might recall that you had a conversation with both Gary and me about this same topic on this list some 18 months ago –
If you already know that the most sensible thing would be to stop doing what you are doing –
– then why do you ask what to do? To stop being silly is a DIY project – doing what is sensible is in your hands and in your hands alone. I was asking myself and also looking for any helpful feedback. There is no need for anyone to answer. Was the feedback helpful? If I run from every sticky situation or jam that I get myself in then I don’t see how I am going to make progress toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing the fear. As you said above I was in a similar situation some 18 months ago and it has come up again although the current situation is much more dangerous and could have much more dire consequences. If you examine the situation you find yourself in then you might notice that it was greed that brought you into this situation in the first place and it is greed that keeps you in a situation that ‘is much more dangerous and could have much more dire consequences’. Vis –
If you want to ‘make progress toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing the fear’ you will have to take into account that greed is as much an instinctual passion that constitutes ‘me’ as fear is. If you want to ‘make progress’ then you need to make the same progress ‘toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing’ the greed. The way I made ‘progress toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing the fear’ was that I stopped trying to suppress, sublimate or eliminate my unwanted feelings, and hoping for a world as-I-wanted-it-to-be as I had in my spiritual years, and set my goal in life at being happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are. I made the effort to become aware of my beliefs and my good and bad feelings when and as they were happening and I emphasized my felicitous feelings to the point that I could actually begin to enjoy be here for the first time in my life. With resentment gone from my life I found that I stopped blaming others for my moods and stopped using them as an excuse for my malice, which meant that I also found myself becoming more benign. Becoming aware of what I feel and believe each moment again gives me the option of making a choice each moment again – away from automatically opting for actions determined by my instinctual programming (fear, aggression, nurture and desire) towards a sensible and intelligent decision as to how to avoid dangerous or stressful situations, and how to be at ease and enjoy life so as to be more happy and to be more harmonious with other people. You said above ‘And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared.’ I am not sure about this because stopping what causes fear in a given situation is not going to eliminate the fear from reoccurring. It will stop the current fear in the current situation but it won’t end fear (‘me’). This sounds more like an avoidance of fear (‘me’). We’ve been at this point before. If I may remind you of the discussion in question –
The actualism method is about becoming happy and harmless – this means sensibly avoiding causing sorrow and harm to oneself as well as to others. This would make sense to anyone but a compulsive masochist. PS: As I said above, what’s keeping me from stopping is ‘I’ don’t want to stop. ‘I’ want to keep doing what I am doing without the fear and worry. Iow, I want to have my cake and eat it too. Yes, you are making it very clear that you’re not aiming for eliminating ‘me’ but you want remain an identity without the inconvenient painful side effects, namely worry and fear – in other words, you do not want to change. Given that even enlightened people do not manage to eliminate anger and anguish – they merely disguise and designate it as being ‘Divine Anger’ and ‘Divine Sorrow’ – I do wonder what plans you have and what method you want to use in order to accomplish your aim of having ‘the cake and eat it too’? Personally I can report that it is absolutely marvellous whenever I am not being a feeling being – pristine and pringling – something that can never be experienced when being a ‘me’.
For some reason my replies to you don’t get posted when I send them from my outlook express so I am sending this one from the web. I am wondering if this is because it is addressed to Actual Freedom and also has a cc to Freedom List or if it is because it is in html? Also, your other messages may show up blank on the list because they are in html and this list may not take html. Yes, I noticed that my posts show up blank in the
archives over the last month or so. I haven’t quite worked out the reason – maybe Topica have
tightened their security or there is a glitch in my Outlook. Some posts arrive ok but many don’t.
If you do not get the posts into your mailbox you can always find the actualist’s writings in the * I have been wondering what’s missing for me? I completely understand how all this works yet there is some missing ingredient. For example, I am involved in a situation that is causing constant fear and worry in my life. I see what is causing the fear right to the core but it still doesn’t go away. I am working on the cause by seeing what my options are and taking appropriate steps. The only way the fear would stop is if I extricate myself completely from the situation but that is not something I want to do. What I am trying to get at is: Is something missing because the fear won’t stop unless I stop what I am doing or in a situation like this is it better to just stop even though I don’t want to stop? Iow, if I see the cause of the fear and the fear doesn’t stop is it better to stop the cause altogether? I know what’s not missing are the instinctual passions including fear as ‘me’ but in the meantime how do I best deal with a situation like this? Do I keep working on the fear (‘me’) or do I get myself out of the situation that is causing the fear? I guess to answer my own question I would do what’s sensible. Obviously I don’t want to do the most sensible thing because of greed which is tied to the fear (‘me’). If I see that it is greed which keeps me in this situation and is causing the fear then it would be prudent to stop. However, I’m back to square one which is ‘I’ don’t want to stop. Can I stay in this situation and use it to get free of fear (‘me’) or is it better to cut and run? You might recall that you had a conversation with both Gary and me about this same topic on this list some 18 months ago –
This is not correct but I get your point anyway. I have lightened up on the investing and am not experiencing fear in relation to that anymore. However, as you pointed out fear has come up in a similar situation so it didn’t end fear altogether. In the current situation, I don’t think it started out because of greed. It involved another person who pulled a switch on me and so the situation changed and I lost control of the situation and no longer could keep it small as I had done. I think greed is involved now because I don’t simply want to pull up stakes because of what someone else has done. As long as you lay the blame for your feelings on someone else, your happiness will always be conditional upon what others say and do. If you want to become free from feelings such as fear, resentment, anger, sadness and uncertainty you have to recognize and acknowledge that the source of all of your feelings is in you and as such it is in your hands to change. *
When others are involved we can’t always know it will inevitably lead to disappointment and sorrow because our decisions could be based on a lie that they are telling us for example. Unless you live on an uninhabited island, ‘others’ will always be involved in your life. As an actualist I never ever blame anybody else for being the cause of my feelings. This enables me to focus my exploration on the real cause of my malice and sorrow – the social-instinctual programming that is inherent to every human being on the planet. If you decide to set your sights on becoming happy and harmless, as opposed to hoping to become fearless, you will then have the intent to do something about freeing yourself of debilitating recurring feelings such as ‘disappointment and sorrow’. By doing so you will experientially realize when, how and why such feelings impede your enjoyment of this, the only moment you can experience being alive. Unless you make this life-changing decision, feelings of disappointment and sorrow will inevitably continue. * If you already know that the most sensible thing would be to stop doing what you are doing –
– then why do you ask what to do? To stop being silly is a DIY project – doing what is sensible is in your hands and in your hands alone. I was asking myself and also looking for any helpful feedback. There is no need for anyone to answer. Was the feedback helpful? Yes, it has been helpful in that it has helped me to look at it and also to get debunked. Also, it is helpful to hear of your experiences and see what you did. I’d be interested to hear what you mean by ‘debunked’. * If I run from every sticky situation or jam that I get myself in then I don’t see how I am going to make progress toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing the fear. As you said above I was in a similar situation some 18 months ago and it has come up again although the current situation is much more dangerous and could have much more dire consequences. If you examine the situation you find yourself in then you might notice that it was greed that brought you into this situation in the first place and it is greed that keeps you in a situation that ‘is much more dangerous and could have much more dire consequences’. As I explained above it wasn’t greed that brought me into it but another person who basically conned me and now the situation is out of my control. However, I think it is greed that keeps me from pulling out altogether. The ‘person who basically conned’ you only activated your social-instinctual programming, which is continuously operating in you. Anybody and anything can trigger this programming to flare up at anytime, but it is up to you to become aware of it and do something about it. To expect others to change to suit ‘you’, or to require that events be always advantageous to ‘you’ in order that ‘you’ should not feel the feelings you don’t want to feel is to waste your life waiting for a miracle. * If you examine the situation you find yourself in then you might notice that it was greed that brought you into this situation in the first place and it is greed that keeps you in a situation that ‘is much more dangerous and could have much more dire consequences’. Vis –
If you want to ‘make progress toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing the fear’ you will have to take into account that greed is as much an instinctual passion that constitutes ‘me’ as fear is. I’m not sure about greed being ‘as much an instinctual passion that constitutes ‘me’ as fear is.’ I haven’t heard about greed being an instinctual passion before. It seems to me that greed arises out of fear and also that greed causes fear. The instinctual passions are one single operating program whose basic function is to ensure the survival of the species and this single program has various salient aspects to it – the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire (aka greed). This instinctual programming can only be understood – and eliminated – as a whole, it cannot be eliminated in part. Any attempt to single out one passion while ignoring the rest can only lead to selective denial and dissociation – you will find many descriptions of, and teachings for, such practice in esoteric bookshops all over the world. * If you want to ‘make progress’ then you need to make the same progress ‘toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing’ the greed. Yes, I see that greed needs to be eliminated also. If I have got it right, thus far you see the need to eliminate the instinctual passions of fear and desire from your life in order to more enjoy being here. Should you also come to see, by observation, that it would be good to get rid of the instinctual passions of nurture and aggression as well, you may well find that you will become interested in becoming happy and harmless. * The way I made ‘progress toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing the fear’ was that I stopped trying to suppress, sublimate or eliminate my unwanted feelings, and hoping for a world as-I-wanted-it-to-be as I had in my spiritual years, and set my goal in life at being happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are. I made the effort to become aware of my beliefs and my good and bad feelings when and as they were happening and I emphasized my felicitous feelings to the point that I could actually begin to enjoy be here for the first time in my life. With resentment gone from my life I found that I stopped blaming others for my moods and stopped using them as an excuse for my malice, which meant that I also found myself becoming more benign. Becoming aware of what I feel and believe each moment again gives me the option of making a choice each moment again – away from automatically opting for actions determined by my instinctual programming (fear, aggression, nurture and desire) towards a sensible and intelligent decision as to how to avoid dangerous or stressful situations, and how to be at ease and enjoy life so as to be more happy and to be more harmonious with other people. Yes, this makes sense but as I pointed out above sometimes when we are involved with other people we get into situations that are out of our control and sometimes unforeseen things happen. The challenge for an actualist is to be unconditionally happy and harmless and that includes all involvements with other people and all ‘unforeseen things’ that happen. * You said above ‘And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared.’ I am not sure about this because stopping what causes fear in a given situation is not going to eliminate the fear from reoccurring. It will stop the current fear in the current situation but it won’t end fear (‘me’). This sounds more like an avoidance of fear (‘me’). We’ve been at this point before. If I may remind you of the discussion in question –
Ok, this makes some sense and I have started doing this since I talked to you last. I have used the fear to start reducing the risk of actual danger or loss. I still don’t see how this is going to permanently eliminate fear from re-occuring but I will keep looking at it. You cannot eliminate fearful feelings just because it seems like a good idea. In order to free yourself from the genetically encoded survival program you will need an altruistic goal – an aim in life that gives you the non-‘self’-oriented perspective you need in order to dare to radically change. Without an altruistic goal you will go round in circles, trying this method and that teaching, this technique and that medicine without ever evincing any change at the core of your ‘being’. As an actualist I want to become unconditionally happy and harmless, knowing full well that achieving this goal will be the end of ‘me’. Because I have a clear direction I can apply the actualism method with success – whenever I am not happy, as in feeling fearful, worried, anxious or sad, I immediately explore what prevents me from being happy and do whatever it takes to return to feeling happy as soon as possible. Similarly, whenever I am not harmless, as in feeling annoyed, angry, resentful or unkind, I immediately explore what prevents me from being harmless and do whatever it takes to return to being harmless as soon as possible. *
This seems in contradiction to what you said above and this is more in line with what I was talking about by confronting my fears. This is what I meant by not running from it. It all depends what is your goal. If you want to be happy and harmless then stopping doing whatever it is that you are doing that is triggering your fearful feelings is an eminently sensible thing to do. However, if your aim is to be fearless, then you will choose to face dangers, battle it out and take all the risks you see fit in order to achieve your goal. Then, of course, you would see reducing risks by avoiding fearful situations as merely ‘running from it’. *
Yes, this is understandable. The other passions must be investigated also but I still say that fear is the most dominant. Fear may seem ‘the most dominant’ because it is the passion you avidly want to loose. The other passions that give rise to the overarching human feelings of malice and sorrow might be just as dominant in you life but they seem to be of less concern to you, for whatever reason. * The actualism method is about becoming happy and harmless – this means sensibly avoiding causing sorrow and harm to oneself as well as to others. This would make sense to anyone but a compulsive masochist. I abandoned the actualism method early on when I saw that it was connected to religious belief which I didn’t want any part of and it also had become mechanical. However, this has not stopped me from investigating the instinctual passions which was what got my interest in the first place. Here is one example of the religious belief that I am talking about: Ok, I couldn’t get the example that I was looking for because when I clicked on the message ‘emotional connections’ dated 7/2/03 all I got was a blank page. You made the statement that ‘Actualism’ would spread like wildfire in the centuries to come and basically be the saviour of mankind. There is absolutely no evidence of this and this is the kind of religious fervour that turned me off to ‘Actualism’. This is one of the problems I have about your testimonials because I don’t know how much of it can be attributed to religious belief. I don’t hear this kind of thing from Richard but only from his followers, especially you and Peter. This is the statement you are talking about –
Here is a similar statement from Richard –
What you call ‘religious fervour’ is my passion for peace-on-earth, the very passion that propelled me to set out on a journey to become free from the human condition so as to enable peace-on-earth in one other person but Richard. The reason why Richard described ‘global freedom’ as a possibility of ‘the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true’ is because when wrote his journal he was the only person who knew about an actual freedom while today there are other practicing actualists – and in case you haven’t noticed, the ‘chain-letter’ that will enable peace-on-earth is already happening via this very mailing list. The fact that actualism is already beginning to spread across the planet caused me to call actual freedom an ‘impending fact’ ‘in the centuries to come’. If you say that this passion for peace-on-earth ‘turned me off to ‘Actualism’’ then actualism is indeed not for you. * PS: As I said above, what’s keeping me from stopping is ‘I’ don’t want to stop. ‘I’ want to keep doing what I am doing without the fear and worry. Iow, I want to have my cake and eat it too. Yes, you are making it very clear that you’re not aiming for eliminating ‘me’ but you want remain an identity without the inconvenient painful side effects, namely worry and fear – in other words, you do not want to change. It’s not that I do not want to change. On the contrary, I am simply stating the fact so that I can deal with it. That’s where you and I are chalk and cheese – you want to find a way of fearlessly dealing with your feelings of malice and sorrow whereas I passionately want to become free of them. * Given that even enlightened people do not manage to eliminate anger and anguish – they merely disguise and designate it as being ‘Divine Anger’ and ‘Divine Sorrow’ – I do wonder what plans you have and what method you want to use in order to accomplish your aim of having ‘the cake and eat it too’? Having my cake and eat it too is only a saying describing what I have been doing. Obviously I can’t have my cake and eat it too and that is not my aim. I have been using an old method that I used in the 70’s which has been working. You say
and you also say that
Putting the two statements together, it reads that your ‘old method’ from the 70’s is ‘having my cake and eat it too’. Yet despite the fact that you say your ‘old method’ ‘has been working’ you started this thread with –
It seems that ‘your old method’ is not working after all if something is still missing for you. . Given that you consider the passion for peace on earth to be ‘religious fervour’ I can only say that ‘what’s missing’ is pure intent. Vineeto’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
