To No 47: When I disentangled myself from the spiritual practice of dissociation I began to allow myself once again to become sensitive to my own undesired feelings as well as to the perversities and horrors of the human condition. In short I allowed myself to feel the full range of my emotions in order to examine them and trace them back to ‘me’, the affective identity inside this flesh-and-blood body. When a reaction to a certain situation kept creeping up again and again, avoiding giving it ‘credence’ was not enough. I had to feel the feeling, label it, sort it out, understand it in the context of my social identity and figure out which part of ‘me’ was responsible for my emotional reaction in order to become free from it. Then I could go back to feeling excellent again and, as a result of this rooting around, was less prone to be disturbed by a similar situation. Vineeto, List AF, No 47, 4.11.2003

I think a) is extremely important. If not done diligently, it leads to denial of the feeling and also distortion of steps b) and c). If I don’t fully feel and acknowledge the feeling/ emotional reaction, it means that I have not fully come to terms with the whole of the feeling; I still have some vested interests in continuing to feel that way and I would trick myself to lie in the surface if I don’t take a good look at the whole of the feeling. It seems to be so difficult to stay with the feeling.

It’s usually difficult to acknowledge and feel a feeling when the particular feeling is either socially unacceptable or personally undesired, i.e. when to feel this way does not concur with one’s morals and ethics and/or one’s image of oneself. You described it well in your recent letter to No 4 when you said –

… funnily the ‘self-image’ I had of myself, say 18 months ago when I came to the list, was totally wrong as it was a product of so many denials and only after digging deep I could see all the stuff I was denying. 7.11.2003

That’s why the questioning of one’s spiritual beliefs and one’s moral and ethical values is crucial for successfully investigating one’s feelings – I had to dare to go past the ‘guardians at the gate’ and take apart my social identity.

This identity consists of the morals and ethics that have been drilled into us from the time when we were first rewarded for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour and punished for ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour. We are thus taught to emphasize and highly value the ‘good’ instinctual passions and to repress and control the ‘savage’ passions. Our social identity is in fact made up of the morals, ethics and values that are programmed into us by our parents, teachers and others to ensure that we will become a fit, useful and loyal member of the particular society into which we were born. Introduction, Normal Solutions

One thing that I found useful in this process of dismantling my social identity was when I became aware of a feeling that interrupted my feeling good and I had given it a name, I then identified this feeling with a specific aspect of my social identity. In my case when I felt annoyed with something that Peter said or didn’t say or did or didn’t do I would acknowledge that I was annoyed and then recognize that it was ‘Vineeto the woman’ and ‘Vineeto the lover’ who was annoyed and this made it clear that if I wanted to stop reacting in that way then ‘Vineeto the woman’ and ‘Vineeto the lover’ would have to go.

In fact some of the spiritual practices seem to point to this step (observe the feeling, don’t run away, escape as is done normally) – but I think either deliberately or inadvertently end up inducing dissociation. And since it is painful to stay with some feelings, dissociation seems to come naturally.

All spiritual practices I have come across and have been taught suggest to ‘observe the feeling’, or rather ‘observe the thought’ that supposedly is the cause of one’s feelings and then disengage, distance and dissociate oneself from the thoughts in order to retreat back inside and get back to feeling ‘who you really are’.

As for ‘deliberately or inadvertently’, as a generalization, ‘normal’ people inadvertently dissociate from being here, spiritualists do it deliberately as part of the teachings. After all, people embark on the spiritual path in order to disengage or dissociate from the world because they are discontent with or appalled by the world as it is and people as they are.

And the watching/observing of the feelings can go on endlessly as it is not coupled with b) and c) – in fact the practices actively discourage b) and funnily even c) – as the aim does not seem to be ‘happy and harmless’ but only ‘observing/ watching/ attention’ etc. – so the continued suffering is not questioned and considered okay as long as one ‘watches/ observes/ attends to’ and is seen to be the best one can do!

Yes, in spiritual practice the ‘watching/observing of the feelings can go on endlessly’ until one succeeds to completely detach oneself from one’s imperfect ‘self’ such that the illusion of a new identity is created, an aggrandized impersonal ‘Self’, a disembodied watcher or observer. The purpose of all spiritual methods is to distance oneself from one’s bad feelings, believed to arise from conditioned thoughts, whereas good feelings such as love and compassion are greatly encouraged.

‘The continued suffering is not questioned’ because suffering is regarded as the very mud from which the lotus of Enlightenment will arise – without suffering there would be no need for dissociation. The feeling of suffering is aggrandized into a feeling of universal sorrow or divine compassion.

When b) is done without a) (not exactly, but somewhat in ‘cognitive therapy’ and some psychoanalytic methods dealing with the cognitive distortions – or as in watching the ‘thought’ as opposed to the feeling) I think the root cause is not seen and a lot of effort is spent in trying to sort out and it gets very complicated and does not produce a fundamental solution (results in better coping-up). Also not having acknowledged the feeling, the feeling is at work when doing b) – so there are lots of distortions and confusions that can arise. Moreover, the situation can get complex because of further triggers in feelings and the crucial information is lost because of not doing the a). Since the issue with this step is complexity, trying to keep it simple (or trying to find that which ‘ticks’ is very useful.

The very reason why psychoanalysis and other self-investigative methods of dealing with one’s feelings do not work is because the necessity that human beings remain ‘feeling beings’ is never ever questioned. That’s why ‘you can’t change human nature’ can be seen as the mother of all beliefs – this fundamental belief prevents any sincere exploration and keeps any method of self-investigation superficial at best and delusionary at worst.

To change human nature is a risky business – you actually need to change.

c) brings back the focus on enjoying the moment and the purpose of the investigation is to find and remove the obstacle that took away from feeling good/ excellent/ perfect. The real test for correctness of the above steps is simply that it becomes once again possible to get back to feeling good/ excellent/perfect. At least the current problem has been understood and eradicated.

Yes and when the problem reoccurs I examine it again, I shine the bright light of awareness onto it, maybe explore it on a deeper level and come to understand how ‘I’ tick more deeply and comprehensively.

In every investigation a crunch point eventually comes when ‘I’ realize that the only way I am going to raise the bar of actually becoming more harmless and consequently feeling more happy is to let go of, or drop, a significant part of my social identity – in my case I was no longer a German, no longer a spiritualist, no longer a socialist, no longer a member of the sisterhood, and so on.

Change does mean change and change does have consequences. For an actualist the over-arching intent to become more happy and more harmless outweighs any consequences that the stripping away of one’s social identity may have.

I also see that the progress is directly proportional to the intent to become happy and harmless as soon as possible. It seems to be very important to remember why one is doing this while one is doing this. And the progress was nil as long as I wasn’t able to see the way all this work is totally opposite to the methods I had come across.

Ah, you put your finger onto the nub of the issue and exposed the very reason why a clip-on of actualism to any of the spiritual methods will always fail to bring results. It’s like using a motor vehicle but keep heading into the wrong direction – one will invariably arrive at the wrong destination.

In other words, the 180 degree turnaround is essential – from one’s head in the clouds to being fully here on earth, from practicing dissociation to paying exclusive attention to how I experience this moment of being alive, from wanting to become ‘who’ I really am, an immortal soul, to wanting to become what I am – this flesh-and-blood mortal body.

On a different note, I was wondering why people see the contents of the website to be similar to existing material like Zen/ Buddhism/ Eastern stuff... because I was doing the same for quite some time. Firstly, that everybody has got it wrong is something very big – and such an extreme position is unusual and considered insane. So the emotional response to that is – who does he (Richard) think himself as [as Richard himself has suggested this as the possibility of objection]; but after reading the material and seeing a lot of sense in it – the feeling becomes this is all great, but he is wrong in thinking that this is different. All the differences in the web-site are seen to be linguistic differences. As it is a common belief in the eastern spirituality that all paths/religions are the same stuff in different guise. So actualism/actualfreedom is also the same just bottled differently.

An excellent observation, if I might say so. I remember when Peter first got hold of a loose-leaf copy of Richard’s Journal and I noticed that he didn’t just skim through it but sometimes he would spend hours trying to work out exactly what Richard was saying in one particular group of 3 or 4 sentences. It’s a good way of reading and trying to understand something new – it is useful to really concentrate on getting to the bottom of it and fully understanding one particular issue that is a key for you and then the whole of what is on offer can start to make sense.

[At some point I told myself that I was going to take the risk of being called a fool in admitting that everybody got it wrong – that helped to be rid of the fear (is this fear of stepping out of ‘humanity’?) and proceed with the investigation.]

Yes, I can relate to that from my own experience – my pride and my loyalty to the spiritual group I belonged to were tough obstacles to overcome. Pride stands in the road of admitting that one is wrong because the last thing a proud person wants to feel is to feel foolish. When I understood that it was not me who had got it wrong but that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong, it became clear to me that it would be foolish to keep looking in the wrong direction just because I didn’t want to feel a fool in having done exactly what everyone else was doing.

Loyalty was a similar issue – when I realized that what was keeping me being a spiritualist was a feeling of loyalty to my dead master and my then spiritual friends I was confronted by feeling to be a traitor whenever I thought about leaving. This continued on for months until I finally found that I had decided that being happy and harmless and living with a man in utter peace and harmony was more important to me than being a loyal spiritualist and the feelings of being a traitor disappeared as if by magic. Now, that my former friends consider me to be both a fool and a traitor, I can delight in the freedom of having no spiritual beliefs and of not belonging to any group whatsoever.

I think you are more talking about the fear of stepping out of society and it certainly requires bold determination to dare to step out of one’s social bondages and leave the various groups that form and maintain one’s social identity behind in order to become an anonymous and carefree human being. The process is incremental, the changes are palpable and the rewards of becoming more harmless is a continual raising the bar of feeling more happy. The final stepping out of humanity happens with the ending of ‘me’.

And since one is used to the vagueness and ambiguity and the indescribables and the unknowables – never defining unambiguously – no wonder actualism looks the same as anything else – but this apparent similarity does not stand the scrutiny.

Yes, and this vagueness and ambiguity comes as no surprise given that spiritual freedom is only a feeling of freedom and not an actuality. Actuality can be described with precise words because it is tangible, apparent, lucid and obvious and as such two people can describe something with very definitive words and know that they are both talking about the same actuality. By contrast one can only be vague and ambiguous when describing an imagined and illusionary feeling state because no two people feel exactly the same about something intangible, spirit-like, ephemeral, ethereal and otherworldly. Once you begin to examine the descriptions of spiritual experiences, you discover that each guru and each disciple lives in their own private affective dream world, their own universe.

I found Peter’s foresight very accurate: ../actualism/path2.htm:

I have noticed a tendency for many people to merely want to clip on a bit of Actualism to their Spiritualism, and no doubt this tendency will grow in the coming years. Already many western spiritual teachers have watered down Eastern philosophy and religion to try and make it more ordinary and less supercilious and, as AF increasingly gains a foothold, those very same Spiritualists will deliberately distort it and try and absorb it into their teachings.

This is the very reason that we have set up The Actual Freedom Trust, simply in order that there will be at least one original untainted source of Actualism and Actual Freedom which people can use as a touchstone in a world renowned for duplicity and self-deception. Thus it is possible, as with any new discovery, to see two streams operating. Peter, A Practical Guide for Actualists

This is all great fun!

Yes, it’s great fun to be a pioneer in such a wonderful human endeavour. Although it’s early days for actualism I notice that apart from objectors and ‘clip-on-ers’ more and more adventurers dare to abandon their pride and their loyal connection with their peers and embark on an exploration how to become happy and harmless.

25.11.2003

29.5.2005

In the post you responded to I posted a quote that was descriptive of the physical sensations that can sometimes accompany radical change –

One time I remember clearly, the experience was like cutting a thick cord that appeared to run from the bottom of my spine to his, like a telephone cord of sharing delight. Afterwards *it felt like my very bone marrow was being drained out of me*, most of my strength, determination and will to ‘fight for freedom’. A very strange experience, I was *almost physically curling back into my self* and became autonomous, not relying on him. Any need for emotional support vanished with that event. List AF, Alan, 12.1.1999 [emphases added]

However it is good to keep in mind that the impression of something physical happening is most likely due to psychosomatic processes, i.e. bodily responses to feelings and imagination.

Given that ‘I’ am a passionate imaginary ‘being’ it follows that ending aspects of ‘me’ is often accompanied by passions and imaginations and sometimes physical reactions occur due to those passions and imaginations. However, given that both feelings and imagination are notoriously unreliable when it comes to determine fact, in the long run I did not give much weight to the strange things that happened in my psyche with occasional physical side-effects – what I was ultimately interested in was if the change that I had felt and imagined to have happened had really happened. This I ascertained by checking if my behaviour had changed, if I stayed calm and happy in situations that had ruffled my feathers before, if certain feelings resurfaced after I imagined to have ‘cut the cord’ or whether my normal habitual emotional reaction was indeed non-existent in similar situations from that moment onwards.

Incidentally, the more imagination disappeared out of my life, the less I was prone to feel weird happenings in my brain, my spine, my belly or my heart.

29.5.2005

I see that No 37 has answered most of your questions. As for writing ‘about some difficulties they found in this part when they practised this method initially’ I can highly recommend Peter’s Journal because it is to date the most comprehensive and down-to-earth account by a practicing actualist about utilizing the actualism method so as to become virtually free of malice and sorrow.

I can also recommend Peter’s conversations both with Alan and Gary where Peter passes on information about the various stages that can happen on the path. Here Peter describes one of the more hilarious of such episodes –

Peter: It does seem that you have understood, and are experiencing, that actualism is about becoming autonomous. Understanding is the first step, experiencing it is the next. Autonomy is an inevitable essential part of the process, which is why I always chuckle when someone says I am a disciple of a Guru. Actual Freedom is squeaky clean.

Gary: I suppose given the propensity of humans to form groups based on hierarchical principles it is natural for people to think that the same thing occurs in Actual Freedom or with the Actual Freedom Trust. I remember imagining such things myself, for instance, that you, Richard, and Vineeto were plotting or planning to do such and such, or so and so, that you had some type of steering committee or planning meetings. In hindsight, that appears ridiculous of course. There was also the tendency on my part to view Actual Freedom as some sort of Heaven or cultic activity with Richard being the Sun, and Peter and Vineeto revolving around the Sun in some sort of Actual Freedom firmament. Given that hierarchy occurs in any group, it is not surprising that one would have such thoughts or even wonder where one fits into such imagined hierarchy oneself. Becoming autonomous is becoming free from all such outlandish hierarchical notions as well as any tendency to subvert oneself to the authority (as in power) of another.

Peter: I went through exactly the same thing with Richard. I remember at one stage saying – ‘Okay, I’m hooked. You can let me in on the secret now’. I figured that if he was a super intelligent being seeded from outer space and seeking recruits, I was ready for the spacecraft to land. It’s all a hoot when I look back but given the human condition and our predilection to blindly follow or senselessly rebel, it is all par for the course, grist for the mill or fuel for the imagination – or the spacecraft in this case.

It is an extraordinary thing to take the words of actualism at face value. I found I had to abandon all my cynicism, crank up my naiveté yet be wary of being gullible as I had been in the past. This is only something that you can do for no one can take you by the hand and lead you down the path. It’s your own journey to being free and autonomous, but then again, that’s obvious isn’t it. Peter, List AF, Gary, 5.12.2000

29.5.2005

 (…) In this context I am reminded of a conversation Richard had with someone about what to do with ‘feeling bad’  in which the respondent similarly had some difficulty seeing the silliness of feeling bad – <snipped>

Ha, No 33/ No 75/ No 71(R), looks like we have two less subscribers to the list.

Well there is a great deal of difference between reading what someone else says, thinking about whether it makes sense or not, realizing that it makes sense and having the sense of what is said confirmed by one’s own experience. Once you know something works and works repeatedly, one then has the confidence borne of efficacy and reliability.

When I started actualism I was well aware, due to Irene’s experience, that even if one is a good way into virtual freedom one can still make a turnabout ‘due to some feeling later on’. For several years I was concerned that I couldn’t be absolutely sure that I wouldn’t do the same as Irene, I wasn’t sure of the validity and duration of my successes with the actualism method and I was aware that I couldn’t rely on myself with 100% certainty … that is until I had experientially explored the great temptation of altered states of consciousness for myself by myself as well as make an exploration of my darkest instinctual corners and my greatest fears.

I had an intermediate goal on the wide and wondrous path to ‘self’-immolation – to reach the point of no-return where I was 100% certain that I would never ever turn back to being ‘normal’ or of becoming self-aggrandized. I would often check around in my mind, so to speak, to see if the road to returning to be normal or spiritual was still there, until one day I realized that there was no place to return to – I realized that I had irrevocably burnt the bridges.

Now I feel like, metaphorically speaking, that I am walking towards the edge of a jumping board into nothing. Very thrilling indeed.

22.7.2005

If it’s emotion backed, you should be able to feel it.

12.10.2005

I thought it might be informative at this point to repost a conversation I had on this list about 5 years ago as it was right on the topic of the psychic web that connects feeling beings –

The idea of the psychic world had captivated me for years and the mystical-psychic playground was a big attraction on the spiritual path at the time. Consequently, when I took up actualism, I was immensely curious to really find out as much as there is to know about psychic phenomena, psychic powers and the ‘rules’ of the psychic world. I was fascinated to learn that Richard not only said he lived without feelings and emotions but also admitted to not having any psychic powers like telepathy, ‘energy’, psychic influence or mystical secret knowledge.

One area of my investigation was how I was influenced by, and connected with, other people’s vibes and feelings. I remember one incident with the woman I had lived and worked with for several years. One day in the office she received a phone call and, being the secretary, I took it, recognized her partner’s voice and transferred it to her into the next room, saying nothing but hello to the man. I didn’t hear the conversation as my door was closed, and just kept working on the daily accounts. From the moment of the call I had fierce pain in my stomach and thoughts of intense fear racing through my head that had nothing to do with my personal situation. After two hours it finally clicked – I went over to ask her if she had a fight with her partner on the phone. She said they did. My pain disappeared immediately. After this incident I investigated what made me so receptive to her vibes and feelings and I came to understand that my feelings of love for her were enough for me to be psychically connected to her fears and pain.

I see the psychic world as an invisible spider’s web that connects people together via their fervent beliefs, feelings and passions. The key to understanding and breaking out of the psychic web was questioning love and, in the spiritual world, my love for and the authority of those ‘who know’, the revered and adored masters. I began to understand that the feeling of love based on the instinctual passions of nurture and desire is just as much part of ‘my’ identity as the opposite passions of fear and aggression. Slowly, I started to see the psychic power battle that goes on between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, higher powers and lower powers, master and disciple, between teachers and between disciples of various ranks. Just as normal reality is a dog-eat-dog world, spiritual reality is a God-eat-God world and the fight is fuelled by the same merciless survival instincts.

Seeing that the psychic web is about transmitting or exchanging vibes, feelings and emotions in order to gain power and influence over others, I was then only interested how to disentangle myself from this insidious web that tied me to authorities, groups and friends, engulfing me in invisible power struggles and everyone else’s beliefs, feelings and instinctual passions.

When I experienced my first full-blown Altered State of Consciousness replete with feeling Love for all, with Truth continuously streaming into my head and the bliss of unlimited psychic power and knowledge, I came to understand even more how this whole psychic world works. In such a state one can tap into the pond of all of humanity’s so-called wisdom – the collection of ancient religions, beliefs, superstitions, atavistic feelings and passions. That ‘pond’ provides the ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ for spiritual teachers – the very reason why their teachings seem to be so true and familiar. Having risen to the top of the psychic ladder, God-men can choose to swan along in the ‘good’ feelings and push the ‘evil’ passions to the bottom – or blame their disciples for causing their anxiety and divine anger.

The transmission of Energy – a feature of all master-disciple relationships – can only work because the disciples are looking for a short-cut to happiness and love by receiving seemingly ‘free gifts’ from the master and thus get trapped into the addictive bargain of giving love and gratitude in return for dependency on his or her authority.

In actuality there is no such thing as psychic transmission of energy because to become free of the Human Condition is to become free of the psychic web itself and this can only be done by oneself and for oneself. Such perfect freedom. Vineeto, List AF, No 18, 27.8.2000

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