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Selected Correspondence Vineeto Affective Feelings – Emotions and Passions Actualists appear to have some feelings … The only actualist who has no feelings whatsoever is Richard who is actually free from the human condition. …or how could you use words like delight, benign, beneficent, happy, etc. None of those words necessarily describes a feeling – delight is a sensate experience, benignity a kindness of disposition, beneficence the outcome of such disposition and being happy can either be a felicitous feeling or a descriptive word that expresses the joyous, blithesome, carefree, untroubled experience of being alive. An actualist who has got to the stage of being virtually free of malice and sorrow experiences felicitous feelings almost constantly such that feeling happy becomes the norm, so much so that he/she is invariably spontaneously considerate of others which means that he/she is almost always harmless to others. I can see having no passions (violent emotions) but there seems to be something of the emotional capacity (or feeling capacity) left. I have been practicing the af method intensively the last few months and I am certainly much less emotional, … The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. …but it seems that even in what seemed to be pce (or mini ones) some sort of a well-being sense – which in scientific categories of emotion is still considered an emotion or feeling. ‘Some sort of wellbeing sense’ need not be an affective feeling, in the same way as being healthy is not necessarily an affective feeling. Having said that, unless I am having a pure consciousness experience, ‘I’ am an emotional being which means that inevitably ‘I’ have feelings – however as an actualist my on-going attentiveness combined with my ever-present intent to be as happy and harmless as is humanly possible means that I always have the choice that these feelings be felicitous feelings rather than the good or bad moods, vibes, emotions and passions ‘I’ have been socially and genetically programmed to feel. Perhaps, this is more a problem with British versus American English. Here is the British versus the American definition of the word ‘emotion’ and they seem to be remarkably similar –
Or more to the point, a problem with the strict dictionary use of a term versus a psychological (or evolutionary use of) use of the term emotion to refer to all feelings as being ‘emotional’. A straightforward definition – and one that is quite congruent with the description
in the dictionaries is that emotions, passions, calentures are all affective feelings, all of which are generated by the affective
faculty of the brain, as opposed to sensate feelings or sensations ( Of course, the best way to gain a thorough experiential understanding of feelings, emotions and passions is to observe them in action in situ, when and as they occur – theoretical speculation and intellectual knowledge are no substitute for practical hands on experience. * The actualism method is all about disempowering one’s cynical, acrimonious and sorrowful feelings via the potent combination of attentiveness, pure intent, integrity and common sense, whilst simultaneously encouraging activating one’s naiveté and fostering felicitous feelings – happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie, joyfulness, and so on. In this process it’s important to understand that one cannot deactivate only one’s bad feelings (‘violent emotions’) – you have to investigate and deactivate the antidotal ‘good’ feelings (the tender passions) as well if you genuinely aspire to become free of the human condition, in toto. Ok, this help a lot. I’m ‘getting it’. For one I see there is ATTACHMENT in the ‘tender passions’ and there is none in the FELICITOUS FEELINGS. Attachment leads to or even is suffering. This is great fun. No. The idea that one is merely ‘attached’ to one’s emotions is an invention of Eastern spiritualism and a particularly persistent and popular one at that. This theory is integral to the notion that the way to become ‘free’ is to become detached from one’s unwanted feelings (as well as from the corporeal body and the physical world). Becoming detached from one’s unwanted or undesirable feelings inevitably leads to dissociation – the prerequisite to delusionary states such as enlightenment. I knew I had not only the wrong word, but concept and I expected a correction. I’m just at a loss to verbally distinguish the ‘felicitous’ feelings from the ‘good’ feelings. As a suggestion, it might be best to try to distinguish them experientially first, then putting this distinction into words will be no problem. To name the main ones, ‘good’ feelings are all those arising from the tender passions of nurture and desire, such as love, gratitude, loyalty, belonging, compassion, empathy, longing, beauty, greed, hope, trust and faith. The easiest way to recognize that you are dealing with a ‘good’ emotion is when it is preventing you from being unconditionally happy and harmless. For example the feeling of love invariably includes possessiveness, jealousy, yearning and dependency; feeling loyalty to one person or a group prevents one from experiencing all people as one’s fellow human beings; feelings of compassion and empathy contain sorrow; hope invites disappointment, and so on.
To No 58 – And don’t forget about wanting to be happy and harmless. The above strikes me as being kind of arbitrary, a shopping list of trinkets to acquire. At this point, I might have said do whatever you want if it makes you happy, but I’m starting to think that the whole notion of happiness (and it’s evil twin unhappiness) is merely another trinket, an external, artificial object to be gained. No 30 got happiness, Richard got happiness, Peter got happiness, Vineeto got happiness, but it seems to me they are all clever metaprogramming (with possible exception of Richard... we’ll never really get inside his head) – ‘I’ve defined what happiness is and I’m going to do my damndest to convince myself I am it’. For me as an actualist, becoming happy means that I investigate everything that stands in the way of being happy. In other words I begin by becoming aware of the causes of my unhappiness – feelings such as grumpiness, anger, irritation, sadness, moodiness, anxiety, etc. and then I take a clear-eyed look at the causes of my unhappiness and do whatever is necessary to prevent it from occurring again. When this attentiveness becomes on-going, the feelings that are an impediment to my happiness are disempowered. Furthermore, a genuine happiness is inextricably intertwined with becoming harmless – it is impossible to be happy unless one is harmless – something that is being overlooked again and again. You’ve raised this question before and you have indicated that you have understood that becoming happy and harmless in actualism is definitely not being ‘merely another trinket, an external, artificial object to be gained’. Vis –
What you call ‘clever metaprogramming’ is your own misinterpretation of actualism and it was one of the first issues you raised when you came to this list –
Maybe this is an apt moment to reiterate something that is essential for an actualist to keep in mind during his or her explorations – the aim and process of actualism is not to suppress feelings and emotions in order to achieve ‘merely another trinket, an external, artificial object to be gained’, as you perceive it, but to become aware of one’s feelings and emotions in order to be able to explore them deeply and exhaustively. The automatic socially-conditioned reaction is to wheedle one’s way out of feeling the bad feelings – those that are considered bad and immoral or wrong and unethical – by repressing the feelings and if this doesn’t work we have leant to revert to denial and/or deceit. Consequently the essential first step in becoming aware of one’s invidious feelings is to be aware of one’s habit of suppressing, avoiding or denying them. In order for the actualism process to work it is crucial to first get in touch with one’s feelings (a common expression meaning to become aware of one’s feelings) because if I want to find out about ‘me’ in all of my guises I can’t afford to only investigate the ‘better’ half of my emotions and ignore, repress or deny ‘my’ dark side. To allow oneself to experience whatever feeling is happening often needs some investigation into what Peter has termed the ‘guardians at the gate’ – the moral judgements and ethical evaluations that trigger feelings such as guilt, shame, defiance or righteousness whenever one starts to become aware of one’s dark side and begins to feel one’s dark feelings. It is important to remember that one needs to neither express one’s non-felicitous feelings nor wallow in them in order to become aware of them – after all the most important thing for an actualist is to be happy and harmless – and the aim is always, as soon as possible, to get back to feeling good about being here or feeling excellent about being alive. When you do get back to feeling happy and being harmless then you can put your feet up and spend some time contemplating on what it was that triggered you to stop feeling happy or being harmless. If you sincerely want to be happy and harmless you will then find that it is vital to drop that part of your social identity, be it a belief, a moral, an ethic, a value, a concept, a habit, that is causing you to be unhappy, sad, resentful, annoyed, frustrated, jealous, and so on. As you can see, actualism is all about diminishing one’s identity to the point where one becomes virtually happy and harmless such that ‘self’-immolation can happen – it has nothing to do with re-programming, re-interpreting, re-defining, re-labelling, re-shuffling, acquiring trinkets or replacing one part of one’s identity with another more shiny outfit – if applied with sincerity and intent the method of actualism will evoke actual change and that’s why many apparently find it too frightening to commit to. But once you get over the hump, it’s the best game to play in town.
As well as Richard’s experiential report there is also the option of inquiring into why you are now doubting the sincerity of the information supplied to you to the point of suggesting that Richard might still have an ‘ego/soul/affect’ and is possibly ‘simply unconscious of same’. (Being verballed by Richard, 29.1.2004) I don’t doubt the ‘sincerity’ of the information supplied to me, but I sometimes do, and no doubt will continue to, question the ‘factuality’ of it. There is a big difference, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Nowadays I am able to take everyone’s words at face value, which is possible only because ‘me’, the doubting, fearing, defensive, aggressive, suspicious identity hardly ever interferes with reading or hearing the actual words that are conveyed. Whether or not the person is sincere or genuine will either become clear in the course of the conversation or by the person’s actions, and if the person is sarcastic or cynical it does not affect me as they only shoot themselves in the foot. I also keep my wits about me when taking someone’s words at face value in that I take into consideration all the information available to me in order to determine what background or motivations a person may have in saying what they are saying – in short, a naiveté based on adult sensibility and sensitivity. In this way I validate or invalidate the ‘factuality’ of what is being said by assessing the sensibility/silliness of the statements, by cross-references from outside sources and, particularly in the case of actualism, by comparing it to my own ongoing experience of what works and what doesn’t work. (In the meantime, in daily life, I am practising actualism exactly as prescribed). When I started practicing actualism I was in for many a surprise because I uncovered many aspects of ‘me’ that were hidden before. No 47 gave an excellent description of the process the other day –
If you have a close look at the posting you referred to above, you’ll notice that I was indeed questioning my own reactions, as well as questioning the phenomena that occasioned that reaction (i.e. Richard’s behaviour as it appeared to me). Questioning my reactions for me means inquiring into why am I getting annoyed or why am I feeling sad. I found it useless blaming someone else or something else for making me annoyed or sad because when I came to understand that I am the only person I can change, I focussed my full attention on ‘me’ not ‘her’ or ‘him’ or ‘they’ or ‘it’. This is how I use the method of actualism (as prescribed) with excellent outcome – In order to investigate a feeling when it is occurring, the first thing I have to do is to stop trying to make it go away or stop trying to hang on to it as we have been socially or spiritually conditioned to do. As long as I object to having the (bad) feeling or desperately want to cling to the (good) feeling, I cannot examine what exactly is going on. The first thing to become aware of and understand was my automatic reaction of suppression or expression in order to be able to experience the feeling fully that I am then able to label and examine. I began to notice that when I stopped fighting having the feeling or stopped feeding the feeling, its intensity was immediately reduced significantly and then I was be able to take a closer look of what has caused this particular feeling to appear in the first place. When feelings are really intense such that they have taken me over, any investigation at such a time is useless. I had to get back to at least feeling good, if not happy, again in order to be able to sensibly delve deeper into the reasons that got me upset or enraptured in the first place. Then I could go about examining the feeling that I had just experienced – when did the feeling first start, what was the event or situation that caused the affective reaction, why did I feel insulted, self-righteous, misunderstood, rejected, sad, angry, worried, pissed off, etc., which of my cherished beliefs, truth, views, values, etc. is being questioned, in what way is this linked to my identity, is there a fear underneath the initial feeling, what is this fear about, and so on ...? In this way I am conducting an empirical systematic inquiry into my own affective experience and I am in fact examining my own psyche in action – I don’t make the feeling go away, on the contrary, I allow it to come entirely to the surface so that I can feel the feeling so that I can conduct an extensive experiential examination into all its aspects. Once I overcame the initial moral and ethical objection to having undesirable and unpleasant feelings in the first place, a keen interest and fascination developed that came from being able to be aware of my own feelings and emotions while they were happening as well as being able to understand why they operate, how they operate and what is their root cause. I was becoming keenly interested in each detail and every opportunity that might give me a clue to the way I tick – and everyday life is rich with such opportunities. The investigation into one’s feelings has to be experiential if it is to bring any tangible results – thinking about feelings and emotions removed from down-to-earth personal experience will only keep one at a surface level and will prevent one from penetrating into the very nature of one’s psyche. So the first thing for me to learn was to stop fighting my feelings and to stop feeding my feelings and allow myself to experience my feelings … all the while making sure that I kept my mouth shut and my hands in my pockets, in order that I wouldn’t do or say something I’d have to regret or feel remorseful about later on. As long as I continue to have silent accusations, grudges, irritation, suspicions, defensiveness, anger, fear, etc. against someone, I always know that there is an unresolved belief, a hidden truth, a firm conviction, a dearly-held principle, a personal moral or value at stake that the other – usually inadvertently – has uncovered or questioned or opposed. In order to get back to being happy and, more importantly harmless, I then need to take this belief apart, as I call it. That means I look where and when I acquired it, why I believe it to be so, why I react emotionally when it is opposed and by doing so inevitably I discover the aspect of my identity associated with this belief – in other words, it is ‘my’ belief and to give it up will mean I have to give up some part of ‘me’. Only my intent to be happy and harmless will cause ‘me’ to give up something ‘I’ hold so dear. This is the very reason why actualism is a do-it-yourself method because nobody can expose your own beliefs and truths but you. * As well as Richard’s experiential report there is also the option of inquiring into why you are now doubting the sincerity of the information supplied to you to the point of suggesting that Richard might still have an ‘ego/soul/affect’ and is possibly ‘simply unconscious of same’. (Being verballed by Richard, 29.1.2004) Whereas you had said in a post to me only 2 days previous to this – (re: infinity, 27.1.2004) There is no ‘whereas’, Vineeto. I meant that, and I still do. I am trying to be more careful in differentiating and separating my personal impressions from what is actual/factual, in growing awareness that my own reactions are not necessarily reliable. Firstly, I have just read in your post to Peter that you had sent this as a private post. I apologize that I have inadvertently published it. I did not realize that it was a private post until just now as I very rarely receive private posts from list members and my MS-Outlook program does not display the difference in the preview pane. As for ‘whereas’ – personally, if I felt that someone was unconscious of ‘his ego/soul/affect’, and for a period of 11-12 years at that, I wouldn’t simultaneous think he was someone who truly knows what he is talking about. To me that would be contradictory. I’ve understood lately that I tend to take in gulps of reality, form a few impressions, and then start addressing those impressions – as if they were reality – without realising I’ve done so until afterwards. It’s something I’m trying to watch more closely. Richard has been rubbing ‘me’ up the wrong way lately, as I mentioned in the posting you referred to above. When I experienced someone as ‘rubbing ‘me’ up the wrong way’, whenever I am discussing an issue with them, I always knew that I had something to look at in terms of finding the underlying emotional investment I had with regard to the issue that caused me to feel this way. If this was the case I usually stopped my discussion with whoever it was, got back to feeling happy and amicable, nutted out ‘my’ issue that was bugging ‘me’ for myself and then was again able to objectively listen to what the other had to actually say. In the early days of my relationship with Peter for instance I felt emotionally threatened whenever the topic of my being a disciple of Rajneesh came up, so much so that Peter and I agreed ‘not to talk about the war’, for a period which lasted about six weeks. In that time I had explored other areas of my conditioning and had found it so beneficial and successful that I was then ready and able to tackle the ‘big one’. I am only saying this because this information might possibly assist you in your own practice of actualism. Inevitably every sincere discussion on this list will uncover many beliefs, viewpoints and truths one holds, will question ethics and values one might have, will disperse images one might have of oneself or trigger feelings one doesn’t like or didn’t know one had. The reason is because what is being discussed is the human psyche, how it is programmed to operate and what is the result of that programming, and therefore ‘I’ will feel inevitably exposed because ‘I’ am the human psyche. For this very reason I always stress that it is important to establish one’s intent first – which essentially is ‘my’ agreement to ‘my’ demise – before attempting to start with the nitty-gritty of dismantling one’s identity, otherwise one ends up going round in circles and blaming others for one’s own feelings of frustration and despair. The trick is to remember that the human condition applies to everyone and that nobody is to blame for it. And, as Richard emphasises again and again, it is important to be one’s own best friend in the enterprise of taking the identity apart –
(And not just me, evidently). Oh, the human condition – as the name suggests – is common to all. It’s a majority – an estimated 6 billion people. Actualism has a ready-made explanation for why that might be the case – everything Richard writes is a potentially fatal poison to the identities that lurk inside us all. I know that Richard does not pander to identities, and so be it – I was writing about ‘my’ reaction to ‘my’ perception of him, and part of that reaction was the idea that ‘he’ is alive and well, albeit unconscious of himself. (Notice that I said: it makes me wonder ... And please notice that it isn’t the same as saying: I’m convinced that Richard is ... this or that.) I wonder in what way publishing what you wondering about but are not convinced about can add to a sensible discussion about the topics at hand. As you would know by experience, expressing your feelings to others only adds fuel to the fire and to other people’s fire – investigating your own feelings by yourself in your own time is quite a different matter. I always found that I first had to sort out my feelings for myself before I could read with both eyes open, ask sensible questions of Richard or have a fruitful discussion that was helpful to me in furthering my inquiry into the human condition.
RESPONDENT: Firstly, may I thank you for an excellent site, which I have found extremely useful, especially the information on PCEs and the method set forth – HAIETMOBA. However, there has been something bothering me about your position which I haven’t been able to put my finger on until now. There seems to be a war going on here between Spiritualists and Actualists. There’s never smoke without fire. VINEETO: For you to propose that a small group of practicing actualists are somehow conducting a war against spiritualists when all that is on offer here is a third alternative to being normal or being spiritual does seem to be somewhat missing the point. RESPONDENT: This is a time when I wish there was a delete button on the message board. It was a silly post of mine, and I regret it. VINEETO: I appreciate that you can see the silliness of your perception that ‘there seems to be a war going on here between Spiritualists and Actualists’. However, an emotional issue is not resolved by regretting having expressed it. The question I always asked myself in such situations is why am I bothered and upset or what is it that I am bothered and upset about by what others are doing or are not doing? I say this because I know from experience that unless you find the source of your being bothered, which is most probably an affective reaction to something actualists say, the cycle of feeling upset, expressing it and then regretting it is likely to continue. * RESPONDENT: In this actual Actual world, in its wondrous, and infinite subtlety, there is no need whatsoever to destroy/eradicate anything at all, including, may I add, the Evil Spiritualism. Everything, and I do mean everything, is seen to be perfect just as it is, including the Human Condition you so desperately want to be free of. VINEETO: Well, if everything is as ‘perfect just as it is, including the Human Condition’, then why are you subscribed to a mailing list that offers a way of becoming free of the human condition? Why do you even bother to write to this list complaining that there is ‘a war going on here between Spiritualists and Actualists’? For me, the human condition is not perfect at all, for me there is something utterly wrong with the way human beings have been arguing and fighting, killing and torturing, suffering and agonizing for millennia – that’s why I took up the offer to radically (at root) change the only person I can change. And the first thing I had to change was my being a loyal spiritual believer. RESPONDENT: Of course I don’t see things as being perfect as they are or I wouldn’t have subscribed to the list. VINEETO: You were very explicit when you said ‘everything, and I do mean everything, is seen to be perfect just as it is’ – and yet now you say ‘of course’ when you state that you ‘don’t see things as being perfect as they are’. I can relate to both your statements because in my spiritual years I was led to believe that the world is perfect as it is – ‘me’ included – but this belief was hard to sustain in the hurly burly of the market place. I have since come to appreciate that living according to one’s beliefs and being in the grip of one’s feelings is a fickle business – one is happy one day and sad the next, annoyed one minute and dissociated the next. What this see-sawing taught me was that whilst beliefs and feelings rule the roost sensible thoughts and considered actions rarely have a chance to surface. RESPONDENT: I realise the only place to look at is my own reaction/ interpretation of things/events – the world. VINEETO: If when you say ‘the only place to look at is my own reaction/interpretation of things/events’ means that you are examining your affective/ emotional/ instinctive responses then I can agree with you. I found that to effectively explore emotions to the point of eliminating them I had to experience them fully. Only by neither repressing, nor expressing, nor in any way rationally twisting the emotional experience could I meticulously observe, become fully aware of and sensibly contemplate on what is happening in my head, heart and guts and thus investigate the root cause of that particular emotion. Knowing that every emotion is part of the Human Condition relieved me from blaming myself or being resentful for having an emotion in the first place. In order to eliminate the particular emotion such that it would not return again and again, it was essential to explore it deeply at its core and to understand experientially how each emotion originated in my social identity and/or in my very sense of ‘being’. Once having seen the emotion in operation and understood its ramifications to their full extent there was no way I could feel the same way about a particular issue or situation – by having understood this specific piece of my identity it had been extinguished. Needless to say, this method has not the slightest thing to do with plain rationalization or spiritual dis-identification – proven by the very fact that it works, that it gets rid of the emotion permanently while increasingly allowing the sensual sensuousness and the pure delight of being alive. I know well the occasional reluctance to explore, yet the frustration of obviously going round in silly circles has always given me courage to stop wasting my time, to face the fear and reluctance and do whatever was necessary to return to being happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: I don’t agree with all that is said on the site, I stand by my right to question things, but I do agree that the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness/ unhappiness, VINEETO: Whereas my barometer as to whether I am on the right track to becoming actually free is my level of harmlessness, both in external actions and in internal feelings and thoughts – happiness then happens mostly on its own accord. RESPONDENT: [the only barometer to measure your experience is your own level of happiness /unhappiness] and ultimately the PCE experience. VINEETO: To me the memory of PCEs is the touchstone for the work that ‘I’ need to do and the guiding light on the wide and wondrous path. As long as I am an instinctual identity, a PCE happens serendipitously, once in a while and is not, as the word ‘barometer’ seems to suggest, an indicator and a reward for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour. My first RESPONDENT: That way, the fear that is the reliance on external authorities, becomes redundant. VINEETO: I am curious about your expression ‘the fear that is the reliance on external authorities’. I discovered that it is vital to make a distinction between my adverse and/or loyal feelings towards authorities and a reliance on the expertise of my fellow human beings, be it my computer repair man, software experts, my accountant, the doctors I visit, my optometrist, the car mechanic … or Richard who is an expert in how become free from the human condition. Nowadays I have no fears associated with relying on the expertise of others because I have investigated, understood and dissolved my emotional issues around authority. RESPONDENT: This site has taught me (whether that was the intention or not) that underneath all the confusion and problems, we are essentially safe and that there is really nothing to be scared of apart from our own interpretations. VINEETO: The main thing that makes life on this lush and magical planet unsafe is the genetically encoded instinctual programming that relentlessly drives human beings to feel aggrieved and to feel sad and the resultant ‘confusion and problems’ are certainly not the result of ‘interpretations’ – be they mine or anybody else’s. What was in my own hands, however, was the possibility to become virtually free of my own grievances and my own grieving. For instance when I succeeded in abandoning my spiritual beliefs I subsequently lost most of my fears regarding moral and ethical rewards and punishment, and the more I diminished my social and instinctual identity (not my ‘interpretations’ but the beliefs and feelings that made up my identity), the more I am now able to act and behave sensibly and intelligibly and as such safely. In other words – only ‘I’ feel fear, fear is not an actuality. RESPONDENT: I wish you all the best VINEETO: Thank you. The best that ever happened to me was that I came across
Richard and decided to learn how to become free from the human condition. Now life is almost always a breeze and a delight.
However, if you are inspired by ‘people describing their PCEs’ and you would like to live a ‘self’-less PCE 24 hours a day, everyday, then you will need to change. You will need to make being harmless and happy priority number one in your life – the very top of your laundry list. Being ‘reasonably happy’ can generally be achieved either by repressing one’s unwanted feelings, obeying the social-religious morals and ethics, or by detaching from one’s unwanted feelings, following the spiritual practice of dissociation. If you are interested in experiencing the dazzling splendour and peerless pristine excellence of the actual world then you would have to investigate why you would settle for feeling ‘reasonably happy’ – reasonably as in ‘moderately, modestly, cheaply, within one’s means, tolerably, passably, acceptable, average’. Oxford Thesaurus You are absolutely right. I did some introspection and found that I have achieved this ‘reasonable happiness’ by detaching myself from my unwanted feelings. I have done this by philosophizing actualism mixed with my earlier spiritual understandings. I realize now that when I say I am reasonably happy I am talking of a general state of not getting effected by feelings. I achieved this because of my philosophy that nothing really matters in this real world because in any case it is all illusion and also there is no afterlife. Isn’t it amazing how much one sincere introspection can reveal. You described the spiritual practice of detachment very precisely – ‘detaching myself from my unwanted feelings’. This practice is not actualism, because actualism is about feeling one’s feelings, becoming aware of one’s feelings and exploring the origin of one’s feelings with the aim of minimizing both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings ‘so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time’ – as Richard says below in a correspondence he had with you –
However when I try to bring my attention to this moment – I find that I am trying to avoid being here and now. The reason looks to be that I do not really enjoy being here. Instead I enjoy more comforting myself in the thought that I am somewhat better off than most other people as I don’t get affected easily by feelings. Yes, the avoidance of being here and now is the very purpose of practicing detachment and aloofness – spiritual people do not want to be here which is why they practice going ‘inside’. And it is an honest admission to say that you clearly recognize the cultivation of feelings of superiority over others that are an essential ingredient of all religious faith and spiritual practice. It is a great step towards regarding other people as what they are, fellow human beings.
To Gary: I can very well relate to what you describe as ‘a deep and abiding terror of extinction’. The trick that often helps me turn this terror into excitement is to remember that ‘I’ have a voluntary mission which is far more dignifying that ‘my’ survival – ‘I’ am to bring about peace-on-earth by vacating the throne, permanently. And although sometimes I feel as though I am only inching my way closer to ‘my’ destiny, I do recognize that I am making progress. I only need to look back at how I used to experience life a few years back to know this is a fact. Facing the reality of my own demise has been one of my favourite obsessions in the past. I am somewhat confused as to what you mean by ‘facing the reality of my own demise … in the past’ – are you referring to the demise of the ego that leaves the soul intact, as taught in each and every branch of Eastern mysticism, or are you referring to facing physical death? Or are you talking about the recent past since taking up actualism – your contemplations about your own demise of your identity in toto, both ego and soul, something that is entirely new to human history? I’ve always known that in that conundrum lies a very important bit of knowledge, but I usually got stuck in an existential quagmire. The most important bit of knowledge that I have gleaned from contemplating the demise of my ‘self’ has been, and still is, the purity of my intent as an actualist. Contemplating death or ‘self’-immolation is not something that in itself brings me closer to becoming actually free of malice and sorrow but it certainly gives me a gauge measure to check if I am becoming comfortably numb, settling for second best or hiding in fear. I found that the best strategy is to check out my intent and then get on with the business of being happy and harmless instead of, for instance, being frightened at the thought of ‘my’ demise. It’s useful to remember that every feeling I indulge in, for whatever ‘noble’ reason, is only going to feed my identity instead of diminishing it. I have spent many years exploring therapy groups and spiritual feeling states and it was quite a challenge to slowly wake up to the fact that feeling is not identical to actuality – in fact, feeling has nothing to do with actuality. In the past I might have felt harmless but was nevertheless quite harmful in that my ‘self’-centredness inevitably caused ripples in other peoples lives. I found that while I might have felt that I valued peace, I still instinctively acted in attack and defence mode. While I might have felt that I was willing to sacrifice my ego for a higher cause, I was actually cultivating humbleness as a means of soul-istic ‘self’-aggrandizement, and so forth. Through the rigorous and persistent process of actualism, I slowly learnt to extend my attention beyond what I thought and felt, i.e. my ideals and passions, so as to become aware of the tangible effects that my thoughts, feelings and actions had on the people around me. I discovered more and more that feeling myself to be harmless and actually being harmless were two completely different things. This process of distinguishing between feeling and actuality is the key to actually becoming happy and harmless compared to merely feeling happy and harmless. I’m saying this because contemplating my demise has been one of my favourite topics since discovering actualism and only lately have I discovered that, while such contemplations can serve to fuel my intent, they don’t bring me closer to the actuality of being free, simply because I am contemplating about a time that is not now. Which reminds me that Richard always maintained that one cannot think one’s way to freedom nor feel one’s way to freedom – something that I have persistently tried to do. It’s great that there aren’t any rights and wrongs in actualism – given the pure intent to be free of malice and sorrow all explorations are useful explorations. Today, while showering, the subject popped into my head for the first time in some while, and I was keenly aware that it was the identity that was clinging to that fear, and that this flesh-and-blood shall simply fade away, no fuss, no muss. When you observe this experience a bit longer you will discover that ‘you’ as an identity are identical to that fear, they are in fact one and the same. ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’. And when fear leaves the stage for a moment, the identity is nowhere to be found and vice versa. Then there is peace.
My partner and I then entered into some very good dialog about the fundamental nature of our relationship, which engendered some warmth, a distinct relief after the pain of the episode. While this fostered some good feelings, I had a nagging suspicion that I was merely sliding back into the same old same old, though this time with ‘good’ feelings. Vineeto’s post arrived and really hit home:
and then goes on to coincidentally mirror my own recent discovery about the separateness of the two of us:
Just to reiterate something that is essential for an actualist to keep in mind during his or her explorations – the aim and process of actualism is not to suppress feelings and emotions but to become aware of them in order to explore them deeply and exhaustively. The automatic reaction is to wheedle one’s way out of feeling the bad feelings – those that are considered bad and immoral or wrong and unethical – and consequently the essential first step is to be aware of one’s habit of suppressing, avoiding, withdrawing or denying them in order to feel superior, stay cool, be strong, rational or logical. In order for the actualism process to work it is crucial to first get in touch with one’s feelings because if I want to find out about ‘me’ I can’t afford to only investigate the ‘better’ half of my surfacing emotions and ignore, repress or deny the dark side. To allow oneself to experience whatever feeling is happening often needs some investigation into what Peter recently termed the ‘Guardians at the Gate’ – the moral judgements and ethical evaluations that trigger feelings such as guilt, shame, defiance or righteousness whenever one starts to become aware of one’s dark side and feel one’s dark feelings. And of course neither is there the need to express your feelings or wallow in them in order to become aware of them – after all the most important thing for an actualist is to be happy and harmless. As soon as possible get back to feeling good about being here or feeling excellent about being alive. Then you can put your feet up and spend some time contemplating on what it was that triggered you to stop feeling happy or being harmless. You will then find that it is vital to drop that part of your social identity that is causing you to be unhappy, sad, resentful, annoyed, frustrated, jealous, and so on, if you want to really want to be happy and harmless.
VINEETO: You wrote something to Gary the other day that seems to be a misinterpretation of what I wrote, so I couldn’t resist ‘butting in’. The misinterpretation is in the second part of this post but I am making a general comment at the start.
RESPONDENT: I realize that ‘nipping it in the bud’ could be interpreted as either suppression, or as you say
The latter is what I intended, and your description jibes with that. As an example, the other day I had an angry moment, and I popped off at someone in an inappropriate (aka violate common consideration for others) manner. The moment swept me along, so there was little I could do to ‘nip it in the bud’, but the following feelings of embarrassment and shame I was able to ‘nip in the bud’. They arose, I recognized them, then got back to being H&H. VINEETO: In the process of becoming happy and harmless, my main focus was on becoming harmless, i.e. ceasing being aggressive or angry towards others. In this case investigating my feelings means that I examine what triggered my eruption of anger, what caused me to up my defences, what is it that I am being defensive about and what part of my identity felt threatened and therefore caused me to react aggressively. Once I am able to isolate the issue in question, then the next step is to clearly look at all aspects of this particular area of identity, be it an authority issue, a gender identification, professional pride, a certain belief or worldview or any other cause that made me react in an aggressive or inconsiderate manner. The difference between maintaining a social or spiritual moral code in order to keep a lid on outbursts of anger and the process of actualism is that in actualism I am changing my behaviour by incrementally removing the very triggers for feeling irritated, annoyed, resentful, threatened or aggressive. To achieve this, I not only have to ‘recognize’ the arising feeling as a feeling, but I have to search for and identify the part of my identity associated with the feeling – ‘me’ as a woman, ‘me’ as a national identity, ‘me’ in my professional or work role, ‘me’ as a partner or family member, ‘me’ as a social identity with a particular philosophy, culture, religion or worldview, etc, etc. Unless I recognize, examine and finally incapacitate the part of my identity who feels offended and therefore responds offensively either covertly or overtly, there will inevitably be a similar harmful response in the next similar situation. As for ‘feelings of embarrassment and shame’ – those feelings quickly became redundant as I incrementally succeeded in ridding myself of malice and sorrow. As an actualist, I set my sights higher than merely keeping the lid on my instinctual aggression by living by the rights and wrongs of some moral or ethical code. Actualism is about becoming free of malice and sorrow via a process aimed at ‘self-immolation – it is not about controlling one’s malice and sorrow via a process aimed at ‘self’-perpetuation. The process you seem to be describing as ‘they arose, I recognized them, then got back to being H&H’ has a striking resemblance to the method of Vipassana. This Buddhist ‘watching practice’ is based on the understanding that ‘who’ you really are is your ‘consciousness’, ie. a disembodied, desensitized ‘watcher’, dissociated from unwanted emotions and thoughts In Vipassana, ‘watched’ anger eventually passes away, not because you understand its underlying reason and origin but because you become the watcher and distance yourself from your anger and merely watch it run its course. In the same way you can distance yourself from any feeling or emotion without ever having to investigate the substance of your ‘self’ – it’s instinctual core. To really face the fact that anger is ‘you’ in action, and that ‘you’ are the only cause and reason of anger arising, is the first and essential step to doing something practical about bringing an end to this emotion instead of merely witnessing it and waiting for it to pass away. Actualism is not a method of passively monitoring, watching or observing one’s feelings – actualism is a method of actively investigating the origin of those feelings and thus rocking the very core of one’s identity. RESPONDENT: So, ‘nip it in the bud’ doesn’t imply suppression, just an acquired skill in processing the emotions as they arise. As Vineeto discussed in another thread, it’s not necessary, or even useful to pump this through the grist mill every time, just recognize it as another manifestation of a fairly well understood response. Of course, there needs to be a check on this process to ensure that this categorization is not self-deception, a red herring. VINEETO: I take it that the thread you are referring to is from my recent post to Gary –
When I said ‘after sufficient exploration into the human condition’ I was referring to several years of actively dismantling and intensely exploring all aspects of my identity – an identity that was clearly seen and recognized in numerous ‘self’-less pure consciousness experiences as being an all-pervading yet non-actual ‘presence’. Such pure consciousness experiences are vital to the intent to investigate one’s identity because only in a PCE can I see, by the very comparison of ‘my’ absence, what havoc ‘I’ am continuously causing by ‘my’ very presence and what confusion, diversion and cunning ploys ‘I’ am inventing in order to stay in existence. The comparison of a PCE to ‘my’ normal life as an identity within the human condition also gives me the confidence that when I am ‘nipping feelings in the bud’ I am not repressing, ignoring or side-lining a ‘precious’ part of my identity. I remember you said that you no longer subscribe to spiritual practices but given that
spiritual values and practices pervade human society like odourless vapour, an investigation of potential hangovers might still be
of use. In case you are interested, some years ago there were several discussions on The Actual Freedom Trust mailing list about
the topic of Vipassana in distinction to actualism –
Recently I noticed the discussions on importance of labelling the feelings as one finds them inside oneself in response to the actualism question. I often face problem in this because I think I am not able to find the right word to label the feeling. Sometimes the feeling is too complicated to be labelled as a single word/phrase. I was wondering if it would be helpful if you publish a list of labels, which you used to label your feeling during the course of your discovery. Then this list can be continuously enhanced by other actualist as they find more labels. I suggest the page The link you provided is a good start though I was looking for a list of more subtle feelings. I guess I will have to prepare my own list as No 35 has suggested. There is another list that Richard provides about the components of malice For me, while it is easy (comparatively) to label and handle obvious feelings like anger, malice, compassion, hope, I find it more difficult to label not-so-apparent feelings. These feelings create a neither-happy-nor-sad kind of state. I remember you talked of dullness in one of your mails. But I find that this dullness or boredom is not the same every time it happens and it happens very frequently. Yes, I can remember times of a ‘neither-happy-nor-sad kind of state’ and I
recall talking to Alan about dullness and stuckness ( I found dullness and boredom one of the most common reactions to being alive when things weren’t going ‘my’ way – and they rarely ever did or that life wasn’t exciting, which it rarely was. In the process of actualism I recognized, however, that my habitual resentment towards the various facts of life, for instance having to work for a living, bad weather, getting sick, etc, clearly prevented me from becoming happy and harmless. I discovered I could either indulge in ‘my’ resentment or pull myself up by my boot strings and break this insidious habit. As No 3 pointed out, it was indeed a matter of priority – and I chose sensuous attentiveness over ‘self’-indulgent apathy, happiness over resentment. The other kind of dullness or stuckness I would describe as an ostrich-behaviour – the result of my fear to investigate the particular belief or behaviour pattern that was under scrutiny at the time. Eventually such periods of procrastination grew shorter as I more and more stubbornly refused to spoil this unique present moment of being alive by not investigating the issue at hand. And indeed each issue investigated, each belief discarded resulted in lifting an
emotional weight off my shoulders and as a direct consequence, life has become easy and enjoyable. You could also say that
‘I’, the complainer, the controller, the moaner and groaner has all but left the stage.
RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. *
RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. (...) * RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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’. RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. * VINEETO: 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. RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. * VINEETO: If you want to ‘make progress’ then you need to make the same progress ‘toward eliminating the ‘me’ that is causing’ the greed. RESPONDENT: Yes, I see that greed needs to be eliminated also. VINEETO: 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. * VINEETO: 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. RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. * RESPONDENT: 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’). VINEETO: We’ve been at this point before. If I may remind you of the discussion in question –
RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. *
RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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’. *
RESPONDENT: Yes, this is understandable. The other passions must be investigated also but I still say that fear is the most dominant. VINEETO: 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. (...) * RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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. * VINEETO: 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’? RESPONDENT: 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. VINEETO: 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.
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