The fact that actualism has no systematic ‘method’ of inquiry has always been quite clear to me, so this is no new issue for me. At some point I realized that RVP either can’t or won’t have any helpful feedback for such a question so I just quite asking questions about improving the Swiss knife ‘method’ of actualism. I have no doubts about the awesomeness of living a PCE, because I’ve had a PCE. It’s actualizing that as an ongoing experience that is the ‘problem’. I can respect that it’s up to me and me alone to come up with the questions to uncover the beliefs that cause my unhappiness.

The reason why the actualism method has no ‘systematic method of inquiry’ is simply that as one inquires into one’s beliefs (beliefs being feeling-backed thoughts), the resultant feelings when they happen are usually all over the place as you probably know from experience.

The only method I systematically apply, and ever needed to apply, is to keep asking whether I want to hold onto the particular feelings that come with being a believer or whether ‘I’ could afford to drop the belief in question in exchange for being more happy and convivial. This dropping of a particular belief sometimes happened quite quickly but more often, especially at the beginning, it took several rounds of repeating cycles of emotions such as doubt, fear, resentment, anger, hope back to doubt, fear, resentment, anger, hope, and so on. What was always needed was to clearly see ‘me’ in action, with the concurrent willingness to put an end to my present ‘self’-created misery.

And how did you find all those beliefs w/o a ‘method’ of inquiry (i.e. specific questions)?

And yet I had a method of inquiry – the questions that followed the method of attentiveness were merely common sense, the application of sensual observation combined with the experience of what works and what doesn’t work in regard to my aim. I started with the aim of living with Peter in unconditional peace and harmony (which soon expanded to being unconditionally happy and harmless) and applied the method of being attentive to this moment of being alive.

Putting this attentiveness into a list my line of questioning would look something like this – with the proviso that when I notice that I am feeling hurt or peevish or irritated the first thing to do is to get back to feeling good –

• If I notice that am not happy, or harmless, now, I ask what is it that prevents this happiness from occurring?

• Ah, he or she said ‘this’ – it felt like a hit under the belt to me … and it did not matter if it was intended or unintended and mostly it was unintended anyway as the other can never know exactly what beliefs and opinions I hold dear.

• I knew that the very fact that it struck meant there was very often a cherished belief being challenged, or at least not confirmed.

• I also knew that I could only be happy (and stop being annoyed at the person who said ‘this’) if I replaced the belief in question with facts and given my intent to do so the next line of action became obvious.

• Then I made note of the inquiry in question in order to be sure to come back to it as soon as the circumstances allowed.

• And then I looked at the belief in question, where, when and how I acquired it, why it is so dear to ‘me’, why and in what aspect it is non-factual, what are the facts on this topic, and so on.

• Often I discovered another layer of belief/ conditioning underneath the first belief which needed further probing into my psyche.

• Sometimes the inquiry itself triggered a bare instinctual passion, usually plain fear and I had to first get back to feeling good before I could proceed.

Yet all in all this whole process of feeling the feeling, finding the underlying belief, identifying the aspect of identity involved, understanding this part of the human condition as common to all and abandoning the whole lot was so fascinating, rewarding and thrilling that it took on its own momentum which was then speeded up by success.

In a relatively short time I could see tangible results in that I was less prone to feeling hurt, there were less and less issues I felt hurt or angry about and life became more and more a cruise rather than an uphill journey, which I might add was only possible because my aim was unwaveringly clear (after my first PCE) and I was determined, come what may, to be scrupulously honest to my aim and with myself.

Along with abandoning beliefs and the related fickle good and bad emotions I also made some practical changes in my life so as to have more free time (in exchange for having less goods, less social status) and less social engagements.

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Personally, I don’t think it needs to be this hard though.

No, it doesn’t need to be hard but ‘I’ tend to make it hard for various reasons. One reason for this hardship I discovered was that I believed life has to be hard because I have to earn, and justify, my right to exist and I believed that if I didn’t play my part I would be a useless fool. Another reason I discovered was that I was taught to be responsible and to look after those less fortunate in order to balance the injustice happening in the world – a moral injunction based upon the notion of scoring brownie points with the Big Judge in the sky. Another reason was that if I made it really hard for myself then the later victory over myself would be all the more glorious. Another reason was that everyone around me insisted by word and deed that it is heartless to have too much fun and to abandon carrying the burden of humanity.

There were many more of society’s beliefs, morals and ethics that I encountered on the way to becoming virtually free but these might convey the tricks ‘I’ am up to in order to stay strong and on stage.

They were instructive.

One thing I found useful to keep in mind – when things looked difficult and complicated and I felt I could not find my way out of the maze of my emotions and beliefs it was usually the thing that I least wanted to do or have happen that lead to the exit of the maze. In other words, ‘I’ had set the parameters and thus made the situation apparently complicated and seemingly insoluble by desperately wanting to hang onto one particular aspect of ‘me’.

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Maybe ‘actualism’ worked so well for RVP cause there all very simple folks. What about us complex city folks? I still think a keen psychologist/ actualist could write a brilliant manual contain ‘how to’ investigate one’s beliefs, how to minimize emotions through attentiveness, etc.

(…) When I began to apply the actualism method I soon found out that all of my seemingly complex problems had a very simple solution, so simple that I first had to abandon bucket-loads of complexity and rediscover naiveté in order to even see the simple solution that was right under my nose – the challenge always being, did I dare to do the obvious and immediate thing I needed to do in order to be more happy and more harmless.

I am fighting this ‘simplicity’

Yep, and yet this simplicity itself might just be the possible exit from hard work and complexity, don’t you think?

Are these predictions due to one or more of the ‘cognitive distortions’ you posted only 32 minutes after the above post?

Of course they are cognitive distortions. They were somewhat ‘tongue in cheek as well’.

Personally I found it essential to take all of my feelings seriously enough to investigate them, specially at the beginning of practicing actualism, particularly in situations where my feelings caused me to imagine about other people’s feelings, thoughts or intentions.

To give you another possibly useful hint – for me the actualism method has been the tool to go backwards – to the origin of a feeling, an imagination, an invention, an accusation, a belief – until I arrived at the original source from where the feeling/ belief was generated and that’s where the switch is located to turn the feeling/ belief off. In fact, as Richard pointed out in his recent post to you, seeing that it is a belief is already the end of it.

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If so, the question I used to asked myself was something like: what is the common theme behind those ‘cognitive distortions’ and what is the dominant feeling generating this onset of negative projections in the first place – in other words, bring the investigation right to where it really needs to happen in order to be fruitful.

Ok, that is a sensible question. I guess I’d like to see more practical examples of ‘investigation’.

Ok, would it be a suitable practical example to apply the same sensible question to yourself in this particular situation?

What I would ask myself in a similar situation (after having returned to feeling good) was what was the dominant feeling behind my ‘cognitive distortions’ that made my world appear so complicated and/or so hostile? Once I found the dominating feeling that generated the belief, the belief disappeared and the feeling looked just silly.

When an emotion has been fully investigated and there is nothing new to be learned from it, what can be done about it? I don’t think I really understand the difference between nipping it in the bud and repressing it. Many emotions recur automatically unless I take action to either dismiss them or redirect my attention elsewhere. I am not comfortable with this because it seems akin to repression, but I don’t know any other way to dispense with the feelings. Any tips would be appreciated.

In my experience with the actualism method, I didn’t nip many emotions in the bud until I was certain that the whole issue that brought on the emotion had been examined and clearly understood.

By neither repressing nor expressing an emotion I have opportunity to ask some investigative questions, either in the situation, if I am not too upset, or some time afterwards when the worst of the storm has passed. My questions go something like this – what brought on the emotional reaction, what is the underlying cause, what is the reoccurring theme, what is the belief behind it, what is it I particularly hold dear that caused my getting upset, what part of my identity feels insulted, threatened, annoyed, etc., what action do I possibly need to take in order to prevent a reoccurring of my upset, and finally, what part of ‘me’ do I need to let go of in order to permanently become free from this particular emotional reaction?

Some emotional reactions I could easily dismiss as being plain silly such as complaints about the weather, about obstacles in the traffic, about people being late, and so on. These situations merely needed a change of attitude, some attentiveness to stop the old habit and then the emotion would not occur again by my sheer determination not to let such trivia bug me. For those issues that needed no further inquiry, nipping any upcoming emotional reaction in the bud was the perfect and only sensible solution.

Other issues took more inquisitiveness, attentiveness, guts and intent to look at the uncomfortable dark side of ‘me’ in order to get to the bottom of reoccurring emotional reactions. For instance, when I first met Peter I had a lot of male-female issues that caused me to get upset which could only be resolved by me finding out the facts of the matter and then letting go of my various idea, opinions, beliefs and feelings around being a woman, i.e. my social identity of being a woman.

Another area that needed extensive exploration had to do with my feelings of love and loyalty for my former spiritual teacher. I began to inch my way into slowly questioning the sensibility of being loyal in the face of blatant contradictions between his teachings and his behaviour and his promises and the actual outcome of practicing his teachings, but for a while each time someone else said something against him I flared up, so much so that for the first 3 months Peter and I agreed to not talk about ‘the war’. It was clear for me that this could only be a temporary measure and I steadily proceeded with finding out the facts of the matter despite my reoccurring feelings of fear, doubt, suspicion, defensiveness, treachery and abandonment that this course of action could sometimes create. Those feelings only permanently disappeared when I managed to irrevocably let go of my identity of being a follower, a member of the clan, a worshipper and lover of a Godman, a New-Age goody-two-shoes and a spiritual seeker and believer.

From those two examples you can see that the actualism method is not a superficial tool to make bad feeling go away – it is, when used correctly, a powerful instrument for radical, i.e. eradicating, change. It’s my identity I willingly let go of when I apply attentiveness and understanding and as a consequence the feelings that were produced and maintained by the respective parts of my identity also disappear.

As an analogy, you could say that the good and bad feelings are only the tip of the iceberg, the tangible aspect of one’s identity. As such, when I pay increasing attention as to how I experience this moment of being alive, increasing parts of the iceberg, ‘me’, come to the surface – and this is a necessary process if one is to bring one’s ‘self’ to the light for progressive dissolution.

I have found that the question ‘Why does this moment suck?’ works much better for me than the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This might sound silly, might be silly in fact, but that’s the way it is. For me, ‘Why does this moment suck?’ works better because:

(1) If the moment doesn’t suck, the question is harmless and absurd, and it might even enhance one’s enjoyment of the fact that this moment is a really good one.

(2) If the moment does suck (and there’s a strong chance that it will), I find the question slightly less irritating than ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ because (a) it somehow makes one feel less guilty and useless for not feeling so good; and (b) it immediately puts the focus on identifying and dispensing with the cause of the imperfection.

(3) It somehow makes whatever is spoiling this moment seem less daunting to overcome.

Asking such a question implies that it is this moment which sucks and that one only needs to change the circumstances of this moment in order to enjoy it.

Yes, I can see that it could be construed that way, and that would indeed convey the wrong impression.

I did not construe anything, I took what you were saying at face value. The question ‘why does this moment suck?’ has ‘this moment’ as its subject and ‘suck’ as its verb which by simple grammatical rules conveys that this moment sucks and ‘why’ questions the reason.

Implicit in the asking of ‘How does this moment suck?’ or ‘Why does this moment suck?’ is a constant awareness that, if something is wrong with this moment, it’s because of ‘me’; something ‘I’ am doing / thinking / feeling / imagining is spoiling what would otherwise be a perfect moment.

From what you are now saying it appears that an explicit translation of your question would read something like this – ‘What is it that ‘‘I’ am doing / thinking / feeling / imagining’ which makes me experience this moment as sucking?’

However, despite your assertion that this question ‘immediately puts the focus on identifying and dispensing with the cause of the imperfection’ (2b above), you have since identified the cause of why the moment sucks in your post to No 37 – that, whatever the situation, the moment sucks ‘in the sense that an Olympic silver medal ‘sucks’’. In other words, whatever you do ‘dispensing with the cause of the imperfection’ the moment still sucks as long as you are not actually free.

Personally I don’t see how your question ‘why does this moment suck’ in combination with your assertion that it will suck as long as you are not actually free can ever facilitate a gradual diminishing of your resentment of being here and a gradual increase in your enjoyment of being alive.

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Secondly, to ask ‘why does this moment suck?’ leaves out the crucial aspect of the actualism method, which is not only to become happier about being here but also to become harmless as well. As an example, I remember in the past whenever I expressed my hostility or irritation, I never experienced that the moment sucked but I was awash with feelings of liberation and relief, albeit temporarily –however my feelings of liberation and relief were always had at the expense of another person’s wellbeing.

Your point that harmlessness is just as important a part of actualism as happiness is not going to be disputed here.

I know what you mean about feelings of liberation and relief, and I would include those under the very wide umbrella of moments which ‘suck’. Basically, if it’s not a PCE, it ‘sucks’ in some sense, no?

My experience of life in virtual freedom is quite different. After I had practiced the actualism method for a few months, making being happy and harmless the most important thing in my life, I noticed that my basic resentment at having to be here – typified by the phrase ‘this moment sucks’ – began to disappear and I increasingly began to enjoy being here, which in turn encouraged me to run the actualism question more regularly and more precisely until it became a wordless constant state of attentiveness.

Nowadays I have excellent days every day and hardly ever experience moments that are spoiled by contrary emotions and feelings. If I labelled such excellence as ‘sucking’ because I am not yet actually free it would be a gross misrepresentation of how I experience being alive and not only would it be counterproductive to my own happiness but I would invariably burden others with my feelings of resentment and frustration. Life does not suck at all, life is quite wonderful as it is and being virtually free from malice and sorrow by far exceeds any expectations I ever had and being virtually free from malice and sorrow is certainly far, far better than being normal or being in love or having a spiritual, an out-of-this-world mystical or a paranormal experience.

In my experience, to label feeling excellent, joyous, exuberant and happy as ‘it sucks in some sense’ does nothing to encourage felicitous feelings, on the contrary, it denigrates the experience of being alive to the point where becoming happy and harmless isn’t possible.

That’s the way I’m looking at it. Anything less than a PCE contains an imperfection (however slight) that can be investigated.

(An advantage I find in ‘how does this moment suck?’ is that I’m less likely to settle for second best; that is, I’m less likely to drift into the inadvertent use of the question as a ‘mantra’, inducing a ‘comfortably numb’ state, which others have commented on before).

Whenever I found myself using the actualism question as a repetitious mantra I knew I wasn’t interested in finding out the answer to the question of how I am experience life right now. Realizing that, I then concentrated on finding out what prevented me from being interested in exploring how I experienced this moment of being alive and thus I was straight back into investigating how ‘I’ ticked. If you want to avoid settling for second then the best way is not change the question but answer it.

I tend to look upon harmlessness as an inevitable side-effect of ‘self’-free happiness.

It is, in fact the other way round – the intent to be harmless and to live in peace with one’s fellow human beings is the only way to crack the intrinsic instinctual selfishness of the human condition.

In the absence of ‘me’, there is an intrinsic benevolence here. It can’t be simulated by moral strictures; the only thing that is going to bring it about is the demise of ‘me’;

Yes, in a PCE, in the absence of ‘me’ one experiences the benevolence that is intrinsic to the actual world. However, when the PCE fades, then the real job begins for an actualist which is to actualize one’s insights gained in a PCE and do the nitty-gritty business of uncovering, understanding and putting a stop to the multitudinous cunning ploys that ‘I’ invariably produce spoiling the already existing perfection.

… and in the interim, the pure intent to facilitate same is the only workable substitute.

Pure intent is not an interim ‘workable substitute’ – it is in fact the very means to bring about ‘the demise of ‘me’’.

And when even that is insufficient: neither express nor repress, but study it, make a note of the circumstances in which it arose, figure out which aspect of ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ is involved, understand how silly it is to let such a thing spoil this perfect moment, and try not to fall for it again. Correct?

When you say ‘when even that is insufficient’ I am reminded of the note that one manufacturer prints on the lid of paint cans – ‘If all else fails read the instructions’. When I came across actualism ‘all else’ had failed and because I was interested in becoming free of the human condition, I decided that the best, easiest and only way to do so was to do what Richard had done to become free of the human condition – i.e. I followed the instructions and they worked wonders.

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The actualism question is designed to bring to light all of one’s beliefs, feelings and attitudes that stand in the way of being both harmless and happy – thereby avoiding the usual pitfalls and limitations inherent in other methods of self-investigation.

(4) ‘... this moment of being alive’ has always had a slightly sanctimonious air about it, to me. I’m sure it didn’t have that tone for Richard, but it does for me.

It is one of the traits of the human condition to instantaneously and automatically attempt to change the circumstances that cause feelings of annoyance or irritation rather than concentrate on changing ‘me’ and investigate why one feels annoyed or irritated – which is what the actualism method is all about.

Yes. As mentioned above, the ‘How/Why does this moment suck?’ is aimed squarely at ‘me’. Nowhere else but ‘me’.

And when you don’t experience this moment as sucking, then asking how you are experiencing this moment of being alive also acts to remind you to appreciate the sense of wellbeing that comes from feeling good about being here and it can even provoke one into daring to feel excellent about being here.

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If you stick with the original question of the actualism method – a method that made one person actually free and several others virtually free from the human condition – then you have the opportunity of uncovering whatever the religious/spiritual/philosophical conditioning is that causes you to feel that the simple descriptive expression of ‘this moment of being alive’ has ‘a slightly sanctimonious air’.

With the usual actualist disclaimer … it is only a suggestion, though.

Ha! I can explain this better now. ‘Sanctimonious’ was the wrong word. The ‘problem’ is that I tend to hear the words ‘this moment of being alive’ as if they’re spoken (whispered seductively, even) by the corny romantic lead in a Harold Robbins novel, or maybe Gone With The Wind ;-)

You are certainly not alone in having an aversion to practicing actualism – there have been many people who have come up with their own particular version of the simple straightforward question that has no other purpose than to focus one’s attentiveness on what is really going on ‘under the bonnet’ as it were.

Which is, of course, rather silly.

In my experience with actualism, when I understand that something is really, really silly, then sincerity and integrity demand of me that I stop falling into the trap of feeling this way again, that I stop believing something to be true despite facts to the contrary, that I stop indulging in the instinctual passions when I know the harm it does to me and others, and so on.

In short, when I understand something to be really silly, I change.

I enjoyed your report of your experience with actualism you wrote to No 38. One part of it I could particularly relate to –

Yes, in the sense that my ‘search’ for truth has ended – and that is quite a relief. Also, my ‘relationships’ and dealings with people are virtually free of emotional entanglement, so they are much, much smoother.

So, I cannot definitively say that I am happier overall.

If I understand you correctly, I can relate to your observation that ‘‘I’ resent being here, and ‘I’ know it’.

When I discovered actualism and came to understand that the instinctual passions are the root cause of all human malice and sorrow I started to deliberately break my ingrained habits of dis-identifying and dissociating from my feelings and emotions – habits which had been part of my previous spiritual practice. I also began to watch television and read the newspapers to see what was going on in the world and to take notice of how I was in relation to other people. It wasn’t easy at the start because what I found was often not very pretty. When I took off my rose-colored glasses of dis-identification and dissociation I was at first overwhelmed with sorrow about the way people are with each other and, more importantly, I was shocked and appalled at the dark emotions I found within myself despite all my diligent spiritual practice and all my good intentions. In short, I discovered that I was as bad and as mad as everyone else, to paraphrase Peter’s description.

One of the first of my previously-hidden feelings I became aware of was ‘my’ resentment of being here and the constant effort required to be ‘me’ and yet I was determined and committed to not let these negative emotions slip away into the background again, but I wanted to actively investigate these feelings, look for the reasons for my resentment, consider and apply any practical changes if possible and where necessary, break my habit of carelessly lapsing back into these feelings – in short do whatever was needed to break the back of this insidious spoiler of my enjoyment of this moment. I found that the commitment to enjoy this perpetual moment of being alive was already half the battle and stubborn determination to not let fear, confusion or doubt stop me, the other half.

The practical and efficient tool – the actualism method – allowed me to not only become aware of my dark emotions but to examine them and incrementally disempower them, or, to put it differently, a tool that enabled me to become increasingly more happy and more harmless the more I uncovered the beliefs, morals, ethics, feelings and passions that prevented me from being happy and harmless. This tool, combined with Richard’s report of successfully applying it, meant that I increasingly dared to stop turning away from the dark side of the human condition, and to explore the darker recesses of my psyche in order that I could investigate the instinctual passions and then do whatever was necessary and appropriate in order to disempower them.

The fact that my ‘search’ has ended and dealings with people have improved is clearly attributable to actualism.

There have been a lot of misunderstandings about the phrase ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive.’ I’ve tried to focus on ‘what’ I am experiencing – a sort of passive awareness, ‘what’ I am sensing – passive awareness – ‘what’ I am feeling – passive awareness – and other variations on the ‘what’ theme. It is only with the recent distinction between ‘what’ and ‘how’ that I see the question is specifically designed to be a simple test of the quality of experience in whatever form. ‘How’ is the important part in that it puts attention on the quality of experience – the emotions and feelings underlying thoughts so that one understands them experientially with attentiveness, not intellectually.

Ah, how simply you said it!

‘How’, not ‘what’ is indeed the clue to the difference between attentiveness with pure intent and the passive awareness of Eastern tradition. It had never occurred to me that it is this word that signifies the vital difference, but now that you said it is perfectly obvious – ‘how’ inquires into the quality of the experience and then the pure intent to improve the quality of this moment to be both more happy and more harmless indicates what needs to be done. Whereas ‘what’ simply takes stock of the content of one’s experience and by doing so one can either focus on sensate experiencing, thereby avoiding undesirable affective experiencing – trying to become an un-feeling ‘self’ – or one can focus on desirable affective experiencing, thereby regarding what one sensately experiences as being secondary or even illusionary – trying to become a non-thinking, dissociated ‘self’.

If you have no interest in finding out how you are experiencing this moment of being alive, then of course this question has no meaning to you.

This HAIETMOBA is nothing new, is just a new name of passive awareness. A new name just to give the impression that something new is discovered. That’s all.

Asking oneself sincerely, each moment again ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ with the intent to become free of malice and sorrow is anything but passive. First of all you deliberately and actively take the decision to make being happy and harmless the most important thing in your life. This decision is integral to the method of actualism – in other words if you don’t want to become unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless then you ain’t practicing actualism.

This is the method of actualism broken down in small steps –

1. You actively inquire as to how you are experiencing this moment, looking for an honest answer.

2. If you discover that are you are either not happy or not harmless at this moment you then actively inquire as to why this is so until you find what event triggered you to cease being happy and harmless this time around.

3. Then you do whatever is necessary in order to get back to being happy and harmless by allowing yourself to recognize the silliness of having such an incident (no matter what) take away your enjoyment of this only moment of being alive or to cause you to feel acrimonious towards a fellow human being.

4. If you find that the same trigger-events keep preventing you from being happy and harmless, you then actively inquire into the specific reason for your own current feeling of misery and/or acrimony, which is more often than not a particular moral or ethical conviction you hold to as being good or right, a firmly held borrowed wisdom or spiritual belief you hold to be a truth, an emotional reaction to something that went against ‘your’ idea as to how things should be, or some other aspect of your social conditioning. If the reaction is much more of a deep-down gut reaction, then you inquire what particular instinctual passions you were experiencing at that moment or you are experiencing in this moment?

5. When you find which particular aspect of your social conditioning has caused you to stop being happy and harmless you do whatever is necessary in order to erase, change, eliminate, eradicate this aspect of ‘you’ in order to not have it again interfere with your being happy and harmless.

This is how one begins to become free from one’s social conditioning, one’s morals and ethics in order to be able to experience and be able to observe the bare instinctual passions but this alone will increase the enjoyment and appreciation of being alive immensely. Becoming free from one’s social conditioning is the necessary preliminary step before one begins to explore the animal instinctual survival passions.

However, as long as you are firmly convinced, despite reading the posts from the AF mailing list for almost 2 years, that ‘HAIETMOBA is nothing new’ then nothing I have said so far and nothing I will say in future will be of use to you.

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. Bob 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 –

Richard appears to have rewired his brain internally (and on the evidence I think that is true), so how do we know that it wasn’t simply rewired to experience the universe as timeless and infinite? Peter, Vineeto and others are attempting the same physical rewiring (not achieved yet... virtual freedom vs. actual freedom) by emulation of that programming... whether they or anyone else can ever accomplish the hard-wiring remains to be seen.

I am certainly not attempting an ‘emulation of that programming’. Actual Freedom is not about emulating a programming – it is about becoming free from one’s social programming and from the invidious effects of blind nature’s instinctual programming. With the actualism method I remove my default setting, the normal and spiritual programming of the human condition – I do not replace it with another programming. When the identity is removed – as experienced in a pure consciousness experience – the actual becomes apparent only because there is no programming interfering with experiencing what is already here.

Therefore I do not need to ‘ever accomplish the hard-wiring’ as you suggest – what I do in the continuous process of increasing attentiveness is to become aware of and remove the redundant software programming. Then the hard-wiring, human intelligence, can function undisturbed and undistorted and the senses perceive unfiltered delight.

Once you begin to practice actualism and begin to de-program your belief in the supposedly unknowable nature of the universe, then the nature of the actualism process becomes easily apparent. Vineeto to Respondent, 20.7.2003

Understood. My example was yet another on a long list of attempts to rationalize AF in terms that make sense to ‘I’. Clearly that can never happen as ‘I’ have a vested interest in making sure that the fundamental experience of the actual never happens. Regarding your last sentence above... the implication is that the underlying human intelligence (including the unique personality components) by its very nature is ‘happy and harmless’, sensately revelling in the universe. Re: Cosmological Clarification, 21.7.2003

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 –

So my question is, how do AF adherents know they have turned off the programs, and not simply replace them with a more pleasing variety? This question is posed from curiosity, not criticism, as either response is a not bad way to live.

… Of course, if you are looking for a shortcut and consider turning actualism into your latest belief to file it with the rest of the passionate fairy-tales of human imagination, then you would be missing the point entirely. Actualism is not a belief or the imagination that one feels happy and harmless, but it is a proven method that, when applied with diligence, determination and pure intent, makes you tangibly and noticeably happy and harmless. The method of actualism is designed to discover, investigate and eventually eliminate the believer and that includes the believer in any system that one may have concocted out of the actualist writings. Vineeto to Respondent, 16.1.2002

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.

You had asked how I am doing. I am very well.

I am returning to the list after a lengthy hiatus during which time I mainly lurked, reading the posts occasionally, and sometimes in depth. I had rather lost my interest in writing to the list, but had not lost my interest in Actualism.

I can relate to this, as I am now in a phase where I seem to have lost interest in writing to the list unless there is some sensible conversation to be had about practical experiences. But no matter if I write or not, I never cease to be vitally interested in this moment of being alive and in what prevents me from being actually free. There is a commitment that happened deep down inside a few months after I came across actualism, after I experienced what being free from ‘me’ is like. It is a commitment that is irreversible, unlike the new-year’s resolutions that are abandoned days after they were made. I think I have told the story before but it signifies for me the day I realized that I was hooked for life.

At one time I was particularly troubled by doubts and fears so much so that after a couple of miserable days I decided to talk to Richard about it. I said to him that the way I feel now I don’t think I am able to go through with becoming free, I am too much of a coward, I don’t have the strength and saying it I felt as despondent and scared as one can be. Richard listened attentively as he always does and then said, okay, if that is so, what are you going to do with the rest of your life, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and so on? I didn’t have to think long, it was pretty obvious that although I was in the grip of my feelings at the time that they wouldn’t last forever and then I would not be able to resist pursuing the freedom I knew to be the genuine article. There simply was, and still is, nothing else I want to do with my life.

The other day someone asked if Peter and Vineeto ever take a holiday from actualism to which I could only say ‘holiday to where’. I am pleased to be here, I enjoy being here, I am vitally interested in being alive, I am aware of what I do, think, feel and sensately experience – why on earth should I want to take leave from that? It took me much effort to get this awareness going to the point were it happens by itself and now it is impossible to switch it off. The alternative could only be to deliberately do something to dull down, to get lost in imagination, to wallow in feelings, to be half-conscious or drugged and to pretend not to be here. The capacity to be aware of being aware is exactly what makes the human species unique amongst sentient beings and to work towards ridding this awareness of selfism – in any form – is a great adventure.

Instead, I have continued to apply myself to demolition work. I use that short-hand phrase to signify using the method to dismantle the social identity and expose the underlying instinctual passions. Then I have been able to get at the buggers. However, I have had long periods during which nothing much seemed to be happening. Getting a ‘taste of the instincts’ has sometimes seemed like a prolonged forced feeding at the pig trough of the Human Condition. But then, nobody is forcing me, are they? I realize in retrospect what has been lacking has been sustained, unremitting attentiveness on my part and sometimes simply the pure intent to proceed further.

There is something else that helps me and that is to remember to be friends with myself and rather than being down on myself for being irritated or fearful to instead give myself a pat on the back for noticing that I was. This way it’s much easier to pull myself up by my bootstraps and to get back to being happy again in no time. It’s a persistent habit to break, this telling myself off for not being perfectly happy for 24hrs a day, but I do notice it much quicker these days than I used to. Then it is not so much a matter of weening myself off the ‘trough of the Human Condition’, as you call it, but more a slipping out of ‘my’ skin and sensately – and sensuously – enjoying being here.

I also had to realize that after I’ve been through certain intense feelings and passions there is nothing further to be learned from staying in the feeling. I used to be suspicious of Richard’s expression of ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’, ostensibly for the reason that it could be confused with repressing the feeling. But now I realized that I was also avoiding the technique itself because ‘I’ wanted to hang onto being ‘the explorer’ of deep passions whenever they occurred and I can see now that there is neither meaning nor value in ceaselessly examining an instinctual passion over and over and over again. In other words I have come to understand that no valuable insight is to be gained from deeply and repeatedly feeling fear – the most prominent of the passions for me – and this understanding has greatly helped to simply notice and label the feeling, in this case my fear of oblivion, and then get on with enjoying this moment of being alive, which is after all the point of actualism.

I can tell you this: that I have during this period of time always used the Actualism method and have not found it necessary nor desirable to take side-detours or short cuts. I have never found it necessary to find add-ons to supplement my use of the Actualism question. Unremitting attentiveness and cranking up my pure intent have been the keys to pulling through what have seemed like unbearable onslaughts of deep dread and fear.

It’s so simple, isn’t it and yet almost everyone feels the urge to concoct their personal addenda in order to avoid its ‘self’-diminishing effects.

But along with complacency and a relative backing-off from the deeper sources of resistance at times, there has been for a long time steady progress too. I think of a graphic presentation of in which there are peaks and valleys, and regressive movement, but on the average a steady overall increase in happiness and harmlessness.

Yep, and with the increase of being happy and considerate towards others comes a waning of ‘me’ because ‘I’ need an arena of problems and passions in order to thrive.

I do think that one of the very interesting things here on the list is the vital opportunity for so many different people to share experiences with one another. I think experiences with Actualism are going to be variable. And of course unlike the snake oil salesmen and charlatans, no guarantee is offered or otherwise implied. Naturally different people have different life experiences, different personalities and constitutions, different temperaments, different motivations, etc. Sometimes it seems like the issues that I have struggled most greatly with have been the issues that I have struggled with my entire life.

I can’t quite see how experiences with practicing actualism are going to be essentially variable at core if one fully commits oneself to becoming free from malice and sorrow. The result, if intent and effort are genuine, can only be a decrease in malice and sorrow and the progress is conditional to each actualist’s own effort and intent. Once I got my attentiveness up and running eventually all of the issues that I had struggled with in my life have come to the surface, as you observed happened with you, and this is where pure intent always leads me to take the particular action that I know I need to do in order to become free of each of these issues.

In other words, it is ‘me’ and to a large extent it is senseless to struggle with ‘myself’, as I cannot rid me of myself (pardon the hyperbole here).

No, I can’t ‘rid me of myself’, but what I can do is pay attention to, and become aware of, ‘me’ in action, thus interrupting the automatic quick and dirty neural pathway, which in turn stops ‘me’ feeding ‘me’ – then inevitably atrophy sets in until one day ‘I’ willingly and happily give myself permission to let go of the controls and agree to ‘my’ demise. And in the meantime I have a great time being alive.

What happens when I crank up the attentiveness and pure intent knobs is that these ‘struggles’ vanish in a twinkling.

Yes, it works like a charm.

I am sure others have had that experience. It’s a bit like shovelling yourself out after a massive snowstorm and once again the sun is shining. The whole world is bright and aglow again.

Currently the popular vote on the list is to ignore, or dissociate from, one’s ‘struggles’ by pretending that there is nothing to be gained by making an effort.

To No 23: The point I was trying to make was that actualism is fundamentally an intellectual process used for a non-intellectual end. HAIETMOBA is essentially a parlour trick in an attempt to bootstrap the mind into a PCE.

The point you are trying to make is clearly erroneous, as it is a misrepresentation of what has been elucidated on the AF website many times over. This is how the actualism process is described –

In the actualism process, as detailed on The Actual Freedom Trust web site, the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) – are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to feel well, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time.

If one deactivates the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and activates the felicitous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre, bonhomie and so on) then with this freed-up affective energy, in conjunction with sensuousness (delectation, enjoyment, appreciation, relish, zest, gusto and so on), the ensuing sense of amazement, marvel and wonder can result in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception) ... and apperception reveals that there is only this actual world/universe. Richard, List AF, No 64 ‘Me’ is false, 10.3.2004

How you can make this into ‘fundamentally an intellectual process’ has got me beat. When I use the actualism method as described above it is not intellectual at all but a process of being aware of whatever is preventing me from feeling happy and being harmless right now. Put succinctly, the actualism process is something one does and, as you know, doing something is not the same thing as thinking about doing something.

Asking myself how I am experiencing this moment of being alive is not ‘a parlour trick in an attempt to bootstrap the mind into a PCE’ – it is a method undertaken with the pure intent to rid myself of the feelings of malice and sorrow in order to bring about peace on earth. A PCE can happen as a result when diligent and persistent attentiveness causes a crack in the bubble of one’s normal ‘self’-centred perception and the ‘self’ spontaneously and temporarily goes into abeyance.

It’s really just a mantra. The problem I had with this (and maybe others) is that my mind gets stuck in the mantra, and it becomes the end in itself.

Of course, when you reconstruct the actualism method into an intellectual exercise for selfish purposes (solely to induce an other-than-normal-experience) then it is no wonder that you have turned it into a meaningless mantra.

Has it ever occurred to you that the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is not merely a sequence of letters (‘HAIETMOBA’) but that it is a genuine question that demands a sincere answer, which requires that one is vitally interested in being here?

I’ve done enough reading and discussion now to realize that I’m just repeating myself. Think about it – what can be said on the 4 million words on the AF site that can’t be written in 1 or 2 pages? (that’s why I like the Advaita writings... the books are thin). Are we all so thick that we need to be fed the same material over and over again in slightly different variations? The answer is, of course, yes.

The biggest obstacle to understanding actualism is that sincere seekers who come to this site are already conditioned, trained and indoctrinated with spiritual/ philosophical concepts, which have already been integrated as a central part of their identity and thus actualism is at first merely seen as another version of the familiar Tried and Failed. I had the same difficulty when I first encountered actualism but I also had sufficient discontent, disappointment and doubt about the spiritualism process I had practiced for almost 2 decades that I was keenly interested in finding out if there was something fundamentally new in what Richard was saying even if that meant abandoning all I believed to be true and right.

The other night I had a realization about the way essential changes happen in my life and that is by determining the direction and then taking a leap. Determining the direction in which I want to go often takes some time because I need to investigate the various alternatives and then determine which of them I am sure I don’t want to do. It is a process of elimination whereby the only certainty is that I know that I am dissatisfied with things as they are, that I know where I don’t want to go and that the new will only become apparent after I have taken the leap of abandoning the old. The reason why doing something new is so frightening is because in order to take the jump I have to take both my feet off the ground – there is no slow motion and no certainty what the new will be like. I am doing it for the first time and more information and understanding will only be available after I have taken the leap. Yet I also know that unless I want to remain frozen in fear or compromise by being comfortably numb there is no way of avoiding such radical jumps into new territory.

Examples of such leaps were when I left home at 18, when I got divorced at 23, when I quit my first job as a drug counsellor at 25, when I sold all my possessions to go to India and live in the commune of a spiritual master, when I left the spiritual commune to come to Australia, when I irrevocably abandoned my Cinderella dream of love in order to be able to relate to a flesh and blood male human being instead of a dream prince, when I quit my job with the Sannyas community, when I irretrievably abandoned my belief in a divine Existence and its unfathomable mysteries only to discover that the actual is magical beyond my wildest imagination.

The point I am trying to make is that unless you are willing to question and throw out everything you have practiced so far – because you can recognize and acknowledge that your present philosophy hasn’t delivered the goods and because you are vitally interested in peace on earth – you cannot help but misunderstand and misconstrue what actualism is about and how the process works in practice. The diagram on the AF library page endeavours to illustrate that one needs to completely backtrack from all of one’s spiritual, social and philosophical indoctrinations and beliefs, throw out everything one has unwittingly taken on board, rediscover one’s naiveté and start afresh – nothing less than abandoning the old and making a fresh start will do.

That’s the human learning process, same as e.g. mathematics. Personally, I’m at the point where I’m not reading or thinking anything new, so my intellect is full up.

If that means that you don’t want to engage your brain in order to learn and understand something entirely new to human history then actualism is clearly not for you. An actual freedom is utterly unnatural in that it goes against one’s intuition, one’s feelings and one’s basic instincts, and it is absolutely unfamiliar (unless one manages to remember a PCE). In order to understand what an actual freedom is about you would need to be sufficiently motivated to make the effort and have the patience to try to clearly comprehend what is been talked about – not because it is difficult per se but because it is contra-intuitive and threatening to one’s very being.

Since it’s obvious I’m not going to think my way to awareness (or whatever), a more visceral approach is needed. I think No 60 is saying roughly the same thing in his response.

Intuiting what is right and wrong, good and bad, true and false (the ‘visceral approach’) will only reinforce what human beings have been doing all along because intuition itself is sourced in the instinctual passions.

Actualism is neither an intellectual exercise nor a visceral discernment of what is right and wrong but a method designed to increase one’s attentiveness of the three ways one experiences life – cerebral (thoughts); sensate (senses); affective (feelings) – with the straightforward intent to become unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless. And attentiveness is not something you ‘think’ your way to but you simply begin to become aware, as in notice, what you are thinking, feeling and sensately experiencing.

The actualism process is amazingly simple and it works like a charm.

(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 –

Being sensible has turned out to be a very dangerous enterprise for ‘me’ <…> Before I came upon actualism I was like a mess swept under the carpet, next few months after that the carpet had been lifted and I was just a mess, now I have a handle on the broom. A Sensible Dialogue, 29.1.2004

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 –

‘I’m intending to keep my mouth shut and learn for a while, but I couldn’t let this pass without a personal thanks. Every word speaks directly to where I’m at right now. I very much appreciate the thoughtfulness, sensitivity and clarity of these words, and the helpful intent that obviously lies behind them.

Thank you very much. It confirms that I’m among people who truly know what they’re talking about’. (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 –

None of this mess is ‘my’ fault ... ‘I’ was born like this. Now that ‘I’ realise this ‘I’ can willingly, cheerfully be in concordance. (...) ‘I’ can never, ever become perfect or be perfection. The only thing ‘I’ can do – the only thing ‘I’ need to do – is to say !YES! so that the already always existing perfection can become apparent. Richard, List B, 25f, 22.6.2000

(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.

Ah, you discovered that you are fatally attracted.

Yes, the other options seem like half-measures and/or band-aid solutions now.

They certainly are.

*

What’s your plan?

Well, now that it’s a question of means rather than ends, I’m happy stick to practicalities and try out the advice of those who have been here before me. I’m trying to put actualism into practice as prescribed paying attention to how I am experiencing this moment, finding out what prevents this moment from being good -> great -> excellent -> perfect, learning about the structure and strategies of ‘me’; identifying the instinctual passions at the root of my being; understanding the source of my thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, fantasies, opinions, actions, etc; minimising the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings (by feeling them, getting to know them intimately, observing what triggers them, observing their consequences, observing how they are related to each other, recognising certain repetitive patterns of feeling/behaviour and nipping them in the bud when appropriate, etc); using the freed up affective energy to enjoy being here as this flesh ‘n’ blood, a living part of this physical universe.

Yep. And when I did all this I found that as a consequence my behaviour towards other people changed dramatically because I became more considerate and inclusive in my actions rather than exclusively looking after ‘my’ interests. Investigating my beliefs and feelings also resulted in some radical changes because my genuine intent meant that I was compelled to act upon the realizations and understandings that my ‘self’-investigations revealed.

I can almost hear other people saying: yeah, right, give up all the other ‘self’-sustaining straws and adopt actualism as the last refuge of a cunning self. I would have said the same a couple of weeks ago. But the bottom line has to be: let’s see what happens in practice. It’s the only way to find out. Early signs are good, and I don’t see any reason why it can’t continue that way.

To go by my experience, that’s what the ‘self’ is invariably going to do as part of ‘my’ survival strategy when one sets out on a path to ‘self’-immolation – to try and make actualism into another belief system, to turn the practical question of how am I experiencing this moment of being alive into a dulling mantra, to transmogrify one’s realisations into a message for the world at large rather than put them into practice oneself. However, these ‘self’-survival strategies are only minor stages in the adventure of discovering how ‘I’ tick because whenever I become aware of these tricks this very awareness combined with the sincerity to act upon my insights will render them impotent. Gabriel once wrote a good description about how he discovered and dealt with what he termed ‘Actualist Calenture’.

What I found important to remember again and again – because it has been a deep-seated religious and ethical conditioning to feel shame and guilt when the ‘dark side’ of one’s own nature surfaces – was to be friends with myself because this enterprise can only be successful with ‘my’ full permission and cooperation – it is ‘me’ who has to stubbornly instigate and constantly fuel the process of actualism, and particularly so in the early stages. This also meant that I had to be particularly aware of another one of ‘my’ survival tricks – trying to become a ‘self’ devoid of feelings, which is not what actualism is about at all. You said in a recent post –

What is the role of ‘me’ in this process? I don’t see any significant role for ‘me’ other than to acquiesce and cede control to the pure intent (which is simple but not easy). ‘Week in Review’ 20.3.2003

There is a very clear and significant role for ‘me’ in this process of becoming free from the human condition because ‘I’ am the only one who can do the job of dismantling ‘me’ to the point where ‘self’-immolation becomes possible. If not ‘me’, who else? If ‘I’ am not interested in undoing my shackles, then who else?

‘I’ don’t merely ‘acquiesce and cede control’ – I actively use ‘my’ passion for peace-on-earth to find out where I need to change in order to become harmless, I use ‘my’ desire for happiness to discover where I need to abandon being grumpy, melancholic, sad and depressed, I use ‘my’ yearning for stillness in order to find out where I am driven by frenzy and consumed by fear and I use ‘my’ longing for genuine harmony in order to determine where ‘my’ feelings of love and nurture stand in the way of an actual intimacy with my fellow human beings. And I use ‘my’ altruistic passion to bring about a final end to the bloody war-torn history of humanity in another flesh and blood body in order to keep ‘me’ on track in this unnatural process of taking myself apart and making my ‘self’ redundant.

These passions are what fuel and sustain my pure intent. And then, towards the end of the process, this pure intent itself ensures that as my instinctual aggressiveness and selfishness diminishes, my desire for peace is slowly replaced by an increasing experience of the actuality of peace-on-earth, as are the other passions slowly replaced by the tangible experience of the actuality of harmony, equanimity, happiness and intimacy. The altruistic passion to facilitate peace-on-earth will also give me the courage and determination to take the ultimate step into oblivion.

The other day you wrote to No 37 making an assumption about me that I want to clarify –

I am certainly not attempting an ‘emulation of that programming’. Actual Freedom is not about emulating a programming – it is about becoming free from one’s social programming and from the invidious effects of blind nature’s instinctual programming. With the actualism method I remove my default setting, the normal and spiritual programming of the human condition – I do not replace it with another programming. When the identity is removed – as experienced in a pure consciousness experience – the actual becomes apparent only because there is no programming interfering with experiencing what is already here.

Yes, you said it very well. As long as ‘you’ ‘have a vested interest’ in preventing ‘the fundamental experience of the actual’, all you can do is ‘rationalize’ actualism – to mean what it doesn’t mean ... because what actualism really means is the end of ‘me’.

When I discovered actualism and satisfied myself that it was genuine article, there came a point when I had to make a clear-cut decision. Either I would live the rest of my life settling for second best … or I would make a commitment, knowing well that this commitment would be the end of ‘me’. I don’t know why, but second best was never an option.

Once I had made this commitment something quite delicious happened – I discovered ‘I’ had something worthwhile to do – ‘I’ had a purpose, a goal worth dying for – and this commitment alone made ‘me’ immensely happy. Committing myself to actual freedom ended my search and began my process of discovery, I had found the effective method to achieve the freedom I had always longed for – the only thing left to do was to do it.

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Therefore I do not need to ‘ever accomplish the hard-wiring’ as you suggest – what I do in the continuous process of increasing attentiveness is to become aware of and remove the redundant software programming. Then the hard-wiring, human intelligence, can function undisturbed and undistorted and the senses perceive unfiltered delight.

Human intelligence is indeed an ‘underlying’ function of the human brain, underlying in that intelligence is subordinate to, and hence crippled by, the instinctual survival passions emanating from the now-redundant primitive or archaic brain. This is the ‘general case’ in that survival instincts are genetically encoded in each and every human brain. The experience of the actualism process is that intelligence, when freed from the instinctual passions, is by its nature benevolent, sensible and intelligent.

I don’t know which kind of animals you have in mind, but animals on farms or in the wild do not enjoy life – they are driven by the survival instinct of ‘what can I eat, what can eat me’. In the wild animals are constantly on the alert, vigilant for predators and scanning for attack on prey. Animals that are provided with shelter, food and security become domesticated such that the survival instincts are not as pre-eminent but when push comes to shove the wild animal instantly re-surfaces – exactly as it does in the domesticated human animal when push comes to shove.

Animals are not aware that they are cruel, in panic, pining or bored but some are nevertheless are run by feelings and all of them are driven by instinctive imperatives. The idea that animals are innocent or happy is a myth.

Spiritual teachings have always maintained that one only needs to dissociate from one’s social conditioning in order to be ‘who you really are’ – the feeling ‘self’ which is none other than the animal instinctual passions. In contrast, actualism recognizes that the root cause of human malice and sorrow lays in the animal instinctual survival passions and not, as ancient wisdom has it, in conditioned thought and cultural socialization. A freedom from the human condition can only be achieved via ‘self’-immolation, which is both, the death of one’s ego (the social identity) and the extinction of one’s ‘being’ (the instinctual identity).

As for ‘is being happy our birthright’ – it does not make sense to call happiness our ‘birthright’ because there is no court where you could claim your ‘right’. I would rather describe it that the animal survival passions, universally manifest in humans as malice and sorrow, are our biological heritage – ‘me’ being as old as the first human – but a path to freedom from this software programming is now laid out. You can jump right on with both feet and complete the next step in human evolution.

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Once you begin to practice actualism and begin to de-program your belief in the supposedly unknowable nature of the universe, then the nature of the actualism process becomes easily apparent.

No wonder, you’ve ‘been tripping over my own feet with the latter’ – you have omitted the most significant part in your first ‘key element’ – the instinctual survival passions, which are a layer deeper than ‘accrued conditioning’. The ‘accrued conditioning’ is always first impediment to freedom, peace and happiness to be tackled and once there is a sufficient dent in the armour of one’s social identity, then it is possible to become more and more aware of the underlying crude instinctual passions. To believe that ‘I’ am a product of an accrued conditioning only is to remain ensnared in one’s spiritual-philosophical conditioning – the very first thing that has to go if one is to even begin to become a practicing actualist.

You may remember the piece from Peter’s ‘Actualist’s guide’ –

It is vitally important to understand that two stages happen with every investigation of a particular deep seated emotion over a period of time, such as aggression, sex, love, sorrow, authority, desire, etc. – first the social identity is dismantled, only then are the raw instinctual passions underneath are exposed. I know, I keep flogging this point but it is the only way to go deep sea diving into one’s own psyche. The initial tendency is to go straight into trying to look at the instinctual passions, but this is a disingenuous short-cut that can only lead to snorkelling around on the surface. This two-stage investigation is the crucial difference between the spiritual version of denial, selective awareness and remaining a passive watcher of life and the Actualist’s application of sincerity, all-encompassing awareness and becoming an active participant in this moment of being alive. An Actualist’s Guide

I always found that my attempts at ‘experiencing the actual universe directly’ were putting the cart before the horse. Whenever I ask the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and I am not happy, then I explore and remove the cause of not being happy – only when I am happy, can sensate experiencing have a chance of happening on its own accord. And whenever in the process of letting go of my spiritual beliefs I eradicated a cornerstone of my identity – a core belief, a deep-seated feeling, a bit of ‘me’ – then the crack in the door bought about a pure consciousness experience.

Good on ya. It is amazing how much can be achieved by a good dose of naiveté combined with the determination to change radically and irrevocably.

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