January 17 2025

SCOUT: I’ve been applying the method pretty diligently these past few weeks.

I will keep applying the method. I feel like I love my life again. I feel so curious to know myself deeper. And grateful that I can return to a grounded appreciation within myself again and again if I keep reminding myself to.

VINEETO: Hi Scout,

This is an excellent report. Now that you had some success for your persistence with the actualism method you have the motivation and curiosity to “know myself deeper”.

This quote from Richard regarding physical pain yet absence of suffering can give you further encouragement to decline when you notice an emotional objection to physical pain –

RESPONDENT: Does not the body suffer? Feel pain?

RICHARD: No, there is no suffering at all. There is physical pain, but no suffering. Physical pain is essential ... if it did not exist, one could be sitting on a hot stove and not know that one’s bum was burning until one noticed the smoke rising!
Suffering is psychological ... only the entities suffer. Thus they forever seek consolation, commiseration and solace. Hence the neediness for the whole gamut of pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love. When one is actually free, none of these products of pathos are necessary ... in fact, with the ego and soul’s demise, they cease to exist. They, too, are bogus. (Richard, List B, No. 20, 15 February 1998).

Additionally, the more you discover the triggers for stress, “fear and sadness and mania” and learn to decline to go down that path again and again, you are also reducing stress hormones like adrenaline, which can only have a beneficiary effect on your health and well-being.

The more you appreciate your enjoyment of being alive (feeling good) the more both enjoyment and appreciation grow – it is quite magical.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Scout, 17 January 2025).

April 17 2025

VINEETO: Hi Ed,

Instead of inching forward towards being happy and harmless tiny step by tiny step you also have the option to take the bull by the horns, as the saying goes, and face the core of your feeling of fear –

Richard: What I did was face the fact of my mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not opposites … there is only birth and death. Life is what happens in between. Before I was born, I was not. Now that I am alive, I am. After death I will not be … just like before birth. Where is the problem? (Richard, List B, No. 21, 10 March 1998)

ED: I remember in your video with Richard the two of you talking about the absolute end of everything. Was oblivion on your mind back then? How were you relating to it at the time?

VINEETO: I remember that well. Oblivion was on ‘her’ mind, as you put it. ‘She’ yearned for oblivion.

However, when Richard and ‘Vineeto’ had met to talk about the video shoot a week after it was taken and ‘she’ unsuspectingly came close to the actual world territory, so to speak. Richard said to ‘her’, encouragingly, ‘you are really close-by right now’ and within a split second, ‘Vineeto’ pulled back, closed up and avoided any in-depth discussion about becoming actually free with Richard for more than 2 years. Obviously more had to happen.

*

VINEETO: ‘Vineeto’ did not take “a leap of faith” at all but relied on and strengthened ‘her’ connection to pure intent. Without pure intent one is trapped in the human condition, but with pure intent operating there is an alternative way of experiencing life and a way out.

The problem you describe is directly connected with this all-or-nothing approach, and of course such a leap is too big, impossible to achieve and hence you are stuck with fear. Whereas the actualism method offers a way to diminish the bulk of the identity you are, peeling off layer by layer of identity-enhancing feelings and replacing them with identity-diminishing felicitous feelings until ‘I’ grow so thin and feeble that at some point ‘I’ will agree to relinquish control and go out-from-under-control, the different-way-of-being virtual freedom Richard has described many times. (Actual Freedom Library, Topics, Virtual Freedom). I particularly recommend the last tool-tip for your consideration.

ED: This fear of oblivion feels like what I am at the core. I understand this echoes Richard’s language, but I can remember a few years before my PCE lamenting to an enlightened guy that all I am is fear. A fear-driven problem-solving machine.

To me, the issue of oblivion seems like a big deal – like if I could resolve it, there’d be nothing left to keep me around.

VINEETO: Ha, here you demonstrate it again, this all-or-nothing approach. Has it ever occurred to you that this is exactly how ‘you’ avoid ever doing something practical, something tangible, which would bring about a change for the better in your life, which would work to diminish the control ‘you’ have over your life? By telling yourself that “all I am is fear” and imagine that this is the sign that you are close to immolation (“if I could resolve it, there’d be nothing left to keep me around“) you remain stuck in fear and imagination.

You are indeed “tricking” yourself but not by your intellectual projection into the future but by avoiding to even start the first step in actively applying the actualism method – “the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive” – and start feeling good/ looking at the obstacles to feeling good now.

VINEETO: From there it is easy to choose to be a different feeling.

ED: My experience of this thus far is that I don’t have the ability to immediately control how I feel.

VINEETO: Of course you don’t, nobody asked you to “have the ability to immediately control how I feel”. What I said was –

Vineeto: “… start allowing yourself to first feel the feeling (instead of merely thinking about it) and then begin to acknowledge that you are the feeling you feel instead of having the feeling. From there it is easy to be a different feeling.”

Please read these two sentences again and tell me if you see the difference between what I suggested and what you made of it. If not, read it again until you do. Then put it into practice before dismissing it out of hand, or out of past experiences.

In case you have trouble understanding my summary suggestion with the relevant words made bold here is a more detailed description from a co-respondent when the penny had dropped for them –

Respondent: ... incidentally, Richard, how can they be ‘an hereditary occurrence’ and be of my choosing at the same time?

Richard: You do comprehend that you are your feelings/ your feelings are you (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’) do you not? Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘It has taken me a hell of a long time to understand the difference between *having* feelings and *being* those feelings. Because I have not clearly understood this, I’ve never quite got the hang of paying attention to feelings without praise or blame, and without notions of innocence and culpability, right and wrong, etc getting in the way.

This makes things very interesting. The moment I regard my ‘self’ as ‘having’ a feeling, I’m split down the middle and there’s a secondary reaction on the part of the social identity (an urge to “do something“ about the feeling, which in turn evokes more feelings, and so on). Conversely, if I recognise that I *am* the feeling, it most often dissolves into thin air – and usually pretty quickly too.

This is great. It’s especially helpful with regard to anger and frustration which have been two of my biggest hurdles to date. Previously, when I caught myself being angry, annoyed or frustrated, identifying and paying attention to this feeling would NOT cause it to disappear. On the contrary, the feeling and the awareness of myself as ‘having’ it would sometimes become like a microphone and amplifier locked into a screaming feedback loop.

I’m really pleased that this is no longer happening. It seems almost too easy’. [emphasis in original]. (Thursday 28/10/2004 6:55 PM AEST).

And again there is a reference to how ‘almost too easy’ actualism is. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60g, 30 October 2005a).

ED: (…) But I can’t necessarily choose from that point to start feeling excellent. Or can I? If that’s the case, why not choose to go into a PCE or immolate?

VINEETO: Here it is again – the all-or-nothing approach, or the search for a short-cut, just so you don’t have to apply yourself to do it step by step. How much longer do you want to procrastinate doing something practical and tangible that has worked for others? Why waste all this time waiting/ searching for instant gratification when you take your life into your own hands and start feeling good now, the only moment you can actually experience.

I highly recommend re-reading Richard’s Article of This Moment of Being Alive, including the very helpful tool-tips.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualvineeto, Ed, 17 April 2025).

June 15 2024:

CLAUDIU: Today was an odd day – the level of appreciation and purity I experienced has been less than other days and my experience has been at times more like how ‘I’ would normally be. However this came with the sincerity of seeing that ‘I’ really do have to actually give ‘myself’ up for this to happen. Ceasing to be me is exactly what self-immolation is. As I write this now I can say I have no doubts that this is sincerely what I want to do.

VINEETO: I can understand that the level of appreciation and purity waxes and wanes, as if ‘you’ want to return to the default position of feeling neutral as described in Richard’s copied article from Sonja Lyubomirsky. I do appreciate your sincerity, it makes it so much easier.

The only way to counteract this falling back will be if you make the deliberate decision, when feeling excellent and experiencing pure intent comes along, to commit to living out-from-under-control from then onwards. When ‘Vineeto’ got out-from-under-control after many ‘ums and ahs’ it was delicious but a few days later ‘she’ fell out of it and accepted this as a matter of course. But Richard didn’t. When ‘she’ told him about it, he said jokingly something to the effect of “stand in the corner until you are back into out-from-under-control”!

So post-haste ‘Vineeto’ invited Peter into the bedroom and after some delicious intimacy soon was back where ‘she’ had been, and then was more watchful and determined to in fact stay out-from-under-control. It worked. It does need your active and decisive input – until an actual freedom happens, then you can’t fall back. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Claudiu 2, 15 June 2024)

June 18 2025

VINEETO: It’s natural given the human impulse to congregate with like-minded people, and this in itself is nothing wrong. As long as you are an identity, to be an actualist is the most felicitous and most harmless identity you can be. The only trap to look out for is loyalty.

I remember an incident where ‘Vineeto’ had inadvertently developed a loyalty for ‘actualists’ – I put actualists in scare-quotes because a practising actualist is learning to more and more stand on their own feet. Sometime around 2000 one correspondent to the mailing list registered a domain name “www.actualfreedom.com” for trolling purposes and ‘Vineeto’ became worried that this would sully the Actual Freedom Trust website and confuse readers. Richard had no concerns and pointed out to ‘her’ that 1) there was no danger of confusion because the AFT domain name had an “.au” at the end of its domain name, and 2) indicated that ‘Vineeto’ was succumbing to the typical fears associated with belonging to a group, whilst also saying that as long as you are an identity to be an ‘actualist’ is quite a happy and harmless identity to choose. Nevertheless, ‘Vineeto’ kept an eye out after that, not to fall into the trap of belonging or worrying.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Roy 2, 18 June 2025).

June 22 2025

Vineeto to Claudiu: Is the “feeling driven” a close cousin to the “‘gung-ho yeah!!’ self” – a diversion from that funny feeling in the belly when anxiousness sets in? If so, I can recommend to stay with that ‘funny feeling’ as long as you dare, without fighting it or expressing it as being driven (both options give the anxiousness extra energy), and experiment a bit. This will reduce the intensity and ‘whoosh’, you are back to feeling good. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Claudiu6, 21 June 2025).

Kuba: Hehe this is a cool way of describing ‘my’ anxiety – “a funny feeling in the belly when anxiousness sets in”, doesn’t sound so serious when you put it this way. (...)

So yes this is essentially what happens for me too, in fact I could broadly break it down into 3 categories :

Kuba: 1 - “things are happening” – this is where there isn’t any of that kind of feeling, ‘I’ am ‘being’ supremely naive and it seems that ‘I’ am well on route to meeting ‘my’ destiny.

2 - “Funny feeling in the belly” – This is where there is still this dynamic aspect all around but also this anxiousness which is as if wanting to halt what is going on.

3 - “towards ‘normality’” – This is where ‘I’ have allowed the anxiousness to do its thing and now ‘I’ have reverted back to some kind of ‘normality’ in order to ease the pressure.

So no 3 I am spending very little time in these days, it is mostly either no 1 which when it is happening it seems nothing else is needed but to remain exactly in that place. And then no 2 which still by all means is better than no 3 and yet there is this kind of ‘friction’ that is halting things.

Vineeto: So, when No. 2 or No. 3 happens you don’t repress and don’t express, i.e. don’t feed the feeling, acknowledge that you are the feeling and get back to No. 1. That’s the natural dynamic of the vortex of swirling feelings, until you are ready to let pure intent take over completely. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba7, 21 June 2025).

KUBA: What a fruitful discussion this was! Thank you Claudiu and Vineeto. You know something has clicked when there is that sense of – “How could I have not seen this all this time!?” Of course the answer was hiding in plain sight. I’m very happy that these discussions are on the World Wide Web for fellow human beings to make use of and to avoid various pitfalls.

What you wrote Vineeto it really hit bullseye with regards to what has been going on for me. It seems too simple typing it out now. But just like ‘I’ can get back to feeling good by seeing that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and thus ‘I’ can ‘be’ the felicitous/ innocuous feelings as opposed to the sorrowful and malicious feelings. Well the same thing can be done with these “jitters” – I think this is actually a pretty cool term for these.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

Well, well, I was literally astounded that this was so eye-opening for you. At first, I thought it was too trite to write it out, it being the actualism method 101. What an effect a choice of a different expressions can make! Perhaps it has something to do with the serious conditioning of mainly the male of the species to not show or express fear of any kind – and therefore not to feel fear – whatever the circumstances. I am pleased to see you could unlock this secret door with the more acceptable label of “a funny feeling in the belly when anxiousness sets in” and/or “jitters” – well done.

KUBA: Somehow what ‘I’ did was separate ‘myself’ from those jitters. ‘I’ would see them as “screams of a dying entity”, as if the screams and the entity were not ‘me’. At the very worst of all this (and Vineeto you might remember this) ‘I’ was writing about ‘me’ kicking and screaming, as if this “dying entity” was to just go in the corner and die in silence, and stop being such an inconvenience. Of course this entity that ‘I’ had separated ‘myself’ from is – ‘me’.

VINEETO: Yes, I remember you writing that. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ at first had qualms to admit that fear was happening, and serendipitously it was recorded on the AFT when Richard called a spade a spade –

‘VINEETO’: Senses are operating but nobody is seeing or hearing and then there is no difference between me and the desk I am seeing, no distance, no ‘I’. Last night I experienced life beyond ‘being’, in a strange way hollow, but very alive and sensate. Now I slowly, slowly can examine the plastic between the stubbies, what it is made of, because recognised it disappears. Sometimes it is fear, sometimes a feeling, sometimes a sense of continuity, of having past and future and definition. (…)

‘VINEETO’: With the stubbies I meant in this incident my actual senses including the brain, fully functioning, better than with the ‘plastic’, but they had no definition or identifiable form, hence the description ‘formlessness’. It is more an idea of a form that was missing. I seemed to be made out of the pieces of information that the senses gave me, the seeing, hearing, thinking, but it had no continuity, no person as such, no identity.

RICHARD: Ah ... now I am with you. I remember the first time I experienced being the senses only during a peak experience. There was no identity as ‘I’ thinking or ‘me’ feeling ... simply this body ambling across a grassy field in the early-morning light. A million dew-drenched spider-webs danced a sparkling delight over the verdant vista and a question that had been running for some weeks became experientially answered: without the senses I would not know that I exist. And further to this: I was the senses and the senses were me. With this comes an awareness of being conscious ... apperception.
Is it not staggering to realise that the identity is felt to be so very real that when it goes into abeyance one initially experiences oneself as having no form ... ‘formless’? (…)

*

RICHARD: It would appear that the experiential study of fear is germane to any examination of the ‘plastic between the stubbies’ so as to ensure a life beyond ‘being’.

‘VINEETO’: Yes, I agree, although often it does not appear as fear, rather a certain hesitancy to fully enjoy the moment, to lash into the sparkles and to become yet more alive – a safe place of ‘this is already enough happiness and pleasure, let’s not rock the boat!’ But since I have nothing else important to do, I might as well rock the boat and become entirely mad!

RICHARD: It may not appear as fear but ‘a certain hesitancy’ and ‘a safe place’ and ‘let’s not rock the boat’ all go to indicate fear ... in this paragraph the fear of going mad. Now, some people say: ‘Richard is mad’. From the real world point of view, this observation is entirely correct. The ‘Richard’ that was so very real back in 1981 was deathly afraid of experiencing where I am now ... yet he opened the door marked ‘madness’ and walked through. Then he panicked at his daring and sought to go back ... but the door had vanished. He had no choice but to proceed.

There is a thrilling aspect to fear ... and it is the source of courage. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Vineeto, 5 August 1998).

Then Richard’s writing on the topic made a lot more sense to ‘her’.

KUBA: So these jitters were seen as happening to ‘me’, and so all ‘I’ could apparently do is ride them out, as if waiting for a storm to pass, helpless. Then it clicked today that of course those jitters and all the rest of it – ‘I’ am ‘being’ those things when they are happening, it is ‘me’ after-all.

And what a wonderful thing to discover, because now seeing that ‘I’ am ‘being’ those jitters, ‘I’ am able to get back to ‘being’ naiveté. And now ‘I’ see what a callous way it was to behave towards ‘myself’ in this way.

VINEETO: Ha, not for nothing did Richard emphasise that “nothing can be swept under the carpet”. It’s great you found out that you are “those jitters and all the rest of it”, expressions of the basic instinctual passion of fear, “encircling all of humankind”. There is no shame in admitting that they are surfacing from time to time in this most daring of enterprises in human consciousness.

KUBA: And spending the day today in the bester territory but without this fear of the jitters anymore, it has been incredible.

VINEETO: You said it well – “fear of the jitters” – it is the fear of fear which is the largest aspect of it, and once you allow the feeling itself without feeding it with fear of fear then what remains is mostly small potatoes.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba7, 22 June 2025).

June 24 2025

ADAM-H: So I am running into some difficulty getting back to feeling good from a state of stress. Over the last week I observed myself moving from happy and harmless, to good feelings, and now to stress. Although I saw the good feelings replacing naiveté as it happened, I basically didn’t have enough motivation to stop it. It basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté, congratulating myself, and imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté. Now that the good feelings are replaced with bad, the motivation is there and I am definitely keeping this whole cycle in mind in hopes that it gives me more focus the next time around.

Anyways, stress is what is here now preventing feeling good. The stress is about work (as per usual) and specifically fears about how I am replaceable and ultimately at the mercy of the whims of my boss. I’m also seeing that I’m embarrassed about having this stress, partly because I think it suggests I’m incompetent, and partly because I’ve dealt with it so many times in so many ways that I think I should have really figured it out by now.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll solve this right here and right now, I’ve been contemplating it while writing this post for a while, but just wanted to get something into my journal while I’m in this spot.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

The first thing that occurred to me was that you were feeling good and feeling naïve and then “it basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté” and you were “imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté”. It could well be that this hijacking of naiveté by ‘’me’ is what caused the original feelings of stress. To fulfil this imagination you would have to manufacture being naïve, which is the very opposite of being naïve, i.e. letting life live you, and therefore a stressful task rather than a joy to be.

Because the feeling of stress continued you then found a likely cause transferring it all to work-related problems. I am not saying they don’t exist but the primary trigger was that your naiveté was taken over by the desire to being praised “for my naiveté” – in other words manifested as the co-joined twins of pride and humility, swinging from one end to the other.

I suggest to get back to feeling good, or at least feeling ok, and then see if what I said makes sense to you. Perhaps it helps to understand more of this aspect of your social identity and thus can be declined so you will be able to get back to a more consistent feeling good.

It’s also useful to remember that when you fight/ reject any of your feelings you add affective energy to that feeling and thus increase it.

As a reminder, here Richard wrote in detail how to access sincere/ pure intent, which is essential for having success with the actualism method –

Respondent: (…) How did you get the pure intent or how did you keep the intent running? Are there certain events that lead to it’s discovery? Is there are a particular approach you would advise other to get pure intent?

Richard: G’day No. 13, Just putting in a plug for what is propagated by the website.

The ultimate source of an actualist’s pure intent is, of course, the pristine purity of the innocence which prevails in the pure consciousness experience (PCE).

For those who are unable to recall/ unable to trigger a PCE there is the near-purity of the sincerity which inheres in naiveté – the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ – which naiveté is an aspect of oneself locked away in childhood through ridicule, derision, and so on, that one has dared not to resurrect for fear of appearing foolish, a simpleton, in both others’ eyes and, thus, one’s own.

(Because ‘naïve’ and ‘gullible’ are so closely linked – via the trusting nature of a child in concert with the lack of knowledge inherent to childhood – in the now-adult mind, most peoples initially have difficulty separating the one from another).

Now, as ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’, then seeing the fact that it is plainly and simply ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment – the only moment one is actually alive – is a first step leading to its discovery.

And, as the part-sentence you have quoted (further above) has been extracted out from the middle of the first paragraph of the section entitled ‘The Who And How of Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’, in the ‘Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’ article, then the opening lines provide a clue to an answer for your queries. Viz.:

• [quote] ‘The intent is you will become happy and harmless.
The intent is you will be free of sorrow and malice. The intent is you will become blithesome and benign. The intent is you will be free of fear and aggression. The intent is you will become carefree and considerate. The intent is you will be free from nurture and desire. The intent is you will become gay and benevolent. The intent is you will be free of anguish and animosity. The intent is that, by being free of the Human Condition, you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body ... as is evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) (...)’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness).

Spelled-out sequentially that first part of the paragraph, immediately prior to the part-sentence you extracted, can look something like this:

1. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming happy and harmless.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of sorrow and malice.

2. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming blithesome and benign.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of fear and aggression.

3. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming carefree and considerate.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free from nurture and desire.

4. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming gay and benevolent.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of anguish and animosity.

*

All of this vital interest/ vested interest enables sincerity – as to be in accord with the fact/being aligned with factuality/ staying true to facticity is what being sincere is (as in being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous) and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté ... then the summing-up sentence can now look something like this:

The [sincere/ naïve] intent, then, is that by being free of the human condition you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body ... as is evidenced in the PCE.

As that summary sentence leads straight on to the sentence you have part-quoted from then it too can now look something like this:

• [quote]: ‘(...) An actualist’s intent is a [sincere/ naïve] intent and discovering how to blend this [sincere/ naïve] intent via attentiveness – into one’s conscious life is the process that places one on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom ... this path is a virtual freedom’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness).

Which in turn is immediately followed by the how-to sentences:

• [quote] ‘Uncovering how to prolong the condition of virtual freedom – via attentiveness and sensuousness – is still another process. These are felicitous and innocuous processes, however, and they are well worth the effort for attentiveness and sensuousness are central to virtual freedom and the key to the whole condition. Attentiveness and sensuousness are both the goal of actualism and the means to that end: one reaches apperceptiveness by being ever more sensuous and one activates sensuousness by being ever more attentive ... and one activates attentiveness by no longer ‘feeling good’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness).

In other words, it is the experiencing of no longer ‘feeling good’ (or ‘feeling happy/ harmless’ or ‘feeling excellent/ perfect’) which activates attentiveness again (as in it ‘jogs the memory’ to pay attention).

It is all a very, very simple method, actually. (Richard, List D, No. 13, 21 May 2009).

Let me know how it works for you.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Adam-H, 24 June 2025).

June 25 2025

FELIX: (…) What is this oversleeping ambition and desperation? It’s pathological. It’s like “I” won’t let myself relax until I achieve this thing that I absolutely must must must achieve. And why? Is it for peace on earth? Or is it for my own means my own sense of self, my own need to accomplish something on this earth. Vineeto is right, it’s always better/ faster/ stronger – preventing even a simple baseline level of feeling good.

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

Hold that thought/ insight that your impulse is to be “always better/ faster/ stronger”. This very insight is the dawning of the actualism method –

Respondent: How does the mere seeing how silly it is make us happy once again?

Richard: Because nothing, absolutely nothing, is worth getting malicious or miserable about (let alone compensatingly loving and compassionate) when the realisation that this moment is the only one there ever is becomes the actuality it already always is. To explain: just as space is an arena for objects to exist in so too is time an arena (so to speak) for events to occur; just as the arena called space does not move neither does the arena (so too speak) called time move, either. A clock (originally a primitive sundial) measures the rate of rotation of planet earth on its axis; a calendar measures the rate of its orbit around its star (the sun); neither is a measure of time as time eternally stands still.

Is it not silly to be malicious/ miserable (or counter-actively loving/ compassionate) where felicity/ innocuity is eternally available? Is it not sensible to be felicitous/ innocuous instead? [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 11, 24 November 2009).

It's a longstanding habit for you but that doesn’t mean you cannot decline this silly suggestion of being “always better/ faster/ stronger”, the moment you become aware of it happening.

FELIX: I’ve never seen this clearly before. I mean I knew I’ve always been a bit “intense”, goal-focused etc – but I couldn’t see it in my awareness because my awareness was so co-opted by this drive. It’s so hidden – it seems to be almost intrinsic to my very being, and a deep survival mechanism that’s encoded in my nervous system. It’s “Felix’s way”, that I’ve used for everything since a small child. “If I don’t work hard, if I am not enough, if I relax – I’m going to be exiled or die.” And all of this has been put into actualism – it could have been anything else and I would have still had incremental success to distract me from it, but not this. The pea under the mattress that has not allowed me to sleep. In a way (my application of) actualism has further held my feet to the fire and kept me constantly striving more than ever.

VINEETO: Yes, it’s clearly “Felix’s way” and you persistently perpetuate it as doing “actualism” when it is nothing of the sort. And you already found the answer why you feel driven to do it “Felix’s way” – “if I don’t work hard, if I am not enough, if I relax – I’m going to be exiled or die.”

For simplicity sake you can call this fear (or being scared or being anxious …) and here is what Richard suggests you do in this situation – the moment you become aware of this feeling of fear driving you to act in “Felix’s way”, STOP.

Stop in your tracks, take some deep breaths and stop rejecting/ fighting the panic. Just let it be there, this is ‘who’ you ARE in this moment, it’s ok, all feeling beings are feeling like this at one time or another.

You will notice, the fear diminishes because you don’t add affective energy to that feeling when you stop resisting it/ blaming yourself (in the name of trying to feel good, for instance). When you genuinely stop resisting to feel how you feel/ stop resisting that you feel this way (because it’s not the “Felix’s way”), then you’ll find that the intensity of the feeling diminishes to the point of feeling good. That’s not a permanent change but a beginning to counteract this persistent habit of torturing yourself this way.

FELIX: Tears are coming as I write this. It’s very unusual for me – I think I am coming to something genuine. The relief of seeing this. The “Spannung” (tension) that has been wound and wound and wound over years is gently unwinding a bit and it feels good.

I’m starting to realise that I am deathly afraid to be naive. At the same time I’m realising that I can be. Lots of tears. I don’t want to fight anymore.

VINEETO: There is no need to jump from I “won’t let myself relax until I achieve this thing” and the fear of “if I don’t work hard, if I am not enough, if I relax – I’m going to be exiled or die” to suddenly being naïve – that is again pushing/ driving yourself to do the impossible. First get back to feeling good by declining this habit of driving yourself, no matter to what.

Naiveté happens when you learn to be able to allow it to happen – so first turn off the flame under the pressure cooker and let the accumulated pressure subside before you attempt to lift the lid (if you are familiar with pressure cookers you’ll understand).

While you are allowing yourself to relax, and contemplate that this fear that you are “going to be exiled or die” is not backed up by factual evidence – then permit yourself to have some fun and enjoy. You can even contemplate to be in a different way to the “Felix’s way”, perhaps temporary at first, as a test drive, and when you like the new way, then for a bit longer …

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Felix, 25 June 2025).

June 27 2025

CHRONO: Continuing on from my reflection, the initial feeling of this ‘put others before oneself’ type of operating seems to be guilt. I experienced it first as an anxiety and a ‘scan’ of how others view me. I sometimes experience a glimpse of what’s underneath it. This fits in with harmlessness and how I want others to accept me before I will feel good continuously. My experience is that it’s actually very easy to feel good once this is out of the picture. This feeling of guilt and anxiety I experience creates a helplessness (victim). By being this victim, I am wanting the other to antidotally respond with loving or compassionate feelings. With that, I will feel accepted and thus let myself feel good. To contemplate feeling good forever without the permission of ‘others’ feels callous. Another interesting related aspect that I’ve noted is that when you’re in love, you automatically put the other before yourself. It’s the nature of love so now it makes sense why it’s advocated by the enlightened people.

VINEETO: Hi Chrono,

This is an excellent reporting of the various aspects of ‘me’ standing in the way of feeling good.

Yesterday I watched the ‘Virtual Freedom’ video again and Peter reminded me of something I had almost forgotten – how hard it was at first to allow himself to be happy and harmless. What was one of the two main objections that he would have to go against the whole thrust of human ‘wisdom’, that one is not allowed to be happy.

I suspect at least part of your “feeling of guilt and anxiety” is arising out of that overall stipulation to not fall ‘out of line’, generated by everyone’s vibes and psychic currents. Hence your reaction so far has been to dutifully feel “guilt and anxiety” and the various consequential feelings, if you aim for “feeling good forever without the permission”. Fortunately, even though it sometimes feels like an unsurmountable barrier, the facts are that

1. you can change yourself unilaterally (and only pay lip service when necessary) – in other words, you neither need permission nor allies in this game how happy and harmless can I feel, and

2. the affective felicitous and innocuous vibes are contagious (just like the malicious and sorrowful vibes are), and they are more contagious the more you confidently allow yourself to be that way.

CHRONO: Once I saw that all it was, was guilt, I had an experience and seeing of what’s underneath. Underneath the guilt and resentment is unbridled aggression. I wrote above about how I feel angry at others for not accepting me and in turn to feel good. But this made me more aware of the anger underneath in myself. I usually am considered a ‘chill guy’ but all of that anger and aggression is right there. I started thinking up all of the times that I do feel it and it’s actually quite a bit. It’s all under the guise of “Righteous” anger or indignation. Anger that’s acceptable by society. You can be angry when something unfair happens. One example that people may overlook but surely experience is when you are driving. There are many incidents of road rage that happen, but often people only see those people as out of control and not themselves as well. I also get angry at other drivers (e.g. if someone is going very slow). This is all considered okay because the other driver choosing to go slow or doing whatever is “not okay” (unacceptable). Often driving in traffic, you can see these aspects of yourself. This aggression felt like a huge beast waiting inside a cave. It’s only the fear of the ‘many’ which keeps it in check. Weirdly, when someone does end up acting out their aggression, it’s an unmentioned expectation that they feel guilty about it. So I must be pre-emptively feeling it so that it never happens. But as I looked around, this same beast was in everyone. It was no different. This burden was being carried by everyone.

VINEETO: Indeed, wanting to be happy when everyone else prefers to follow the dictum to be sad or bad is not the only reason for feeling guilty. And as you found out, blaming others for feeling angry or not liked is pointless and only aggravates feeling bad. Everyone is inflicted by the same instinctual passions, hence no need to feel either guilty or resentful. The very fact that you have the sincere intent to do something about your aggression, and know a way to do that effectively, is already a eminent position to appreciate.

Here is how feeling being ‘Vineeto’ described ‘her’ own discoveries –

‘Vineeto’: ‘As I am the one who on my own accord is investigating my own fraudulent existence, nobody else can expose me more than I am already doing so myself! And I am not only admitting that ‘I’ am a fraud, ‘I’ am also ready and willing to take the cure – ‘self’-immolation.

Once this commitment to eliminate my own aggression and my own taking offence is taken fully on board, then aggressive arrows of others simple fall flat on the ground. The aggression of others can only trigger fear and anger in me as long as I nourish malice in myself. When I start examining my own anger and maliciousness with the sincere intent to eradicate it source, ‘me’, then I can be confident that there is no glint of malice in what I say and write and therefore other people’s accusations simply look silly.

As I am the one who on my own accord is investigating my own fraudulent existence, nobody else can expose me more than I am already doing so myself! And I am not only admitting that ‘I’ am a fraud, ‘I’ am also ready and willing to take the cure – ‘self’-immolation.

Once this commitment to eliminate my own aggression and my own taking offence is taken fully on board, then aggressive arrows of others simple fall flat on the ground. The aggression of others can only trigger fear and anger in me as long as I nourish malice in myself. When I start examining my own anger and maliciousness with the sincere intent to eradicate it source, ‘me’, then I can be confident that there is no glint of malice in what I say and write and therefore other people’s accusations simply look silly. (…)

When I revisited this post that I had written four years ago, I could see my process of learning to think in action. I remember that each paragraph was the end product of mulling over topics, of sincere investigation into my emotions and of honest questioning of my beliefs. I remembered how I had enjoyed the process of discovery and the act of describing it to someone else. One thing, however, was always top priority in my writing – I needed to be 100% sure that I was in no way malicious, grumpy, resentful, spiteful, revengeful or aggressive in what I said. This means sticking to the facts and being aware of the slightest emotional reaction that I might have while making good use of it for investigative purposes each time it happens. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, Gary-d, 24.6.2001)

CHRONO: There were only superficial differences and no one was special. Not even a ‘chill guy’ like me . I feel this aggression more intensely when I think about the ‘unfairness’ in the world. When I watch the news, it does not make sense and I just play out a scenario in my head of how whoever I think is responsible (usually the “upper” class) gets punished severely. It’s truly a never-ending cycle. But now I experienced myself as responsible as well. Seeing all this makes it easier to sift through the facts as that pull towards how I should think or approach life based on if it feels ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’ has greatly lessened. But even further to that, my intent to feel good come what may now can stand on its own. Because when I saw that others were also keeping at bay this same unbridled aggression, it became more clear that no one actually knows what they are doing. Previously I wrote that others seem to know something that I don’t. Now there’s no reason to go along with that feeling as it seems silly. It’s very fascinating how all of these feelings come together and feed each other. Many of them also seem to be weaker now. Especially the negative ones that I was feeling with my partner where I felt like I had to be anxiously grasping. I’m able to allow her more to be in her own space and I meet her from where I am if that makes any sense.

VINEETO: It is really amazing how dealing with one issue, anger, and aiming to be harmless, has such beneficial results on being able to play together rather than the automatic hide, defence and attack-mode. It is quite magically and remarkably enjoyable and buoyant.

CHRONO: I’m reflecting on time now as I inevitably always come back to this and it seems very related to feeling good. The words that ‘this moment is the only moment of being alive’ seem to really stand out more. There’s an automatic sensuousness and feeling good that accompanies this seeing. It’s like how could I forget that this is my only moment of being alive?! Sometimes when I see it, it’s like waking up from a dream from everything prior. Everything prior doesn’t exist. There’s a great significance to this occurrence. Maybe I can rephrase my question then to ‘how can I fully enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive forever?’ . I think ‘oh yes everyone knows this’, but I am seeing more nowadays that everyone does not see that this is the only moment of being alive. When I tell my partner or friends something like ‘isn’t it interesting that it’s always this moment?’, they often almost dismiss it and not realize the full import of it. Just the other day I was noticing this moment more and more and ‘pushed the envelope’ a little further. It’s so wonderful that this is the only moment of being alive, so precious, that I simply don’t know how to describe it. I had to take a step back from this further seeing after that because I had tears in my eyes. What would take me to ‘push the envelope’ more?

VINEETO: Ha, and once you are back to feeling good and understood more of which dominant feeling was the trigger and how you tick, then there is room for sensuousness and remembering to appreciate this moment of being alive … and to be like that forever no longer seems impossible.

What would it take to ‘push the envelope’ more? – more of the same, looking sincerely at the obstacles and then enjoy more and appreciate more being alive, in this only moment you can experience, now.

CHRONO: Ah! Something else I was reflecting about and I forgot to write down. To be happy and harmless seems to be related to caring. This in turn is related to vibes and psychic currents. Stay tuned!

VINEETO: It’s wonderful to hear you say this.

This sentence from Richard from many years ago may sound familiar to you –

Richard: Now that you indubitably know what apperception is – as per your ‘It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception’ sentence – and how to evoke it (as in your ‘Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling’ sentences) you may very well come to look back upon this day as being the turning-point of your life, eh? (Richard, List D, No. 44, 2 January 2014).

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono, 27 June 2025).

June 29 2025

IAN: One of the things that I thought I had left behind but popped up again to trigger a strong reaction within me, is the habitual/ instinctual panic when feeling disconnected from my partner (in this instance from being falsely accused).

This was great because it disarmed a secondary fear; ‘if I decide to feel good again then that means I am not important – (what about me?)’. Because it was clear again that it is safe, that nothing bad happens… otherwise, if I was to fulfil my importance there would be a continuing drama which is not only unpleasant but unsafe, my suffering and the suffering of the other person would both continue. A combination of new and reinforcement. The fear of not being important enough to myself had been a stick in the spokes in the past but not this time.

VINEETO: Hi Ian,

This is such an excellent report of how the actualism method works at its best.

And the outcome is not only that you did not need to engage in the conflict by being exquisitely aware of every affective movement that was going on but that in the end you could also decline to be self-important (as in ‘what about ‘me’’), which as you say “had been a stick in the spokes in the past”.

IAN: So it was another moment of confidence that happiness and harmlessness is safety, and that I don’t need to be concerned with whether I was doing myself a disservice by not validating my self importance/ feelings and just feeling good instead, and that as always the world continues uninterrupted in its peacefulness.

VINEETO: With the disappearance of self-importance “the world continues uninterrupted in its peacefulness”.

It’s a delight to read of how well it all works when ‘I’ decline to interfere.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 29 June 2025).

July 5 2025

PELAGASH: This week, I had the experiential understanding of why it’s only useful to investigate when you’re feeling good. It all started with problems at work. I have to do this really big project on my own, and after I showed some stuff I wrote to my boss, he basically told me to redo everything. In that moment, I started experiencing tremendous fear, resentment and a feeling of impotence that led to procrastination for many days, which in turn led to feeling guilty and really afraid. I was like a cornered animal, all I could think about was how to get away from this situation (quitting was the only option I could think about lol). Of course, I tried to investigate, read about peasant mentality on the Actual Freedom Trust website and in the forum, and it helped me to feel better for a few hours, but then I would feel afraid again. I said then, ok, ‘let’s not fight the feeling, I am the feeling’, and I would explore being this intense fear, but I still couldn’t go back to feeling good entirely.

One night, I almost couldn’t sleep. I felt like Louis XVI waiting for the guillotine in the public square (I’m laughing now thinking about it, so silly, but it felt so real in the moment).

VINEETO: Hi Pelagash,

Welcome back the Discuss Actualism Forum.

It is a fascinating read how you went about getting back to feeling good after having been told by your boss at work to “redo everything”. And that even after researching the peasant mentality writings and allowing the feeling of fear you couldn’t get back to feeling good. I find comparing yourself to “Louis XVI waiting for the guillotine in the public square” quite revealing as to what your ‘persona’ fears the most – the holder of the highest office in the land being publicly subjected to the greatest humiliation (death).

PELAGASH: It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning that I could see how silly it all was, how I was not only ruining the moment, but that I was, essentially, a distortion. When I feel bad, I stain it all with my ‘badness’, and turn into what feels like a bad trip. By being fear, I take everything near me and distort it into something terrible: my thoughts, others, and the world at large. And then I understood why there’s absolutely no use in investigating while feeling bad. This brain’s ability to think and asses a situation clearly gets completely impaired when I am there as bad feelings. I’m like a swirling vortex that infuses whatever I touch with the qualities of the feelings I am being.

VINEETO: Exactly and that’s why this “Pro tip for myself” is such an essential tool to be able to apply the actualism method –

PELAGASH: Pro tip for myself: First, you do everything you can to go back to feeling good, and then you investigate. If not, you’re just going to experience distorted thoughts and images (created by you), and it will end nowhere.

VINEETO: It’s worth framing.

PELAGASH: Seeing myself in action and seeing what me being here does to this body in such a clear way led to feeling better really fast. It was like waking up from a bad dream, except I was the bad dream lol. Feeling better, suddenly I could see much more clearly the beliefs that were operating the days before. The peasant mentality, the perfectionism, the belief that if I make a mistake, I am worthless. The non-factual conclusions about the world, and about life. And suddenly started to truly feel good again. Today, I actually enjoyed working, and using my brain to try to decipher how to do this project. And while feeling good, I am actually going back to these bad feelings I had, because I find it much better to see the silliness in them while feeling good. When I feel bad, I truly cannot see the silliness in an emotion, it’s crazy how much I believe the distortions created by ‘me’.

VINEETO: It’s worth to keep this greatest fear from above in mind, as there is hidden a significant aspect of the peasant mentality, what you call ‘perfectionism’ – it’s not only that you have to perform perfectly but that your perceived status depends on it. Now what would happen if you recognized that this perceived status is in itself a lie, a phantom? What would happen to pride, and with it to humility and to ‘who’ you feel yourself to be?

PELAGASH: Anyway, I want to end this post by saying how much I appreciate the actualist method, and being able to read about all of your discoveries guys. Imagine the days I would have spent feeling terrible had I not had the tools the AFT and your post provide. And the choices I would have made if I had continued to feel bad! Who knows. People I talked to when feeling bad these last couple of days are now like “Hey, how’s everything going?” and I’m like ‘Oh I feel great now, please forget everything I said.’

VINEETO: This is a great feedback, especially to yourself having found out how to ‘decipher’ and apply the actualism method to what felt like a huge problem.

Well done.

PELAGASH: I just finished having a conversation with my mum on the phone, we were talking about how I had always struggled with perfectionism, and how she could see that especially when I quit university. I started thinking about it, and I could see the similarities with what I experienced this week. Those two times I quit university, it was after failing exams. And I remembered how it felt to have my family asking me how I did in exams, and the weight of their expectations. Only, I can now see, it wasn’t just their expectations… I have internalised those expectations, they are part of my social identity. I can see how linked they are to both the loyalty to my family and society, and the fear to be cast out of the group.

If this loyalty feels so bad, why keep it? Especially if there’s a much better option: to be happy and harmless right now.

VINEETO: So this perfectionism has been a long-standing survival mechanism of the young Pelagash – and now you discover that you no longer need it despite the expectations of family and society. Once you can recognize that they are now your own expectations of yourself, then loyalty loses a lot of its seriousness as well.

PELAGASH: Also, I seem to have lost whatever was keeping me from writing on my journal, lol. Probably my own expectations to write something that was… What’s the word of the day? Perfect.

Also, a sense of being observed is not here anymore. Like I’m suddenly free to just be here and write what I want to write.

VINEETO: Ha, I can see that – you are on a roll. What an excellent result.

You wrote in August 2022 –

Pelagash: I’m currently exploring how I can access naiveté and pure intent more easily, and trying to be more conscious of the parts of me that block these things from becoming apparent.

By letting go of the heavy burden of perfectionism you are a big step closer to “access naiveté and pure intent more easily”.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Pelagash, 5 July 2025).

July 5 2025

IAN: This exploration is becoming even more fascinating and fun, I am bit by bit actually making proper progress into being a social identity, instead of getting stuck in the intellectual understanding… I am enjoying the discoveries and uncoveries…

It’s a real can of worms, but so fun to open it up and really start looking at things…

VINEETO: Hi Ian,

A very perspicacious report of your joint explorations by putting the issue on the table, so to speak, where neither is accusing or blaming the other for having a particular approach/ belief/ attitude. And it worked really well in that each person could uncover their particular modus operandi and moral compass!

This is fun indeed and so fascinating.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 5 July 2025).

July 13 2025

VINEETO: So now that you know how to drop resentment for one issue, by the same means it is easy to drop any other resentment each time you become aware of one. It is immensely liberating to take charge of your life in that you don’t blame other people and outside events to how you feel.

ALEXANDER: Yes. And it’s getting easier to nip it in the bud. Hearing Richard talk about that in one of the videos was really nice.

VINEETO: Hi Alexander,

Yes, Richard summed it up really succinctly and expertly. It is quite easy to nip the minor resentments in the bud.

Nevertheless, some of them may be persistent – and you know which ones they are because they keep reoccurring – and then you will do some further investigation about the issue – it could be a belief or a principle or an ideal or even a truth taken for a fact.

Richard: The phrase ‘nipping them in the bud’ is not to be confused with either suppression/ repression or ignoring/ avoiding ... it is to be consciously and deliberatively – with knowledge aforethought – declining oh-so-sensibly to futilely go down that well-trodden path to nowhere fruitful yet again. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive, Tool-tip)

Also, it is good to not confuse ‘nipping in the bud’ with suppressing the feeling.

Richard: It is impossible to be a ‘stripped-down’ self – divested of feelings – for ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’. Anyone who attempts this absurdity would wind up being somewhat like what is known in psychiatric terminology as a ‘sociopathic personality’ (popularly know as ‘psychopath’). Such a person still has feelings – ‘cold’, ‘callous’, ‘indifferent’ – and has repressed the others. (Richard, List B, No. 19e, 26 December 2000)

*

VINEETO: The reason is that good and evil are two sides of the same coin and both arise out of the instinctual animal passions – fear and aggression, nurture and desire.

ALEXANDER: I’m seeing more clearly all the time that there are no solutions to be found in the human condition. People enjoy fighting and justifying it with self righteousness. Self righteousness gives you a high, and a confidence that being aggressive is a good thing. I can’t count the times I’ve felt bad and had to apologize because I acted out of that sense of rightness.

VINEETO: I remember feeling being ‘Vineeto’ had a few topics ‘she’ repeatedly became self-righteous about. ‘This is not fair’ was the most persistent, not only when it was in regards to ‘herself’ but even more so when it happened to others.

Therefore I know that such emotional reactions cannot be simply ‘nipped in the bud’, it takes a closer look, and sometimes a quite comprehensive look at what makes you ‘tick’ in regards to self-righteousness.

Here Richard talks about his personal experience with righteousness –

Richard: Speaking personally, the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago instantaneously rid ‘himself’ of the bulk of those school-age hurts and slights – whilst sitting out in the sunshine one fine morning, putting pencil to paper in order to finally record those dastardly events for posterity, as per a long-held and cherished ambition to do so at length – via seeing-in-a-flash that, as it was simply not possible to ever physically be a child again (and thus juvenilely susceptible to not only those bully-boys and feisty-femmes but any enabling teachers and principals as well), there was absolutely no need whatsoever to continue nursing them as a carryover grudge. It soon became increasingly apparent, thereafter, how those childhood hurts had been vital to the maintenance of the righteous indignation which fuelled ‘his’ plaints of injustice (a.k.a. ‘unfairness’) and, thus, ‘his’ mission to bring justice (a.k.a. ‘fairness’) to the world.

Also, with the dissolution of those childhood hurts the (deeply felt) need for any aggressive tit-for-tat modus vivendi also vanishes – leaving one free to treat all others as fellow human beings rather than as adversaries to gain dominion over. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression, 21 January 2016).

The next quote is also quite revealing in that as long as you believe in the truth of what is considered right and what is wrong, you will potentially react with righteous anger when coming across injustice, unfairness, or ‘this is just wrong’ and the likes – and there is plenty of it in the world as it is with people as they are. Also, emotionally accepting what is intellectually unacceptable helps a lot with restoring feeling good.

It is important that pure intent needs to be firmly in place before any whittling away of the otherwise essential societal/ cultural conditioning be undertaken.

Richard: As a matter of related interest ... one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/ justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends ... justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on).

I have touched upon this elsewhere:

• [Richard]: ‘There is no ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ as a ‘sub-stratum of the universe’ ... they are but human inventions and do not exist in actuality. The same applies to fairness/ unfairness, justice/ injustice and any other human concepts that, whilst being useful for human-to-human interaction, are futility in action when applied to the universe. Male logic is as useless as female intuition when it comes to being free: the everyday reality of the ‘real-world’ is a veneer ‘I’ paste over the top of the pristine actual world by ‘my’ very being ... and ‘being’ is the savage/ tender instinctual passions (giving rise to feelings of malice/ love and sorrow/ compassion etc., with the resultant concepts of bad/ good and evil/ god and so on) which cripples intelligence by invariably producing dualistic concepts.
‘Tis all a fantasy ... feelings rule in the human world’. (Richard, List B, No. 33c, 3 August 2000).

(Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 66, 27 April 2005a).

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Alexander, 13 July 2025).

July 28, 2025

VINEETO: Now that you have precisely identified your “default state of being” and been “able to put everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis”, has your “default state of being” changed to being more continuously feeling good?

CHRONO: Not entirely but I am able to feel good more often than before. Something I re-read a few days ago that helped immensely as well was tracing back to feeling good before the trigger which caused a diminishment in feeling good. That itself automatically restores feeling good and when look at the trigger after that, it amounts to almost nothing and easily seen as habitual.

VINEETO: Hi Chrono,/p>

This is an excellent discovery, I will add it to my repertoire when someone else might benefit from it. It also confirms to you that the trigger was really irrelevant in the grand scheme of your life and can simply be declined the next time it occurs.

*

VINEETO: The first habitual impulse is to dive into ‘solving’ “the murky areas of ‘being’” so it’s a matter of noticing and replacing this habitual impulse with the more felicitous habit for contemplative attention and “sensuous attention” whenever possible. This will aid you in up-levelling from feeling good to feeling felicitous.

CHRONO: Yes I experience the sensuous attention as a simultaneous seeing of the psychological and psychic world and also the awareness of being here. My default state of being is such that I am excluding the senses part and thus going inward instead to ‘solve’ it.

VINEETO: Yes, the default state of being is to pay almost exclusive attention to one’s feelings, and once you do that there is no room for appreciating the sensate experience. It takes a bit of diligence and tenacity to ween yourself off from believing what your feelings induce you to believe and instead look for the factual evidence (of the sensate experience) that everything is already perfect.

*

VINEETO: The reason Richard gave two different options is because when someone has a tendency to experience their mood in an intellectual/ abstract way, perhaps even a dissociated way, then they need to first viscerally feel the feeling which disrupted their feeling good in order to correctly identify the nature of the trigger rather than assessing it at arm’s length.

Whereas when you are an emotional/ passional-type then identification of the feeling happens at the moment of it occurring, perhaps even in an overwhelming way, then getting back to feeling good as soon as possible is necessary to be able to look at what was the trigger in a more clear-headed manner.

CHRONO: Ah that makes sense. I always thought of myself as the intellectual/ abstractional type but the more I look at my feelings, I am seeing that I am actually the second type. I experience it often times in an overwhelming way. So feeling good first makes sense.

VINEETO: Ha, men are conditioned to be more of the intellectual/ abstractional type but underneath you discovered the emotions and passions operating. It’s great to find out more and more how you tick and put it to good use to enjoy life and appreciate being alive.

*

VINEETO: And further, are you now perhaps able to access the memories from three years ago in a way – rememorate the flavour of these experiences – to establish the golden clew to pure intent?

CHRONO: I want to write this while it’s still fresh on my mind. I backtracked through the comments and tried to arrive at how I experienced it as before. The trigger or clue was in Claudiu’s description of pure intent and then reading my own description. I was able to experientially arrive at the same experience. This time the aspect that stood out the most was ‘my’ essential nature and why my default way of ‘being’ is the way it is. The word ‘quality’ triggered this seeing for some reason. ‘My’ essential quality is malice and sorrow. No matter how hard I try that is what I will be. But then there is this quality of the universe which I can only describe as perfection. It was so clear that is something that ‘I’ will never be or can’t be. ‘My’ default way of being is the way it is because ‘I’ am trying to get to this perfection in ‘my’ own way, but I can’t. This triggered a bit of alarm and I found I was getting overwhelmed but in a good way. I pulled back but I kept looking at this quality because it brings effortless enjoyment and appreciation. With this quality of perfection, that’s all I can do is enjoy and appreciate. What else needs to be done if there is perfection? Even further to that, I can confidently say in this experience I genuinely found that I am liking myself. It’s interesting that it’s this experience which has me feeling this way vs me trying to get there myself.

VINEETO: This is wonderful to read. In effect your first discovery (“that is what I will be”) is ‘you’ at the core (including all the other instinctual passions) but there is an alternative. And in face of the evidence of the perfection of the universe and it’s qualities – benevolence and benignity – you can now like yourself, and like others and life becomes fun. Remember to establish the ‘golden clew’ connection while it is happening so you can always find your way to pure intent.

Richard: Incidentally, just before/ just as the PCE starts to wear off, if one unravels (metaphorically) a ‘golden thread’ or ‘clew’, as one is slipping back into the real-world, *an intimate connection is thus established betwixt the pristine-purity of an actual innocence and the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté*.

At least, that is the way it worked for the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body, all those years ago, inasmuch ‘his’ recall of PCE’s was a naïve remembrance [i.e., rememoration & presentiation; see Message № 19775 (Richard, List D, No. 32a, 19 June 2015). for context], rather than a cognitive memory, and ‘he’ thus experienced a constant pull, each moment again, into the immaculate perfection of the actual world ... and thus away from the contaminated imperfection of the real-world.

Being a ‘fatal attraction’, so to speak, it rendered the entire process virtually effortless”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 13, 21 May 2009)

CHRONO: Maybe ‘I’ want some purpose in all this?

VINEETO: ‘Your’ purpose is, of course, that ‘you’ have a job to do – to go into oblivion for the benefit of the flesh-and-blood Chrono and that body and every body.

And that is wonderful.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono, 28 July 2025).

August 14 2025

VINEETO: Hi John,

I am pleased that this “misunderstanding” has now been cleared up. It turns out that Geoffrey never used the phrase “The direct path”. It was you who named it thataway and then asked on the forum “another question is in regards to “The direct path”” and “about jumping off the buss early”, as if it was a new separate technique.

Here is what Geoffrey said –

Geoffrey: I don’t remember writing this, I must have said something to that extent during one of those long video chats a few years ago.
Although I don’t think I’ve ever used, to mean “direct route”, the formulation “direct path” which is indeed confusing: it gives ideas of some secret hardcore tech for reckless actualists (kind of like the “rapid way” fantasies did in my time). As an aside, pursuing those fantasies amounts in my experience to nothing but delaying doing what works in favor of what doesn’t. Aka “how to lose time and get nowhere while thinking oneself a badass”.

*

VINEETO: My question to you at this point is, why do you want to ‘self’-immolate?

JOHN.E: When I experience the world, even with just a lessened feeling of being and more towards the actual it is infinitely more enjoyable to be alive. So it makes sense to continue with that even farther as experienced in a PCE.

Yes, the actualism method is to blatantly imitate the actual as experienced in PCE –

Richard: The ‘I’ that used to inhabit this body did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. That is, ‘I’ would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but if it did not turn out like that ... it did not really matter for it was only a preference. ‘I’ chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make ‘me’ angry ... or irritated ... or even peeved, if that was possible.

It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 27 January 1999).

And –

Richard: The application of the actualism method (which is, in essence, to effect an imitation of the actual) is a means to an end which is not within the human condition: as such it will, of necessity, ensure that the selfish instinct for individual survival (selfism) loses its dominance. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Rick-a, 21 January 2006).

*

VINEETO: If you do not even care about the difference of experiencing being in the real world as a feeling being or experiencing the actual world when your ‘being’ is in abeyance, then your level of interest is rather lukewarm and presently not conducive to have a fruitful conversation.

JOHN.E: There’s a background to that statement that might make it clearer. I was never into all the maps, states stages and trying to figure out what I was experiencing while meditating and then tying that to a stage of insight etc. Instead I always found discussions like that counterproductive and was more interested in the practice than discussions about it. Similarly with actualism I know there are terms such as excellence experience etc. but I’m not sure what the definitions are for it and how many other descriptions like that there are.

VINEETO: As it is ultimately your own pure consciousness experience which is your lodestone and/or guiding light, and not the words written about actualism, it is vital to remember an unequivocal PCE and differentiate it from other experiences such as excellence experiences, ASCs or any other experiences within the human condition. Perhaps some selected correspondence on those various terms can give you a clearer understanding about the differences. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Index).

JOHN.E: So for me I instead see it as a slider where on one side I’m deep in the story about me and feelings are controlling my actions. And on the other side is the PCE.

VINEETO: There is certainly no such a thing as a “slider” from the ‘real’ world to the actual world. There is no connection between the real world in which feeling beings live and the actual world. A feeling being, ‘I’/ ‘me’, is forever locked out of the actual world, in other words ‘I’ can never experience actuality. Maybe this quote makes it more clear –

Richard: Nothing in the real-world is genuine (as in actually authentic, true, pure, bona fide, veritable, valid, non-counterfeit, non-fake, original, unadulterated, unalloyed, the real McCoy, and so on).

Respondent: I have no idea. It all seems to give me pleasure or pain depending on what’s going on. I’d say that thinking, imagining and feeling give me less pleasure than anything sensory, but then some thoughts I find ‘interesting’ (which is pleasurable) and some feelings I find ‘nice’ (like when I’m really happy). It’s all very confusing. What needs to go?

Richard: Eventually ... everything.

Respondent: What needs to stay?

Richard: Ultimately ... nothing.

Respondent: If the whole lot is to go, then how is it done?

Richard: By asking oneself, each moment again, how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (the only moment one is ever alive) until it becomes a non-verbal attitude towards life, a wordless approach to being alive, so that the slightest deviation from the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition – a way epitomised by a felicitous and innocuous naïve sensuousness – is not only automatically noticed almost immediately but the instance whereby the deviation occurred is readily ascertained such as to enable the resumption of one’s habituated blithesome and benign way again ... sooner rather than later. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 90, 14 June 2005a).

In a genuine PCE it is patently obvious that one’s experience “is out of this world”, as in “jamais vu” (never seen) experience, that ‘I’ am nowhere to be found, where everything is so perfect that one could live like this forever.

If you consider it as a “slide” or a “scale” from good to better to excellent to PCE to actual freedom, then perhaps what you thought was a PCE was something else?

JOHN.E: I very much care about where on that slide I am, and I am here because I feel better when I’m more towards the PCE side of that scale and want to learn how to live there. But if going into and learning the different names that would correlate to that scale would make that easier, then I’m open to trying that out and see if it helps.

VINEETO: In order to “live there”, ‘you’, the feeling being, will have to die. ‘You’ can never experience the actual world. That’s what Geoffrey was referring to when he said –

Geoffrey: As long as you find yourself looking for the door that is tiny (the recipe, the formula, the secret sauce, the psychic gun, the pill, the trick), you’re nowhere near and should instead walk the path.

As long as you find the path narrow, arduous, vanishing, confusing, instead of wide and wondrous as it is, you’re not walking it, you are merely lost in the woods nearby – and should instead find it in yourself to take a first clear step in the right direction, such as making a commitment to happiness and harmlessness.
The door is wide as the universe, just as the path is by imitation.
When one knows what it is one wants, and when one knows what it is one must sacrifice, then only the sensible action remains. [Emphasis added].

When this has sunk in deeply then the actualism method of channelling all one’s affective energy from the ‘good’ feelings, the affectionate and desirable emotions and/or passions and/or calentures (those that are loving and trusting) and the ‘bad’ feelings, the hostile and invidious emotions and/or passions and/or calentures (those that are hateful and fearful) towards the felicitous/ innocuous feelings will make more sense.

The actualism method offers a way to diminish the bulk of the identity you are, peeling off layer by layer of identity-enhancing feelings and replacing them with identity-diminishing felicitous feelings until ‘I’ grow so thin and feeble that at some point ‘I’ will agree to relinquish control and go out-from-under-control, the different-way-of-being virtual freedom Richard has described many times.

*

VINEETO: Ah, the quick if not instant way to an actual freedom – before you experientially understand what it is where you want to go. Here is what I wrote to another a few months ago who has been similarly looking for a shortcut to become free (…)

JOHN.E: This is from a misunderstanding on my part. I thought there were two different methods or ways of practicing the method, one called the direct path and one the actual method. Naturally I’d be interested in hearing how the latest people to become actually free did so.

VINEETO: There is one sure way to become actually free and Geoffrey summed it up brilliantly in the last sentence of the quote presented above –

Geoffrey: When one knows what it is one wants, and when one knows what it is one must sacrifice, then only the sensible action remains. [Emphasis added].

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, John-E, 14 August 2025).

August 21 2025

KUBA: And something else that Richard wrote came up too, which is that without equity one cannot have intimacy. I could see that only from a position of parity I can experience a genuine fellowship regard.

And so it seems (at least for now) this elitism and resentment is gone, however there is something that has become apparent underneath that. And it is related to what you wrote here :

Vineeto: How on earth can you notice and investigate feelings and channel the affective energy towards felicity and innocuity when you don’t even allow admitting your feelings (so that nobody else will notice).

I noticed that there is something like a cap, to how much intimacy I am willing to allow. And it is related to this fear of being seen for the emotional being that I am. Because if I am so concerned with others seeing my good and bad feelings then I will also habitually censor when the felicitous and innocuous feelings are happening.

That fear of being seen to have good and bad feelings it has spilled over to a fear of being seen to want and to enjoy intimacy. Like I have made it taboo for myself to explicitly show to another that I want to be close to them, somehow being “calm, cool and collected” aka distanced is taken as a priority instead.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

Thank you for your detailed feedback and description.

And because you said that you wanted to “see where I am at without any of this information, without the map, without the recipe” now is the perfect opportunity to do just that – to be practical, rather than conceptual, and explore experientially the various aspects standing in the way of naïve intimacy.

Perhaps revisiting the description of the actualism method in “This Moment of Being Alive”, especially between the second and forth banner (including tool-tips) is worthwhile, particularly keeping in mind acknowledging that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feeling are ‘me’. This acknowledgement that you are your feelings allows you to channel the affective energy from the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feeling towards felicitous/ innocuous feelings by choosing to be felicity/ innocuity.

Once you get the knack you have no need to express any of your ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings, and therefore don’t have to censor them either. But affectively recognizing, acknowledging and admitting those, so far rejected, feelings to yourself is vital.

Enjoy and appreciate the adventure of growing tenderness and intimacy.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba 9, 21 August 2025).

August 23 2025

KUBA: Thank you for your reply, I am considering now whether after all these years I have not fully understood this key aspect of actualism – which is to actively channel ‘my’ affective energy from the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and towards the felicitous and innocuous feelings.

VINEETO: This acknowledgement that you are your feelings allows you to channel the affective energy from the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feeling towards felicitous/ innocuous feelings by choosing to be felicity/ innocuity.

KUBA: Which is to say that at the core of it there is no pre-set list of conditions which ‘I’ have to tick off as the ‘doer’ before felicity and innocuity is granted to ‘me’ – this is completely the wrong paradigm. It pre-supposes that felicity and innocuity is something that is granted as an end result of some kind of deterministic domino effect, all the while ‘I’ remain passive, waiting.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

You put it well – this is the difference between actively taken life into your hands and changing yourself fundamentally, rather than following the reward/ punishment template and therefore passively wait for an authority, ‘mother nature’, karma or some supernatural force/ entity to capriciously dish out the rewards. In fact, this is one big difference between the straight and narrow path and the wide and wondrous path.

KUBA: I guess this is exactly what the ‘doer’ is all about, that is how ‘I’ experience life as the ‘doer’. In that ‘I’ operate from the back-seat, ticking off the ‘right things’ and hoping that the goods will be delivered to ‘me’.

So instead what happens is that ‘I’ choose to ‘be’ the felicitous and innocuous feelings instead of ‘being’ the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. Then ‘I’ am no longer operating from the back-seat, ‘I’ am directly and actively involved in how ‘I’ am experiencing this moment of being alive.
Of course as you mentioned this can only work if ‘I’ first fully acknowledge that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings, which means that no feelings can be repressed, suppressed or dissociated from.

VINEETO: This seems to be quite a common obstacle – to fully comprehend that it is not ‘my’ fault that ‘I’ am the instinctual passions (not just the tender ones but also the savage ones), that ‘I’ am not to blame for ‘my’ genetic inheritance but instead can unilaterally do something about it. The sooner this is understood the easier it is to be the feeling one chooses to be.

KUBA: I remember on the AFT a correspondent asked something along the lines of “how long does it take for the actualism method to bear fruit”, Richard responded along the lines of “about as long as it takes to see that feeling bad sucks”.

VINEETO: Ha, this is such an excellent pithy quote. It took a while but I think I found what you are referring to –

RESPONDENT: How soon will the rewards can be reaped by the method (in getting rid of the ‘me’) so that the momentum can be acquired by the success rather than the veracity/ power of your words?

RICHARD: About as soon as it takes to realise that feeling anything other than happy and harmless sucks ... and sucks big-time at that. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 71, 9 July 2004a)

KUBA: So this is exactly what I am trying to point to, that the correspondent saw himself as merely a passive entity, hoping that some discipline will provide ‘him’ with the goods. This kind of paradigm has one as a victim to one’s feelings and moods and simply waiting and hoping that change will come as a result of ‘doing’ the ‘right things’. As if ticking off a long list of requirements and then handing in ‘my’ assignment to receive ‘my’ reward.

VINEETO: More importantly – you can see that now. And as I understood you, it came about when you recognized that you had wanted to hide the undesirable feelings from yourself and others.

KUBA: But actually it’s a lot simpler and more direct than that, ‘I’ don’t have to wait for anything at all, the goods can be delivered right now. What ‘I’ do is acknowledge that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and then direct ‘my’ affective energy into ‘being’ the felicitous and innocuous feelings.

VINEETO: Bingo, it is really that simple.

KUBA: This is somewhat convoluted but I guess what I am getting at is the difference between ‘doing’ and ‘being’. With ‘doing’ being something passive, living from the back-seat, waiting, trusting and hoping. Whereas ‘being’ is ‘me’ actively involved in how ‘I’ am experiencing this moment of being alive, no more waiting.

VINEETO: Before you make it into a new concept or map or something sophisticated – it is simply a matter of doing it – each time you “feeling anything other than happy and harmless”.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba 9, 23 August 2025).

August 26, 2025

JESUSCARLOS: Thanks for your kind and detailed reply, Vineeto.

VINEETO: Have you ever thought that it might be the other way round, that your fear is created by ‘me’ wanting to force ‘me’ to do something ‘I’ am not ready to voluntarily do?

JESUSCARLOS: This makes a lot of sense. And now I can see that in the last 2-3 weeks I’ve pushing myself to feel good when not. Or I have been reproaching myself for not being able to feel good in the midst of the sea of ​​difficulties I am facing now. So it makes sense to me to think that I caused that fear myself by trying despite everything to feel good, excellent, perfect and to become extinct. (…)

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

You are welcome.

When you notice not feeling good, instead of “pushing myself to feel good”, stand still and let the feelings ebb away, perhaps go back before the trigger event until you get back to feeling good again. Then you can look at the cause which triggered the diminishment of feeling good. Here is what Chrono reported –

Chrono: Something I re-read a few days ago that helped immensely as well was tracing back to feeling good before the trigger which caused a diminishment in feeling good. That itself automatically restores feeling good and when look at the trigger after that, it amounts to almost nothing and easily seen as habitual. [Emphasis added].

*

VINEETO: I don’t know the film but this is not synchronicity but real-world sentimental fantasy for bitter-sweet feel-good effect.

JESUSCARLOS: I didn’t realize it until I read it, and now I can see it clearly. It makes sense to me, especially because at that moment I felt very different than I did after the PCE a year ago. This time there was no lightness, but rather a kind of feeling of shock after the trauma, and with that feeling I fell into the trap of seeking shelter in good feelings…

Thanks to this feedback, I see that I need to further refine my differentiation between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings.

VINEETO: I am pleased you can see that. Of course, one notices the bad feelings first, and now you can refine your attentiveness to distinguish “between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings”, which in normal-day parlance are lumped together in one category.

*

VINEETO: ‘I’ am feeding the fear, either by fighting against it or by wanting to have something immediately which needs a gentler more friendly approach, especially when it comes to ‘my’ extinction.

JESUSCARLOS: Of course! I can see that this way of wanting something immediately is an old, tantrum-like pattern of my personality. The other side of the coin, or the other extreme, is believing that achieving something will take forever, which turns me into a passive entity waiting for salvation.

VINEETO: Indeed. Here is how feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ put it –

‘Vineeto’: Expectation is certainly not the full description of my attitude towards extinction, obsession is a more appropriate word to use. It is one of the widespread spiritual requirements that one should not aspire, desire, expect but wait for the grace of Existence to grant fulfillment of one’s dreams. But as actualism is about the actual and not about some spurious feeling-state granted by some even more spurious Energy, I can be straight forward with wanting Actual Freedom, desiring it, expecting it to happen and doing everything I can to achieve it, just like people in the normal world aspire tangible, non-spiritual values like riches, a car, a position or a woman. What I mean is that I am the only person who can bring about my freedom from malice and sorrow and I am the only one who can rewire my brain to facilitate self-immolation. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, Gary-b, 19.8.2000).

This recent exchange may also help –

Kuba: Which is to say that at the core of it there is no pre-set list of conditions which ‘I’ have to tick off as the ‘doer’ before felicity and innocuity is granted to ‘me’ – this is completely the wrong paradigm. It pre-supposes that felicity and innocuity is something that is granted as an end result of some kind of deterministic domino effect, all the while ‘I’ remain passive, waiting.

Vineeto: You put it well – this is the difference between actively taken life into your hands and changing yourself fundamentally, rather than following the reward/ punishment template and therefore passively wait for an authority, ‘mother nature’, karma or some supernatural force/ entity to capriciously dish out the rewards. In fact, this is one big difference between the straight and narrow path and the wide and wondrous path. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba9, 23 August 2025).

It is useful to recognize the typical real-world affective paradigm of swinging from one side to its affective opposite while in actualism, when you get back to feeling good, you look for the third alternative using pure intent as your guide.

*

VINEETO: As you might have gathered by now, when you are a friend to yourself and look at/ sort out the various obstacles to being happy and harmless, enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive, when you become more and more naïve, like yourself and others, then you can follow the wide and wondrous path of felicitous discoveries and appreciative amazement, then there is no need to get lost in the scary thicket of self-created fear, sorrow and bitter-sweet fantasy.

Then, following pure intent, one day the choice is so crystal-clear and irresistibly attractive, then the facts speak for themselves and inevitably trigger ‘my’ permission to the only obvious action which is not of ‘my’ doing.

JESUSCARLOS: Thanks for the “wall of fear” quote! I’ll read all the correspondence you mention.

VINEETO: It’s good to be up to date with the descriptions, reports and explanations about self-immolation because before the direct route was opened in January 2010 Richard had only his own path to an actual freedom to describe what happened for the first pioneer. It is a lot easier now to become actually free.

JESUSCARLOS: And I really appreciate this last summary of the method you’ve given me. I see that where I’m failing the most is in being a friend to myself. Especially this weekend, I was noticing that I don’t like myself, or that I’ve returned to that point I thought I’d overcome.

Thank you so much, Vineeto. Your feedback helps me a lot to correct my course and avoid getting lost in more mazes.

VINEETO: Indeed, being a friend to yourself is vital and helps you to uproot the detrimental habits of blaming and berating oneself, or others, being resentful, angry, lost or sad as reaction to unexpected events. Then naively enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive comes more naturally, and you recognize you live in a friendly world, all the while imitating actuality as much as possible.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Jesus Carlos, 26 August 2025).

August 28, 2025

VINEETO to JesusCarlos: Chrono has just posted a report that he was experiencing a similar fear of not being likeable and found other feelings lurking beneath that. It may give you some helpful or even applicable pointers. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, JesusCarlos, 26 August 2025).

ADAM-H: Yes I definitely have been seeing the connection between my fear of not being likeable with the knowledge that I have harmfulness hidden within me. The more I channel energy into happiness and harmlessness the less I feel like I have to fear from others, it leads to a positive reinforcement loop… whereas when I hide and ‘nurse’ harmful feelings the opposite happens.

I think this is a phenomena I’ve been aware of, but the recognition of what point in this ‘loop’ I can actually make changes is something that’s never fully sunk in. The point where I can actually make changes is in being happy and harmless ...

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

This is excellent. Fully comprehending that you "can actually make changes" will give you the necessary interest, vitality and persistence to actually be happy and harmless.

ADAM-H: … which brings me to some of the recent forum happenings that have inspired me to post again:

Geoffrey: As long as you find yourself looking for the door that is tiny (the recipe, the formula, the secret sauce, the psychic gun, the pill, the trick), you’re nowhere near and should instead walk the path.

As long as you find the path narrow, arduous, vanishing, confusing, instead of wide and wondrous as it is, you’re not walking it, you are merely lost in the woods nearby – and should instead find it in yourself to take a first clear step in the right direction, such as making a commitment to happiness and harmlessness.
The door is wide as the universe, just as the path is by imitation.

When one knows what it is one wants, and when one knows what it is one must sacrifice, then only the sensible action remains.

*

Kuba: Which is to say that at the core of it there is no pre-set list of conditions which ‘I’ have to tick off as the ‘doer’ before felicity and innocuity is granted to ‘me’ – this is completely the wrong paradigm. It pre-supposes that felicity and innocuity is something that is granted as an end result of some kind of deterministic domino effect, all the while ‘I’ remain passive, waiting.

*

Kuba: So instead what happens is that ‘I’ choose to ‘be’ the felicitous and innocuous feelings instead of ‘being’ the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. Then ‘I’ am no longer operating from the back-seat, ‘I’ am directly and actively involved in how ‘I’ am experiencing this moment of being alive.
Of course as you mentioned this can only work if ‘I’ first fully acknowledge that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings, which means that no feelings can be repressed, suppressed or dissociated from.

*

Vineeto to Kuba: You put it well – this is the difference between actively taken life into your hands and changing yourself fundamentally, rather than following the reward/ punishment template and therefore passively wait for an authority, ‘mother nature’, karma or some supernatural force/ entity to capriciously dish out the rewards. In fact, this is one big difference between the straight and narrow path and the wide and wondrous path. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba9, 23 August 2025).

ADAM-H: I find myself getting stuck into what Kuba described with conditions to check off or actions to take that will lead to somehow receiving happy and harmlessness, as opposed to just being happy and harmless. It’s interesting how even in the very moment of trying to get back to feeling good I do this.

VINEETO: This is a marvellous selection of quotes and well worth revisiting. What you describe is a deeply ingrained pattern, instilled and reinforced from early childhood, through school and all the other socialisation processes. The best thing you can do is become aware of it instance by instance, nip this habitual approach in the bud and get back on the wide and wondrous path. Once you notice it you are no longer stuck.

ADAM-H: Last week some friends of my girlfriend came to visit who I’ve never fully gotten comfortable with, they still seem like ‘her friends’ not mine. In the moment I was (or told myself I was) trying so hard to be happy and harmless, all the while thinking to myself about how we didn’t really connect, how they were different from me, how nothing I was saying was ‘landing’, how nothing I was doing was ‘working’ to put them at ease or connect.

I was also watching the tightness in my chest, the hesitancy and nervousness in my words, the suppressed resentment in my thoughts, thinking to myself ‘how do I fix this?’ Very much a case of not really seeing my feelings as being me, seeing my feelings instead as something that I "know better" than.

VINEETO: Well, firstly it is a case of not being friendly with yourself. When you become aware of what is affectively happening, pat yourself on the back for spotting it, and then it is much easier to get back to feeling good. Only then it’s worth looking at the cause of what diminished your feeling good.

ADAM-H: The difference between this and actually seeing that I am my feelings and choosing to be another way is huge experientially yet somehow hard for me to grasp conceptually. I think the key that helped me to grasp it was reading the above exchange between Kuba and Vineeto, and recognizing how even in that moment where I thought I was trying to apply the actualism method, I was still within that ‘reward/ punishment template’.

VINEETO: Yes it is, and as one correspondent once said, who had tantrum-size trouble with the actualism, once seen "it is remarkably easy".

Respondent: ‘It has taken me a hell of a long time to understand the difference between having feelings and being those feelings. Because I have not clearly understood this, I’ve never quite got the hang of paying attention to feelings without praise or blame, and without notions of innocence and culpability, right and wrong, etc getting in the way.

This makes things very interesting. The moment I regard my ‘self’ as ‘having’ a feeling, I’m split down the middle and there’s a secondary reaction on the part of the social identity (an urge to "do something" about the feeling, which in turn evokes more feelings, and so on). Conversely, if I recognise that I am the feeling, it most often dissolves into thin air – and usually pretty quickly too.

This is great. It’s especially helpful with regard to anger and frustration which have been two of my biggest hurdles to date. Previously, when I caught myself being angry, annoyed or frustrated, identifying and paying attention to this feeling would NOT cause it to disappear. On the contrary, the feeling and the awareness of myself as ‘having’ it would sometimes become like a microphone and amplifier locked into a screaming feedback loop.

I’m really pleased that this is no longer happening. It seems almost too easy’. [emphasis in original]. (Thursday 28/10/2004 6:55 PM AEST) (See Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60g, 30 Oct 2005a).

ADAM-H: To be even more specific, I think the exact ‘realization’ which helped me switch over was to realize that I could actually choose to enjoy the experience right now and that would be the reward in and of itself, rather than having in mind the reward as the way that the relationship dynamic would improve if I dealt with the annoying feelings I was experiencing.

That realization led to coming directly face to face with my own objections to enjoying life in that situation, at which point I realized how I was being silly to have those objections because they were self-evidently making my life and everyone else’s life worse, and got back to feeling good. The path is not hard to find it’s just I don’t want to walk down it, but seeing this really clearly is often enough to change my mind, especially when the triviality of my highly specific reasons for not wanting to is illuminated.

VINEETO: Indeed, and once you find out that this was the only obstacle, you not wanting to enjoy life, it is really amusing and easy to redress, amend, readjust. It reminds me of Peter’s Virtual Freedom DVD who reported having had a similar resistance to be happy and harmless.

And now that you discovered how easy it is there is no reason to make this the most important aim in your life.

Ain’t life wonderful.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Jesus Carlos, 28 August 2025).

This Topic continued

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

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