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(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence Appreciation
VINEETO: Dear forum members, This is an eventuous moment – and I deeply appreciate all your responses. Take the shock and the reminder of mortality and move this affective energy towards even more determination to become actually free now so that Richard’s discovery and evolutionary breakthrough in human consciousness can spread around the globe with each and every one of you being the catalyst for that. Allow any affective energy of shock or sadness to transform and express itself as a deep and
abiding appreciation – for Richard’s discovery and words, for the fact that an actual freedom is available now
– and further a deep and abiding appreciation for the purity and perfection that exists everywhere around you, both
in the natural world (the Four Affect-Free States of Matter Now is the time, don’t waste the opportunity, there is immense potential in this moment, the
energy of appreciation freely available in the pure web of human consciousness (called ‘action potential’ It is very strange and quite overwhelming at times – I realized that I am now Richard as well as me because we were so intimate as only two fully actually free people can be, hence I am writing words I would have never written before. Regards and appreciation. Vineeto
FELIPE: Thanks for the input, Claudiu Enjoyment = this feels good It has a meta function. I do wonder though how to drive appreciation even deeper in a way that it doesn’t remain an intellectual effort and rather it’s a second layer of affect that reinforces and deepens the actualization of it all in the long run. All this in the context of that exponential nature that Vineeto wrote about, that’s an intriguing part that I may be missing. How exactly does the exponential nature come into play? I guess I need to experiment more with it to have an existential answer as well. Been trying to commit more to actualism lately, so this fits great. Any further input from you or Vineeto will be appreciated. VINEETO: Hi Felipe, Your deduction that “Appreciation = it feels good to feel good” is incorrect. “it feels good to feel good” is the act of taking notice of the hedonic tone of feeling good. Therefore appreciation is not “a meta function” of feeling good, appreciation is something *additional*, otherwise why even mention appreciation, let along emphasize it? Can you recognize how you miss the points on appreciation, which my post Actualism is a full-blooded approach – and it needs your whole-hearted attention and application to have some lasting effect and success. FELIPE: Update: tapped into that for a bit and I can certainly feel the snowball effect of feeling good → feeling good about feeling good → feeling even better, etc. I do wonder if this particular activity can help me break the habit of
me trying to get distracted/entertainment when feeling good becomes normalized and triggers a “now what?”
response. That usually leads me back to normal, so maybe feeling good about feeling good can calm and rechannel that
dissatisfaction back to actualism mode? See what I mean – “tapped into that *for a bit*” – and you can already “feel the snowball effect” even in this short time and even though you haven’t applied any appreciation yet? And then you stopped enjoying and in the next – intellectually thought-out – sentence you started worrying about getting “distracted/ entertainment”. Why? Is this just a (bad) habit of yours you need to become aware of, or is there more behind this not wanting to keep feeling good for too long? Here again is a quote from my post, in case you have not read it with care –
And here is more to read with care and leisure to contemplate its significance –
Once you figure out experientially how appreciation exponentially increases and
expands on your enjoyment, you can *up-level* your bottom line or your hedonic fall-back position which
Claudiu When ‘Richard’, the identity decided to dedicate ‘his’ life to live ‘his’ PCE 24hrs a day, ‘he’ started on ‘his’ journey by imitating the actual world as experienced in the PCE, guided by the golden clew of pure intent. And when ‘he’ succeeded, Richard confirmed to all of us that living in the actual world is indeed an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of being alive –
Does this tell you something? The actualism method is imitating the actual world – hence it cannot *merely* be an affective-only enjoyment and its meta function. It has to be something which increases your experience of being alive exponentially, to more and more imitate the actual world and the experience of a PCE and to lead you to becoming actually free. Hence any (intellectually) watering down (i.e. depreciating) the act of enjoying and appreciating is going in the wrong direction, a red flag should appear right away, and it indicates a missing ingredient of pure intent. The direction to proceed is to do whatever you can to *increase* enjoyment of being alive, and you do that by “adding value”, “cherishing”, marvelling and living in wide-eyed wonder regarding your enjoyment of being alive, i.e. by appreciating and deeply contemplating the wondrousness and mirificence of the world around, including one’s fellow human beings. In a similar way you are attempting to depreciate, i.e. reduce, the marvellous function of
awareness, which encompasses all aspects of being alive and conscious (“The mere awareness or even
contemplation could be interpreted to be done merely intellectually” * PS: Claudiu: You have described it very well
Cheers Vineeto
FELIPE: Hello, Vineeto, it’s so nice to read you here. VINEETO: Thank you for your kind welcome. Sorry that I missed the first post when I answered the rest just now. FELIPE: I don’t remember having read such emphasis on appreciation in particular (in the sense that it can be THE element to cause an exponential boost, as you say). It’s one of those words that I’ve misunderstood a lot. At first I took it as the sensorial part (enjoyment = more affective, appreciation = more sensorial). VINEETO: Naturally feeling being ‘Vineeto’ was aware of the importance of appreciation during ‘her’ years of actualism. I remember once Pamela asking – “Now I feel good, what now”? Richard smiled and said, “appreciate it”. But ‘Vineeto’ never wrote much about is – it was just part and parcel of ‘enjoying and appreciating’. Here is an early example from 2000 –
In fact, I had only in the recent two years become increasingly aware how *very important*
appreciation is to the actualism method and actualism process, especially when we had visitors who wanted to know
about the actualism method. I could see it in action when they occasionally appreciated the fact of feeling good, of
being alive – how this increased exponentially their very enjoyment. Then I of course emphasized it further. In the
last weeks before his death Richard was increasingly expressing appreciation, to me, to the marvels of the actual
world, large and minute, and to private correspondents. Then he wrote the article about marvelling During Richard’s sickness and especially after his death the significance of appreciation became overwhelming – it was everywhere, often accompanied with a sweetness and tenderness in connection with writing about Richard’s memory, appreciating people, appreciating the universe – pure intent was overwhelmingly pouring in. As Kuba recently said –
Hence I started writing about the significance of appreciation more and more and the responses from members here confirmed how important the comprehensive understanding of appreciation really is. FELIPE: The word has also been somewhat charged with hints of positive/love feelings (such as love and gratitude), at least in Spanish. VINEETO: I don’t know who “somewhat charged” it, I certainly never did and neither did Richard. Appreciation is very, very different to love and gratitude. FELIPE: All this context to ask: can you tell us some specific examples that you remember from your own past experience in which appreciation was an important factor to get you unstuck or ramped up your actualist experience in given moments, or even created breakthroughs in your journey? I think such anecdotes can help appreciation fully click for some of us. Thanks so much in advance. VINEETO: I don’t remember any specific anecdotes, I think ‘Vineeto’ often equated deep appreciation with pure intent and that certainly facilitated breakthroughs and progress in her process. Cheers Vineeto PS: In my last post to you I said – “it indicates a missing ingredient of pure intent”.
Just to clarify, it means in this context of your writing pure intent is missing, it is not *activated*
FELIPE: Thanks, Vineeto, this is very useful. And yes, my replies
were rushed and reductionistic, as I got sucked in a very specific aspect of what Claudiu wrote there and hyper
focused there. VINEETO: You are very welcome Felipe. Was it about contemplation and its relation to appreciation? * VINEETO: And then you stopped enjoying and in the next – intellectually thought-out – sentence you started worrying about getting “distracted/ entertainment”. Why? FELIPE: Part of the rush. Happens to me often when I’m excited and caffeinated: jump from idea to idea fast, lol. It can also be indicative of my distracted nature (part of why I haven’t been able to fully focus on actualist endeavors all along and rather chase all kinds of cheap dopaminergic rewards). VINEETO: That’s understandable – so you will dig a bit deeper into this habit so to be able to focus better on what you really want to do? FELIPE: I will shut up now as this thinking out loud of mine in these last posts isn’t too beneficial for the conversation. VINEETO: Ah, but that would mean running off again so as to remain as you are – and you didn’t really describe these qualities (rushed, reductionistic, distracted nature, chasing cheap dopaminergic rewards) as something you want to proudly maintain, or do you? Why not give actualism another go, with new input and insights, and get to an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation each moment again? People here are really happy to help and assist. FELIPE: To clarify I’ve experienced the range of experiences you are describing before, I think just I’m still not tuned into it all yet as I’ve been distant from actualism, or at least I practice it on and off, for a while. VINEETO: Yes, I understand that – I can recommend the thread “Richard has passed away” To clarify further what you had said yesterday –
VINEETO: A good example that translating actualism writing into other languages is fraught with misunderstandings. Feeling good and appreciation are felicitous feelings, those who allow you to disentangle yourself from the identity-enhancing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings more and more. Whereas love and gratitude are ‘good’ feelings/ to counteract ‘bad’ feelings. Once you marvel at/appreciate how you feel, what you see and experience, there can be no mixing up of the two. As Kuba said only recently –
FELIPE: Thanks for the responses again. VINEETO: You are very welcome, Felipe, stick around it might be worth your while. Here is an inspiring insight from Felix – in fact the whole post might ring a bell with you –
Cheers Vineeto
JESUSCARLOS: Lately I have been experiencing a persistent feeling of well-being. Emotions come and go, but against a background of happy, harmless feelings. Sometimes anxiety, fear, worry, but nothing that prevents me from enjoying being here and now. I find myself investigating how to go from feeling good to feeling excellent, with the same consistency (more appreciation perhaps). How exciting it is! VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, This is excellent. Definitely, appreciation will increase your feeling good, it multiplies feeling good every time you remember to sincerely appreciate being here. And when you recognize that now is the only moment you can actually experience being alive (remembering that neither the past nor the future are actually happening now) it will increase your appreciation of this very moment even more. And the less your feeling good is interrupted by “anxiety, fear, worry” the easier it becomes appreciating being here. Do you take a closer look at anxiety, for instance, once you are back to feeling good, to find out what causes this anxiety to arise in the first place so that it won’t have to arise in the first place? Cheers Vineeto
ROY: I just stumbled upon a beautiful journal entry from Felix. These bits got my attention…
As I now start to investigate the positive feelings too, I can’t immediately pinpoint why exactly I am feeling good. And like Felix mentioned, I am also quite numb in terms of how much I get from my senses… Maybe this feeling good that I’m experiencing is, to some extent, related to the feeling that I’m making progress. And/or to the fact that I’m doing something that I’m good at: examining/ investigating. But what if I stopped progressing? What if I stopped sharing my progress here, and stopped receiving reassuring messages from people in this forum, that I am making progress? Maybe this forum has become my new source of dopamine hits… Feels uncomfortable to consider this. VINEETO: Hi Roy, Even though you said you are feeling much better than you did a few months ago you still seem to have a modus operandi/ habit(?) of interpreting your progress as something potentially negative. This is your ‘self’-preservation in action, a trick of ‘me’ to prevent change, not to be confused with being sensibly cautious or “examining/ investigating”. Just thought I’ll let you know. ROY: EDIT: I’m feeling anxious right now with the thought that I may be (to some extent at
least) fooling myself and that this current “feeling good” may not be sustainable in the long run. VINEETO: Well, “feeling good” can change, as all feelings are in flux (being
the swirling vortex of instinctual passions that you are). However, as you described in your previous post Perhaps it is also the prospect of testing the waters of naiveté, which makes you wonder if you are not “fooling” yourself. Remember to focus on the thrilling part of fear/anxiousness … it is there where you source the required courage. Cheers Vineeto
FELIPE: Now that I think about it more, there’s a reason why it was hard for most here to grasp what actualism was all about, even after decades of the method being public. The method was about feeling all along, and we didn’t quite realize it (to this day even, at least fully, in my case). VINEETO: Hi Felipe, Are you really suggesting that not only you but also most people (as in not just I but we all) were unable “to grasp what actualism was all about” because they did not understand that “the method was about feeling all along”? Here is one quote from the go-to page for the actualism method, in the first paragraph under the
second banner (I have highlighted the words ‘feeling’ and ‘affective’
The inserted tooltip in this paragraph makes it even more clear –
Just out of curiosity, what did you think, for all those years, the actualism method “was about”? FELIPE: Similarly, when you talk about actualism to other people,
look how they automatically categorize it as a philosophy or a religion/ spiritual pursuit. There seems to be a lack
of a word to hit the nail on the head (perhaps a challenge/ opportunity to “market” it better? haha). VINEETO: Perhaps it would make more sense, when you introduce your particular … um … philosophy of actualism to others, to rather share your own experiential discoveries instead of a method you obviously have not yet understood even in principle. Possibly, your own difficulty in explaining actualism to others is because you are lacking experiential expertise/ confirmation (and not because of the lack of a word to describe the actualism method and aim). Besides, what good is ‘marketing’ when it’s misleading? You could also watch out for a tendency to blame something else (i.e. the method and missing words) instead of finding the causes for the lack of expected results in your own misunderstanding –
I wish you speedy success now, in feeling happy and harmless, as you seem to begin to grasp “what
actualism was all about”. A re-read of the instructions and associated web pages might be useful. Cheers Vineeto
(...) KUBA: The other day as I was driving I had a glimpse of what it means to be innocence personified, that without ‘me’ there is an immaculate purity permeating everything and it is so clean, with not even a trace of ‘dirt’, to be that purity is to be innocence personified. Shortly after this happened I could see ‘my’ place from a different vantage point, it gave me a lot of confidence that it is safe for ‘me’ to die. VINEETO: You may be perceiving it to be “safe” to die, but do you willingly and gladly agree to blessedly Would you treat any of your fellow human beings the way you seem to be treating yourself such that you are “‘screaming’ constantly”? How can you agree to this noble self-sacrifice, when there is neither respect nor appreciation, neither dignity nor admiration for “‘my’ most supreme donation”? (...) KUBA: In that there is the “field” of apperceptive awareness which ultimately precedes ‘me’, this apperceptive awareness allows the seeing of ‘me’ in ‘my’ proper place, which is not that important at all! Essentially this means that there is this entire world going on outside of ‘my’ self centred bubble. I could see from that vantage point that it is very possible for ‘me’ to disappear, it is just in a direction which ‘I’ don’t normally see or know that it exists, the apperceptive seeing showed that this direction is there to be taken and that it exists just outside of ‘me’. So yes by all means everything seems in place but as above ‘my’ being is still trying to ‘survive’ or perhaps
it’s slowly dying, those passions are still burning away to some degree which means that ‘I’ am not in full
agreement, yet. VINEETO: You seem to have turned this originally apperceptive seeing into a concept (“‘my’ proper place”) by which to treat you, ‘your’ ‘being’, as the antagonist who will not do as your concept demands. It is not for nothing that the actualism method is about enjoyment and appreciation, all the way. In other words, you have the option to enjoy and appreciate your slowly coming to terms with your being redundant. Cheers Vineeto
JAMES: Been pulling myself up by my bootstraps and the results
are paying off. I have been experiencing enjoyment and appreciation slowly but surely. How sweet it is! VINEETO: Hi James, Good to hear from you and I am glad you “been experiencing enjoyment and
appreciation” despite “the uncertainty of my various health conditions”. I looked up the term ‘pulling oneself up by the bootstraps’ which ‘Peter’ introduced and ‘he’ and ‘Vineeto’ made use of on several occasions. They both used it in a similar sense of ‘getting back to feeling good’ as quickly as possible but with a hint that it sometimes was an effort to extract oneself from the glue of the ubiquitous human condition.
(...) You have come a long way since then, James – and now you can really enjoy and appreciate the tangible practical results of “bootstrapism” – “how sweet it is!” It is truly marvellous. Cheers Vineeto
JAMES: There has been a noticeable breakthrough this morning. There is a discernible enjoyment and an upgrade in feeling good. Back to being glad to being alive. Things are looking up. I need to stay on track. One thing I thought of is to enjoy and appreciate w/o thinking of how it should be. VINEETO: Hello James, Congratulations, you cracked the code – “One thing I thought of is to enjoy and appreciate w/o thinking of how it should be”. That’s being naïve and it makes everything so much easier. Cheers Vineeto
EMP: Thank you for this timely reminder Vineeto VINEETO: Hi Emp, You very likely did – something like ‘noticing in a positive way’. Never mind you used the anaemic meaning for 15 years – it’s always great to start afresh with a new insight and enjoy that it works. To emphasize how significant the word "appreciate”/ "appreciation” is, to
everyone who had similar misconceptions about it, let me start by saying that it appears five times in the running
banners of "This Moment of Being Alive” [Richard]: –
Appreciation is the most potent aspect of the actualism method because as I said before – it
"is the very key to *exponentially* increase the level of your enjoyment, expand it in scope and
depth" […] to the point of excellence being the norm. It is the key to upgrade your "hedonic adaptation
set-point" EMP: It took me until about a month ago to realize that it’s anything but anaemic. It’s funny how this understanding has leaked through lately even though I’ve been bad at actively engaging it (down to getting comments about how positive I am, which is as close to a personality transplant as you’d get). VINEETO: It seems to have already worked marvellous for you, Emp – “a personality transplant” is no small thing to bring about. Now when you do it more actively and consciously, perhaps even as a deliberate decision and commitment to feel good/excellent for the rest of your life, it will be even more of a palpable “personality transplant” beyond recognition of the old Emp. And it is such fun! Cheers Vineeto
SONYA: It’s wonderful how simple it is. I think where I was going wrong before was trying to figure out why I was feeling bad whenever I was feeling bad, and of course trying to do that whilst in that state means that any investigation led me to justifying and solidifying my “right” to feel bad. So, being okay with not trying to intellectualise my feelings meant that I was freed to see that I am being the feeling and fully experience it without repressing or expressing – then any time it came up again I would refer back to the last time that bad feeling came up and see that there was no point to feeling that way, it didn’t help the situation, it wasn’t “protecting” me from anything. In fact being that way would just spoil whatever experience was going on. The next time the feeling came up it would get easier and easier to nip it in the bud and go back to enjoying and appreciating. After the above happened it seems to be getting easier to come close to the direct experience again. I
keep getting fleeting glimpses of being close to that direct experience which is cool! It’s like I’ve found a road
leading straight to that direct experience that is so easy to get back on, it seems all I have to do is just angle
myself towards enjoying/appreciating and I’m back on it again. I guess that’s why it’s called the wide and
wondrous path. VINEETO: Hi Sonya, You have mapped it all out and it’s great you found a way to go back to enjoying and appreciating more easily and it easy that way “to come close to the direct experience”. There is one hitch though you need to take into account – when you had the direct experience you described ‘you’ were in abeyance. Hence ‘you’ cannot make it happen, ‘you’ can only give permission to get out of the way and allow it to happen.
Cheers Vineeto
KUBA: Hi Vineeto, Thank you for your reply, I will consider your latest response as well as the previous one. As a side note I wanted to say how much I appreciate the way in which you have been speaking with me over the past year. Of course this process of working out how to arrive at my destiny, it involves stumbling into various dead ends, diversions and even me being outright cunning. But all these times, through hundreds of messages I have experienced nothing but goodwill and more from you. I can’t tell you just how deeply I appreciate this, and it is something I will remember for the rest of my life, just what is possible in terms of relating to one’s fellow human being. VINEETO: Hi Kuba, I do appreciate your feedback, primarily for your sake as you seem to be benefitting mightily from appreciating my comment – but also because your perspicacity makes the interaction particularly delightful when facilitating another becoming free from suffering forever. By the way, when I mentioned “cunning” in my message yesterday (“‘you’ are very real, passionately (and cunningly) so”), I said that not as a criticism (because all identities are by instinctual necessity cunning from time to time) but as a warning to what to look out for once you recognize the pattern. You may have already noticed how appreciation is its own reward facilitating and enhancing the enjoyment of what or who you appreciate. After all, to appreciate means 1) recognize the full worth of and It also means adding value to what / who you appreciate. KUBA: I can see that this challenge of being intimate is what I
have been avoiding, there is a joke I saw online that goes something like “men would rather go to war than
therapy” of course neither war nor therapy is needed for the third alternative but this gets the gist of my
resistance. It’s like I found it easier to turn actualism into some battle against dragons and demons as long as I
could avoid this challenge of being intimate. VINEETO: Ha, now that you have understood this (instinctual) pattern you never need to fall into this trap again. Cheers Vineeto
KUBA: Hi Vineeto, VINEETO: It’s wonderful you now have access to this flavour of “the wonder and amazement itself rather than any intellectual answer”. Intellectual answers are never successful in the long run standing against any onslaught of instinctual passions, whereas “wonder and amazement itself” are very potent and ultimately irresistible. KUBA: Yes and there is this other side to it in that I am quite an intense person in the sense that the “cogs are always turning”, and the problem when looking for intellectual answers within the real world is that I only end up chasing those various steeples which are never satisfying anyways, on top of the fact that they never lead anywhere. Whereas when allowing that mirificent flavour it is like my natural inclination to be fascinated finally finds home and here it can flower fully, because the possible wonder and amazement is endless in both scope and depth. VINEETO: Hi Kuba, Yes, a conscious change of habit might be useful – to remember and appreciate sensuousness and
value the very act of appreciating the wondrous and amazing world around you as a beneficial and worthwhile activity
– simply because this is what you want to do in your life, and not because anyone else praises you for it or gives
you a badge of honour for it. To allow yourself to follow your “natural inclination to be fascinated”,
don’t stop it in midstream, let it “flower fully, because the possible wonder and amazement is endless in
both scope and depth”. It is indeed endless in scope and depth. Richard’s last article, ‘Marvelling how
well-equipped human beings are’ KUBA: Then I don’t need to be looking for things to do, being here is that fascinating in itself, I remember this specifically when driving back from London the other day and looking at the vista all around, the trees have begun turning in colour and some had leaves that were almost red, other leaves were as if dancing in the wind in front of the car and we were comfortably making our way home with music playing. What Richard wrote then came to mind, that being here is an escapade in itself. Even writing this I am amazed that such wonder and amazement is possible, and there was more because it was precisely around that time that an option presented itself to me, which was to allow this moment to live me. It was this naive wonder and amazement that made the option available, because ‘I’ was not required for any of this wondrous happening in the first place. I can understand why it has been written that “the sky is not the limit”. VINEETO: Ha, you got the gist of it – will you dare to continue? Will you care to continue? * VINEETO: And don’t castigate yourself for your “endless stubbornness” – more than likely it’s not only the deep fear of venturing into the unknown but also the fear of leaving behind everything which is dear/ familiar to you and common to all. And the moment you dare to look the fear in the eye, acknowledge its existence and refuse to be beaten, fear will instantly lose a large portion of its power (because fearing fear is feeding it) and then you can look for the thrill of the adventure of a lifetime. [Emphasis by Kuba]. KUBA: Yes I think you hit the nail on the head here, this is why I have felt like I sold out too, because pure intent has been experienced and yet I could not bear to proceed through that potential fear of leaving all that is dear / familiar to me and common to all. In fact this summarises my objection altogether, this objection / fear is what stands between me and that which I want more than anything. VINEETO: Yes, once in a while marvelling is not sufficient, it requires daring and caring to dare to continue on the path which will eventually leave behind all that ‘you’ hold dear, including ‘you’. KUBA: So this fear of leaving the known behind it seems it can’t be gingerly walked around either, I mean that is what I have been doing for a long time with not much success. At the same time I understand from past experience that it is not to be pushed through in a sudorific manner. VINEETO: Ha, “gingerly” walking around fear has never worked, neither does endless rational thinking and/or conceptualising or other strategic detachment manoeuvres. KUBA: I actually have some good idea of what needs to happen this time around, it seems all those prior failed attempts did provide me with some valuable information as to what not to do. And you have also explained what can be done:
and
VINEETO: Excellent. And don’t merely focus on the fear either, stay with the amazing flavour of wonder. Only when fear interferes with enjoyment and appreciation, acknowledge fear’s existence and refuse to be beaten/ distracted. Here I found a reminder what you (briefly?) already knew in November last year –
As you know, the opposite to being sophisticated is being naïve. And naiveté is a quality which, once re-discovered, can be cherished, fostered and become a new way of life. Cheers Vineeto
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