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(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Selected Correspondence Being a Friend to Yourself
SCOUT: Thanks for elaborating further. I’ve had experiences on psychedelics that were definitely ASCs but also ones that were definitely PCEs, which stand as the goalpost I have oriented my whole life around and they’re how I was able to recognize the truth in yours and Richard’s writings. VINEETO: I am not sure what you mean when you say “just presence”? Could it be that this “presence” was ‘Being’ or ‘Me’? It would be good to explore so you do not take a possible ASC as your lodestone. SCOUT: Good catch, I was using spiritual lingo here but what I really meant was just raw, un-centered senses and the inescapable present moment – like it was impossible for there to be anything other than what was immediately physically happening because whatever imaginary centerpoint that usually mediates my conscious experience and imagines a past and a future was entirely gone. VINEETO: Hi Scout, Thank you for clarifying. It’s really good that you can clearly tell the difference and thus don’t accidentally go down the wrong alley. * VINEETO: If you were really “not worried about what’s not happening now” then you would be enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive to the point of continuously feeling excellent – but that is not the case, is it? And you wouldn’t have to ask if “the sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah?” SCOUT: I also may have mis-communicated here as that comment was more intended as conjecture than stating how I actually feel right now. I’m pretty ill and exhausted most of the time and I definitely still worry about it. As you pointed out though, conjecture is kind of an empty mental exercise compared to aiming to actually become free. Thank you for clarifying this as well. It’s become more apparent what you would like to achieve. * VINEETO: Don’t you want to find out how you tick, … SCOUT: Yes, so badly. I feel bad pretty often. I try to set my bearings and observe myself
honestly and keep getting lost in the weeds. But I can see my confusion and stress make my body sicker than it already is. I want to stop torturing myself
and to be well. Ah, now we are talking, lol. Here is something I recently wrote to another and they reported instant success, so I wonder if it will work for you as well … First let me tell you a fundamental fact one needs to recognize in order to successfully apply
the actualism method or any other advice I can give you – you do not have feelings, you are your
feelings. Without recognizing this the method won’t work. (I recommend a long piece of correspondence with No. 60
on the Actual Freedom list To explain: humans are born as feeling beings, babies cry before they can think, and before they even develop a sense of self – so feelings come first. But then thinking sets in and one starts to think that you have feelings which come and go and try to manipulate those feelings, blame yourself for the unwanted ones and chase the ones that you like feeling. That is a sort of subtle dissociation and it doesn’t allow you to choose how you feel, for instance felicitous. So that is an understanding which needs to happen first, at a fundamental level. You are this swirling vortex created by ever-changing instinctual passions and it is not your fault (because everyone is born that way). With this firmly in mind you can stop blaming yourself and you will find that the moment you do that, the feeling itself will diminish (not disappear) but lose some of its strength. The reason is that fighting the feeling you are feeding it. Now when you put this in practice and notice the effect, you can pat yourself on the back that you had your first insight and success. Be a friend to yourself (the only one you are with 24hrs a day). The other benefit of recognizing and accepting that you are your feelings is that you are not a victim, neither a victim of your own feelings nor a victim of other people’s feelings. This quote from Richard might be helpful as well –
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: To “be generous with this body” doesn’t make much sense to me – when you take care of your affective moods your body benefits automatically. What is beneficial is to be a friend to yourself and not blame yourself for what you discover about yourself. Also, there is no such thing as “true actual reality” JESUSCARLOS: Thank you Vineeto ! Got it. Not only did I express my ideas wrongly, but, as you say, I wasn’t looking at the problem
correctly. It makes total sense to me what you suggest I rectify. I need to go deeper into my research to detect what
exactly is the cause of my stress and anxiety. I know it’s me, both as an ego and a soul. But more than knowing it intellectually I need to see it
experientially. Now I can see that I lost the connection with pure intent and I am simply operating from the old habits that I already know and
are useful to me to defend myself in the jungle.
VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, You are right, intellectually knowing is not enough, you need to understand how your mind, i.e. your feelings and being, ticks. Again, the actualism method is of great help – paying ongoing affective attention to how you experience yourself informs you what diminished feeling good. You find what triggered this diminishment and get back to feeling good. Then you have a look at the problem. It may just be a habitual response and will disappear when you decide to decline to go along with it. In the long run none of those “old habits” “are useful to me to defend myself in the jungle” because they only perpetuate the conflict and therefore you are feeling worried and stressful. Remember that by acknowledging that you are your feelings to are able to change how you feel. Or you find that it is a more complex pattern, then you nut out why you consider the world a jungle, why you feel that you have to protect/ defend yourself, in other words protect /defend the feeling being inside your flesh-and-blood body, thereby harming it by stress. For instance, you can ponder/ feel out if resentment plays a part, like Claudiu discovered. Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: then a new thought about the issue strikes me, and I
start back down the feeling bad path. ANDREW: This has been a contemplation lately, and that is there
is a lot of subconscious stress, we get so used to it that it’s just "how things are", reading what you
have written really brought it into focus. What I mean is, I see these deeper issues reflecting in all aspects of
life, but often don’t acknowledge them. So, they do "pop up" when I am in a better mood, and I know the
experience of some simple intension (being determined to feel good), just not working like it did yesterday. VINEETO: Hi Andrew, The good news is that not feeling good when it happens has "brought this into focus" – and not only that but now you have more of an inkling that, and how, you can do something about it. I suggest, start with being a friend to yourself – to notice the habitual put-down of yourself (inculcated and trained for decades) and stop doing it whenever you notice. There is no need for putting yourself down at all as you already want to change for the better. So you are way ahead of your habitual ‘self’ in that you are determined to actively become more happy and harmless and have some effective tools to do it. It’s just a habit when you put yourself, so no reason to continue a bad habit. If you need more tools or understanding, it is amply explained on the Actual Freedom website, whatever topic you choose to go deeper into. You say "some issues are going to take time" – yes time, but more so courage. Courage to admit that those feelings are there despite one’s best intention and that they need to be acknowledged and sensibly looked at. Some, when discovered, you can discard right away, some are part of a larger pattern, perhaps intricately interwoven with some desire, or pride, or other cherished feelings. That takes courage to investigate. But then you will find that those cherished feelings (the ‘good’ feelings which spawn the bad ones) are not worth keeping either. Once you start it becomes either each time you have success. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Hi Felix, So many good posts and insights! Before you end up stressing yourself from the sheer amount of what you want to do differently, let me comment on some of what you wrote – FELIX: Probably the biggest thing I’ve found is this. So much of my
“determination” and “drive” to pursue actualism has been driven by FEAR. This fear points away
from itself oh so cunningly …. I’d even wake up already stressed, and then of course you feel fearful and want to
escape. Which can either be something actualism related or something completely different. VINEETO: And: FELIX: This was my way of trying to put a lid on the feeling being. To not be caring toward
myself or others. This lack of friendliness within caused my nervous system to absolutely tighten and freeze and lock
up - pretty much on an ongoing basis. I just wanted to shut everything down and “achieve” what I needed to.
I didn’t want to mess things up so I ignored myself. VINEETO: One of the best help for feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ was Richard’s advice very early on to be a friend to oneself, and given that you have identified this as one of the last things you had paid attention to in your stressful period, here is a timely reminder –
Whenever you catch yourself being hard on yourself, stop, pat yourself on the back for recognizing this pattern re-emerging, and get back feeling good by declining those ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ demands which are designed to give you a hard time. “A hard time” is a clear sign that you are no longer on the “wide and wondrous path” so you can abandon those with the clear knowledge that they are not part of actualism anyway. FELIX: I have been hunting myself for not being able to turn “myself” into a good person. I’m starting to see that’s the whole game, I’m seeing the limits of being a self – that there is no winning. Why have I tried my whole life to be a winner then? Attempting that is pure stress. I feel ready to do something else, to lose almost, as an action. And it’s like I can feel some support there, that I won’t be “alone
in this endeavour”. That it’s possible. VINEETO: Exactly, actualism is not at all about being a “good person” – which is again using real-world values to determine what you ‘should’ do. Being sincere and naïve is far more valuable both for you and for those you interact with. Neither is the aim to be “a winner” (in everything you do) because it comes from the same internalised moral/ethical template. Here is something for you to chuckle about –
And yet despite all these failures by societal standards, the identity ‘Richard’ succeeded in what ‘he’ had set as ‘his’ priority in life. And a lot of being able to achieve his ultimate aim was made possible by discovering/ re-awakening his dormant naiveté, which made him both liking and likeable. As such, sorting out your priorities will help you determine in which areas you want to succeed and which ones are rather side-issues. FELIX: This usually reveals the beliefs that are operating. Usually a lot of shoulds about
what I should be doing, what I should be achieving, what I need to improve about myself to justify being here. Also
some mean questions like why do people not want to be around me, what’s wrong with me? Etc etc. A fried nervous
system certainly helps to perpetuate this dynamic. VINEETO: Yep, whenever the way you feel dips below the line of feeling good, you know what to look for. You wrote in a previous message – FELIX: I’m reminded how Richard once told me his main goal using the actualism method
originally was “to not get triggered”. That makes a LOT of sense now – it is just so much easier to be
feeling good first and then avoid triggers. VINEETO: It sounds like the most sensible line of approach to start with – and when there are too many different triggers, get back to feeling good first and then do one, then perhaps another at your leisure. There are not as many different triggers as you might believe at first. Enjoy. Cheers Vineeto
ANDREW: Hi Vineeto, To echo Adam’s theme of initial reaction to later appreciation, I
took this as encouragement but didn’t specifically have anything to be courageous about. I was also surprised by
the encouragement to be friendly with myself, it is always a great reminder for me. (…) VINEETO: Hi Andrew, Perhaps this is something to take note of – reminding yourself to be friendly with yourself until it becomes a beneficial habit. As your further post indicates, this reminder allowed you to feel some of the deeply buried fear and contemplate it. ANDREW: The drama in the moment of writing about the fear of failing again, has revealed more of the simplicity I look for these days, rather than any “thought out” type of conclusions based on the “story of my life”. The simplicity is the basic fear intrinsic to being a survival (and reproductive) program, at my core. It’s a feedback loop which is now focused on the fact there is a lot less potential life ahead, than there is behind, and the daily reminders from the aging process that this is not math, or theoretical. The fear, which is me, and has always been so much that a) was ever present, b) not admitted, ever. I distinctly remember the moment I vowed to myself I would not admit I was afraid even. It of course, didn’t stop me being afraid, but it means I denied it to myself so thoroughly that in many circumstances I didn’t even feel it. That moment was as a child when the stove caught on fire, an oil fire on the cook-top when someone had left oil heating up. I remember “screaming like a girl” and in that was even going to douse the flames with water, though I don’t remember what happened. I remember such shame sitting on the step out the front of the house, that I vowed that I would never be afraid again. I was about 10 years old, I think. I have of course, felt fear many, many times, but it is surprising how few, if any will I openly
admit feeling it. I probably have talked about it, in theory, but admitting, in the moment, that I am afraid, is
rare. VINEETO: This was a harsh treatment indeed for a 10-year-old, and when fear is constantly
pushed away, it automatically grows – the very affective energy of pushing it away increases the affective charge
of the unwanted feeling. And when it is seriously suppressed, over a long period of time, it results in all kinds of
psycho-somatic side-effects. For additional general information see Richard, Dissociation and Trauma So it’s very beneficial that you can now allow to acknowledge and feel the feeling of fear, as much as you dare each time, being friendly and shining the bright light of awareness and contemplative attentiveness on those feelings.
When you apply this kind of contemplation, at bit at a time, and then perhaps longer, not getting side-tracked into imaginations or intuitions, then the affective charge of fear will diminish and allow you to more deeply understand how you tick. It might well diminish the restlessness you reported. Of course, you can do that with any feeling that arises. Cheers Vineeto
ANDREW: Hi Vineeto, Thanks for the reply. I was drunk, however, the inclination to post and cringe has been there in any state of mind. Underneath it all, there is loneliness. However, practically, there was also the thought that
this "post then cringe" pattern, which predates Actualism, indeed predates the internet itself. From one extreme to the other, with the same rebellious ideas powering the dynamic. But, I saw that loneliness as the main driving factor. The desire for connection, the desire for conversation with actualists. The knowledge that despite the "cringe" it’s going to take a village for me to change. That sounds just as pathetic to me as it surely does to others. However, is it not a fact that
as of now, very few have had the individual fortitude the make it solo? VINEETO: Hi Andrew, Thank you for your sincere reply. Perhaps the prospect of "put everything on an ‘it-doesn’t-really-matter’ basis" was a bit too daunting for now. So for now, you return to the other of the two most potent techniques – i.e. being kind to yourself, being a friend to yourself.
Being a friend to yourself really needs to take foot in your psyche and become a constant habit, not only that you won’t put yourself down but also that you don’t doubt your own "individual fortitude the make it solo". Some did "make it solo" and if they can, so can you. Being a friend to yourself there is no need to feel lonely – you have been on your own and taken care of yourself almost all of your life. Sometimes there was/is enjoyable company, but the majority of your life you took care of yourself quite well on your own. And remember, loneliness is a feeling and a feeling is not a fact. So when you stop pushing it away or endorsing it (i.e. giving it affective energy), the feeling will change and make way for feeling good again. Adam recently said it quite well –
He also reported another great insight –
ANDREW: Discussing the single most important thing to me is locked behind a screen. VINEETO: It takes time – being a genuine friend to yourself will eventually unlock your mysteries to yourself, and that’s when you can communicate it best. Cheers Vineeto PS: Don’t put too much stock in what your co-respondent says
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