June 13 2025

ADAM-H: The other big change in this time was entering into my first (still ongoing) long-term relationship with my girlfriend. We’ve been living together and spending almost all of our free time together all this time, in relatively good (but far from perfect) harmony and intimacy. There’s no other place in my life where there is such direct feedback for the quality of my actualism practice as there is in how I experience our relationship. When I’m not applying the actualism method, the relationship can feel unfair and stifling, while when I am applying it things can feel incredibly intimate to the point of feeling magical, like there is no separation between us. These ways of experiencing can alternate fairly rapidly where I feel like I can ascend and descend through that spectrum of experience in the course of a week. With ‘work stress’ on the other hand where relationships are much more measured and controlled, that same alternation in mode of experience is much more internal.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

Welcome back to the forum. Great to hear your detailed report and success.

As you have mentioned stress, and work stress in particular, maybe this is the topic to direct your affective attentiveness to in order to determine what causes you to feel this stress in the first place.

There is not much point aiming for naiveté or even “care to be innocence personified” (which only an actually free person can be) before you are able to recognize, dismantle and abandon the triggers for feeling stressed. You say that stress equally affects your mood in your “first-time” relationship, so the feeling of stress can have multiple and diverse as yet unexamined reasons. Once you start paying close attention you will find a treasure-trove of exciting discoveries that can make your life instantly better when you understand each issue more fully as how ‘you’ tick – and thus be able to get back to feeling good and appreciating much more quickly.

ADAM-H: My focus, inspired by the successes of several participants and their interactions with Vineeto, has mostly been on diving into naiveté. This has been a process of making an effort to recognize that I am my feelings, that I can choose how I want to be, and that being naiveté is essential to (or perhaps the same as?) being happy and harmless.

VINEETO: This is excellent. Still stress, according to your report, seems to interrupt feeling good and needs to be addressed –

Gary: I gave some thought as to whether I am ‘tracking’ the waking entity, and I think I am. I seem to go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax, often to but take up the tracking the next day.

Richard: If it be not fun to track oneself in all of one’s doings then one might as well ‘give up the chase and relax’ ... however what you describe as a modus operandi does not make sense to me (‘go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax’).

To need to (and to be able to) ‘relax’ means there must be tension in the first place to relax from ... thus the tracking down has changed from tracking down the ‘same emotions’ or the ‘same repetitive thoughts’ to tracking down the tension ... and you did not notice that the game had changed horses in mid-stream. The need to ‘relax’ is a flashing red light that the game-play has changed: ‘when did this tension start?’; how did this tension begin?’; ‘what was the event that initiated this tension?’; ‘what were the feelings at the time?’; ‘what was the thought associated with that feeling?’ ... and so on. Usually one has only to track back a few minutes or a few hours ... yesterday afternoon at the most. Then one is free from both the tension and the ‘Tried and True’ cure of ‘relax’.

Speaking personally, I never relaxed in all those years of application and diligence, patience and perseverance ... upon exposure to the bright light of awareness the tension always disappeared. [Emphasis added].(Richard, AF List, Gary, 28 January 2001)

ADAM-H: I remember being particularly stirred by this from Vineeto:

Vineeto to Kuba: With the thrilling permission for ‘you’ to die and the passionate care to be innocence personified in place you have blessed set in motion your demise – nothing can go wrong. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba, 14 April 2025)

especially the endorsement of Kuba’s ‘passionate care to be innocence personified’, recognizing that it had never really been part of how I approached actualism.

VINEETO: Of course, it is beneficial to experiment with being naďve and use all the good tips and information Claudiu just gave you. What feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that for ‘her’ being naďve was at first not easy to establish, ‘she’ had to have success in other areas with applying the actualism method consistently and rigorously, such as dismantling various beliefs, and all the while ‘she’ was determined to be ruthlessly honest with herself and being more and more sincere. Out of that sincerity ‘she’ then could allow ‘herself’ to be more and more unsophisticated and guileless.

Richard: There is a marked distinction betwixt spontaneity and impetuosity (aka impulsiveness) ... acuity and/or perspicacity, in the applied form of discrimination, discernment (as in being expedient, provident, judicious, prudent) in conjunction with pragmatism, practicality, sensibility, simplicity, and so forth, gives ready access for any introspective/ creative process to take place. With no identity in situ/ no affective faculty extant, to stuff things up, it is all quite effortless. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 103, 1 October 2005d)

You can change Richard’s last sentence to “with a diminished identity in situ/ a diminished affective faculty extant” – then it becomes clear that the more diminished the identity becomes, naiveté will increase accordingly.

ADAM-H: Since then, I’ve been attempting to galvanize that passionate care which is for this body and everybody to flourish through ‘my’ seeking naivete, which is inextricably linked to seeking my end. Directly recognizing that my calculating/ guileful tendencies are the very thing that prevents happiness and harmless is a small step from seeing that my being is the very thing that prevents perfection.

VINEETO: Mmh, becoming more and more happy and increasingly harmless, i.e. considerate, in your daily life is the best thing you can do for your fellow beings right now, particular for your partner, and of course for yourself. In other words, when you emanate less and less stressful feelings and vibes and are able to neither suppress them nor acting on them, and/or eventually not having them arise in the first place, the less you contribute to stress circulating and multiplying. Start from where you are at, and with pure intent the progress of the actualism method will fall into place organically.

It’s best to avoid creating conceptual maps, which you then try to follow, as this methodology, so tempting for many, only leads to strife (stress), self-deception, and ultimately disappointment ... and is in the very opposite to being naďve.

I snipped the next section because Claudiu has already answered it..

Cheers Vineeto

June 14 2025

ADAM-H: Thanks Vineeto

VINEETO: There is not much point aiming for naiveté or even “care to be innocence personified” (which only an actually free person can be) before you are able to recognize, dismantle and abandon the triggers for feeling stressed. You say that stress equally affects your mood in your “first-time” relationship, so the feeling of stress can have multiple and diverse as yet unexamined reasons. Once you start paying close attention you will find a treasure-trove of exciting discoveries that can make your life instantly better when you understand each issue more fully as how ‘you’ tick – and thus be able to get back to feeling good and appreciating much more quickly.

ADAM-H: Interesting, it seems like your overall impression is that I’m putting the cart before the horse a bit. I can confirm that the investigation side of my practice has maybe been a bit light recently. I wouldn’t say I neglect it entirely but it certainly hasn’t been the focus. With the flavor of naivete powerfully enticing me right now, I’m definitely interested in making it more consistent, so thank you for the advice that the way to do so is more focus/ investigation on the issues that interrupt it.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

You are welcome.

It may well be only a ‘small cart’ that is ‘before the horse.’

Naturally, being stressed needs “‘good’ investigation”, as Geoffrey said in the quote below, so you can recognize and then decline what causes you stress. As ‘Vineeto’ observed early on, it’s often the ‘good’ feelings such as pride, ambition, loyalty, virtue, being ‘right’ and other feelings like this, which caused the ‘bad’ feelings such as stress to achieve the ‘good’ feeling or disappointment when not achieving it. And unless those ‘good’ feelings are recognized and acknowledged with the ‘bad’ feelings both will stay in situ.

Chrono: Just watched Geoffrey’s video that he shared a while back and something he said in there really helped me right now. It’s essentially that “good” investigation is just seeing what’s preventing me from feeling good right now. There’s no need to get any more complex. I mean I know this has been written many times before and the words are right there in front of my face but hearing it really clicked for me. Because I can basically “investigate” forever and I will always find problems (or create them). So in the context of my discomfort and investigating the discomfort, it is the same thing. So what is preventing me right now from feeling good? It’s basically trying to “do” something to feel good. So simple! I have a tendency to complicate things. Also might be related to how I’ve learned throughout my life to be “sophisticated”. If it’s not difficult, then I’m not doing something right. It became the measure (internally) of if I’m doing something properly. Now it’s like the opposite. If it’s not easy, then something is amiss. [Emphasis added].

Thus, when you found the trigger, you can get back to feeling good (not the same as having a ‘good’ feeling) and enjoy and appreciate being alive. Make sure, when feeling good that you’ve understood enough of what triggered the feeling so as to not have it happen again. Then naturally you can enjoy even more and increase this enjoyment with appreciation.

*

VINEETO: What feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that for ‘her’ being naďve was at first not easy to establish, ‘she’ had to have success in other areas with applying the actualism method consistently and rigorously, such as dismantling various beliefs, and all the while ‘she’ was determined to be ruthlessly honest with herself and being more and more sincere. Out of that sincerity ‘she’ then could allow ‘herself’ to be more and more unsophisticated and guileless.

ADAM-H: I think I am on the same page in terms of the ruthless honesty with myself, and it is clear to me how the sincerity of that intention segues into naiveté. Basically if I am really honest about how and why I’m not happy and harmless, it segues into an experiential realization that ‘I’ am the problem, which segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful.

VINEETO: That’s excellent and it already “segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful”.

ADAM-H: The form that this takes for me right now is mostly focused on intentions and vibes more than beliefs, which may be a shortcoming. This is related to previous struggles going in circles of ‘philosophizing and psychologising’ in the past when my practice did have more focus on investigation.

VINEETO: I’m not sure what you mean by “intentions” – are they certain plans for the future?

Also I don’t know what you mean by being “focused on … vibes” – are you focused on your vibes (which are essentially your feelings), or are you trying to figure out other people’s vibes in order to respond accordingly?

It is definitely more beneficial to pay affective attention to how you feel and what is preventing you from feeling good rather than guessing other people’s vibes in order to react according to your guesses. One, you can never be sure if these are your feelings or their feelings/vibes and two, your focus is on their feelings rather than your own. The only person you can change is yourself.

ADAM-H: It’s somewhat rare that I get back to feeling good by recognizing an unexamined belief, much more often it’s closer to a ‘resolution’ that I don’t want to experience life this way, fuelled by the memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way, plus the memory that once I am experiencing life in that other way all of those ‘problems’ will seem imaginary and get dealt with in a manner that is effortless and harmless. Perhaps what is necessary is that once I get into that state where all the problems melt away and seem imaginary, what I need to do is basically dive back into them and closely examine how and why they seemed real vs. how and why they now seem imaginary? Or is there something more fundamentally off with how I’m approaching things?

VINEETO: Not fundamentally, just a little tweaking here and there …

Mmh, resolutions generally don’t work as it’s a form of controlling yourself to feel in a certain way – if that is what you mean by “resolution”. Whereas recognizing that your feelings are caused by a certain belief and then are able to replace this belief with a fact, this will make the belief evaporate and thus no ‘resolution’ is required. You don’t need to believe in a fact, it just sits there, unsupported.

“The memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way” can strengthen your intent to be/become more happy and harmless, and perhaps allows you to take life less seriously, less sophisticated, more naďvely.

Actual change happens now, only this moment is actual. The past is not happening now neither is the future happening now – that’s why you don’t want to waste this moment by feeling stressed, remembering good intentions and bad decisions or planning/ wishing something in the future.

Now is the only moment you are being alive. Realising this, again and again helps a lot to recognize that feeling bad is just silly.

Here Richard tells a correspondent how to access naiveté whenever you want to –

Richard: Given that it is, plainly and simply, always ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment then the optimum manner in which to do so is, of course, sincerely/ naďvely.

Given that it is, plainly and simply, always ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment then the optimum manner in which to do so is, of course, sincerely/ naďvely.

Thus the part-sentence in that previous post of mine [quote] ‘and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté’ [endquote] is worth expanding upon.

The operative words in that part-sentence are [quote] ‘... to be the key ...’ [endquote] and with particular emphasis on the word ‘be’ (rather than ‘have’ for instance).

In other words, to be sincerity (not only have sincerity) is to be the key (not merely have the key) to be naiveté (not just have naiveté).

(Bear in mind that, at root, ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ and it will all become clear).

As there is something I have oft-times encouraged a fellow human being to try, in face-to-face interactions, which usually has the desired effect it is well worth detailing here:

Reach down inside of yourself intuitively (aka feeling it out) and go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until you come to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being ... which is ‘being’ itself).

Now, having located ‘being’ itself, gently and tenderly sense out the area immediately below that (just above/just before and almost touching on the sex centre).

Here you will find yourself both likeable and liking (for here lies sincerity/ naiveté).

Here is where you can, finally, like yourself (very important) no matter what.

Here is the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’.

Here lies tenderness/ sweetness and togetherness/ closeness.

Here is where it is possible to be the key. (Richard, List D; Srid, 26 May 2009) 

Cheers Vineeto

June 15 2025

VINEETO: I’m not sure what you mean by “intentions” – are they certain plans for the future?
Also I don’t know what you mean by being “focused on … vibes” – are you focused on your vibes (which are essentially your feelings), or are you trying to figure out other people’s vibes in order to respond accordingly?

ADAM-H: Just for a little more clarity on what I meant by intentions and vibes – I did mean my own intentions and vibes. Effectively the ruthless honesty with myself is honesty about my own self-centeredness and harmfulness (which I was loosely referring to as intentions/ vibes), which segues into seeing that I’m the problem etc.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

Thank you for the clarification.

The way you describe yourself may be ruthless but not very friendly towards yourself. It’s a good idea to treat yourself as a friend and not someone you need to take down. There are already enough others who do that.

Richard: ‘It is important not to view ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ as an enemy – blind nature is the culprit – and to be friends with yourself ... only you live with yourself twenty four hours a day. Coopt any aspect of yourself as an ally in this investigation into the human psyche ... eventually ‘I’ come to realise that the very best thing that ‘I’ can do is altruistically ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body and all bodies’. [endquote]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 18 February 1999)

Richard: Put succinctly: be kind to yourself ... you are the only friend you have, so to speak’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 41, 4 February 2003).

The actualism method is to enjoy and appreciate being alive – only when something happens, which diminishes this enjoyment and appreciation, then you get back to feeling good and from there look at what triggered the diminishment. There is no need to go out of your way to look for trouble.

ADAM-H: I was trying to express how, overall, my practice of actualism is focused on the core feelings and attitudes that I have that are opposed to happiness and harmless, less so on the beliefs I have that are opposed to happiness and harmlessness. I’m thinking a bit more focus on beliefs will be beneficial since I haven’t really been thinking about things in terms of beliefs, worldviews, psittacisms lately.

VINEETO: It’s not about which aspect of ‘me’ to focus on but on whatever is happening at this moment – if it’s a belief which causes diminishment in feeling good right now, then this is what you figure out; if it’s a habit, such as resentment or castigating yourself, then you acknowledge and decline this habit by replacing it with something better; if it is a certain attitude, then you look at that and work out in what way you can exchange it for a more beneficial attitude.

As Geoffrey said, “It’s essentially that “good” investigation is just seeing what’s preventing me from feeling good right now. There’s no need to get any more complex.”

Cheers Vineeto