|
An Actual Freedom From The Human Condition
(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Correspondence with Claudiu Discuss Actualism Forum
CLAUDIU: But I think the missing ingredient is… basically the decision to do it, to go all-in. I definitely see now that the self-centered aspect of myself still has a powerful pull that it’s easy for me to fall into. I think this is what is ‘overcome’ when going out-from-control in the way Richard, Geoffrey, & Vineeto were. And then indeed as there’s no more escape hatch it will happen on its own. VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, I am pleased that you recognized that what you (with encouragement from me at the time) had called being out-from-control, a different way of being – has turned out not to be the Out-from-Control “Richard, Geoffrey & Vineeto” described. (…) Just to have some common understanding about what you are referring to –
This is really an excellent acknowledgement/ insight in that you now can see your way forward to in fact traverse the wall of fear, become naïve all the way to being naiveté, become harmless, considerate, caring, inclusive, likeable and liking, benevolent, benign and magnanimous – non-sudorifically, with joy and delight because it’s the best way a ‘self’ can be and appreciate this magnificent planet we all live on. CLAUDIU: But this has got me all looking around, now that I’m confident I am not out-from-control in the way Geoffrey was at the end (‘constantly accelerating’) I know there’s that next step I can take, which will be smaller than the step to self-immolating, in other words it will make it easier. VINEETO: The quicker you drop any plan and/or map and/or concept you might have in your head and start living naïvely, the easier it will be to experientially find out the next step the moment you take it. Mental maps are the opposite of being naïve and they have an inherent flaw that imagination takes over and pretends one is already where one wants to be according to the concept. CLAUDIU: But maybe the way to do it is just to be vigilant and
purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route (yet again), due to all the above (caring, altruism, blessed
oblivion), which for both of us it seems like it does lead to something that we experience like being out-from-control,
but indeed to keep doing that and ‘stabilize’ in it (in the sense of making it my baseline) and then from there it’ll
be easier/more obvious how/more obviously sensible to make that irrevocable decision. VINEETO: Ha, the addiction to sudorifically finding one’s way through an imagined jungle of chores and traps is not easy to abandon, hey, but it’s really worthwhile. Make friends with not knowing what’s going to happen next, with experimenting living without plan and scheme, don’t envision you have to ‘tick off’ ‘self’-set tasks. It’s not vigilance you need, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself and towards your fellow human beings. Re-discover how to play and play together.
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: This is really an excellent acknowledgement/ insight in that you now can see your way forward to in fact traverse the wall of fear, become naïve all the way to being naiveté, become harmless, considerate, caring, inclusive, likeable and liking, benevolent, benign and magnanimous – non-sudorifically, with joy and delight because it’s the best way a ‘self’ can be and appreciate this magnificent planet we all live on. CLAUDIU: But this has got me all looking around, now that I’m confident I am not out-from-control in the way Geoffrey was at the end (‘constantly accelerating’) I know there’s that next step I can take, which will be smaller than the step to self-immolating, in other words it will make it easier. VINEETO: The quicker you drop any plan and/or map and/or concept you might have in your head and start living naïvely, the easier it will be to experientially find out the next step the moment you take it. Mental maps are the opposite of being naïve and they have an inherent flaw that imagination takes over and pretends one is already where one wants to be according to the concept. CLAUDIU: Sure but I don’t see the difference in what you said vs what I said? I wrote I “know there’s that next step I can take” (i.e. going out-from-control genuinely) while you write that I “now can see [my] way forward to in fact traverse the wall of fear” (i.e. going out-from-control genuinely), what’s the difference such as it makes the former a mental map but the latter not? VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, I understand, they do sound similar – I was more commenting on the tendency I have observed of following the finger on an imaginary map rather than naively experiencing the next moment without a plan but unwavering intent. How do you know which is the next step – I know that ‘Vineeto’ didn’t know which was the next step to get out-from-control, even though Richard had explicitly urged ‘her’ to do just that –
* CLAUDIU: But maybe the way to do it is just to be vigilant and
purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route (yet again), due to all the above (caring, altruism,
blessed oblivion), which for both of us it seems like it does lead to something that we experience like being
out-from-control, but indeed to keep doing that and ‘stabilize’ in it (in the sense of making it my baseline) and
then from there it’ll be easier/ more obvious how/ more obviously sensible to make that irrevocable decision. VINEETO: Ha, the addiction to sudorifically finding one’s way through an imagined jungle of chores and traps is not easy to abandon, hey, but it’s really worthwhile. Make friends with not knowing what’s going to happen next, with experimenting living without plan and scheme, don’t envision you have to ‘tick off’ ‘self’-set tasks. It’s not vigilance you need, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself and towards your fellow human beings. Re-discover how to play and play together. CLAUDIU: Humm I don’t see how what I wrote is “an imagined jungle of chores and traps” though. VINEETO: It seems I haven’t been precise enough to be understood correctly. What I was responding to were your words “the way to do it is just to be vigilant and purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route (yet again), due to all the above (caring, altruism, blessed oblivion) …” and “keep doing that and ‘stabilize’”. Richard somewhere described ‘his’ change to out-from-control similar to changing to a higher ‘gear’ –
Unfortunately I was unable to find the exact quote where Richard used a similar description when in January/ February 1981 the change into virtual freedom occurred comparable switching into a higher gear. He said he only fell out once and it was so unpleasant he never wanted to revert back to normal after it recommenced a few moments later. This is to emphasize that the transition to being out-from-control is indeed a radically
different-way-of-being, which can neither be achieved by “vigilance” nor by “keep doing that
and ‘stabilize’” and arises out from being naiveté (see last tooltip in A Clay-Pit Tale
When you said in two other messages –
And
– it makes me wonder what happened to pure intent, this actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity which makes it impossible not to care or being considerate and endows one with virtual magnanimity and caring and benevolent generosity towards one’s fellow human beings. How can you just “forget about the caring aspect lol” as if you had just forgotten your keys when leaving the house? CLAUDIU: If I put it differently what I would say is that being in an excellence experience is very familiar to me now, this is where caring, naiveté, fun, being likable & liking, etc., are all part of it without having to put effort into it (because the ‘beer’ is operant rather than the ‘doer’), and it’s way less self-centric. VINEETO: It may be familiar as past experiences, the memory of which is a belief right now unless it is happening now. And unless it is presently happening then your conclusions (for instance of “without having to put effort into it”) are informed by the rational, logical, reasonable identity ‘Claudiu’, who cannot, by ‘his’ very nature, know how to move from the ‘doer’/controller to the naïve near-innocent ‘beer’ experiencing overflowing pure intent (because that is not ‘his’ territory). CLAUDIU: It is very contrasted with going back to the regular self-centric way of being which is no fun at all by comparison. So what I’m saying it makes sense to do is, when being alive in the way of being like an excellence (or intimacy) experience, just decline to go back out of it back to the self-centric way of being. Like make the choice to not go back there. It seems like an obvious thing and I am not sure I need to do anything else actually lol. (ADDENDUM: I mean I think there is still actually going out-from-control from there but I think I will see where to do that/ it’ll be obvious how to do it, as a natural consequence of doing this, not going back to self-centric ways). (…) VINEETO: First you will need to abandon “the regular self-centric way of being” to contrast it with something else. That is what I mean by working along a concept, a map, rather than moving one step experientially while you are doing it. Here is something for you to ponder: Richard had neither a blue-print nor a map nor anyone’s reports of what happened to them on the way to an actual freedom. He figured it all out by himself. However, what he had in abundance was naiveté (the naïve boy from the farm, as he kept saying). One would think that those who have all these past reports, explanations and confirmation available for their own experiences would be better off now, but the cunning of the genetic/social identity can and does use any opportunity to turn a helpful tool into a stumbling block. As such pure intent is vital, essential. CLAUDIU: Does it make sense, do you still see it as a sudorific
thing when I put it that way? VINEETO: The alternative of “sudorific” is not its logical opposite as
in “without having to put effort into it” but a major ongoing re-experiencing of your way of being
(without the ‘controller’).
A bit like what you said in your next post – CLAUDIU: Yea it’s more like a not-sure-what-will-come-next, it
doesn’t make sense to plan the next steps for how to self-immolate. Although all the stuff I discussed w/ Geoffrey
and we discussed here is all relevant to keep in mind I suppose. Will see how it goes. VINEETO:
(Library, Topics, Naiveté)
Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU: I think there’s just a disconnect here. The funny and delightful thing is that from the self centric way of being it’s a big social identity issue, wanting to show that I “know the answer” and defend myself. But writing now from the being naive way of being it just doesn’t ‘matter’ at all haha, at least this aspect of it. In any case it does seem beneficial to flesh it out in case I am missing something. So: If you read it as a normal/in-control self-centric being looking at a checkbox of stuff like “ooh gotta add some caring” and “oh yea can’t forget about the altruism!”, trying to check off boxes or add these in as ingredients to some dish, then I can see why you wrote what you did. Indeed it’s obvious that wouldn’t work, that isn’t how to proceed from being in an in control way of being. The way to proceed is rather to go from an out from control way of being which is what being naïveté is, which is also called an excellence experience. This isn’t an out from control virtual freedom, the distinction there (which I asked Richard about) is that pure intent isn’t fully and dynamically operative yet. But that’s just words describing something I haven’t experienced yet so it’s not so relevant now except as to know there’s something ‘more’ (but it is unknown to me what that is like). VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, I demure. You can only proceed from where you are at. How can you “go from an out from control way of being” when you are not in “an out from control way of being”? How can you go from “being naïveté” when you are not “being naïveté”? Being naïveté itself is to be permanently out-from-control.
Given that you recognized CLAUDIU: So what I was attempting to convey, perhaps poorly, is that the way to continue from here seems to be to more consistently be naïveté, to be more and more of the time in this excellence experience way of being rather than not. I put ‘stabilize’ in squotes cause it’s not a great word, but don’t know what a good one would be. But basically to be it more consistently. VINEETO: To say it again for emphasis, the change from being in a methodological, in-control virtually freedom to a dynamic out-from-control different way of being is a paradigm shift, not “to be more and more of the time” in the way you have been –
To use a physical-world simile – there is a major difference between driving a car and flying in a rocket-ship. CLAUDIU: And the way doesn’t seem so different from establishing a baseline of feeling good, it’s a matter of noticing when I have fallen out of it and getting back to it soonest. So when you write the way to go out from control virtual freedom is by being naïveté it sounds like you’re saying the same thing — what do you think? (…) Yea I do think we are saying the same thing. Last few days have oscillated from being in control
self-centric way of being and feeling or wondering if everything is horribly awry and I’m way off track, to the
out-from-control naive way of being and it’s like oh ok I’m basically going in the right direction. As of now I
do think I’m basically on the right track, but the doing/being of it will be the proof in the pudding of course. VINEETO: As the remainder of your reply is in a similar vein of just doing more of the same/ more consistently doing the same, and that we are talking about “the same thing”, let me use your own words of your report when your visit to Geoffrey was still more fresh in your mind –
Even though this first of “two key pieces” does not appear in your list of “main take-aways” I think it is an all-important revelation – that you “had been trying to put myself into actuality”. It might well require a certain gestation period to fully grasp the enormity of the impact on your imaginary way of “trying to put myself into actuality”. Because when fully understood, with all of your ‘being’, not just intellectually, it will have/ would have, completely taken the carpet from under your feet. Hence my reference to a gestation period –
It would be a pity if you missed the full import of what transpired during your visit to a fully free human being. Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU: Hi Vineeto, I see the disconnect and I can unravel it. Basically, the way forward is clear to me: it’s the way towards naïveté, being way way more naive than has been my usual way of experiencing myself the past year, to the point of being naïveté, and revelling in it, this palpable naïveté that is now such an obvious direction to go into. It’s so obvious and clear that it’s the way to go that I am not sure anyone could convince me otherwise. VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, Ha, with ramping up naiveté (liking yourself and others, being likeable and liking) you can’t go wrong. With naiveté it’s so much easier to let any self-image, social status problem, concerns about previous concepts or one’s place on the map fall by the wayside because life is then experience as the best one can be, and let active pure intent do the rest. CLAUDIU: So to allay your concerns, no it’s not that I’m gonna do the same thing I have been doing the past year. That will only lead to another year of the same. Rather it’s to go into this clear, far-far-more increased naïve way of being alive. VINEETO: My point rather was, not that you would do that intentionally but that ‘you’ the identity, having a vested interest in surviving another day, will secretly, unnoticed, step in and pervert the cause of facticity. After all you said in your report about your visit to Geoffrey –
Sometimes it takes a while to digest, rememorate and then fully abandon one’s previous modus operandi, even a possible gestation period. This is only natural given the complexity and weirdness of the human condition. For instance, ‘Vineeto’ had a severe shock and re-orientation and re-adjustment when Richard told ‘Peter’ and ‘her’ that their virtual freedom was not the dynamic different-way-of-being, ‘Vineeto’ needed a day to emotionally and mentally digest this, including the fact ‘she’ had deceived not only ‘herself’ but also a lot of others in ‘her’ writing. So I know from personal experience how self-deception operates and how one can feel upon exposure/ revelation. At that time ‘Vineeto’ was also experiencing competition with Pamela about who would be the first female to become actually free. Richard always gently played on our competitive feelings by saying to each of us that “you could be the first”. He figured that anything which helps to overcome our inertia was beneficial. I remember the competitive feelings were particularly acute for ‘Vineeto’ when Pamela had her 5-months PCE which at first, of course, looked like ‘she’ had ‘done it’. CLAUDIU: What I was getting at (but poorly it seems) is that this palpable naïveté is something that I have experienced on occasion the past year, actually somewhat frequently, and I would say I have gotten a knack at getting back to it – but no it hasn’t been a 100% or even 99% ongoing experience. However it’s not an entirely unknown and unfamiliar direction, was what I was saying, it’s more just going to that already-somewhat-familiar direction, but more, much much more, with renewed intent and vigor, and it certainly appears to go “deeper” than I’ve gone into it before. VINEETO: It is not a matter of “poorly” conveying what you wanted to say but the very fact that you were trying to move forward, “with renewed intent and vigor”, before you really digested and fully assessed the major game-changing events which happened during your visit to Geoffrey.
And:
The planning for going ahead, as in “but maybe the way to do it is just to be vigilant
and purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route” Whereas when you first feel good, feel great, feel excellent, and become more naïve, then everything – I mean every thing – is seen in a different light, including what to be next (and I don’t mean be vigilant). It’s promising that you say “it certainly appears to go ‘deeper’”. CLAUDIU: I can’t think of a better way to depict the sheer fun of this naïveté than the interaction with my partner when I just got home now. I’m walking in having a blast, and she gets an amused look and says I have a mischievous grin on my face (I didn’t realize I was grinning lol). So then I go up closer to her and hug her on the couch and say “Oh I have a secret”. And she’s like oh? What’s the secret? And I pause and say … … “I’m having a lot of fun”. And she just bursts out laughing, this hearty, full-on laugh. It certainly is contagious . VINEETO: This is a lovely fun story and in that experience you have indeed “a secret”. To once in a while have fun is easy to start with – to give full permission to always have fun
needs some “awareness-cum-attentiveness”
CLAUDIU: I ehhh wrote another 1,200 words about the various
terms and terminology for all this but… I think it’s unnecessary for now lol. So I’ll just leave it here for
now. VINEETO: Excellent. Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU: I think we both experienced something like this and what it is like being alive has not changed for me either. And the experiential portions of the reports we have made of it are accurate reports of what it is like, at least I haven’t made anything up. However, does it attain to that which is called “out-from-control virtual freedom” in actualist lingo? There are, I think, two ways to tackle this question. The first is the mapping approach which is trying to determine whether it really is this. What happened with me is: after talking about my experience of being alive with Geoffrey, he described a bit what it was like being out-from-control for ‘him’ in ‘his’ last week, and to me it sounded like a different thing than I was experiencing, and we were in concordance on that. Part of that convo is where he asked me something like, do I think that how I am now will inevitably result in self-immolation, or do I think there is something more I have to do to have it happen? I said it was the latter, and he said something along the lines of that that’s good and he was wondering whether I have been “chilling” / waiting around (or something like this) as a possible reason for why I haven’t self-immolated yet. Another way to take the mapping approach is to compare experience with already-available
descriptions. Is something really described as being “nigh-on unstoppable”
(...) VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, After giving it some deliberation, I decided to comment on the whole topic. One reason is that I encouraged both yourself and Kuba to collect messages from the forum that appeared to fit the description of being out from control for publishing it on the AFT website, when it eventually turned out that this might not be the case. The other reason is that I take the words my correspondents write at face value and therefore can only go by what they write, and not what they live day-to-day, when Claudiu’s visit to Geoffrey provided a more complete experience –
The last but not least reason is that I will have to be more careful in my writing that I better not encourage people to adopt the label of being out-from-control according to what they write, so that time (a person’s and other readers’ most valuable asset) may not be frittered away by believing that they only have to “chill” and wait for the actualism process to complete by itself when this is not yet the case. For additional help in the action of determining your own situation I have collected some
unambiguous quotes from Richard and one from myself from Richard’s selected correspondence
*
*
*
*
Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU: Hi Vineeto, That all makes sense, I just want to address this quote you included:
There is an implication here (maybe unintended) that I was fooling you
(and others) by “reporting something which is not the situation”, and I want to affirm that this is
not what happened. (snip). VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, Before you continue with your response to your own “implication”, which you already classified as “perhaps unintended”, let me tell you there was no implication when I sent off the message. It must have crept in when you read it. The intentioned reason I included this quote was because of the first sentence –
That means I will be refraining from labelling who is at what stage in the actualism progression, and I have already taken responsibility when I gave my reasons for providing the quotes in the message you are replying to (which you said makes sense to you) –
The comment is my hindsight and what I will be doing different in future. We are all pioneers in this business of bringing about peace on earth. Where in that introduction did I say that you were “fooling” me? It is up to you to determine that. Let me put it in a different way – to explain why Richard wrote the second part of the above quote – the whole process of actualism includes finding out about one’s emotional/ passional habitual thinking and (at times passionate) feeling which encompasses finding out about one’s beliefs, morals and ethics inculcated from birth onwards, which prevent enjoying and appreciating being alive. Each time you are able to replace a belief/ truth with a fact you recognize you have been fooled and as such been fooling yourself. The same applies to any other social identity issue you have inadvertently swallowed hook, line and sinker, when you eventually find out that they make no sense when compared to the sincere intent of imitating the actual. Your visit to Geoffrey enabled you to find out the fact that his being out-from-control doesn’t match your own belief of being out-from-control –
And –
So you were able to replace your previous belief with the newly discovered fact. Now why you want to go back discussing what happened a year ago (June 23 and 24, 2024) to justify anything that was happening then, and then have me “imply” that you were or were not “fooling” me, is anyone’s guess. For what purpose? Why not appreciate that a new fact has come to light which makes the previous belief obsolete? I am reminded of a quote from Richard (he always said it better than I ever can) –
Besides, your additional message confirms what I just said – why not appreciate that a new fact has come to light, which resultant action makes the previous belief obsolete? As a guess, the qualifier “when being naïve” is the clue. CLAUDIU: Also just wanted to add that the funniest thing about
this all is, when being naive, that it “doesn’t really matter” what transpired. Like there’s no moral
weight or blame or “something done wrong” on any side of anyone. It was well-intentioned people doing their
best with given information at the time, to navigate and attempt to label experiential ways of being, which can
certainly be tricky. And there is no lasting harm or anything that has been done… ultimately it’s up to me anyway
to self-immolate, I had already grown suss for a few months and recognized something more was needed, visiting
Geoffrey helped me see what I think the main blocker was (trying to put myself into actuality), and now that I have
been able to properly contemplate and reflect on just what my total extinction means and entails, I am having a blast
and experiencing myself as having gotten to further ‘reaches’ than I ever have before. So all is, in the final
analysis, going just fine really. VINEETO: Regarding your question what to do with the out-from-control reports of yourself and Kuba we can sort this out in a private email. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO (to Kuba):
CLAUDIU: I always found the grammar a bit odd here, can you clarify Vineeto? What I gather he is saying is that when facing profound dread, it’s better to plumb the depths of ‘being’ itself rather than avoid the dread, because avoiding the dread can lead to manifesting various phantasmagoria, while using the opportunity to plumb the depths of ‘being’ will be fruitful. But the “avoidance through realisation of the portentous event” is confusing, why is “realisation
of the portentous event” a form of“avoidance”? VINEETO: Perhaps I should have included the follow-up sentences in that quote (the link was also faulty but is fixed now) –
Perhaps a comma after “avoidance” and after “portentous event” makes for an easier comprehension. CLAUDIU: Ohhhh or wait is he saying that – Rather than trying to realize or figure out what the foreboding event might be that is causing a deep feeling of dread (i.e. I am dreading something, what am I dreading?) … Instead of that (looking ‘outward’ at what the event might be) it is instead an opportune moment to look inward, at the depths of ‘my’ very ‘being’ itself, which (with pure intent) “can enable a movement into the existential angst […] which movement facilitates the bright light of awareness being shone into the innermost recesses of ‘my’ presence … which is ‘presence’ itself” – and this can then “reveal that ‘presence’ itself feeds off ‘my’ fear” which “functional acuity brings an abrupt end to its nourishment”. So it is kinda funny in that ‘realizing’ the event-that-I-am-dreading ends up being the “avoidance” of
looking at the dread itself/ why dread manifests in the first place/ ‘my’ being itself. VINEETO: Excellently put. You found the description of how to proceed when a deep feeling of dread makes its appearance. At some point plumbing the depths of ‘being’ itself is most likely unavoidable on the way to self-immolation at this point in the pioneering stage. Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU (to Felix): Ah okay, maybe you meant “not hedonistic”? “Hedonistic” in a colloquial usage now means… well the Claude AI put it well: Today, these terms often carry negative connotations, suggesting:
When someone is called “hedonistic” now, it typically implies they’re irresponsible, shallow, or addicted to pleasure-seeking. It’s funny cause that’s not at all what the original Greeks who were pursuing hedonism meant by it, but anyway the point is how we’re using the words. So then we could coin a word “anhedonistic” to mean “not hedonistic” in the above sense. In that case it makes a lot of sense and certainly more sincere and naive ways of affectively enjoying being alive, would not be hedonistic. So you could be saying you’re discovering how to enjoy being alive more sincerely / naively in actualist lingo, and experiencing pleasure not in this hedonistic way but in a more salubrious way. Could indeed be great if so, I leave it for you to find out. I understand if you don’t
wanna detail out the vocabulary at this point but it is something I enjoy and maybe helpful to others. VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, Just a quick comment. I appreciate your attention on precise wording. One’s choice of words describing one’s experiences, linguistic or mental, generally shapes one’s thinking and feeling. As such, just as the word “hedonistic”, according to your AI, signifies an excess of hedonic feelings and behaviour, in a similar way the (presently non-existing) word “anhedonistic” would indicate an excessive way of being anhedonic. This is confusing for those who know the word “anhedonic” as an characteristic of experiencing a PCE or an actual freedom, and for those of the psychiatric genre “anhedonia” is classified as a mental disorder. There is a perfectly good word for feeling good, calm, contented, delighted, happy in a quiet non-exuberant way for a feeling being – affective. As such one can say one is affectively feeling good, calm, contented, delighted and happy without experiencing either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings. There is nothing wrong with affectively feeling good, either exuberantly or quietly as an ongoing background mood – on the contrary.
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: As such, just as the word “hedonistic”, according to your AI, signifies an excess of hedonic feelings and behaviour […] CLAUDIU: Well not exactly – feeling good (as in “calm, contented, delighted, happy in a quiet non-exuberant way”) is also a hedonic feeling and behavior, since hedonic just means related to hedonic tone, and feeling good does have a pleasant hedonic tone (as opposed to an unpleasant one). VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, I should have said “‘hedonistic’ as compared to hedonic”. Hedonic tone is the feeling tone that accompanies every feeling – such as it feels good to feel good, it feels bad to be sad, and so on.
CLAUDIU: That being said I agree that “anhedonistic” resembles “anhedonic” too much so I agree it is not a good term. One could just say “not hedonistically” which would already be better. VINEETO: Exactly, as you say “hedonic just means related to hedonic tone”, it is impossible for a feeling being to be not hedonic and by extension not hedonistic. Better to be sincere and be aware that as a feeling being affective feelings accompanied by hedonic experiencing is always happening except in a PCE and appreciable. It speaks for itself that hedonism and hedonistic pleasurable feelings are discouraged/ castigated by implicitly implying that feeling good falls into the category of hedonism and hedonistic, while aggression, for instance combative sports, games and entertainment, is not only tolerated but encouraged and promoted. * VINEETO: There is a perfectly good word for feeling good, calm, contented, delighted, happy in a quiet non-exuberant way for a feeling being – affective. CLAUDIU: Mmmm this doesn’t make the distinction I’m wanting to draw though. Cause all emotions and feelings are affective. So if one is following hedonistic pursuits, one will be feeling those hedonistic feelings affectively too, i.e. they will be affective hedonistic feelings. However I see that there already is a way to describe hedonistic pleasure in actualist lingo… it’s nothing other than the ‘good’ feelings! i.e. the desirous ones in this particular case. VINEETO: Indeed. As all the descriptions of behaviour your AI has suggested – “excessive
indulgence in sensual pleasures, short-sighted pursuit of immediate gratification, selfishness or disregard for
consequences, lifestyle focused on partying, luxury, or physical pleasures” is not being harmless or even
considerate of others and it is clear that they don’t fall into the category of ‘feeling good’ or ‘being
happy and harmless’. So any accusation of a malcontent killjoy is a non-sequitur CLAUDIU: And enough has already written on distinguishing between ‘good’ feelings and
feeling good… so indeed no new term is needed to be coined here. VINEETO: I am pleased we agree. Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU: Well I’m having a good time. I figured that really it seemed only thing I was/ am lacking is ‘wanting to do it’. So I regathered my intent and set about sincerely and scrupulously examining every aspect of me and whether I actually want anything of what actualism offers. The main thing is I identified a sort of ‘gung-ho yah!!!’ aspect where I’d just feel or conclude that of course I want this/ of course it’s better… but it was not fully sincere, not really deep-down thing. So I noticed that and didn’t go there anymore and really examined all. VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, This is a fascinating insight how ‘you’ tick – that when something get too close existentially your automatic/ inadvertent response is to cover it with a “‘gung-ho yah!!!’ aspect” in order to keep the more thrilling aspect at arm’s length. Well spotted. CLAUDIU: The summary is that it is better to feel good than not,
by the very facts of existence and what that entails (pleasant things are more pleasant than not). There’s
combination of just seeing, simply seeing, that actual freedom is obviously superior, not a gung-ho ‘yea!’ but it’s
an experiential seeing of it (see: Claudiu's Journal #452 At some point along the way a whiff of pure intent drafted in and I got the flavor of that again, and I can see that I am not ‘making it up’. And especially reading this really brought in that flavour of that purity together with a pulling-in sensation:
Soo anyway continuing on with that approach, I find myself eating a hamburger in a food court, (a ‘new hamburger’ as branded by the company, which is just a hamburger without a bun lol) and the sensuosity is really off the charts, a sumptuous delight for the eyes and the ones and the tongue … Then I notice a ‘something’ that I make the choice to allow, and whoooooshh it’s like a
thing flipped, and then I experienced it like a I don’t really know what to call it. My experience was that
actuality was striating and coruscating. I experienced the same thing petting my dog right before the May 24th 6:48pm
experience here It was hard to tell if it was a PCE or not. I had the thought during it that while having too low standards can cause problems, having too high a bar for standards won’t really, so I could just say this is an EE (nearly indistinguishable from a PCE) and if it is too ‘high’ a bar, well I can’t really go wrong anyway lol. VINEETO: I’m not sure if the “whiff of pure intent” survived because I didn’t know what to make of your description that “actuality was striating” and then I found this quote today (possibly relevant to what you said further down “it’s a relic from the DhO meditation days”) –
CLAUDIU: It was hard to tell if it was a PCE or not. I had the thought during it that while having too low standards can cause problems, having too high a bar for standards won’t really, so I could just say this is an EE (nearly indistinguishable from a PCE) and if it is too ‘high’ a bar, well I can’t really go wrong anyway lol. It definitely was not like the rock-solid PCE I had while driving some months ago, that was much more stable. This was really much more wild haha When it ended I felt myself come back in (so maybe was a PCE after all, or at least I was abeyant…???) and then I had the aftershock thing where I reacted with anxiety to it, which also makes me think PCE since at least what I been calling EEs does not have that. But another valuable insight here, I saw how this anxious reaction to it was transforming itself back into that ‘gung-ho yeah!!’ self haha. Like I was clearly scared shitless of what just happened, which I put it down to cause it is ‘my’ demise that it fore-tells – but that was turning into a feeling like I really wanna do it hahahaha. Even though it was the anxious reaction turning me away from that!!! Wowww so cunning. VINEETO: Again, it’s valuable information that your habitual “anxious reaction to it was transforming itself back into that ‘gung-ho yeah!!’ self” which causes you to oscillate between some sincere contemplation with a “whiff of pure intent” and a backing off from fear arising by the very possibility of what this will entail. Hence, regardless if the above-described experience was more of an altered state or an excellence experience or a PCE, perhaps a further exploration into these “anxious reaction”, and “scared shitless” feelings seems worth exploring because as you describe it, fear seems to stop you each time you want to proceed. CLAUDIU: I also identify now what that apparent ‘shift’ on May 24th at 6:48PM was – it is a cunning way to get ‘me’ off track, to feel like a shift happened and now I gotta wait and see what happens lol. It’s a relic from the DhO meditation days, wow everyone had so many ‘shifts’ back then lol, what a crock. Anyway it was dope, I don’t know why I experienced it like actuality striating. After that though I feel a momentum to it all, which is familiar to before, which is cool, but
also a little hard to disambiguate from the gung-ho yeah thing, so anyway on it goes, but it’s certainly a fun
time. VINEETO: Going by your overall description this “gung-ho yeah thing” seems to be the current fall-back position presenting itself as feeling good. Take courage, it can be overcome (not rationally or with reasoning but experientially), and daring comes from caring, as in “I could stop all the wars currently going on on the planet, would I?” –
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: This is a fascinating insight how ‘you’ tick – that when something get too
close existentially your automatic/ inadvertent response is to cover it with a “‘gung-ho yah!!!’
aspect” in order to keep the more thrilling aspect at arm’s length. CLAUDIU: Ah somehow only just saw this today! The striating thing isn’t something I can make happen or anything like that. It wasn’t an impermanence kind of thing from meditating. I would wanna describe it like actuality was shining through somehow… but I’m not confident in this. I don’t know what to make of it per se, but what followed afterwards was unmistakable, it was a really dynamic way of being alive that lasted up until sometime around the next day. So a little over 24 hours. VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, That is excellent, Claudiu. CLAUDIU: During that period I experienced a richness that I associated only with EEs in the past, but it was an ongoing experience without me having to do anything, a much firmer and continuous experience of that richness than I’ve had before. Everything was also just very crystal clear and remarkably un-self-centered. It was just evident, experientially, that my delight of being alive does not harm anyone else (i.e. it is not a selfish thing), and not only that, but more-over it is for everyone. In other words it is that everyone can experience this level of wondrous delight. It was just very clear and it seemed like all I had to do was smooth myself out, allow any wrinkles to be smoothed out, and I just know that “it” would happen. This wasn’t like making a plan either, it was just how my experience of being alive was. And I also saw, experientially, hitting me to the bone, how the most wonderful possible gift I could give to my partner, the best reward I can give her for the devotion she’s shown me in choosing to be with me, is to self-immolate, to give her the gift of a perfect partner. This was not a thought-out thing, I could just palpably see that it is a fact, and entirely a selfless act (I would not be doing it for ‘me’ to be praised or anything like that). VINEETO: Ah, this is music to my ears. Now you know the genuine excellence with a full measure of pure intent, which you now
accustomise yourself to as in the quote from Richard you posted
CLAUDIU: However I got ehmm overwhelmed lol, it was all a bit much, and I was able to dive out of it by diving into being driven to do various things. It took a lot of effort to direct away from it haha. Of course throughout effortfully driving away from it I had some feeling like I wasn’t driving away from it, but really I knew I was, it just seemed like too much. So yea the ‘whiff’ of pure intent flourished into far, far more, before I finally dived away
from it. Indeed it was fear that stopped me. I tried the thing of plumbing the depths of my being Anyway it’s like basically I know the entire wide and wondrous path, and what to do at each point, all the way from feeling bad to feeling driven to feeling good to feeling great to the dynamic excellence experience to the PCE. I reaffirm my earlier recognition that it is just a matter of wanting to do it. I don’t think there is anything else missing. I don’t really know what else to write in my journal these days lol. VINEETO: 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. CLAUDIU: It’s sort of at the point where my only refuge away from self-immolating is feeling bad haha. Cause as soon as I’m back to feeling good, off and away I go sooner rather than later towards that wondrous dynamism. A recent insight is simultaneously recognizing that the next step from there is a small one (to feeling good), not aiming for self-immolating (which would just end up being a driven manifestation of the gung-ho aspect rather than a genuine shooting for it)… but at the same time I know I will not stop at feeling good, that’s just the next step on the way to the next one, which will bring me sooner rather than later up to wherever the latest point I left off of was, which now was that remarkably rich dynamic experience. So anyway I simultaneously want to get back to that rich dynamism as soon as possible, whilst also being perilously afraid lol. I don’t know what will resolve it. As I started writing this it’s tipped over towards progressing further though so I am confident at this moment haha. VINEETO: Well there is a stage between feeling good and ‘self’-immolation, and that it feeling excellent, naïve, and making that your new default-set-point. From there you can safely acclimatise yourself to the “it just seemed like too much” until you are getting used to the “resultant blitheness”, the new wondrous frequency, so to speak. CLAUDIU: Another fun insight was seeing how there’s a certain
feeling I can have that I will succeed in self-immolating, which I’ve come to see now is a de-motivator not a
motivator. Cause it just has me slacken my intention/ attention rather than continue onward. Like a “oh yeah I’ll
surely do it… oo let’s go and do this other thing first” lol. Fun stuff. VINEETO: Ah, you recognized the “gung-ho aspect” as a dead-end, great. Cheers Vineeto
CLAUDIU: Hehe I feel it more like something in my chest than the belly. It is interesting to stay with it and suss it out. Intrinsic to it is a desire to look away from it. I was able to see it that the effect of fear is for me to look away from the fear, and then as soon as I look away from it now it’s driving me to do this or that (being driven definitely stems from fear, I can see this clearly). So perhaps I just have to not look away VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, That’s interesting that you feel it in the chest – an anxiousness (“the knot”, which perhaps even acts on your ease/ joy of breathing). When you decline the “desire to look away” and dare to allow it, see if you can feel it sinking into the deeper region of your belly, where the more profound feelings are generally situated and from there to the core of your ‘being’. Then by not feeding the anxiousness (allowing it to happen and thus taking the fear of being anxious out of the affective mix) you can then recognize that you are the feeling, and hey presto, get back to being felicitous, and perhaps weaken/ dissolve the ‘knot’ altogether. CLAUDIU: At some point recently (before the ~24hr experience)
while experiencing pure intent I also saw and was enjoying allowing pure intent into the ‘knot’ of me that I
experience. It was like allowing pure intent to waft through all my nooks and crannies. It felt very nice! VINEETO: Sounds great. Here is what Richard recommended to Syd to do to access naiveté –
Cheers Vineeto PS. The Actualism Method video excerpt is now also accessible (embedded) at the bottom of
Richard’s Article of This Moment of Being Alive
CLAUDIU: (…) Interesting
thoughts, that Divinity being incarnated upon the planet in the form of Christ (i.e. a fully Enlightened being) was
responsible for ending the hallucinations and imaginations and illusions of the oracles (to be replaced with
different ones of course). VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, An interesting find. As to your parenthesised words in the last paragraph, Richard did not even consider Christ having been fully enlightened. I could only find one written source for this, based on Christ’s supposed last words, even though I was familiar with Richard’s evaluation long before Richard wrote the extensive examen on “The Rise Of Buddhism” –
Considering Christ’s last words I fully agree with Richard’s assessment. Given that the Christian vibes and psychic currents steeped in their morals, ethics and principles emanate from every pulpit as well as every loyal believer – just as similar vibes and psychic currents flow from followers of any other belief-system, it is a perfect time to replace them with felicitous and innocuous vibes. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO to Kuba: That’s why a mere conceptual assessment is not enough – you need the ongoing experiential confirmation that not only is an actual freedom what you want to have but that it is what you want to be. With this clarity the perspective shifts to a down-to-earth action to imitate the actual and make this the number one priority of your life, practically and pragmatically. Then your evaluation won’t be from the all-or-nothing frame of reference as in “yet
in the cave ‘we’ remain” but how much better your life has already become despite not having become
actually free yet. CLAUDIU: How does this work though since I can never be actually free? Since I
have to disappear entirely for actual freedom to be what is, since it is the disappearance of me? VINEETO: Hi Claudiu, Welcome back. I appreciate that you interrupted your present hiatus to point out that what I wrote to Kuba
could potentially misleading, especially for an actualist who is not experiencing what Kuba described.
When I wrote “you need the ongoing experiential confirmation that not only is an actual freedom what you want
to have but that it is what you want to be”, I was responding to Kuba’s words
that “it is not Terra Actualis but it is certainly not reality anymore.” I remember ‘Vineeto’s’ condition at this point very well where, although ‘she’ was rarely in a long-lasting PCE, nevertheless frequent apperceptive moments, i.e. ‘self’-less perception, occurred, where ‘she’ could not distinguish between ‘her’ doing it and it happening. Hence her ‘being’ and what ‘she’ wanted to be were increasingly in alignment even though the decisive event had not yet happened. I also found your own writing from January this year –
At that moment for you there was no question ‘who’ wanted to “be that” – it was obvious that ‘you’ were willing to abdicate in order for you “to be that”. You asked –
Magically. �� Now ‘you’ exist, now you don’t. The way it works, described semantically correct, “to want to be that” would be spelt out this way –
* I think it is serendipitous that you came back to the forum at this junction of the discussion because the last entry in your journal was –
What Kuba eventually discovered in the meantime was that –
Only ruthless honesty and sincerity can discover, recognize and disable such ancient, deep-seated patterns that you would then describe as narratives. To (inadvertently) maintain the old paradigm (‘me’) and attempt to merge it with actualism,
the resulting experiences are of the “ethereal/ non-existent/ imagined target of projected perfection”
as Felix so aptly called it Since everyone has grown up and was conditioned in the ‘Tried and Failed’ paradigm, there can well be pockets of this spiritual, ‘it’s-all-in-your-mind’ perception regarding actualism practice. And the sooner one discovers any remnants of such blue-print, the sooner one can experience the down-to-earth success when applying the actualism method, which can easily be recognized and described. Cheers Vineeto
Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual
Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
