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(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Correspondence with Felipe on Discuss Actualism Forum
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
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
HENRY: Had an interesting insight into myself watching an age
of empires final FELIPE: No way, lol. I never thought I’d find a fellow competitive AOE2 enthusiast around here. I’ve been following the scene for more than 6 years, and played thousands of hours for 25 years (but I still suck, haha). The challenge with pro tournaments now is not getting too bored with Hera winning all the time.
Liereyy was close to challenge him in the S tier tourney before this one tho! Maybe we can play later if you play. VINEETO: Hi Felipe, In your excitement to find a play-mate you appeared to have missed the main point –
There is also Henry’s later addition to his competitor-shattering worldview –
Has something happened to cause your interest in actualism to wane since you told Richard in January 2013 that –
Or has Henry’s report of success in unconditionally feeling good and “peace and peacefulness” perhaps rekindled your attraction to achieve a similar experience in your own life? Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: There is also Henry’s later addition to his competitor-shattering worldview – FELIPE: That being said, one naturally takes sides in the hopes for the game to be more competitive and hence thrilling. This is where the strong emotional part comes in, as in taking sides, rooting for the underdog, hoping for an even and spectacular game, are all ways to crave conflict and drama as conditional entertainment and cope. (…) VINEETO: Hi Felipe, This is exactly the point – it feels natural to take sides. Wanting to become free from the human condition is not natural, hence sincere intent and ongoing affective attentiveness is required if one wants to make progress in freeing oneself from the various aspects of the human condition. FELIPE: Though a reason for anyone to watch any sport or movie, I guess even being actually free, is for it to be more engaging in some way (a conflict or a dramatic structure), I guess the difference being that a feeling being craves way more for these emotional condiments and spices in life, and for an actually free person is just a matter of preference. I think Peter, for instance, liked (likes?) watching cricket. So, assuming he still likes watching it, I bet that if the same team won every time 20-0, he’d lose interest and would prefer spending his time differently. So there’s some to that competitive aspect that makes the hobby worthwhile besides the conventional emotional thrill. VINEETO: When ‘Peter’ watched cricket, ‘he’ had no longer an investment which side would win because ‘he’ was well aware that this was an aspect of being part, being loyal to a tribal allegiance. This very allegiance gives rise to taking sides, being emotional about the outcome of any game and ultimately of conflict. In the later years of our association ‘Peter’ had given up watching sport altogether. Personally, ‘Vineeto’ was never interested in watching any competitive games, ‘she’ only watched the opening of the Sydney Olympics for the spectacle of it. Here is what ‘she’ experienced –
When you say that “there’s some to that competitive aspect that makes the hobby worthwhile” – this very competition, which you engage in by taking sides, is the very core of your “emotional thrill”. The question is, do you want to keep doing and feeling what one feels “naturally”, or do you have the sincere intent to abandon what feels natural, bit by bit, in a pursuit of becoming more happy and harmless. * VINEETO: (…) Or has Henry’s report of success in unconditionally feeling good and “peace and peacefulness” perhaps rekindled your attraction to achieve a similar experience in your own life? FELIPE: It’s been a rocky road for me. Not a linear progression, but actualism never entirely wanes. It’s always in the background even when I take detours. Last one was that I started psycho-somatizing weirdly when I tried to feel good (I’m guessing because I was misapplying it, making it sudorific or repressing in my last iteration), but I’m returning once again and that’s why I was reading the old messages I missed. VINEETO: Whenever you notice that you start “psycho-somatizing weirdly” it is a sure sign that some dissociation from an unwanted, uncomfortable feelings is taking place. Dare to pinpoint this feeling and allow it to be there, to feel it – and you will experience how it diminishes the moment you allow it to be there (it’s already there, just stop pushing it away by trying to forcefully feel good). You will see how the psychosomatic symptom will also eventually diminish (depending for how long you had habitually pushed the particular feeling away). Then you can allow to be the feeling instead of having (and wanting to control) the feeling. Being the feeling you can see how silly it is to feel bad when instead you can enjoy and appreciate being here. Only then you can choose to be a different feeling, for instance being appreciative. FELIPE: As I told you before, some months ago I got to a state
that set a rich benchmark that showed me what’s possible, when I had what it seemed like a mini virtual freedom
that made me make sense of actualist aspects like never before. I want to reach that again. VINEETO: You can look up what you did then in your private journal, what it was that
brought on the success. Otherwise you can employ the actualism method more methodically (see also what I wrote to
Felix recently Cheers Vineeto
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