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(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Correspondence with Jonathan on List D and Discuss Actualism
See: Sundry, Facts and Groupthink, Global Warming JONATHAN: I hope you’re in good health. I’m writing to see if you would be willing to hang out in ballina over coffee and breakfast. It would be my treat. I’m enjoying some positive advances in becoming free and am considering hopping a flight to see if another visit will deliver the goods. And, also, to double check my progress. If this is merely another ASC then it’s best I find out sooner than later. VINEETO: Hi Jon, Thank you for your inquiry – I am in good health and excellent. As for your plan to visit Ballina again, I don’t think you need to bear the expense and dislocation to ‘doublecheck [your] process’ as you are writing some quite informative emails on the Yahoo mailing list. Here are some excerpts of your very recent posts that indicate a misunderstanding that can easily lead to disassociation or is an expression of disassociation –
One does not need to reject anything in order to ‘embrace’ what is actual. It seems to indicate that what you think ‘you know is actual’ is not part of the actual world. In actualism, when you understand that something you do is silly, it falls away by the simply act of seeing that fact. If you have to reject something in order to enable you ‘embracing what you know is actual’ then you create a dichotomy where one aspect of ‘you’ is in conflict with another aspect of ‘you’. I have talked about this, mainly to Syd, during your visit – there is neither policing nor sacrifice required in actualism – on the contrary, that would be utterly counterproductive. You just see a fact for what is it and the very seeing of this particular fact evaporates the lies and beliefs that had obscured the fact. No rejection at all is required.
Human sorrow is *not* imaginary – it is the very essence of the human soul, of ‘being’ itself. Again, you would have to split one part of ‘yourself’ from the rest of ‘you’ in order to classify it as merely imagination. ‘You’ are your feelings and your feelings are ‘you’ and those feelings only disappear when the identity disappears. Unless you acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings, you will always come up with tricky ways to keep one aspect of ‘you’ in existence, disguised as [fill in your own discoveries here], while pretending to yourself to have made advances in becoming free when you have merely rearranged the deckchairs. (Mind you, this is a very common occurrence when one is embarking on the path of leaving one’s ‘self’ behind, so no need to beat yourself up for it. Just remember that ‘I’ am a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity programmed to stay in existence at all cost – hence the necessity of being scrupulously honest with oneself). Now, because ‘I’ am my feelings, the only way to make progress towards an actual freedom is to become affectively aware of how I experience this moment in order to be able to minimise both the good and the bad feelings and to maximize the felicitous/innocuous feelings – hence the emphasis on enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, no matter what the circumstances. This is the only way to weaken the influence of ‘me’ on the flesh-and-blood body as the good and the bad feelings only make ‘me’ stronger and bigger.
VINEETO: If you are trying to cut off your passions, you are splitting yourself into parts. It’s either repression or dissociation. Then you engender the help of do-gooder feelings (of helping the world) in order to cut off your unwanted feelings. As I said above, it doesn’t work that way. It is not just imagination that is the problem, it is ‘you’ in your entirety that is the problem. Only utter sincerity can cut through the wild array of tricks an identity comes up with. As for ‘I find it utterly wonderful that I am already here in the actual world’ – ‘you’ are *not* already here in the actual world. This was the point Richard was being firm about at the fish-and-chip shop on your second-last day. You wrote in your report on the Yahoo list that you got angry about it ... but did you actually take notice of the information that Richard was trying to impart to you because it is really, really important to understand this point? All identities have an inner world and an outer world and what you call ‘here in the actual world’ is in fact the identity’s outer world (in your case masquerading as the actual world). Another trick of the inherently cunning identity to avoid being seen for what it is – an impostor, a fake, a fraud. * JONATHAN: I haven’t decided if I want to take the trip or not. I figured I’d check with you to see if you’d be able to accommodate a few mornings or afternoons. Because if you can’t then that would make my decision for me. But I figure I should take some time off work anyways, because, work seems to stir up all the passions and they override Here and Now. At work I’m always back defending the identity and I figure that if a biological adaptation is to occur, a prolonged period of living Here and Now is necessary. So I need to live Here and Now in order to allow the adaptation to occur and since that means taking time away from poker then I may as well fly to Australia. If you aren’t in ballina or can’t spare the time then I’ll probably rent a cabin by the water for a week or two. I’m not exactly sure. I’ll flush it out over the next few days and see what your response brings. VINEETO: I see from your posts on the mailing list that you have now taken a holiday in order to be more able to ‘experience perfection’ without the interference of work –
First of all, Virtual Freedom is never described as ‘a prolonged period of living Here and Now’. That is you making up stuff from a superficial scanning of the Actual Freedom website. You can check the Library for the terms ‘Here’ and ‘Now’ and you will see what I mean. Further, Richard said many times, both in writing and to you and Syd in person, that actualism works best in the marketplace, i.e. do *not* retreat from the world of people, things, and events like the spiritual people do. I can understand that taking time off is a nice thing to do and it is even more beneficial if you can find the knack to maintain the holiday-mode when returning to work. All it requires is to pay diligent attention (to how you feel each moment again) in order to catch yourself when the mood wants to change back to the familiar resentful/defensive mode and then you decline to revert back to that non-carefree and non-happy attitude. It is possible and Richard just recently related to me how ‘Richard’, the identity, discovered that it was possible and how pleased ‘he’ was when ‘he’ succeeded. What’s the point in being a Sunday-actualist? To sum it up, I don’t see that you would have to spend a considerable sum of money to fly to Australia at this point as this email can easily get you back on track. And, to reiterate what Richard said to you at the fish-and-chip shop by the harbour, you do yourself a great disfavour by not reading the Actual Freedom website more thoroughly. As for the deliverance of ‘the goods’ you had in mind, that won’t happen until *all of you* is on board. When you enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive (in all events and in all situations) and thus increasingly let the universe live your life, then ‘you’ will inevitably become more and more redundant (and thus weakened for lack of ‘self’-nourishment) by the sheer fact that living life becomes easier and more and more enjoyable. When most of your waking time is enjoyable without exception, then ‘you’ have nothing left to do and can fully acquiesce to manumit the flesh-and-blood body from ‘your’ control. Then the conditions are ripe for magic to happen. Cheers Vineeto
Continued from Richard, List D: Jonathan JONATHAN: Maybe the primary objection to self immolation is not being sure whether one wants to be by oneself in a fantastical place that isn’t real vs being among others in a place that is real. The words depersonalization and derealization come to mind. I just experienced actual not as something that is more real than real or Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive. Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just experienced. A synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was. Any word at all could be used to describe it as the place has no parallels. Something conveying a magic like quality well known to be fantastical fiction might convey how unreal it is: Genie land, pixie world, fairy land, a spontaneous song and dance with no choreography and no duration where the stage itself is singing and dancing and there is no audience… So a question I need to ponder is do I want to live by myself in that
completely unreal world of pixie dust and theory-less music and plotless pomp or live with my very real friends and
real family and my real tribes and anti-tribes solidly centered in reality. Which, say what you will of it, is, at
least, real. VINEETO: Ha, what a brilliant cynical put-down of an actual freedom from the human
condition, by someone who likes bluffing One of Aesop’s fables comes to mind C’est la vie, hey. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Hi Jon, Let’s start with some facts. JONATHAN: Maybe the primary objection to self immolation is not being sure whether one wants to be by oneself in a fantastical place that isn’t real vs being among others in a place that is real. The words depersonalization and derealization come to mind. I just experienced actual not as something that is
more real than real or Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed
counter-intuitive. Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just
experienced. A synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was. Any word at all could be used to describe
it as the place has no parallels. Something conveying a magic like quality well known to be fantastical fiction might
convey how unreal it is: Genie land, pixie world, fairy land, a spontaneous song and dance with no choreography and
no duration where the stage itself is singing and dancing and there is no audience… [emphases added]
VINEETO: This is clearly not a description of a PCE but an altered state of consciousness. When you have a genuine PCE, it is never experienced as unreal the way you described it, i.e. foreign. It is more in line with the purity and perfection of the actual world become suddenly apparent –
You say you had experienced PCEs in the past But that was not the intention of your strange tale – the intention was – JONATHAN to Claudiu: “I did choose impact over thoroughness. I wanted my prose to have
some style. I didn’t want it to sound like a manual. I wanted it to be fun, not boring. How can I leave the reader
surprised while still understanding my point was the unverbalized question I asked myself. [...] So I just chose to combine flair with brevity.
[emphasis added] VINEETO: You also knew it was “irrational and factually inaccurate” whilst not disclosing the “unverbalized question”, i.e. “looking for my own personal objections” – JONATHAN to Claudiu: “I was looking for my own personal objections,
which I knew to be irrational and factually inaccurate.” VINEETO: So on several levels you have led your fellow human beings astray. You can call this lying (presently a political incorrect word) or bluffing i.e. not showing your cards for the “impact” you wanted to achieve (the course for more effective bluffing seems to have crept into real life after all).
So after clarifying that there is a difference between a PCE and an ASC and pointing out your present lack of honesty, especially self-honesty, we can get to the meat of the matter – your present objections to leave the cage “when the doors are wide open”.
No. 1 is easy – who wants to live in an ASC – you would certainly be in a world of your own, with so many different types of ASCs to choose from. I am not alone in the actual world – I only meet flesh-and-blood human beings
and there is an actual intimacy happening with every body and every thing and every event because there is no
separation (no separative self whatsoever). (see No. 2 – Richard has written about the 4 psychiatric symptoms he has been diagnosed with –
Incidentally, according to these psychiatrically defined terms, myself and everyone else free from the instinctual passions could be diagnosed with the same symptoms. It only means that psychiatry is as yet unaware about the Third Alternative. Hence I think your objection that comes to your mind is rather the fear of going mad, not “depersonalization and derealization” per se. I won’t be guessing any further, you did say you “did choose impact over thoroughness”. I am happy to talk about the precise objection when you have pinpointed it more informedly and accurately. No. 3 – this is perfectly understandable. After all, this cage of yours is decorated with posters like “which, […] is, at least, real”, you can’t change human nature, you become derealized when you leave this cage, you will loose all your friends and family and be totally alone in the world – and similar scare stories. And in front the open doors of your cage there are images of AI comics and snapshots of sci-fi films. Now tell me Jon, when you have read this post so far, which of your fears has
been resolved and which objections remain? It will make the discussion about your objections so much more concise
when you are scrupulously honest with yourself, and with your correspondents, honest with yourself with the aim of
being sincere (=at root) Btw, it’s more fruitful to examine those fears and objections from a more dispassionate perspective, i.e. after you get back to feeling good first. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Hi Jon, Thank you for the welcome. JONATHAN: My experience of late has been rather wonderful. It may be an ASC. If I were to call
a PCE foreign then that would be clue. Because that would be impossible. PCEs aren’t like that. Nor are EE’s or
IEs. This I know from experience. But examining my objections while being temporarily free of my normal anxieties did
lead me to a place that seemed both foreign and a lot closer to the actual world than I am normally. I thought that
foreignness might be an objection a lot of us have. And I was keen on conversating about that if anyone was
interested. And if not then I was happy just putting it out there. VINEETO: Lately there is a new kind of ASC amongst people who come across Richard’s writings which could be called actuality-mimicking-ASC /Hypomania. However, experiences of unreality have been quite common within the human condition. Here is one Richard’s described and another one from Peter –
Besides, your very description of the experience is rather revealing: JONATHAN: I just experienced actual not as something that is more real than real or
Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive.
Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just experienced. A
synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was […]
VINEETO: You can’t have it both ways – either your is ‘actual’ is used synonymous with
real or it is “so unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive”. Neither of these two
descriptions reflect anything of the actual world. As such your very claim that this is why you have objections to an
actual freedom are simply a red herring, a “nothing burger” I also look askance at your statement that “lead me to a place that seemed both foreign and a lot closer to the actual world”. It may be your subjective impression but the way you write shows no indication that you are “a lot closer to the actual world”. * JONATHAN: Leading others astray didn’t occur to me. VINEETO: You also said: JONATHAN: I simply lack the leverage to do that. VINEETO: Who are you kidding – have you forgotten the Cause of Bias thread
And now you have started another red herring/ nothing burger with this “unreality”=PCE. Can you comprehend that with such a history your claim of “lack of leverage” is rather unconvincing and that therefore your assertion that your “inaccurate” information would cause no harm to anyone is equally erroneous? JONATHAN: The actual world is pretty foreign when you’re not in it. When you still have access to all your anxieties yet see a world where those anxieties don’t exist and it’s like well i can stay here or go back – I think some interesting thoughts occur, some conversations can take place where words like unreal and foreign are bandied about. But maybe this an ASC. VINEETO: Those statements are very clearly not made while in a PCE, in an EE or even when feeling good. They are made when in the grips of the ‘self’, which is “a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning” identity –
Hence my previous suggestion that “it’s more fruitful to examine those fears and objections
from a more dispassionate perspective, i.e. after you get back to feeling good first”. * JONATHAN: An objection must remain, right? Otherwise, I’d have immolated, no? VINEETO: Ha I think you fallen for James’ simplistic formula – What I had said was –
This is when one is out-from-control, in a different way of being, in an ongoing excellence experience. Your next step is to recognize that fear is a burden, not a necessity for survival. JONATHAN: I think living without fear is an objection I have. I think the danger of having no fear is the objection. However, the foreignness I described has lessened. It feels more normal to have this level of reduced defensiveness, this level of reduced boredom, this level of assuredness that everything will be fine, this level of reduced responsibility and neediness. It’s still not totally normal though. VINEETO: Ok, now you are getting closer to the real cause of why you introduced this thread but you are still defending the feeling that you feel. You are defending your ‘self’, the human condition. You haven’t decided yet that you want to live life without this feeling hampering you. The way the actualism method works is to get back to feeling good *before* investigating any aspect of the trigger that made you feel bad. Once you are feeling good -- which may take some time to accomplish -- look at the trigger (if it was an intense feeling which in your case it is) in a dispassionate way. Don’t embrace it, don’t defend it, don’t object to it, be as honest as you can, in other words, don’t feed it. When you stop feeding it, it will automatically shrink to at least half its intensity, if not more. Feelings can’t sustain themselves unless ‘I’ continue to feed it. Then you can begin to contemplate in a rational manner, perhaps gather some information, for instance. Btw, enjoyment and appreciation is not the same as you termed it – “wonder and
satisfaction” JONATHAN: I’m not used to thinking that everything will work out and I really don’t need to worry. VINEETO: That is not what an actual freedom is about, even though it’s true that without instinctual passion is it much easier to meet the challenges that being alive presents. (See how you water down the magnificence of experiencing being pure intent personified as a flesh-and-blood human being, even the possibility to living peace-on-earth, by defining it from the myopic ‘self’-centred perspective of ‘what do ‘I’ get out of it?) JONATHAN: […] It’s just different thinking like that. And I think that’s still an objection. Maybe I should worry more. Ya know. If I don’t worry then christ shit might hit the fan and I won’t be prepared. VINEETO: Ha, do you really think, if you worry enough those things won’t happen, and if they are happening, you will be prepared for everything? I guess you do think that, but you do so because you are not yet feeling good – life looks a lot different when you allow yourself to stop feeding the present feeling and allow a bit more naiveté to flourish. It will not automatically pay your electricity bill but you have been able to pay so far whether you worried about it or not. Look at it this way – the universe has kept you alive and well so far, given you your skills and talents to accomplish staying alive, whether you additionally worried or not. Your ‘self’ and your feelings have not contributed, on the contrary, they have stuffed up a lot and caused a lot of unnecessary problems. ‘You’ are not needed, ‘you’ are redundant.
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Hi Jon, It is indeed a good post, sticking to one coherent subject matter, as you say yourself at the end. JON: Good post. Tx. Really on point. I appreciate that. Way to stick to one coherent subject matter. lol VINEETO: This is how productive thinking works. Great you remembered to pat yourself on the back. When I first met Richard, after years of spiritual search where thinking was discouraged, I was delighted to be encouraged to use my brain again in the way it is capable of. Richard gave me one guideline – when exploring one topic to find out answers I hadn’t thought of before, he said, always come back to the ‘trunk’, the original question of inquiry. You can branch out, jump from branch to branch, but then come back to the original question. This way whatever has been discovered by the discursive way of thinking will be fed into advancing the original question. That’s how productive contemplation can work best. JON: Along similar lines to what Vineeto wrote to Henry VINEETO: Here is what I pick out from your thought process – you “experienced how the real world revolves around some climax or another”, that you are always chasing some excitement (like most people), some valued goal, and when that is achieved, or not achieved, the excitement disappears. JON: But the actual world has no climaxes. The stream of benignity and benevolence doesn’t have one. Perfection can only exist without them. Climaxes need to exist outside time. We psychological entities are always in some relationship with a climax of some sort. Take that away and the feeling is freeing yet peculiar. One can say the climax is always ongoing. VINEETO: This seems to be guesswork or a projected imagined quality rather than thinking, as you also say that “it seems pure intent is utterly unhuman”, which means you have not experienced either pure intent or “the stream of benignity and benevolence” or “perfection” – or at least can’t remember those qualities from when you experienced it. What is correct is that there is no emotional climax. JON: One of the great obstacles I have to moving closer to freedom is that those times when I’m closer than usual there is an onset of confusion and/or boredom as in what’s next, okay so what now. VINEETO: That is a good insight. It’s akin to Claudiu’s reporting yesterday –
Now, if you asked yourself, “is anything actually wrong happening?” you might discover that it’s ok to feel confusion/ boredom … because it might well be a way for you to discover a glimpse of your childhood naďveté. Viz.: JON: I also like observing children. My gf has two of them. It’s delicious seeing how utterly ignorant they are and can’t help themselves but to be. It’s hilarious. VINEETO: Naiveté starts with having fun for no reason at all, to allow yourself to feel confused, not being in line with adult seriousness, being coy, unsure, a bit like a fool and a bit like a happy child, and very alive. See if you can access this naďveté, and discover that it eventually allows you to like yourself and consequently like others too. You can even marvel at the fact of being alive with childlike sensuosity. Naďveté will make enjoying and appreciating very, very easy. “Kindness” is a very poor substitute, more like a duty when you can feel naďve instead, and then moving on to be naďve, and consequently feel more alive and more enjoy being alive. It doesn’t require one climax after another, which only leaves you empty after it’s finished. Being naďve opens your eyes to a world you have long forgotten … and you can, if you allow it, experience sincere intent and even allow a PCE to happen (where you can get a connection to pure intent). JON: But sufficient pure intent would clear that up. It seems pure intent is utterly unhuman. And climaxes or the need for them, the need for a story with a beginning and at least one climax, is human. Pure intent isn’t human. I’d say the closest human attribute it has could be described as kindness. VINEETO: You say that “pure intent is utterly unhuman” because it is not in your human experience. But the word “intent” in this phrase is the feeling being’s sincere intent to bring about the purity one has experienced (if you could only remember it) at least one time in one’s life. The purity is of the actual world, the intent is from the feeling being wanting to (eventually) live in the actual world. [Correction: [Richard]: “pure intent, born out of the connection between one’s
inherent naiveté and the perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe” – therefore wanting to live in the actual world is sincere intent,
“pure intent” is that which “must be outside of the human condition” So now that you come this far in your contemplation, why not give naďveté a try. All you need to do is putting aside your pride and its counterpart humility (which everyone is inflicted with to the detriment of the human race). Here is what Richard said about naďveté –
So you see, being a fool would be the opposite of being naďve. Cheers Vineeto
JON: What did Richard say about shit like this? Something to the effect of accepting an unacceptable world as it is… VINEETO: Hi Jon, When you surmise what Richard said, it would be advisable and beneficial for your fellow readers to actually check “what did Richard say about” with what he actually said. Richard never said “something to the effect of accepting an unacceptable world as it is…” Here is what Richard suggested to those interested in doing something about the human condition for themselves (and every body’s benefit), by themselves –
Here is another description –
I snipped the bulk of your post, being a conglomerate of hearsay, rumours, guesses and political opinions from the popular press, which you conclude with – JON: But it is what it is. When it comes to politics and
nationalism, I guess there are no standards. To accept an unacceptable fact is our goal. [Emphasis added]. VINEETO: How have you determined that all this you presented is “fact”? Have you researched what you presented here to be established facts (something that happened the way it is told), or is it just a regurgitation of what someone else said, what you read in the popular press, or seen in the TV news? Have you gone to the sources and searched for reliable references, checked cross-references from the other side of politics, so that you can confidently say that these are facts. Or did you merely repeat what already confirms you pre-formed opinion and political and moral persuasion (as in “I picked my side after the Iraq invasion”)? If so, the intelligence is already compromised by picking beliefs, taking factoids and hearsay as facts and representing it with your own moral stance of opinion. And all these factoids and rumours of doom and gloom you are trying to emotionally accept even though they are already of dubitable repute. * JON: From where we stand, it’s most important to cultivate a
sense of needing to do something to fix the situation. I said to accept what is unacceptable. But that’s not fully
it. It’s to help fix the madness and the callousness. To fully adopt a program of self-immolation and/or virtual
freedom and naiveté to help those close to us and even the whole world. VINEETO: Ok, now you are being more specific. When you say “it’s most important to cultivate a sense of needing to do something to fix the situation” are you talking about a feeling, or a bunch of feelings? Or are you perceiving a lack of feelings that you ‘should’ have because you say “important to cultivate …”? Also, since you started the sentence with “from where we stand”, are you perhaps trying to have a collective solution for what you feel to be the problem? To clarify, as the only person you can change is yourself, and this is all you need to do. Hence the question will be ‘what is most important from where I stand …’ Remember, Richard said, in the long conversation he had with you about peasant mentality –
Hence, before you rush into action “to fix the situation”, wouldn’t it be sensible to determine what exactly it is from where the need/ the feeling arises “to fix the situation”? I am asking so specifically because the answer to this question will guide and crystallize your intent, and what specifically you have in mind/at heart when you say “to fully adopt a program of self-immolation”. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Hence, before you rush into action “to fix the situation”, wouldn’t it be sensible to determine what exactly it is from where the need/ the feeling arises “to fix the situation”? JON: Hi Vineeto, Was the above misstated? Are you asking 1) if it’d be sensible to determine what exactly the
situation is or 2) From where the feeling of needing to fix the situation arises? VINEETO: Hi Jon, I don’t know if you mis-stated but it isn’t clear to me when you said –
- Are you talking about yourself or more people than you? - What is the original feeling from where you want to “cultivate a sense of needing to do something”? - When you say “fix the madness and the callousness” – are you talking about yourself or other people’s madness and the callousness? These are the points which are not clear to me. The second part of your post has to wait until tomorrow – it is past midnight here. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: I snipped the bulk of your post, being a conglomerate of hearsay, rumours, guesses and political opinions from the popular press, which you conclude with – JON: I did say hysteria is systematically manufactured. And gave two example in which the left did just that. VINEETO: Hi Jon, You said this about hysteria, amongst many other things, in the post #1076 * JON: But it is what it is. When it comes to politics and nationalism, I guess there are no standards. To accept an unacceptable fact is our goal. VINEETO: How have you determined that all this you presented is “fact”? JON: Sorry. When I said ‘fact’, I should have said reality. As in, bad shit done by bad people resulting in not so good things. In that particular sentence I wasn’t referring to any specific bad things or any specific person or people. Ah, understood. It’s worthwhile to make a clear difference between the reality of the real world, and facts, because the real world is ruled by feelings and instinctual passions whereas a fact is “a thing that is indisputably the case”. (Oxford Dictionary).
When you clearly see the difference between a fact and reality (a conglomerate of beliefs, feelings, hearsay, rumours, guesses and opinions) you can gain much clarity in your assessment of what happens, both in the world around you and inside your own mind. You don’t have to follow every belief to its pathetic end (pathetic as in pertaining to the emotions). JON: “To accept the unacceptable” would have worked better. VINEETO: As I explained in my previous post and will again in my next post, Richard and I are talking about emotionally “accept the unacceptable” for the sake of the integrity of your own intelligence. That means finding out the reasons in yourself why you get upset or righteously indignant, which is clearly an obstacle to feeling happy and harmless. Think about it, even if you lived alone on a paradisiacal island you would still experience negative emotions, but then you couldn’t blame anyone else for having them. It is ‘you’, the passionate identity inside, which is continuously producing and maintaining ‘good’ and bad feelings in order to preserve ‘your’ very existence. Once you grasp this simple fact, you can start changing human nature in yourself as described on the AFT website. As Andrew recently contemplated –
* VINEETO: How have you determined that all this you presented is “fact”? Have you researched what you presented here to be established facts (something that happened the way it is told), (…) Or did you merely repeat what already confirms you pre-formed opinion and political and moral persuasion (as in “I picked my side after the Iraq invasion”)? JON: Have I researched whether Trump or Clinton and others knew
of the sex trafficking? I have not. I know that neither of them did anything for those kids and it seems they should
have known something was up. And both of those characters fit the mold though Trump with him owning Miss Teen USA and
his various on the record Epstein comments, on the record sexualization of I believe two of his children: one as a
baby and the other when she was a grown adult. Stuff like that. Really fits the mold. But no I haven’t researched
exactly what he knew and when he knew it or whom personally victimized if anyone. As far as Jan 6 goes, I just know
of the phone call to Raffensperger, the many lawsuits, the riot, the speeches preceding it, the pardons and the lack
of (presented) evidence that there even was (sufficient) voting fraud and the plan to kick the election to the House
for what’s called a contingency vote. That’s good enough for me but I have learned that sometimes the players
themselves don’t give you their best arguments and though they may have the right conclusions they still seem like
lying crazy people. For example, until I studied the Ukraine situation, it seemed to me all the republicans were just
spreading conspiracy theories. And they were. But, nonetheless, their conclusion was right. So they were right (imo)
but their reasoning was way off. So I do have experience with the truth of the matter not being what it seems. Like I
often trust the advocates of the counter-position to give their best arguments. But sometimes they give terrible one
and until you go and learn what the best arguments actually are, you unaware that are even good arguments. It’s a
weird phenomenon but you can’t rule out that someone may actually be right even though they give nothing but bad arguments. VINEETO: Richard and myself followed current events for several years, and Richard was very apt to access some of the lesser known sources as well but there is rarely a situation where one can say with certainty what actually happened. As you say “So I do have experience with the truth of the matter not being what it seems”. The best thing you can do is not to believe either side of the political range because everyone has an investment to keep something hidden, and the each has reasons to make up stuff as well to discredit their opponent. I can look for sensible suggestions for action, and if promises are actually carried out … but that is as far as it goes. Besides, being non-political, I do not vote. It’s really the (unelected) public servants who run the country. Btw, did you know that Raffensperger was coerced to hold back the votes – his son-in-law was killed in a “mysterious” car accident exactly at that time and the guilty driver never brought to justice. These guys play for keeps! Of course, being actually free I have the benefit of having lost the capacity to believe –
that even includes the weather channel nowadays; it’s never as bad as they make it out to be ��. I can only recommend to abandon any belief as
soon as you discover an emotional investment in holding on to one side or the other of something which you don’t
know for an indisputable fact. That may be any story you read or hear or a loyalty you automatically obey. However,
keep in mind the fundamental proviso to only dismantle the social identity when pure intent is firmly in place As a feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found it much more fruitful to uncover ‘her’ own secrets ‘she’ was hiding, discover where ‘she’ was not honest with ‘herself’, where ‘she’ employed tricks and narratives in order not to change because at times it seemed to radical. But whenever ‘she’ did acknowledge something and abandoned a belief, a narrative, a loyalty, a dearly held truth, ‘she’ felt lighter, more sincere, more happy and more harmless. In short, it worked. Cheers Vineeto
JON: What did Richard say about shit like this? Something to the effect of accepting an unacceptable world as it is… VINEETO:
 (Richard, List B, James 2, 18 August 2001).
JON: How is that not close to what I said? It is better though.
It would be beneficial to go and search what he exactly said. thank you. VINEETO: Hi Jon, Yes, that would be far more beneficial, particularly for yourself. When you read your own quote at the top, you can see the difference yourself. You are basically suggesting one should accept “shit like this”, “an unacceptable world as it is …” Much more beneficial to apply it as it was intended. Richard clearly makes a difference between emotionally accepting (not getting angry or sad or upset) about what is happening, while a lot of happenings are still “intellectually unacceptable”. Human beings are still run by instinctual animal passions … even though now there is a way to change that in oneself. * VINEETO: - Are you talking about yourself or more people than you? JON: I was talking about me and Andrew. VINEETO: Ok. Just remember that finding out how you ‘tick’ in order to better enjoy and appreciate being alive is something only you can do. Sharing notes can certainly add to the enjoyment of doing it. Also, there is something I remember from ‘Vineeto’ – “if he can do it, so can I”. * VINEETO: - What is the original feeling from where you want to “cultivate a sense of needing to do something”? JON: I think it comes from wanting to feel good and be happy and harmless. I think giving myself a life’s purpose and happy and harmlessness being that purpose would be great for me. VINEETO: Mmh, when you say “I think”, it indicates you are not sure if it was this or something else. When you set out to improve the art of paying increasing attention to how you feel (affectively), while you go about your business of living, then you can more easily pinpoint what it is exactly that in this instant caused your mood to drop from feeling good (if it did) – and then get back to feeling good.
It’s best to read the article in the original to get the benefit of all the informative tool-tips, especially in those quoted paragraphs. As you can see, when you read the description, you can do all this unilaterally, you don’t need anyone or anything to change for you to start improving your own enjoyment and appreciation of being alive. * VINEETO: When you say “fix the madness and the callousness” – are you talking about yourself or other people’s madness and the callousness? JON: My madness and callousness, I think, is not being focused on being happy and harmless. Like that’s both crazy and callous. And the madness of the world and it’s callousness stems from other people prioritizing things other than happiness and harmlessness. So if I can cultivate a sense of being behooved to be happy and harmless for myself and to show to others that it’s possible then I think that’s a good life goal. VINEETO: Why make it so complicated as if it were a duty to “cultivate a sense of being behooved to be happy and harmless for myself”? The straightforward question is – do you want to feel good? You know that it feels good to feel good, so where is the problem? And that in itself is worth contemplating. When you find out more about the art of enjoying and appreciating you start to realise that being genuinely happy, i.e. unconditionally happy, includes being harmless as well. Being harmful, malicious, gleeful, selfish, self-centred doesn’t feel really good, it leaves at least a bad taste in your mouth, so to speak. It is far more enjoyable to experience the felicitous and innocuous feelings (happiness, delight, joie de vivre/ bonhomie, friendliness, amiability, consideration and so on) – hence it wouldn’t need a ‘cultivation’ to wanting to do it. But maybe there is a belief, a conditioning, that states ‘thou shalt not be happy else you’ll
be punished, or something similar? Something such as a guilt for being alive or taking up space? Check out the
conversation I had with Andrew on this topic of guilt, he said it helped him drop a big burden. JON: I appreciate your time. VINEETO: You are very welcome, Jon. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Why make it so complicated as if it were a duty to “cultivate a sense of being behooved to be happy and harmless for myself”? The straightforward question is – do you want to feel good? You know that is feels good to feel good, so where is the problem? And that in itself is worth contemplating. JON: A problem is real-life goals and values. I was thinking that maybe if I changed those goals and values than I’d have more success. Valuing happy and harmlessness as a virtue to be proud of might help. VINEETO: Hi Jon, So you are presently assessing if doing something about peace-on-earth via actualism is a worthwhile goal in life for you? * VINEETO: Btw, did you know that Raffensperger was coerced to hold back the votes – his son-in-law was killed in a “mysterious” car accident exactly at that time and the guilty driver never brought to justice. These guys play for keeps! JON: I did not know that. Asking more questions and good questions is very helpful. It prevents one from falling into rabbit holes and jumping to conclusions. You can review this particular very unfortunate footnote of the 2020 election by looking up Harrison Deal and Mario Demaine Clark. VINEETO: Thank you for the tip. I looked up what I could find. It seems that my memory wasn’t accurate. It was his son who was killed. I have for now lost interest in watching current affairs – the situation is always dire. �� JON: Back to the better
part of our conversation. I feel a renewal lately. At 48, I am experiencing a mid-life crisis. It is too late for me
to be a family man and a successful professional or businessman. It seems taking pride in always being mirthful and
never feeling pressured takes the sting away from missing out on having kids and not having a big network of friends
or enough luxury money to travel on the drop of a dime or just completely retire right now if I wanted. Without that
sting, which can cause some gloominess, it is easier to feel blithesome. VINEETO: Well, if pride is the source of your ‘blithesomeness’ then with this motivation only actualism is not for you – the actualism method is designed to diminish all ‘good’ and bad feelings in order to experience the felicitous and innocuous feelings. Pride is a ‘good’ feeling, whilst hurt pride or unfulfilled pride leads to feeling bad. I recommend Richard’s article “Peace on Earth in this Life-Time” Cheers Vineeto
Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual
Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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