ANDREW: So, I use the habitual language of the oppressed to self-castigate. One of the time “honoured” habits, one I identified when leaving the DhO, is ‘intellectualisation’. It wasn’t until Henry started exploring its effects recently, that I started to contemplate it again. Vineeto pointing out the difference between adopting an “actualism” belief, vs experience of the feeling and reality and deciding what to do.

I grew up reading Peanuts. Such habitual language, and the resultant ‘climbing into my head’ can be safely discarded.

VINEETO: Hi Andrew,

Welcome back. I am delighted to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour which I remember from your posts on the last Mailing List (Richard, List D, Andrew, 13 June 2013).

Now that you recognized that “‘intellectualisation’” and “‘climbing into my head’” can be safely discarded like Linus’ blanket, both Kuba’s and Henry’s reports will be encouraging to actualize your realisation, including the aspect to “throw away any conception of appearing foolish” which is often the hardest part at the start.

Kuba: For the one’s inclined towards intellectualisation it seems one of the best ways you can speed up this process is by honestly writing on here, and being prepared to be happily shown as wrong over and over. It seems it is doing exactly this that led to Henry’s success recently. It was useful when Vineeto suggested that I throw away any conception of appearing foolish, this advice meant that ‘I’ could as if vomit all of ‘my’ inner workings through ‘my’ writings.

Then it is only a matter of time until these mechanisms (such as the intellectualisation) begin to show their cracks. The ‘intellectual’ can give ‘himself’ no choice but to be shown to be utterly wrong, and eventually to realise that ‘he’ is redundant.

Henry: Yes, this is exactly what happened haha.

Embarrassing, but necessary because I was already ridiculous, I just hadn’t exposed myself just yet in an obvious enough way. Perhaps the embarrassment is only a way to cover for myself anyway, as if to say I thought I was better than that… I wasn’t, but I can become better.

This also reminds me of Irene’s flip away from actualism. Richard describes it as she got “stage fright…” Richard was free and having all kinds of people over to talk, and she was there too, in virtual freedom! But because she had those few shreds of identity left, she became afraid of being exposed… it led to retreating, and ultimately to rejecting actualism and Richard.

When I became more excited by the potential than afraid of being exposed, it started to be worth it to expose myself (by freely saying what I really thought about this and that). Especially with Vineeto participating in the forum, it’s an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up.

As you can see, you won’t be alone in “appearing foolish” when you are prepared to be “be happily shown as wrong” and admit to yourself that you were “already ridiculous”. As a consequence you will become “more excited by the potential than afraid of being exposed”. You are already in like-minded company with those who, because of allowing to feel embarrassed are now more happy (and harmless) than before.

ANDREW: That’s what I meant by rebellion. Of course, it’s short lived. The rush of doing something “dumb” but for a moment feeling that edge.
This seems similar to what the extreme athletes do? Chasing the ‘rush’ which can lead to PCE / EE. But it can also lead to its own identity, “I’m someone that does these cool extreme things”.

VINEETO: “Rebellion” has been your modus operandi since I started reading your posts on actualism forums. Now you can make use of this inclination for rebellion by rebelling in a way that can make a genuine and radical change – changing yourself fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly.

To begin with I recommend (if you are open to recommendation) to rid yourself of any resentment against being here and against the universe at large, which resentment tends to make one very serious, apart from being angry towards anything and anyone on top of it. Basic resentment demonstrably stands in the way of allowing oneself to be naïve, like a child again but with adult sensibilities.

Richard: The first and crucial step was to say ‘YES’ to being here on earth, for ‘I’ located and identified that basic resentment that all people that I have spoken to have. To wit: ‘I didn’t ask to be born!’ (Richard, List B, James, 17 October 1999a).

Richard: [...] in 1980, ‘I’/‘me’, the persona that was, looked out deep into the inky darkness betwixt the twinkling stars and actually saw this vastness called the universe for the very first time ... and temporarily disappeared; in 1980, this flesh and blood body experienced that this universe is magically capable of bringing this flesh and blood body into existence, is wondrously competent at keeping this flesh and blood body alive, and is amazingly able to bring this flesh and blood body to an end; in 1980, this flesh and blood body experienced that this universe was packed full of meaning and that the ‘I’/‘me’ had been searching everywhere for meaning in vain ... it had already always been just here, right now, all along.

There is an unimaginable purity that is born out of the stillness of the infinitude as manifest at this moment in time and this place in space ... but one will not come upon it by thinking about or feeling out its character. It is most definitely not a matter to be pursued in the rarefied atmosphere of the most refined mind or the evocative milieu of the most impassioned heart. To proceed thus is to become involved in a fruitless endeavour to make life fit into one’s own petty demands and desires.

In 1980, ‘I’/‘me’, the persona that was, saw that this universe is so enormous in its scope, so grand in its arrangement, so exquisite in its structure, that it was sheer vanity and utter insolence to presume that ‘his’ paltry demands and desires had any significance whatsoever.

They were consigned to the dust-bin of history. (Richard, List B, No. 21g, 26 October 2001).

After all, changing oneself can be immense fun, and your sense of humour – including humour when looking at yourself – can aid you immensely in recognizing that being alive is not a serious affair … and is certainly anything but “boring”.

Cheers Vineeto

March 5 2025

ANDREW: I am time and time is me.

VINEETO: Hi Andew,

You may feel that way but this is not a statement of fact.

In actuality time is the arena in which events happen.

ANDREW: So, being happy, feeling good, is about feeling good in time. That time, the feeling of it, isn’t something to be afraid of. I am time. I am the passing of time.
If everything is cut short, and all my efforts too, what was I afraid of? Wasting time? Time is me all along!

VINEETO: Here you are simply using a philosophical trick to relieve you of the conditioned guilt of “wasting time”.

ANDREW: So, when I feel happy, or have another moment when things feel good, I am not spending time or wasting it, I am it!

VINEETO: What is correct is that when you are not feeling good you are wasting this precious moment of being alive, now, because now is the only moment you can experience being alive, by feeling sorrowful and/or malicious.

ANDREW: There was always the background morality about time for me, which was about future judgement.

I still dream like this. In an abstract way about “the future”.

VINEETO: I remember feeling being ‘Vineeto’ being driven to do ‘something useful’ with ‘her’ time because of ‘her’ work-ethic conditioning.

Now, being free from the social identity and instinctual passions I have all the time in the universe, and it is always now.

But I am not ‘time’ – that is a misleading concept/ construct. It is the universe which is eternal, I am mortal.

ANDREW: That is disassociated. I am the ‘time’ I am rebellious against!

VINEETO: That sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

When will you come out of your ivory tower and play?

Cheers Vineeto

March 6 2025

ANDREW: (…) My career has been an accumulation of experiences which have made me a valuable commodity. As a person in a chair in front of a screen, or on the phone, or in person.
I am the commodity. I sell myself, through time, to others.

‘I’ am ‘time’. ‘I’ am not actual time, ‘I’ am imagining ‘time’. A ‘time’ when I will be happy.

VINEETO: Ok, now I know what you mean by ‘I’ am ‘time’, that you are talking about an imaginary time “when you will be happy”. Hence your sentence would better read – ‘I am living in an imaginary time’. This way it becomes obvious what an ineffective enterprise it is to imagine to be happy some day in the future instead of doing something right here, right now, to be happy, isn’t it?

Hence my suggestion to ‘come out and play’.

ANDREW: This is what I was thinking about. The disconnect between what I am doing and feeling, and that ‘time’ in the future.

What is it that I am missing here?

VINEETO: Mmh, perhaps what you are missing is recognizing that there is fear? And being afraid of this fear?

ANDREW: For 49 years I have woken up in the morning, but there was never a day I really took proper care of the fact that was likely to keep happening.

Yet here I am. And, probably will remain.

VINEETO: Now that you have faced the fact that you are indeed here in this place and now in this moment in time, and that merely imagining a happy future will not be powerful enough to bring it about – do you perhaps have the necessary wherewithal to allow this fear to come to the surface? In other words, are you ready to not fight the fear that is there?

I remember a correspondence from you to the mailing list where you said you ‘girded yourself for battle every morning’ (it is not in the archives so Richard did not respond) but it remained in my memory because it struck me at the time as a hard and tiresome existence. In this post it appears that you are looking for a different, more happy modus operandi, so perhaps stopping the fight (against yourself) might now have a certain appeal to you.

Here is my recommendation based on personal experience from feeling being ‘Vineeto’ and the success of other people’s reports as well –

Vineeto: … stop fighting your pain and stop fighting the feelings you experience. Any battle against yourself only fuels the feelings and the [somatic] pain by increasing the power of ‘you’ to make you feel bad. Personally, feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that the moment she stopped fighting the feeling (i.e. by being afraid of it), it instantly diminished.

From there, seeing the success of stopping the battle against yourself, you might be able to get to a reasonable feeling good, a little better than neutral. (Actualism, ActualVineeto, Scout, 23 December 2025a).

ANDREW: I feel like writing more.

Yeah, that’s what I want to say. [Emphasis added].

VINEETO: This is excellent, Andrew, a propitious time to do that.

Cheers Vineeto

March 7 2025

ANDREW: Thanks Vineeto.

I will feel it out more, but I wanted to write down so to remind myself to be specific about the object of fear, and let myself feel it and get further into the facts.

VINEETO: Hi Andrew,

Isn’t it great that when you contemplate and reflect and become more and more fascinated that you can find out a lot about how you operate and come to a valid conclusion, to wit: “I just don’t admit I am afraid, and skip straight to some compensatory fantasy or rumination, is a big part of how I am afraid of feeling afraid”.

In this very sentence is the recognition and admission that you are indeed “afraid of feeling afraid”.

Now that you uncovered and verified the fact of the matter you can act. You can dare to not fight the feeling of being afraid.

Of course, in order to summon the necessary courage, you need a sincere motivation to do so.

Could this motivation be that you would like to feel good now?

Would you perhaps like to become happy and harmless (instead of fighting yourself or rebelling against anything that tickles your fancy)?

Do you like the possibility that you then more likely feel good in what you call ‘the future’?

Or, even more, would you like to devote your life to something worthwhile?

All this is possible if you sincerely want it – and take the first step, the first action, on the fact which you discovered – “I am afraid of feeling afraid”.

This time, don’t allow the habit of being “easily manipulated”, or skipping “straight to some compensatory fantasy or rumination” to distract you from this first action towards a more peaceful life. The action to feel the fear without fighting your initial impulse to fight the feeling.

Cheers Vineeto

March 7 2025

 ANDREW: Thanks so much Vineeto !

I have not had such a success as far as I can recall (excluding the possibility that I am cunningly not remembering it).

VINEETO: Hi Andrew,

This is great to hear – did you pat yourself on the back? Appreciate the big day of change in your life?

ANDREW: It’s a powerful imagination of mine right now to think of the weather you are probably experiencing right now, and yet such a detailed and thorough message from you has arrived in my journal.

VINEETO: Yes, it has been quite windy last night (~ 80 km/h gusts) but has calmed down a bit. It is predicted that most of the storm will be over tomorrow morning for the Ballina area. Dealing with high water in the streets and shops and houses of the towns around here will take a bit longer. Funny, some acquaintances were concerned that I wouldn’t be safe on the boat from their perspective, but boats are quite useful when there is a flood (wind is another matter).

ANDREW: I felt more encouraged by this success yesterday than perhaps ever before (excluding the possibility of me deliberately forgetting for cunning purposes).
I even remembered that the actualism method is the enjoy and appreciate, when the habit arose to become bogged down in some intellectualism about how I felt.

VINEETO: Ha, indeed. The method is just that – enjoy and appreciate, and enjoy and appreciate more … if anything triggers a diminishing of that feeling good (noticed via affective attentiveness) you do whatever it takes to get back to feeling good, and then work out what the problem is, which triggered the lessening of feeling good. If you care to read more about how to deal with arising feelings or social identity issues, here is a link you might enjoy (Richard, Origin of the Actualism Method).

Otherwise just ask, many here on the forum have well-founded experience.

ANDREW: There has been a sense of space in front of my physical eyes. Like I can lean into the future, the world has space. When looking at flowers they are somehow more there.

VINEETO: This is great – but take care not to get distracted dreaming about the future too much – now is the only moment you can actually experience and this is where life is happening. It is here where “looking at flowers” shows you more and more of actuality, and if you pay attention and appreciate, you can discover that matter and fauna and flora are not merely passive.

Enjoy the adventure.

Cheers Vineeto

March 9 2025

ANDREW: Thanks so much Vineeto !

There has been a sense of space in front of my physical eyes. Like I can lean into the future, the world has space. When looking at flowers they are somehow more there.

VINEETO: Hi Andrew,

I am responding to this post again because there has been no input from you or answer to my post to you (you may not even have read it yet) – instead you were busy philosophising and intellectualising on unrelated topics in great length on other threads.

I can only conclude from this that being “encouraged by this success” did not last very long, and you chose to escape into “Classic intellectualisation” which is the more familiar territory.

Do you really want to run away for the rest of your life because you are afraid to find out what you are afraid of, and prefer keep escaping into diversions of endless and fruitless philosophising and intellectualising? You don’t even know yet what it is you are afraid of because investigating your fear requires that you allow yourself to feel the feeling.

Maybe part of James’ conversations with Richard on a very similar topic may give you pause to absorb, contemplate and reflect on, and perhaps become fascinated by, what direction you want to give your life, after your short encouraging success with paying attention as to how you feel?

There is soo much more to life than intellectualising, fruitless rebellion, and ivory tower philosophising. Remember, you said “When looking at flowers they are somehow more there”?

James: … What comes to mind is I keep treading the same path over and over because that is what I know. That is what is familiar.

Richard: Indeed it is ... so in order to successfully escape one needs to abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods, so that the energy one is frittering away fruitlessly is available for the unknown path, the unfamiliar path, the path that does deliver the goods. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)

Richard: In other words: do ‘I’ not continue to temporarily escape from being ‘me’ because permanent escape from being ‘me’ is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for? (Richard, List B, James3, 5 Nov 2002)

James: ‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now. ‘I’ can’t see how to get past that.

Richard: As there has been a, perhaps predictable, retreat back into suffering (predictable as foreshadowed in ‘‘I’ want to hide from this inquiry’ and ‘‘I’ want to back out’ for example), then one starts with where one is presently at (where one is not yet at will emerge of its own accord as one proceeds): as you say ‘‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now’ then for ‘me’ that is where ‘I’ am currently at.

Therefore, do ‘I’ feel the feeling of being stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) or not? If yes, then through staying with the feeling, by being the feeling (instead of trying to see how to get past that), one will find out, experientially, what it is really like to not have a path and/or not have a plan ... other than the one of ‘looking for a way out’ so that one can stick with the known that is.

It sure beats armchair philosophising any day of the week. [Emphases added]. (Richard, List B, James3, 21 Nov 2002)

A change to more enjoyment and appreciation is in your hands and your hands alone.

Cheers Vineeto

March 10 2025

ANDREW: Thanks for the follow up, Vineeto.

Indeed a quick thankyou or acknowledgement on my part would have been polite. Sorry about that.

VINEETO: Hi Andrew,

I don’t need an acknowledgement or an apology – the reason I wrote was to remind you that you started something beneficial for yourself and then went back to your age-old habit instead of persisting and following up on your initial success.

ANDREW: To your conclusion that I have retreated into classical intellectualisation, and forgotten the success, I will have to consider that a bit more.

I was definitely becoming engaged in the evolution of consciousness discussion, and struggled to stay in a feeling good mood, and identified that I was pushing an agenda which I offered or decided to end the discussion if it was getting in Claudiu’s way. Perhaps ending it for my own peace of mind would have been more sensible. I was enjoying the “intellectualism” I guess, as it is stimulating to have thought about and even discussed the topic of Jayne’s book. It was this book that put the nail in the coffin , at least intellectually, regarding the existence of God.

VINEETO: It’s good to hear that Jayne’s book liberated you from your belief in God but if I remember correctly, that happened already years ago and there is no need to carry this gratitude (a feeling which binds you to the past) for ever and a day. Something you now can unburden yourself from.

ANDREW: The discussion with Scout was actually quite fun today. I was laughing and running around with a bowl of water seeing if I it would boil in the sun light! On top of that, I was able to continue coding a trading strategy (my ongoing “Improve my lot” goal).

All that being said, it’s a sound observation that all that intellectual and philosophical type discussion, or scientific discussion, does lead me to be in my head and not maximising feeling good, it is as you say “familiar territory”.

VINEETO: You are aware, are you not, that the actualism method is not to maintain feeling good at any price, for instance via pushing away any diminishment in feeling good by ignoration or distraction?

Perhaps a refresher of Richard’s recommendation is useful –

Richard: Before applying the actualism method – the ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – it is essential for success to grasp the fact that this very moment which is happening now is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness and harmlessness does not mean a thing if one is miserable and malicious now and a hoped-for happiness and harmlessness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All one gets by waiting is more waiting. Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. The jumping in point is always here; it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if one misses it this time around, hey presto, one has another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.

What ‘I’ did, all those years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective way to be able to enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive each moment again (I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). It does take some doing to start off with but, as success after success starts to multiply exponentially, it becomes progressively easier to enjoy and appreciate being here each moment again. One begins by asking, each moment again, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?

Note: asking how one is experiencing this moment of being alive is not the actualism method; consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is. And this is because the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself. (...)

As one knows from the pure consciousness experiences (PCE’s), which are moments of perfection everybody has at some stage in their life, that it is possible to experience this moment in time and this place in space as perfection personified, ‘I’ set the minimum standard of experience for myself: feeling good. If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most (‘feeling good’ is an unambiguous term – it is a general sense of well-being – and if anyone wants to argue about what feeling good means ... then do not even bother trying to do this at all).

Once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good ... but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand ... with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive. And, of course, once one does get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ ... and after that to ‘feeling excellent’.

The more one enjoys and appreciates being just here right now – to the point of excellence being the norm – the greater the likelihood of a PCE happening ... a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing the magical event, which indubitably shows where everyone has being going awry, to occur. Plus any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

ANDREW: A sort of conditional feeling good, often flat, or even a bit anxious, as it is very dependent on what others are saying and writing and is easy to be caught up in feeling less than good and “grinding” harder on the intellectual discussion to try and feel good via it, rather than stopping and getting back to feeling good deliberately. 

VINEETO: Here you gave a precise description how feeling good diminished and you used your old coping tactics, which you know don’t work in the long run. Why not try something new for a change. Stop and feel out what lies underneath this feeling a bit “flat”, or “anxious”. By allowing to feel it you can get the information what is wrong, what is the cause – be it some ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ you have violated and which validity you can now question, some deeper feeling being covered up or perhaps just a habit which on inspection makes no sense to continue. Here is a perfect way to make your intelligence work for your well-being instead of only abstract discussions (which can be fun). When more persistent feelings happen, then the quote I sent in my last post applies –

Richard: Therefore, do ‘I’ feel the feeling of being stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) or not? If yes, then through staying with the feeling, by being the feeling (instead of trying to see how to get past that), one will find out, experientially, what it is really like to not have a path and/or not have a plan ... other than the one of ‘looking for a way out’ so that one can stick with the known that is. [Emphases added]. (Richard, List B, James3, 21 Nov 2002)

See how you go and don’t give up before you start.

Cheers Vineeto