FELIPE: Thanks for the input, Claudiu. I think you’ve already made this point to me in a past instance. Basically, it is that:

Any further input from you or Vineeto will be appreciated.

Can you recognize how you miss the points on appreciation, which my post and Claudiu’s extensive explanation made, by wanting to just quickly think about it and put it aside?

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 –

“Hence appreciation means assessing of the true worth or value of persons or things and thus adding value, enriching, encouraging (the expansion of your value assessment), highly regarding, cherishing, marvelling, with a link to Richard’s article how you can appreciate and what there is in this infinite universe to marvel at and delight in. Especially take note of the 3^rd paragraph in the above linked article.

And here is more to read with care and leisure to contemplate its significance –

“With the ongoing increase in appreciation and the consequent appreciative enjoyment it will be easy to follow Richard’s instructions further –

[Richard]: “one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ … and after that to ‘feeling excellent’ […] to the point of excellence being the norm”.” 

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 and Richard and myself have talked about. (Non-intellectualized, i.e. comprehensive) contemplation, especially apperceptive contemplation, is certainly part of appreciation and can increase it immensely.

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 –

“The means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end” (as it says in the 4^th scrolling banner).

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”) – another red flag expression. Why are you so carelessly reductive ?

*

PS: Claudiu: You have described it very well. I would say that at some point in the actualism process enjoyment and appreciation are experientially so closely linked together as to be inseparable. And isn’t that wonderful!

Cheers Vineeto

July 27 2024

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).

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, which really drove the point home.

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 –

“The focus on appreciation started when Vineeto urged us to turn any sadness surrounding Richard’s death into appreciation for his life and his words. Then further to allow this appreciation to ‘spill over’ into appreciating this wonderful universe which exists all around, including the natural world and one’s fellow human beings.”

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*. 

July 28 2024

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” as an introduction for why appreciation now gets such a prominent place in the actualism practice.

To clarify further what you had said yesterday –

FELIPE: At first I took it as the sensorial part (enjoyment = more affective, appreciation = more sensorial). The word has also been somewhat charged with hints of positive/love feelings (such as love and gratitude), at least in Spanish. 

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 –

KUBA: The other interesting thing is that the difference between appreciation and gratitude is clear as day.  

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 –

FELIX: Feeling good becomes a value in itself from this vantage point, and is felt to be something incredibly valuable to have and to share. It creates a whole new way of looking at the world and being in the world – all because oneself has changed as the lens through which everything is experienced and perceived. I have been the block all along. Which we always knew but it’s weird to see how true it is…  

Cheers Vineeto