October 14 2024

HENRY: My experiencing of what I took to be virtual freedom was sincere, but I soon found myself feeling jealous of what I perceived to be superior progress by Claudiu and Kuba. Fortunately I was able to smell something was off quickly and put my hands in my pockets and carried on. However, this undercurrent was still able to define me through to today. […]

It is wonderful to put this to rest. I can see that jealousy of the same variety has been a part of ‘me’ for a very long time [...] 

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

It’s great you have discovered and can admit to what this ‘smelly’ undercurrent is – jealousy and competition are a strong emotional forces. As you said it has been a part of you for a very long time. So now that you identified the trigger which prevents you from fully enjoying and appreciating this moment, you can contemplate it in depth, recognize the pattern and make a conscious choice.

You can first ascertain the facts as far as the habit of comparison/ competition/ jealousy goes. You want to be actually free and someone has made better progress. The fact that it makes you feel jealous could mean that, deep down, you know you are not yet doing everything you can possibly do to achieve your goal.

Therefore, instead of feeling jealous, which is wasting a potent emotional energy, one can easily, with some awareness and common sense, turn this energy into the action of making tangible progress towards your aim. I remember ‘Vineeto’ used imitation, i.e. tried to learn from the successes ‘she’ identified in others at making progress in actualism and thus channelled ‘her’ own emotional energy into being productive, and, of course, added further confidence, enjoyment and appreciation.

You said – “any advantage of progress that Claudiu and Kuba may have was defined purely by my own parameters”.

If your own parameters are merely about “I am better than someone else” then those parameters are well worth looking at and worth reassessing.

If, however, your parameters are that you want to become actually free as soon as possible, then they naturally need to align with pure intent, and then the next action will become obvious to you.

Perhaps it’s a matter of realigning your aim and actions fully with pure intent and follow the guidance of pure intent?

In any case, sitting “on the sidelines” or rationalizing jealousy out of existence will not do the trick, and I congratulate you for somewhat recognizing that. As you say “Plus it’s so much more fun to just jump in rather than sitting in a huff on the sidelines”.

Cheers Vineeto

October 20 2024

VINEETO: If your own parameters are merely about “I am better than someone else” then those parameters are well worth looking at and worth reassessing.

HENRY: I was initially a bit taken aback, but it became clear that that very dynamic was at work in my life. Upon reflection, I could see it was defensive in nature and ultimately served to sustain insecurities.

Since exploring those aspects, things have been ‘coming unstuck,’ and as of yesterday afternoon a ‘christmastime atmosphere’ has become predominant. There is a glow, a sense of magicality, a delight wherever my attention wanders.

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

There is no shame admitting that competition is operating in you – pretty much everyone has this feature of the human condition to a greater or lesser extent. But it is wonderful that you can own up to it and are “exploring those aspects” to the point where things are “coming unstuck” resulting in “a delight wherever my attention wanders”. Well done.

Don’t stop here as competition and rivalry are quite a pertinacious occurrence inherent in the peasant mentality and deserve attention whenever they stand in the way of persistently enjoying and appreciating one’s association with fellow human beings.

HENRY: There is a question of where there is love at play, as I have been getting some attention back from a girl I’m interested in, but I’m paying close attention. Experience will inform. In the meantime, enjoying this atmosphere, which I do recognize from PCEs. A sensation of circling the drain.

VINEETO: As Richard explained in detail, there is a way of bypassing love with sufficient naïveté when moving further into intimacy with one’s partner –

RICHARD: I also detailed how feeling-being ‘Grace’, who was exacting in evaluating ‘her’ differing ways of being a ‘self’, had gradations of scale in regards to intimacy (togetherness: → closeness: → sweetness: → richness: → magicality) – all of which correlated to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence – in the second and third paragraphs[1] following on from the above.

[1]What did not get included in those second and third paragraphs, regarding feeling-being ‘Grace’ and her rigorous gradations, was ‘her’ oft-repeated observation – regarding the onset of the third stage, on that range of naïveness, where ‘her’ gradation of ‘great’ related to sweetness [“delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other”] – about a bifurcation manifesting where the instinctual tendency/ temptation was to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate) as contrasted to a conscious choice being required so as to somehow have that sweetness then segue into a naïve intimacy via what ‘she’ described as ‘richness’ [“a near-absence of agency; with the [sophisticate] doer abeyant, and the [naïve] beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian”] and graded as ‘excellent’. [emphasis added]

MARTIN: What does that mean practically then Richard?

RICHARD: Essentially, what “that”meant practically for feeling-being ‘Grace’ was how ‘she’ needed to be fully alert, upon the emergence of (if not prior to) that third-stage ‘sweetness’[2], to the attractiveness of the feeling of affection/ of ‘self’-centrically being affectionate – so as to not instinctually veer off into the intimacy of love – and thereby remain steadfast with delighting in the physical proximity of the flesh-and-blood body typing these words. [emphasis added].

[2] This ‘sweetness’ is an emergent effect of that second-stage ‘closeness’ – which came about due to feeling sufficiently safe/ feeling secure enough, emotionally, to intuitively enable an inclusive expansion of viscerally-established personal boundaries (and which ‘closeness’ was an outcome of that first-stage ‘togetherness’ which had been engendered by the willingness to be and act in concert with another in the regular relationship/ companionship way of feeling intimate) – and is epitomised by its physical proximity (i.e., immanence) effect. (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 March 2016).

They key is to activate sufficient naïveness and naïveté and be attentive and “stay fully alert”, as Grace termed it, to the instinctual tendency of love and affection which’s unpleasant side-effects most of us know so well.

Cheers Vineeto

November 30 2024

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

HENRY: I realized that all I am really doing when I’m playing these games is finding out what works and what doesn’t, there’s no need for any emotional involvement / involvement from ‘me.’ […]

By doing all that I’ve developed a wonderful library of knowledge of what works and doesn’t, which I can carry forward and share with others. And I can continue every day – trying this, trying that.

There was something I was doing as an identity, ‘identifying’ with particular outcomes – "I am a winner / I am a loser," not aware that both of those are completely dependent on conditions – all there is to do is tweak a condition here and there and the whole thing can flip. There is winning and there is losing but neither are permanent states – just as nothing in this universe is permanent. It’s wonderfully dynamic, and quite fascinating to take part in.

VINEETO: Now that you have discovered your, the identity’s, propensity to be a winner/loser and discovered experientially that you don’t have to do that anymore, you could apply this to your whole life and live your life on a preference basis. Viz:

Richard: I did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. That is, ‘I’ would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but if it did not turn out like that ... it did not really matter for it was only a preference. ‘I’ chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make ‘me’ angry ... or even irritated ... or even peeved. (Richard, List B, No. 12a, 16 July 1998).

Richard: I did everything I could to be as happy and harmless (as free of sorrow and malice) for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by first putting everything on a does-not-really-matter-in-the-long-run basis. That is, I would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but, if it did not turn out like that, it did not really matter for it was only a preference. I chose to no longer give other people – or the weather even – the power to have me annoyed, irritated, irked, or even peeved, if this was possible.

Then, as it was patently obvious in those experiences of pristine purity how this very moment of being alive is the only moment of ever actually being alive, I began to treat each moment again as precious. After all, it is not as if we have an unlimited amount of moments and – unlike a bank account which can be replenished – our supply of such moments is our most valuable (albeit dwindling) asset. In practical terms this meant being aware of how each precious moment was being experienced; if feeling good (felicity and innocuity) was the prevailing experience then this attentiveness ensured enjoyment and appreciation, of the sheer fact of being alive, each moment again; if feeling bad (unhappy and harmful) was the prevailing experience then whatever had displaced feeling good became readily apparent, upon such attention, with so much at stake. (Out-from-Control Reports, Richard).

VINEETO: In other words, if you put *everything* in your life on a preference basis then you can be winner big time, not only in a rather insignificant game on your mobile phone (I mean in the grand scheme of life) but in every moment of your life. It can look like this –

Richard: I do have personal preferences ... one of which is a marked disinclination to engage in any sport or sporting activity (including all aspects of spectatorism).

There is, for instance, a preference for omnivorism over vegetarianism; a preference for water-based activities (boating, swimming, and so on) over land-based activities (hiking, mountaineering, and so forth); a preference for comedic entertainment over the dramatic/ a documentary over a fantasy/ the voluptuous over the horrific ... and, to detail a few general ones at random, a preference for creature comforts over frugal asceticism, a preference for the warmer climes over the colder, and a preference for civilisation over savagery.

Please bear in mind, however, that a preference for something is to merely prefer this over that ... and if ‘this’ is not available/ does not happen then ‘that’ does not detract one iota from the utter enjoyment and sheer appreciation of being just here, at this place in infinite space, right now, at this moment in eternal time, as this particular form which perdurable matter (mass/ energy) has taken shape as. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 118, 23 June 2006)

VINEETO: Doesn’t this course of action intrigue you?

Cheers Vineeto

December 1 2024

VINEETO: Now that you have discovered your, the identity’s, propensity to be a winner/loser and discovered experientially that you don’t have to do that anymore, you could apply this to your whole life and live your life on a preference basis.

HENRY: My plan precisely! 

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

Excellent.

And now you only have one thing in life which is not a preference but an imperative – to become actually free from the human condition.

Life is so much easier when one has sorted out one’s priorities, isn’t it?

Cheers Vineeto

December 25 2024

HENRY: I can see that as long as any others have objections to being happy – which is a universal condition – then they have the leverage over me to illicit sympathy. As long as I am sympathetic, I am not experiencing happiness or (ultimately) harmlessness, though I have believed that what I was doing was the most harmless approach.

It’s not ultimately a harmless approach because it verifies the suffering for myself and for them – they got one more ‘vote’ in favor of the validity/reality of their suffering. […]

But now I see it’s pretty straightforward – the sympathy is not, contrary to popular opinion, harmless.

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

You are spot on – sympathy is not, and has never been harmless. It is, at best, reaffirming the entity inside your fellow human beings and thus perpetuating their (contingent) existence –

Richard: She [Devika] would also say that Richard does nor support her, as an identity that is, at all ... which lack of (affective) caring was disconcerting for her, to say the least, and my current companion has also (correctly) reported this absence of consideration.

Put simply: I am unable to support some-one who does not exist (I only get to meet flesh and blood bodies here in this actual world). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25a, 10 June 2003).

Whereas actual caring aims to bring suffering to an end, forever –

Richard: You see, the difference between you and me is that I actually care about my fellow human being and will leave no stone unturned, if that be what it takes, to understand them, to comprehend why they say what they do, so as to facilitate clarity in communication ... I like my fellow human being and prefer that their self-imposed suffering come to an end, forever, sooner rather than later. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 74f, 2 February 2006).

If you are interested, this is what sympathy means at root –

• sympathy (n.), ‘affinity between certain things’, from Middle French sympathie (16c.) and directly from Late Latin sympathia, ‘community of feeling’, ‘sympathy’, from Greek sympatheia, ‘fellow-feeling’, ‘community of feeling’, from sympathes, ‘having a fellow feeling’, ‘affected by like feelings’, from assimilated form of syn-, ‘together’ (see syn-; viz.: word-forming element meaning ‘together with’, ‘jointly’; ‘alike’; ‘at the same time’, also sometimes completive or intensive, from Greek syn (prep.) ‘with’, ‘together with’, ‘along with’, ‘in the company of’) + pathos, ‘feeling’ (see pathos; viz.: ‘quality that arouses pity or sorrow’; 1660s, from Greek pathos, ‘suffering, feeling, emotion, calamity’, literally ‘what befalls one’, related to paskhein, ‘to suffer’, and penthos ‘grief, sorrow’). ~ (Online Etymology Dictionary). (Richard, Abditorium, Sympathy).

Sympathy is ‘fellow-feeling’ but often it means ‘suffering together’ and as such is a very close relative to compassion, which also means ‘suffering together’, so highly praised by Irene when she was in her ‘Matriarchal ASC’. Viz.:

IRENE to Vineeto: Compassion is not what is understood by Richard – [he calls it] the hopeless game of compassion – at least I don’t have that view at all. To me compassion is the full understanding through experiencing all the accompanying emotions of a particularly testing aspect of life, that this is what it is to be grieving, or to be angry or to intensely hate or to be desolate, lonely, utterly discouraged in all of life etc. and to accept it as belonging to the all-round human experience in order to become wise. Not that only the so-called negative feelings will grant wisdom; the positive ones can be even more important in that respect! The richness, the depth of each human feeling reveals the understanding of what it is to be a human being in such an empirical, intimate way that it is later instantly recognised in a fellow human being who is going through the same emotional, human experience and who can then be met by compassion, that very kind understanding that you will have enjoyed with another, not only when life was being particularly difficult or sad, but also when you wanted to share your utmost joy or love. It is indeed such comfort to talk to someone who doesn’t lecture you, but who is right with you in your deepest pain or your exquisite happiness and doesn’t condemn you or suggests all kind of predictable therapies. The reward is first of all in the understanding of being human and secondly it is a privilege to be of genuine help with a person who feels alone, confused and abandoned in their circumstances. Or to be invited by someone who wants to share their most precious feelings with you.

RICHARD: Hmm ... you have well described the trap of compassion – as I call it – for the giver and the receiver thus remain firmly locked into the piquant and seductive snare of the beauty of pathos. Literally the word ‘compassion’ means pathos in common ... and actually starts out as nothing more impelling than a coping-mechanism designed to alleviate – not eliminate – the existential pain and distress of being human. For to be human is to be suffering and to be suffering is to be in sorrow. Indeed, all sentient beings suffer – not only the human animal – and one can travel deeply into the depths of ‘being’ itself ... and come upon Universal Sorrow. The piquancy of one’s personal sorrow pales into insignificance when confronted with the pungency of all the sorrow of anyone who has ever lived or who is living now or who is yet to be born ... for one is indulging oneself in self-justifying grief. There the beauty of this universal pathos reveals what lies eternally silent at the heart of the mystique ... a god or a goddess that is The Truth.

And thus is a new religion born – and another sect to wage their vicious wars – which is why I call the alluring beauty of pathos ‘The Trap Of Compassion’.

There is, however, a third alternative to being human or divine. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Irene, 11 October 1998).

HENRY: I have some history in my early 20s of aggressive people in my life that I can now see left me with a very avoidant and timid existence. Luckily I can now see the line of causation clearly, which means I can easily interrupt it: when I see myself being avoidant or timid, I can see the connection to fear of aggression. When I see the fear and do not give it any sustenance, it quickly fades – along with the auxiliary emotions and behaviors. […]

I can see how this dynamic is holding everyone in thrall, it’s part of what makes it taboo to be happy and harmless. However, that is nothing but superstition – it’s amazing to see how all the ‘state of the art’ psychology falls apart on that one point alone. In the end, it was all just a belief. There is something far better.

VINEETO: This is excellent, Henry. I find it fascinating that you first had to deal with fear and aggression in order to see that people don’t like others to be happy and from there you could see that sympathy is not harmless. And you also experienced instant confirmation that due to “the lack of sympathy” the client’s “terrible time” and “struggling” “must have passed quickly”.

There is indeed “something far better” –

RESPONDENT: [... I don’t see much point in thinking about you] or your claims any longer. Whatever it is you’ve discovered ...

RICHARD: There is no need to be coy ... you know quite well what it is. For example:

• [Respondent]: ‘Trying to imagine someone who has no feelings, someone who is incapable of empathy, incapable of feeling sorrow or compassion, one naturally tends to think either of someone who is heartless, uncaring, ruthlessly self-centred (a ‘psychopath’ in popular parlance), or someone who is dull, lifeless, emotionally flattened. I am still bothered by this sometimes, even though I know it needn’t be so.

I was thinking this over again recently when I remembered the day two summers ago when I took a long walk in the country, ate two ‘magic’ psilocybin mushrooms, and had 4 hours of PCE on earth. Back at home (still on the fringes of the aptly described ‘magical fairytale-like paradise’) I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone in Sydney. She was crying, telling me about a problem at work that was getting her down. As she was going into the details I was lying there on a sofa looking out a window, watching the sky, observing a magnificent snowy-white cloud drifting way up there in the cool blue immensity.

Everything was utterly immaculate. (...)’. (Wednesday, 16/02/2005 6:27 PM AEDST). […]

RICHARD: Here is what you went on to say (in that e-mail of yours already part-quoted above) a year ago to the day:

• [Respondent]: ‘... [Everything was utterly immaculate]. What she was telling me belonged to a different world altogether. I heard it, I understood it, I knew she was concerned about it, but it had no relevance here. And the important thing is, I knew it had no relevance *there* either – but there was no way she could really *see* that unless she could experience ... this’. [emphases in original]. (Wednesday, 16/02/2005 6:27 PM AEDST).

RICHARD: And here is the very next paragraph (from that e-mail you wrote a year ago to the day):

• [Respondent]: ‘To say that I was callous, cold, indifferent, uncaring, flat, dull or lifeless at that moment would be totally off the mark. No way! What I really wanted was for her to experience the world this way, and to realise that whatever problem she had was made redundant by the perfection of the sky, the clouds, the trees, the air. It’s true to say there was no compassion in me, none whatsoever, because there was no sorrow, and no way I could endorse anyone else’s unnecessary sorrow either. At that moment I was literally incapable of conventional compassion ... but there was genuine caring, and plenty of it’. (Wednesday, 16/02/2005 6:27 PM AEDST).

RESPONDENT: Whatever you’ve got, enjoy it, but keep it. (Richard, Actual Freedom  List, No. 60j, 19 February 2006).

However, a year later the Respondent had forgotten/pushed aside his experience of genuine caring (“but there was genuine caring, and plenty of it”) and bemoaned the absence of sympathy and compassion in Richard.

With being happy and harmless comes genuine caring for one’s fellow human beings.

Cheers Vineeto

December 25 2024

HENRY: Thank you for the detailed response!

VINEETO: You are very welcome.

Richard to Irene: The piquancy of one’s personal sorrow pales into insignificance when confronted with the pungency of all the sorrow of anyone who has ever lived or who is living now or who is yet to be born … for one is indulging oneself in self-justifying grief. There the beauty of this universal pathos reveals what lies eternally silent at the heart of the mystique … a god or a goddess that is The Truth. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Irene, 11 October 1998).

HENRY: The aspect of the beauty of The Truth / God etc. is fascinating to feel out, I can see now how it has been such a temptation down the years… without the context of history it only makes sense that one would be intuitively drawn in that direction. It is indeed seductive at an intuitive level.

VINEETO: You can say that again! I spent 14 years at the feet of an enlightened master because of the attraction of his Love and Compassion. Even occasional outbursts of ‘Divine Anger’ did not penetrate sufficiently into my common sense to even question the nature of the Truth I was seeking. Only his death eventually freed me from the addictive influence of Divine Love and Compassion … and then on my further quest for ‘what is Truth’ I met Peter and Richard.

HENRY: The direction of the actual is sweet but in a different way, it’s clean to the point of being nearly invisible from within the human condition. It’s amazing to consider how Richard managed to find his way to it.

VINEETO: Yet the more you experientially understand actualism and remember your own PCEs the more obvious its utter purity becomes.

HENRY: The discerning intellect is so key, to be able to spot those inconsistencies and contradictions present within the August state, to be a keen observer of history and of ourselves. Within those contradictions and wilful ignorance is the dark side of the enlightened state:

Richard: … what I then called ‘The Absolute’ presented itself as being feminine – a Radiant Being initially seen to be Pure Love – which femininity I would nowadays consider to be a product of me being of masculine gender. Due to an intensity of purpose there was the capacity to penetrate into the nature of this ‘Radiant Being’ and I was able to see ‘Her’ other face:

It was Pure Evil – the Diabolical underpins the Divine … (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Love)

VINEETO: A “discerning intellect” is not enough to dissuade you from following your “intuition” and your feelings. Common sense helps but it is the sincere yearning for peace on earth, which allows you to fully engage and understand that all of the intuitively attractive solutions offered by humanity have done zilch, for centuries of experimenting with human souls, to bring peace on earth even an inch closer to how it was in the early days of human history.

‘Vineeto’ asked Richard once, in ‘her’ early actualism years, if humans have made any progress in consciousness and his answer was – “no, no progress at all”. ‘Vineeto’ was deeply shocked. I now know that this is so.

*

VINEETO: I find it fascinating that you first had to deal with fear and aggression in order to see that people don’t like others to be happy and from there you could see that sympathy is not harmless.

HENRY: I see it coming from two sides:

• Sympathy is not harmless because it conceals the greater peace that’s possible by offering a validating pacifier

• People can become aggressive when they don’t think someone is behaving properly. In the case of sympathy, the belief is that by withholding sympathy one is hurting the sufferer (the ‘victim’). The aggression is a counter-attack to a perceived attack.

VINEETO: There is an additional angle to No. 2. People who develop a condition to any degree outside of the sanity spectrum are often very sensitive to vibes and psychic currents and therefore instantly feel when they are lied to, or disliked. It is not a ‘belief’ as you call it but a direct affective experience. Hence their ‘victimhood’ is not merely imagined, but experienced and reinforced by everyday experience. It is, of course, also part of their survival strategy and as such of vital importance.

You will find that they do appreciate honesty and integrity, more than your well-adapted co-workers might.

Richard: … when a ‘normal’ person becomes ‘psychotic’ it is because they have found the pressures of life too much to handle and have chosen for psychosis as their way out. As strange as it may sound to normal people, they are comfortable with their modus operandi and have no interest in budging one iota from their position ... despite their pleas for help (a part of their strategy). (Sundry, Disclaimer).

HENRY: This is selfish in nature because the belief in the victim hood of the other is felt… ‘I’ know they are suffering because ‘I’ feel their suffering. In this sense, the counter-attack is defending one’s own ‘self.’ The pang is personal, and the defensive aggression is personal.

VINEETO: Are you talking about yourself when you say “the belief in the victim hood of the other is felt”? And that you feel your “counter-attack is defending one’s [your] own ‘self’”? And that your “defensive aggression is personal”? And that is why you first had to deal with fear and aggression? I am trying to understand your own emotional process and insights.

HENRY: Guilt is similar to this as well… one identifies with the ‘victim’ and feels the emotional harm one caused to them. Because of the belief in the solidity of that harm, it’s felt that a crime was committed. But it works similarly to sympathy in only continuing the entire structure, as has been pointed out many times on the AFT it does little or nothing to prevent future behavior.

Just one more case of the diabolical underpinning the divine.

VINEETO: When you feel “that a crime was committed” you swallow the set-up hook, line and sinker. Only ongoing affective attentiveness can break that vicious cycle. Your clients have nevertheless set up their lives the way they did (largely unconsciously of course) and in their scheme you are their servant.

HENRY: I find it disturbing and distressing to discover that all the well-meaning people I grew up around and emulated carried that evil – and still carry it (as do I). Something to reflect on further.

VINEETO: It is not only the “well-meaning people” who “carried that evil”, even though it is shocking to discover this. It’s a self-perpetuating set-up of both sides of the game.

Only unilateral action can resolve the situation you find yourself in.

Cheers Vineeto

December 25 2024

HENRY: My belief has been that people are inherently good – a sort of ‘look for the good in people’, overlooking the obvious evils and bad vibes that are rife.

Part of this has had to do with seeing everyone as a mere victim – to circumstances, to their psychologies, to their upbringings. Ultimately helpless. Within this view, it is impossible to change and we just have to accept how things are. It conveniently lets everyone off the hook, including myself, for falling short. It means that any change must come from ‘outside,’ essentially from a god.

VINEETO: Yes, what makes this pernicious outlook more difficult to penetrate that it has now become the mainstream creed. And that it lets you off the hook makes it all the more attractive for those being content with second rate solutions. It’s good you are starting to see through the charade.

HENRY: Everyone gets to be ‘good,’ (a mere victim) at the cost of being helpless. The effect of considering others and myself helpless is irresponsibility – a failure to take the necessary steps to change whatever it is that’s happening. If we are just victims, there’s no point in even trying, it’s better to just accept what’s happening.

VINEETO: Indeed, and thus the suicide rate is higher than ever. And so is the murder rate, given that even hardened criminals are considered mere victims who only need some therapy.

HENRY: However, that isn’t the case. We do have the ability to appraise our situations and make different choices, to experiment, to dare to try something different.

As such, the entire narrative falls apart: I am not a victim, because I can do something different. And neither are anyone else. If they cared to, they could do differently. Everyone is only being the way they are because they’re too afraid to do anything different.

VINEETO: Indeed.

Richard: I was born of ordinary parents, was sent to an ordinary state school – receiving an average education until I was fifteen years of age – took an ordinary job and worked for a living. I eventually got married and had four children and bought a house and ... in short, I was relatively normal and did all the expected things. Thus did I live my life for thirty two years according to the ‘tried and true’ methods as laid down by the countless millions of other humans that had lived before me. I tried my best to make their system work to produce the optimum result ... but to no avail. Only then did I make the first and most important movement of my own volition ... I discarded the ‘tried and true’ as being the ‘tried and failed’. (I did say ‘I was relatively normal’ because one thing, and one thing alone, stood out that distinguished me from whomsoever else I met: I wanted to know – as an actuality – just what it was to be a human being here on this planet, as this body, in this life-time.) [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List A, No. 26)

It’s just as well that you have dealt “with fear and aggression” enough to dare to do something radically different – enjoy and appreciate being alive despite everyone playing the victim or pretending to play the victim.

HENRY: And that is the evil present in me. That’s what I allow./p>

VINEETO: Ha, it looks as if you are starting to disallow it now. You might like this one –

Richard: Non-belief: My favourite subject as beliefs are the bane of humankind. Beliefs have been so instrumental in killing, maiming, torturing and otherwise causing such pain and suffering since the dawn of human history, that one wonders that they are given any credence at all these days. It behoves one to examine each and every belief – especially those that pass for ‘truths’ – and watch them disappear out of one’s life forever. It is so liberating to be free of beliefs – of believing itself – that I cannot recommend their elimination highly enough. One’s sense of identity is largely made up of beliefs ... beliefs and feelings. In fact a belief is an emotion-backed thought. The vast majority of the beliefs that one carries are not invented by oneself; they were imbibed with the mother’s milk and added to thereupon up to the present day. They are inherited beliefs, put into the child with love and fear – reward and punishment. It is no wonder human beings are such a desperate lot. A ‘mature Adult’ is actually a lost, lonely and frightened entity careering around in confusion and delusion.

However, it is never too late to begin to undo that which has been done to you. One of the marvellous aspects of entering into actualism is that it is a wide and wondrous path full of delight and discovery ... with some down-turns from time-to-time as the old ways reassert themselves. I will not pretend for a moment that all is rosy when one begins to dismantle one’s belief system; one’s very identity is at stake ... not to mention the self. The identity and self will put up a good fight for they want to stay in existence as they have a lot to lose. To wit: their life. As the sense of self is firmly based upon the instinct for survival, it will get up to all kinds of tricks to retain and regain its ascendancy. But it is not a hopeless case: if I can do it, anyone can. I am not special. I was born of normal parents and went to an ordinary State school. I got a job and worked for a living like anyone else. I became married and raised a family. I claim no special abilities other than a determination to succeed in my desired ambition. In 1980 I had what is known as a ‘Peak Experience’ wherein I experienced the perfection and purity of the universe as-it-is. I was hooked! I devoted myself to the task of setting myself free of absolutely everything that stood in the way of attaining what I had experienced. The word ‘fail’ is not in my vocabulary. (Richard, General Correspondence, Page 1, 26 June 1997).

Cheers Vineeto

December 27 2024

HENRY: This is selfish in nature because the belief in the victim hood of the other is felt… ‘I’ know they are suffering because ‘I’ feel their suffering. In this sense, the counter-attack is defending one’s own ‘self.’ The pang is personal, and the defensive aggression is personal.

VINEETO: Are you talking about yourself when you say “the belief in the victim hood of the other is felt”? And that you feel your “counter-attack is defending one’s [your] own ‘self’”? And that your “defensive aggression is personal”? And that is why you first had to deal with fear and aggression? I am trying to understand your own emotional process and insights.

HENRY: I’d say I was generalizing to humanity at large but it would be accurate to say that that is how I have experienced it. It has been diminishing of late, though, as I learn a new way.

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

Thank you for your reply.

I did guess that but it appeared to be rather dissociated, so I thought I better ask.

Generalisations often are used to keep one’s delicate issues at arm’s length. It might well be a habit reinforced by the job you do.

Cheers Vineeto

January 5 2025

HENRY: It’s a dead end trying to connect with people on a psychic level, but I can be as intimate as possible with them, reaching toward near-actual caring. [emphasis added].

VINEETO: Hi Henry,

I singled out this line from your post because I have observed this tendency of people to arrogate words for their dreams and [future] experiences to present a picture which has nothing at all to do with where they are at, and ‘near-actual-caring’ is at the top of the list.

The original expression of feeling being ‘Vineeto’ was the description about the final clue to becoming actually free –

Vineeto: The final clue was again about caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. Only when I cared enough to give all of ‘me’ to another person, to give them what they want most, was I then ready to give it to the one I cared for most, the one I was closest to, and then I was able to leave all remnant concerns and inhibitions of my identity behind. (Direct Route, No. 20, 20 Jan 2010)

It was to describe the experience which allowed ‘her’ to initiate the altruism required to give all of ‘herself’ to become actually free and was only used once and never since, because ‘her’ near-actual-caring became an actual caring once the identity had ‘self’-immolated.

All the while cunning identities wanting to jump the gun began the watering-down process of appropriating the term, now shortened to “near-actual-caring”, into their everyday feeling experiences and dreams, never realising that to experientially know near-actual-caring will be the end of ‘me’ –

SRINATH: For starters it I have been using the term ‘near-actual caring’ as a proxy for ‘more innocuous caring’ ...

RICHARD: And thus does the watering-down process begin – even while the pioneer of what that specialist term refers to is still alive – and by which process thus does identity prevail. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #near-actual-caring)

Richard wrote a long email dedicated to the purpose of drawing out the distinction of feeling caring and actual caring/near-actual-caring –

RICHARD: 1. When feeling-being ‘Vineeto’s everyday feeling of caring first shifted into what has since become known as a near-actual caring the qualitative difference was so marked in its effect ‘she’ initially mistook it to be an actual caring (as per ‘her’ memories of PCE’s).

2. This shift occurred when ‘she’ transitioned from ‘her’ pragmatic, methodological virtual freedom into being out-from-control – a dynamic, destinal virtual freedom – for the remaining four-and-a-half weeks of ‘her’ life (albeit with a melodramatic three-day out-of-control interlude towards the end).

3. Due to ‘her’ naïve intent to be as intimate and without prejudice as possible – which, in conjunction with the absence of self-centredness/ self-centricity that is part-and-parcel of being out-from-control had resulted in the actualism method segueing into the actualism process – ‘her’ cheerful and thus willing concurrence allowed pure intent to dynamically pull ‘her’ evermore unto ‘her’ destiny. (Hence the “dynamic, destinal virtual freedom” nomenclature).

4. This moment-to-moment experiencing of a caring which is not self-centred/ self-centric provided ‘her’ with the experiential convincement that actualising such caring, via ‘self’-immolation, was the only solution to the human condition; this ‘hands-on’ understanding as a dynamically present feeling-being – an impressively distinct contrast to having been abeyant during PCE’s – left ‘her’ with absolutely no choice (lest ‘she’ be forever “rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic”).

5. Since a near-actual caring is, of course, epitomised by a vital interest in the suffering of all human beings coming to an end, forever, as a number one priority, then ‘her’ single-minded focus was essentially centred upon the most immediate way of ensuring this long-awaited global event could begin to take effect the soonest ... to wit: bringing ‘her’ own inevitable demise, at physical death, forward into a liminal imminence.

6. Because the means ‘she’ elected to utilise towards these ends was the near-actual intimacy which goes hand-in-hand with a near-actual caring (per favour that afore-mentioned absence of self-centredness/ self-centricity which typifies being out-from-control) it is apposite to defer to what Vineeto herself wrote on the 20th of January 2010, only fifteen days after her pivotal moment/ definitive event, as its refreshingly simple directness speaks for itself. […] [emphases added]. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #near-actual-caring)

As I know the inventive cunning of the ‘self’-preserving identity only too well from ‘Vineeto’s’ own experience, I copied the whole sequence to demonstrate how vital it is that one is ruthlessly honest in one’s observations and descriptions of one’s own experiences, and not imagining oneself to be ‘almost there’, which imagination can only be safely within the human condition.

Sincerity is the key to naiveté, and to proceed naïvely is the end of any imaginative planning and the beginning of truly having fun.

Cheers Vineeto