VINEETO: Hi Ian,

Excellent to recognize it – now you can be on the look-out when it turns up again.

Does your action of publicizing this significant discovery on the forum indicate a conscious choice to pursue actualism as your priority?

If so, you might find Richard’s quaint little wonder-tale to Rick about self-esteem helpful and informative – .

Looking at the grip the demand for self-esteem has on your life will do a lot to make you more autonomous and thus free to pursue your primary aim in life.

Cheers Vineeto

October 28 2024

IAN: I’m mishandling actualism. I recognise today that a part of me wants to be successful with actualism as a way to be lovable vs as a way to be free… applying actualism to be perfect and thereby avoid shame… to be worthy/ loved/accepted because I can’t be accused of self centred arrogance, and/or can’t be affected by shame. Good to recognise.

VINEETO: Excellent to recognize it – now you can be on the look-out should it turn up again.

Does your action of publicizing this significant discovery on the forum indicate a conscious choice to pursue actualism as your priority?

IAN: Actualism has been the ultimate goal since I had a PCE before finding the actual freedom website - whether it has always been number 1 priority is kind of a two part thing. It’s always the underlying thing, every experience gets analysed whether badly or well through the lens of actualism. I haven’t had a lot of success with enjoying and appreciating consistently (aside from a few weeks here and there where for some reason it all seems easy) but that doesn’t mean it’s not the ultimate goal. Hopefully this latest realisation will help me actually make progress. […]

The thing is I have been wanting to get to the bottom of why I feel so continuously stressed for years and I have recently cottoned on to the fact that it is less about completion of tasks (at work for example) and almost entirely about whether I feel accepted in the group. The completion of tasks is how I maintain acceptance. It seems like such a big pervasive network of beliefs that I am not sure where exactly to look.

VINEETO: Hi Ian,

It seems to me that presently the actualism method is contraindicated because as yet you do not *want* to feel good for its own sake so it won’t be very successful to practice it right now.

To start with, a more practical approach would be, instead of trying to attain acceptance from everybody and their dog, for you to realize that the only person you can change is yourself. As a rational consequence you can ask why do you not accept yourself / why do you not like yourself. (It’s very difficult to make other people like you when you do not like yourself).

A first and most obvious answer is (and very common answer in fact for those honest enough to admit it) – that there is resentment – resentment of being here, of having been born in the first place and resentment for the way things are in general. It goes hand-in-glove with the belief that life is inherently bad.

Here is what Richard had to report about it – perhaps it works for you as well –

What is at the bottom of all this disapproving business is a basic resentment at having to be here in the first place (as in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ for example) and that fundamental grievance gets taken out on the universe at large.

And for as long as ‘I’ am out to prove that life sucks (by being miserable and malicious) and that being here is the pits there is no way ‘I’ am going to be happy and harmless as to do so would be to betray ‘my’ most basic feeling about it all.

I kid you not – it was one of the first things ‘I’ realised all those years ago – yet there is a simple way to be done with such nonsense forever.

Viz.:

• [Richard]: ‘In 1980, ‘I’ , the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the world – and the universe itself – was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom’ of the world ‘I’ had inherited – the real world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so exquisite to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly ... the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! (pages 240-41, ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997).

You will see that this is a far cry from being ‘more neutral’ about it all. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 30 September 2003).

I also recommend other examples from the Richard’s Selected Correspondence on Resentment).

Once you identified resentment and decline to nurse this futile and ineffectual feeling any longer, then *wanting* to feel good cannot be far away.

Cheers Vineeto

November 2 2024

IAN: Yes I can say although ultimately I do want to feel good, at the moment I am currently becoming aware of what I am feeling, so I suppose I am more wanting to feel what I am feeling. What the full spectrum of feelings encompasses and feels like, to feel what it is to be a complete feeling being. I had developed something like a blanket suppression order on almost all of the way I feel (therefore the way I am) and am in the careful process of uncovering and looking at everything that makes up me. I believe this is the process of accepting myself/liking myself.

In other words, once you identified the particular feeling as what it is (anger, sorrow, worry, spitefulness, melancholy, fear, etc.) then you have a choice to either keep feeling it or to decide to put it aside in order to feel better (i.e. get back to feeling good). Then from this more dispassionate perspective you can have a good look at what was the cause/trigger for you to feel such an insalubrious feeling.

To be “uncovering and looking at everything that makes up me” you do not need to keep feeling each feeling until it subsides of its own accord (and embracing it only fuels the feeling to hang around for longer) – it is enough to recognize it and then *stop feeding* it (which may take a while to find the switch until you get the knack).

I’m not sure if you succeed in liking yourself as long as you nurture, i.e. feed, malice and sorrow in your bosom. ‘Vineeto’ certainly couldn’t until she had a clear third alternative. She continued to feel bad via either suppressing or expressing her feelings as she had been taught by new-age therapists during her spiritualist years.

IAN: I don’t like myself because I can be scared, angry, sad, deceitful, petty, arrogant, childish, greedy, cunning. I am slowly welcoming those parts of me I have rejected, with the right mind I can recognise those parts are natural and appropriate for a feeling being to feel (putting aside the question as to the appropriateness of expressing or acting on them). Appropriate also doesn’t mean sensible - expected might be a better word. That is if I feel something, it’s not for no reason, nor is it an anomaly of experience. For example – it makes sense for an animal to feel like it is powerful and competent - why wouldn’t it. It seems fundamental that a creature should not doubt its ability to do and achieve what is required for survival. The odd thing is that a creature would feel like those feelings must be suppressed or hidden, but again this is about survival in the group so if the creature feels more safe (achieves homeostasis) by not expressing those feelings whether through training by peers or life experience then that would make sense that suppression occurs.

VINEETO: All this can be summed up by acknowledging the fact that you, like everyone else, was born this way and it is not your fault that you are “scared, angry, sad, deceitful, petty, arrogant, childish, greedy, cunning”. But, being equipped with intelligence you certainly don’t have to stay that way and you don’t have to *accept* the way you were born (the belief that you can’t change human nature). You can stop following the “tried and failed” template of the wisdom of the real world.

Richard: “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’.” (Richard, List A, No. 26)

Hence instead of “welcoming” those insalubrious feelings you can decide to change them (without suppressing nor expressing them). (see: (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression).

IAN: Cognitively, I understand that I can only change myself; emotionally, I want everything else to change – so there is something missing in my understanding (did feeling-being Vineeto experience something like this?). I do feel sad and angry and scared when I think about ‘the way things are in general’. I find myself thinking/feeling things like ‘life just gets worse and worse’ or ‘it’s just one thing after another’ or ‘what’s the point, it’s just never going to change’. I think these point to a belief that I have adopted or developed over the years, that life is somehow impossible to enjoy.

VINEETO: ‘Vineeto’ experienced this ‘wanting others or things to change’ but quickly put it aside as non-sensical once she started practising actualism. It’s an automatic reaction which, once recognized, need not be perpetuated. What you describe is exactly what is meant by the word resentment –

• Resentment: indignation or ill will stemming from a feeling of having been wronged or offended. (American Heritage Dictionary)

• Resentment: a feeling of anger or unhappiness about something that you think is unfair (Oxford Dictionary)

• Resentment: a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury (Merriam-Webster.com)

• Resentment: Opposite: appreciation, contentment, satisfaction, […] (Onelook Dictionary)

As such my previous advice to you still stands – as long as you consider feeling resentment being an appropriate response (and that includes “welcoming those parts of me”), no change can be evinced. You seem to have fallen for therapeutic humbug – now that there is a third alternative to suppressing or expressing (including “welcoming”) this real-world advice is superseded.

So when you say further down – “I want to decline this resentment but in the past I have only succeeded in suppressing – is there anything I can do to bridge the gap between realising something and actualising it” – you can only decline something when you have 1) recognized it, 2) acknowledged it and 3) understood it. Hence you first need to recognize that it is operating in every complaint you have with the world you live in.

IAN: On the other hand, I also really enjoy being alive, and there is so much I love about existing, and I feel sad if I contemplate dying or being gone (at the same time as desiring oblivion and release). And I love more than anything the times when I have a PCE or excellence experience.
The resentment I think comes from feeling frustrated about not having the resources to only do the things in life that I enjoy – those things that stimulate good feelings.

VINEETO: There seems to be a basic misunderstanding about the actualism method. Enjoying and appreciating being alive means exactly that – an unconditional enjoyment and appreciation of being alive (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive), not just enjoying the things you “love” (love is a good feeling, as opposed to a bad feeling). If you only want to enjoy the things you love, of course you resent that you can’t have it all the time and resent those other things you don’t love.

IAN: From communication with Claudiu I understand that when something is fully seen for what it is, then the declination will happen automatically because it is obvious to not do that. In the mean-time I can keep shining a light on the feelings/beliefs to uncover more until that moment happens. Is there anything you can suggest here.

VINEETO: I did just that in my above answers. “Fully seen for what it is” requires a *dispassionate* investigation *after* you decided that you *want to feel good* about being alive now, which is certainly not the same thing as “welcoming those parts of me” or “accepting myself/liking myself” for being “scared, angry, sad, deceitful, petty, arrogant, childish, greedy, cunning”.

IAN: As an aside – I’ve noticed that I massively enjoy hearing or reading about the experience of the actual world. For example whenever I read the tales of becoming free, or recently Geoffrey’s description of letting go of the ‘guardian’, or when I was visiting you and Richard – Richard’s description of the pelicans beak, or his demonstration of time. These stories and descriptions really get through to a part of me, I get that feeling of excitement because I know that world, and it becomes clearer to me, I get the butterflies tickle, that I am close to it. It seems to help me begin to rememorate the PCE – maybe this is my way to connect to pure intent. It was Richard’s description of the actual world ‘the entire world is a magical fairytale-like playground full of incredible gladness and a delight which is never-ending’ which sparked recognition in me as that was how I had described a PCE that I had prior to finding the website, yet had not found a similar description in any spiritual writings. I remember being so excited because I knew he was writing about the same thing that I had experienced.

VINEETO: It is great that you do feel excited about those descriptions and I do remember you writing about those instances of your own experiences on this forum. I wondered what happened that you got sucked in so badly into the New Age therapy stuff, as I pointed out above, which resulted in losing your way. Richard’s advice to Claudiu in answer to his first post to the Yahoo list applies to you as well – (Richard, List D, Claudiu) – (in your case it would be “stop doing New Age therapy”, “stop listening to therapists, period.”)

Disclaimer: If you are currently in medical treatment/ official therapeutic treatment, then as long as this is the case the actualism method or taking any actualist advice including my own *is contraindicated* (see (Disclaimer) until you have finished your medical/therapeutic treatment. To try to marry actualism and New Age therapy is ineffectual, at best.

Cheers Vineeto

November 13 2024

IAN: I am doing what I can to recognise and understand my full self so that I can become friends with myself.

VINEETO: Hi Ian,

Not sure if one needs to “understand” one’s “full self” to become friends with oneself – it is more a matter of becoming aware of the habitual attitude, put into you by parents, teachers and peers, to ‘humble’ yourself, be hard on yourself, grovel and feel that you are not good enough – whatever you do or achieve.

Once you recognize this habitual pattern, the very awareness allows you to *stop feeding* it and voila, there is already some burden off your back. It’s the affective attentiveness which allows you to do that.

Just think, if you had a habit of wiggling your toe or slightly sticking your tongue out when doing something challenging and someone pointed that out while it’s happening – you would instantly be able to stop it. The same is the case with the habit to put yourself down, except for this you develop the affective attentiveness to catch yourself doing it and then just stop. And right afterwards, to replace the detrimental habit with a positive one, you pat yourself on the back for having caught it. It is really that simple.

IAN: As Richard said on a transcript: “It is a good thing to become friends with yourself, to decide not to tell yourself off any more”.

Richard has also written: “In a nutshell: one cannot examine something fully if one is busy denying its existence.”

and even better as feeling being Vineeto put it:

VINEETO: Ok, once you have become accustomed to no longer put yourself down, you can start with the actualism method proper. Apply the same affective attentiveness (attention to how you feel) in order to see if you started to dip from feeling good (just the normal general feeling when someone asks you how you are and you reply “good”). When you notice a diminishment of feeling good – and you can only notice it when you don’t suppress the feeling itself – you stop feeding it, i.e. you don’t fight against it or wallow in it. There is no wisdom to be found in prolonging any feeling.

You get back to feeling good, just the basic being ok, ‘good’. Then, at your leisure, you can in a far more dispassionate mood than if you were in the middle of feeling bad, look at what triggered you to slip, just like it is described in This Moment of Being Alive article.

Often just finding the trigger and recognizing that it’s only a bagatelle and not worth wasting precious good time over it is enough. Only when the feeling gets triggered over and over and you recognize that it’s a bigger issue which causes distress, do you need to “investigate” as feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ described it above. For instance, what is my belief that I am getting constantly annoyed over the same thing? “It unfair, unjust and I want to feel righteous indignation over it”, for instance. Well, in that case, you can recognize the fact that life is not fair and why should you punish yourself with bad feelings in order to feel superior – looks silly, doesn’t it? And with that change in attitude, another burden is falling away …

Beliefs where relatively easy for ‘Vineeto’ – even though some of them took weeks to understand their full extent – but once ‘she’ had figured out what it was, and that it was only what ‘she’ believed and not because it was an immutable fact, then suddenly the whole particular construct crumbled and disappeared, and what a relief! This includes particular morals and ethics from your social identity which, with pure intent in place, you no longer need to believe in (without be a danger to society).

Instinctual passions are different – they don’t disappear until you are actually free. What you can do, however, by not resisting /fighting or indulging the feeling, you can change their affective energy into felicitous energy. Richard wrote about how he dealt with anger (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression) by neither expressing nor repressing it and you can use the same technique for the other passions with the requisite affective attentiveness.

IAN: I’m really still a ‘beginner’ despite having found the actualfreedom.com.au website in 2007 as I don’t have the knack yet as you put it:

Vineeto: “To be “uncovering and looking at everything that makes up me” you do not need to keep feeling each feeling until it subsides of its own accord (and embracing it only fuels the feeling to hang around for longer) – it is enough to recognize it and then *stop feeding* it (which may take a while to find the switch until you get the knack).”

This is the main difficulty; I haven’t got the knack yet – and I’m not sure why either – would love to figure this one out as it’s really the only thing I need to be able to do. Are you able to go into more detail on how stopping feeding a feeling is like in action. Was there something in particular you had to realise or uncover before you got the knack, or was it a series of experiments on how to do it until you figured it out.

I think there’s something I am still not aware of that keeps me from going down this path. Some need to continue tolerating feeling all the feelings.

In the meantime I’m still examining myself, gathering information and getting a handle on what it means to be a feeling being and the silliness of it, the impact it has on my life and the life of those around me.

VINEETO: The ‘knack’ is to get your affective attentiveness up and running whenever you remember to do so. Then noticing how you feel you deal with it as I described above. With the first successes happening, especially regarding the habit of putting yourself down, you recognize that you found the ‘knack’ and it wasn’t really difficult after all.

Cheers Vineeto

*

IAN: *Seeing the changes in feelings and emotions as habits* seems to be the way to go! Rather than delving into deep analysis or observation.

This was my goal, and now i have a better/ easier base line to practice from, and more free time to really let myself enjoy and appreciate. [emphasis added by Vineeto]

VINEETO: Hi Ian,

This is an excellent post.

I suggest to make it publicly available.

Cheers Vineeto