KUBA: This is yet another reason why actualism is experiential because all words have been invented by feeling beings and therefore on their own they cannot quite convey actuality, they will simply go around in circles and never reveal the actual nature of this universe.

Eternal will be taken to mean a very long lapse of time or infinite a very long stretch of space and yet the actual experience of infinitude is outside of those descriptions.

All of those real world descriptions still infer some ultimate movement/distance to time/space. Whereas actual time and space exist within the stillness of infinitude.

Even writing the word “within” seems to screw it up  As in that stillness is the very infinite and eternal nature of this universe. 

VINEETO: Yes, I had the same thought when I read it – the word “within” didn’t seem to be quite right and then your last sentence expressed it exactly. Only someone experiencing (or having experienced) actuality can say this with utter confidence. It is indeed experiential.

SCOUT: May I ask – what does this mean? It feels directly in opposition to the Richard quote you shared in Henry’s thread about moments being finite and constantly running out, which makes them infinitely precious and relays the urgency of not wasting time on suffering.

KUBA (to Scout): I’ll have a go at this in the meantime

“You have all the time in the universe” is referring specifically to one’s experience as a flesh and blood body only, one exists where time has no duration. It is impossible to ever ‘run out of time’ as time does not move in actuality.

Whereas as an identity ‘I’ am locked out of eternal time and instead ‘I’ exist precariously across the past, present and future. This is where ‘I’ am always managing, anticipating and running out of time.

As it is always this moment, this body does not move through time like the identity moves across the past, present and future. Rather this body exists securely in eternal time.

In eternal time there is no distance to be travelled between ‘then’ and ‘now’ as the immediate is the ultimate, whereas ‘I’ am forever shifting between these thin slivers of ‘real time’, desperately trying to hold, manage and anticipate each one.

I think I have just answered in part my own question – of why is it that where time has no duration there is such safety. Because all this painful psychological/psychic activity which comes from ‘managing time’ (whilst being forever locked out of actual time) ceases when one exists in eternal time. Everything is in its place already as one is not actually going anywhere or coming from somewhere. 

VINEETO: Yes, one can never run out of time in actuality, it is always now, and I am always here and the universe being perfect and pure everything is already perfect.

To answer Scout’s question more in detail, here is a quote from Richard’s journal –

Richard: Yet time is as intimate as this body being here now at this moment. It is so intimate that I – as a body only – am not separate from it. Whereas ‘I’, as a human ‘being’, have separated ‘myself’ from eternal time by being an entity. To be an ontological ‘being’ is to mistakenly take this body being here as containing an ‘I’, a psychological or psychic entity. To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally … as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence. ‘I’ am an illusion; if ‘I’ think and feel that ‘I’ do exist, then ‘I’ am outside of eternal time. ‘I’ am forever complaining that there is ‘not enough hours in the day’, or ‘I am always running out of time’, or ‘I am always catching up with time’, or ‘I am always behind time’. All this activity is considered ‘normal’, as it is the common experience of humankind. (Richard’s Journal, Chapter Sixteen).

SCOUT: Interesting, I’ve had experiences on psychedelics where psychological time ceased to exist as I’d previously known it, as well as the anxiety around it – but there was still change and a direction to change. there was no longer anticipation or anxiety surrounding where that change was leading, just presence.

Is that the “eternity” Vineeto and Richard discuss? time is not a concern or even really felt because the mind stops creating a past or future. but there is still always the change and there is only so much change I will experience before all experience ends.

But maybe that doesn’t matter when I’m not worried about what’s not happening now. the sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah? 

VINEETO: Hi Scout,

You cannot think your way into this, it is indeed experiential.

Have you ever experienced that when you are feeling good, time seems to fly while when you are sad or worried time seems to go on forever?

This is a perfect example of ‘personal’ time, it’s all coloured by ‘me’, how ‘I’ feel, what ‘I’ want (or don’t want).

Contemplate just this sentence: “To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally … as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence” and then, in attentive contemplation become fascinated by the very fact that ‘you’ and 8 billion other people all have their own personal experience of time. It can’t be that time is like this, can it?

There is an alternative how to think about this – apperceptiveness. You can try it out in a quiet moment.

Cheers Vineeto

December 1 2024

SCOUT: Thank you for the thoughtful responses Vineeto, I will explore. 

VINEETO: Hi Scout,

You are very welcome. Seeing you enjoyed the responses, I like to explore your original question a bit further.

SCOUT: Interesting, I’ve had experiences on psychedelics where psychological time ceased to exist as I’d previously known it, as well as the anxiety around it – but there was still change and a direction to change. there was no longer anticipation or anxiety surrounding where that change was leading, just presence. 

VINEETO: Yes, events change but when ‘I’ am in abeyance either in a PCE or when actually free, it is evidently obvious that time does not move, no matter which events take place in the arena of time. Here is a stillness that is all around, unimaginable, inconceivable and utterly magical.

To explain, when ‘I’ am in abeyance then ‘I’ am no longer the centre around which ‘my’ perception and ‘my’ world view revolves. When ‘I’ am in abeyance, or extinguished, there is no “presence”, there is no centre, there is only here, this place in space and now, this moment in time.

I am not sure what you mean when you say “just presence”? Could it be that this “presence” was ‘Being’ or ‘Me’? It would be good to explore so you do not take a possible ASC as your loadstone.

SCOUT: Is that the “eternity” Vineeto and Richard discuss? Time is not a concern or even really felt because the mind stops creating a past or future. but there is still always the change and there is only so much change I will experience before all experience ends.

VINEETO: Given that you are not sure then it is better not to rely on those experiences, especially as most experiences with psychedelics turn out to be ASCs. Viz.:

Richard: In regards hallucinogens: I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances (for obvious reasons). If, however, someone already has done so, and intends to do so again of their own accord and volition anyway, then I would counsel their very careful and considered use as it is all-too-easy for an altered state of consciousness (ASC) to emerge rather than a pure consciousness experience (PCE) ... there are many accounts available on the internet and 4 or 5 years ago I browsed through several web pages and never found any description that resembled a PCE. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 61, 29 Jan 2004)

SCOUT: But maybe that doesn’t matter when I’m not worried about what’s not happening now. The sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah?

VINEETO: It does matter a great deal. You would want a clear experience of the actual world in order to guide you, and when you rely on something that very likely was an ASC then you are getting confused at best. If you were really “not worried about what’s not happening now” then you would be enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive to the point of continuously feeling excellent – but that is not the case, is it? And you wouldn’t have to ask if “the sense of the ”clock ticking“ is mostly just fear yeah?

The “clock ticking” means you live in real-world time of past, present, future, like every other feeling being, and have conveniently convinced yourself of the belief that you are “not worried about what’s not happening now” while the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ instinctual passions are happening unobserved.

Don’t you want to find out how you tick, how your mind really works, how you can genuinely feel felicitous and innocuous 23 hrs 59 min a day? Wouldn’t that be worthy of your fascinated attention?

Here is a short quote from Richard’s correspondence with a spiritualist regarding eternity for your amusement –

RESPONDENT: Or is it that the movement creates time (maybe even different kinds of time), whenever it’s appropriate?

RICHARD: Do you allow the possibility that time always was, already is, and always will be?

RESPONDENT: Yes, but I have doubts that that’s all there is to it.

RICHARD: What on earth do you mean by ‘that’s all there is to it’ ... eternity (beginningless and endless time) means that it is an all-inclusive everywhen which boggles the mind (intellectual thought) leaving one in a state of wonder and amazement at the sheer magnitude of this marvellous universe. (Richard, List B, No. 42b, 7 Dec 2001).

Cheers Vineeto

December 3 2024

SCOUT: Thanks for elaborating further. I’ve had experiences on psychedelics that were definitely ASCs but also ones that were definitely PCEs, which stand as the goalpost I have oriented my whole life around and they’re how I was able to recognize the truth in yours and Richard’s writings.

VINEETO: I am not sure what you mean when you say “just presence”? Could it be that this “presence” was ‘Being’ or ‘Me’? It would be good to explore so you do not take a possible ASC as your loadstone.

SCOUT: Good catch, I was using spiritual lingo here but what I really meant was just raw, un-centered senses and the inescapable present moment – like it was impossible for there to be anything other than what was immediately physically happening because whatever imaginary centerpoint that usually mediates my conscious experience and imagines a past and a future was entirely gone.

VINEETO: Hi Scout,

Thank you for clarifying. It’s really good that you can clearly tell the difference and thus don’t accidentally go down the wrong alley.

*

VINEETO: If you were really “not worried about what’s not happening now” then you would be enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive to the point of continuously feeling excellent – but that is not the case, is it? And you wouldn’t have to ask if “the sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah?”

SCOUT: I also may have miscommunicated here as that comment was more intended as conjecture than stating how I actually feel right now. I’m pretty ill and exhausted most of the time and I definitely still worry about it. As you pointed out though, conjecture is kind of an empty mental exercise compared to aiming to actually become free.

Thank you for clarifying this as well. It’s become more apparent what you would like to achieve.

*

VINEETO: Don’t you want to find out how you tick, …

SCOUT: Yes, so badly. I feel bad pretty often. I try to set my bearings and observe myself honestly and keep getting lost in the weeds. But I can see my confusion and stress make my body sicker than it already is. I want to stop torturing myself and to be well.

Ah, now we are talking, lol.

Here is something I recently wrote to another and they reported instant success, so I wonder if it will work for you as well …

First let me tell you a fundamental fact one needs to recognize in order to successfully apply the actualism method or any other advice I can give you – you do not have feelings, you are your feelings. Without recognizing this the method won’t work. (I recommend a long piece of correspondence with No. 60 on the Actual Freedom list (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60g, 30 October 2005a) and (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60g, 1 November 2005), he had big trouble getting it, if you are interested).

To explain: humans are born as feeling beings, babies cry before they can think, and before they even develop a sense of self – so feelings come first. But then thinking sets in and one starts to think that you have feelings which come and go and try to manipulate those feelings, blame yourself for the unwanted ones and chase the ones that you like feeling. That is a sort of subtle dissociation and it doesn’t allow you to choose how you feel, for instance felicitous.

So that is an understanding which needs to happen first, at a fundamental level. You are this swirling vortex created by ever-changing instinctual passions and it is not your fault (because everyone is born that way).

With this firmly in mind you can stop blaming yourself and you will find that the moment you do that, the feeling itself will diminish (not disappear) but lose some of its strength. The reason is that fighting the feeling you are feeding it.

Now when you put this in practice and notice the effect, you can pat yourself on the back that you had your first insight and success. Be a friend to yourself (the only one you are with 24hrs a day).

The other benefit of recognizing and accepting that you are your feelings is that you are not a victim, neither a victim of your own feelings nor a victim of other people’s feelings.

This quote from Richard might be helpful as well –

Richard: What I have observed over many years is that a normal person has a propensity to blame – to find fault rather than to find causes – when it comes to dealing with the human condition … if for no other reason than that finding the cause means the end of ‘me’ (or the beginning of the end of ‘me’).
Whereas endlessly repeating mea culpa keeps ‘me’ in existence. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27c, 9 September 2002)

Cheers Vineeto

December 23 2024

VINEETO: Don’t you want to find out how you tick, …

SCOUT: Yes, so badly. I feel bad pretty often. I try to set my bearings and observe myself honestly and keep getting lost in the weeds. But I can see my confusion and stress make my body sicker than it already is. I want to stop torturing myself and to be well.

VINEETO: Ah, now we are talking, lol.

Here is something I recently wrote to another and they reported instant success, so I wonder if it will work for you as well […]

This quote from Richard might be helpful as well –

Richard: What I have observed over many years is that a normal person has a propensity to blame – to find fault rather than to find causes – when it comes to dealing with the human condition … if for no other reason than that finding the cause means the end of ‘me’ (or the beginning of the end of ‘me’).
Whereas endlessly repeating mea culpa keeps ‘me’ in existence. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 27c, 9 September 2002).

SCOUT: This forum is an anti-groupthink groupthink. […]

VINEETO: Hello Scout,

It looks like your try at the actualism method wasn’t very successful and hence you did exactly what Richard observed in the above quote, except you are turning the blame outwards – you blame the forum members and Richard himself in order to avoid getting closer to “the end of ‘me’“).

That’s understandable.

What is less understandable is that you come up with the lamest allegation I have ever seen – “anti-groupthink groupthink“. Ha! What does that make you – anti-anti-groupthink think? Or perhaps a member of non-anti groupthink after all?

And what about the comparisons you provide, those followers of enlightened or ‘quasi-enlightened’ persons and those following the teachings of the 10-bull story – according to you their teaching is similar to what Richard is supposedly saying. Are those followers of the “groupthink“ variety or also “anti-groupthink“ people?
(BTW, those objections are nothing new, they have all been answered here so there is no need to clutter the forum as uninformed as you did).

Again, my question is, which side are you voting for (since to you it is a matter of numbers who is called “groupthink“ – are you the lone defender of anti-anti-groupthink? Or do you perchance just want to mount a critique and stir some commotion before you slink away because you couldn’t make a success of the actualism method?

Did you know that one of the essential requirements for the actualism method to work is that one is ruthless honest with oneself?

Cheers Vineeto 

December 23 2024

SCOUT: I read the CRO’s, I’m not trying to retread old territory. I didn’t see any quotes raised there for discussion indicating that others had maybe gone all the way before, which constitutes potential proof.

VINEETO: Exactly, no examples by those who raised the question that another had “gone all the way“. You suggest that it was “potential proof“. Even you yourself cannot confidently state that it would be.

Ha. Have you ever heard that one cannot disprove something that does not exist? For instance, can you prove with confidence that a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people-eater does not exist somewhere in this infinite universe?

It is comparable to Fallacy No. 10 – burden of proof fallacy. [The legal example: People accused of crimes are presumed innocent. The burden of proving that they are guilty rests on the prosecutor. The accused doesn't have to prove anything.]

SCOUT: I’m not done with the method and will continue applying it; it just feels excruciatingly slow, and I am hungry for change, so I am trying to ascertain as much as I can about what I am exploring to ensure I am not spinning my wheels. I probably still am, unconsciously, to some extent. 

VINEETO: That is good to hear. The fact that it is “excruciatingly slow“ perhaps has something do with not understanding, or misunderstanding, the actualism method. Perhaps you could explain where exactly you get stuck when being affectively attentive to how you experience being alive, and after getting back to feeling good, examine the trigger for the diminishment of your enjoying this moment of being alive.

Cheers Vineeto

December 23 2024

SCOUT: Being affectively attentive is very painful and exhausting. If I do not suppress or indulge sometimes it still takes literally hours for even neutrality to emerge, and it is pretty fleeting before the next wave of feelings arise. I am agitated and exhausted and in physical pain pretty often, and inviting even more pain by not dissociating when stuff comes up feels like a rough prospect. I recurrently fall back to numbing, because the effort of paying attention to the pain in the way I need to in order for it to pass and not puppet my reactions is daunting and slow to pay dividends.

Of course the numbing does not pay dividends at all, quite the opposite, but in the moment I am beyond grateful to be relieved from the pain, if only for a little.

VINEETO: Are you saying that the moment you become aware how you experience yourself, the fact of being aware makes the experience “painful and exhausting“? Or has it been like that all along, and you were refusing to/afraid to acknowledge it?

Either way, first, stop the habitual response – stop fighting your pain and stop fighting the feelings you experience. Any battle against yourself only fuels the feelings and the 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.

Then have a look at your resentment. Perhaps you can see (to a small degree at first) how silly it is to waste energy in objecting to being here, since it is a fact that you are here. Then whenever you get a chance, explore this resentment a bit further –

• [Richard]: ‘Back in 1980 ‘I’ looked at the stars one night and temporarily came to my senses: there are galaxies exploding/ imploding (or whatever) all throughout the physical infinitude where an immeasurable quantity of matter is perpetually arranging and rearranging itself in endless varieties of form all over the boundless reaches of infinite space throughout the limitless extent of eternal time and ‘I’ – puny, pathetic ‘I’ in an ant-like-in-comparison and very vulnerable 6’2’’ flesh and blood body – disapprove of all this? That is, ‘I’ call all this a ‘sick joke’, or whatever depreciative assessment? And further: so what if ‘I’ were to do an about-face and graciously approve? What difference would that make to the universe?

Zilch. (Richard, AF List, No. 10, 25 May 2000).

Once you become fairly confident with these two aspects via experiential confirmation (the only proof which counts) you can have a look at how to change how you feel. It requires giving up dissociation, even if only temporarily, until you become more confident. Once you genuinely recognize and acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings (including your feelings about pain) then you find that you do have a choice about how you want to experience being alive. Here one of Richard’s co-respondents explains this in detail –

Respondent: ... incidentally, Richard, how can they be ‘an hereditary occurrence’ and be of my choosing at the same time?

Richard: You do comprehend that you are your feelings/ your feelings are you (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’) do you not? Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘It has taken me a hell of a long time to understand the difference between *having* feelings and *being* those feelings. Because I have not clearly understood this, I’ve never quite got the hang of paying attention to feelings without praise or blame, and without notions of innocence and culpability, right and wrong, etc getting in the way.

This makes things very interesting. The moment I regard my ‘self’ as ‘having’ a feeling, I’m split down the middle and there’s a secondary reaction on the part of the social identity (an urge to “do something“ about the feeling, which in turn evokes more feelings, and so on). Conversely, if I recognise that I *am* the feeling, it most often dissolves into thin air – and usually pretty quickly too.

This is great. It’s especially helpful with regard to anger and frustration which have been two of my biggest hurdles to date. Previously, when I caught myself being angry, annoyed or frustrated, identifying and paying attention to this feeling would NOT cause it to disappear. On the contrary, the feeling and the awareness of myself as ‘having’ it would sometimes become like a microphone and amplifier locked into a screaming feedback loop.

I’m really pleased that this is no longer happening. It seems almost too easy’. [emphasis in original]. (Thursday 28/10/2004 6:55 PM AEST).

And again there is a reference to how ‘almost too easy’ actualism is. (Richard, AF List, No. 60g, 30 Oct 2005a).

Let me know how you go.

Cheers Vineeto

December 24 2024

VINEETO: Are you saying that the moment you become aware how you experience yourself, the fact of being aware makes the experience “painful and exhausting”? Or has it been like that all along, and you were refusing to/afraid to acknowledge it?

SCOUT: The latter, but lending it attention makes the pain feel more acute than numbing it (even though I remain low-grade agitated while numbing too). I’ve been trying to work on not fighting it, it’s just hard bc if I don’t it feels kind of overwhelming.

VINEETO: Hi Scout,

I understand that it is hard to get an entry into the actualism method when you have a long-habituated response to fear and pain and all other unpleasant feelings. The thing is if you want to get better, you will have to start somewhere, and your entry is to allow yourself to feel, so that you can notice how you fight this feeling … and then consciously stop resisting, fighting, complaining, rejecting it. Unless you actually do it, you can never find out if the feeling itself diminishes when you stop fighting it, or not.

*

VINEETO: Then have a look at your resentment. Perhaps you can see (to a small degree at first) how silly it is to waste energy in objecting to being here, since it is a fact that you are here.

SCOUT: Yea I feel resentment a lot. I’m unable to work even a kind of chill home job right now bc I have been dealing with some weird medical symptoms that leave me constantly fatigued and slight stress provokes sometimes scary symptoms. I’m scared I won’t be able to support myself, but I’m also scared that things will get worse if I keep working since that’s been the trajectory thus far. I’m decently young too so most of my peers are out enjoying their lives and I’m in bed a lot of the time, I know comparatives aren’t helpful but I really wish I could function normally and that basic stuff like eating wasn’t a source of constant pain.

I don’t think any of these feelings are serving me in getting better. But it feels like I can’t help it; when I sit with myself long enough I cry like a scared child in pain.

VINEETO: Ok, resentment is a form of socially accepted anger (mostly turned in on oneself), and must have been brewing for a long time … so long that, not dealing with it, you developed psycho-somatic “scary symptoms” and aren’t able to earn a living. Therefore, this too seems to be a rather urgent topic to tackle sooner rather than later.

Now that you acknowledge that resentment operates in you, you can go ahead and sincerely and dispassionately contemplate what the benefits and damages are that resentment creates. It must be fairly obvious to you that the harm outweighs the benefits by a large margin, no? A sincere and clear seeing of this fact will evince action (if/when there be sincere intent to be happy and harmless).

Claudiu made a very perspicacious observation –

Claudiu: But if you want to maintain feelings of justified resentment and woe is me, then you will reject the new habits, via often clever and cunning mechanisms like saying it’s too hard or doesn’t really work or only works for some people etc. This lets you continue in your old ways, which you know don’t work, but this way you can maintain a self-image that it’s out of your control and nothing you can do about it. 

VINEETO: Once you genuinely recognize and acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings (including your feelings about pain) then you find that you do have a choice about how you want to experience being alive.

SCOUT: I can’t see this clearly yet honestly. I see that I do have a choice as to whether to engage narratives around certain feelings with my attention, and that if I stop giving those narratives attention then the feelings lose their edge, and diminish sooner. I don’t feel in control of what emotions arise in a given moment at all, just in how I respond to them.
I’ll keep exploring. I appreciate the engagement.

VINEETO: You are welcome.

You are indeed not “in control of what emotions arise” but you constantly try to be in control by fighting and objecting and resenting all these unwanted feelings which arise. Wanting to be in control requires a ‘controller’ and something to be ‘controlled’ (your feelings). Therefore you split yourself into two – a form of dissociation (additionally to the dissociation of suppressing the feelings themselves).

When this dissociation stops (via personal insight into this self-inflicted phenomenon) then you can experientially grasp that the whole process (controller and controlled) is ‘you’, the psychological and psychic-emotional identity trying to prevent ‘you’ from changing the status quo.

Perhaps you first need to succeed in not fighting nor suppressing unwanted feelings (and experience how they diminish when you don’t feed them by objecting) before you can grasp experientially that you don’t have feelings but that you are your feelings and that your feeling are ‘you’, the passionate instinctual identity.

Cheers Vineeto

January 17 2025

SCOUT: I’ve been applying the method pretty diligently these past few weeks.

I will keep applying the method. I feel like I love my life again. I feel so curious to know myself deeper. And grateful that I can return to a grounded appreciation within myself again and again if I keep reminding myself to.

VINEETO: Hi Scout,

This is an excellent report. Now that you had some success for your persistence with the actualism method you have the motivation and curiosity to “know myself deeper”.

This quote from Richard regarding physical pain yet absence of suffering can give you further encouragement to decline when you notice an emotional objection to physical pain –

RESPONDENT: Does not the body suffer? Feel pain?

RICHARD: No, there is no suffering at all. There is physical pain, but no suffering. Physical pain is essential ... if it did not exist, one could be sitting on a hot stove and not know that one’s bum was burning until one noticed the smoke rising!
Suffering is psychological ... only the entities suffer. Thus they forever seek consolation, commiseration and solace. Hence the neediness for the whole gamut of pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love. When one is actually free, none of these products of pathos are necessary ... in fact, with the ego and soul’s demise, they cease to exist. They, too, are bogus. (Richard, List B, No. 20, 15 February 1998).

Additionally, the more you discover the triggers for stress, “fear and sadness and mania” and learn to decline to go down that path again and again, you are also reducing stress hormones like adrenaline, which can only have a beneficiary effect on your health and well-being.

The more you appreciate your enjoyment of being alive (feeling good) the more both enjoyment and appreciation grow – it is quite magical.

Cheers Vineeto