RESPONDENT: I know that the mailing list was ended but I’m wondering if I may ask questions by email, especially questions of practical matters concerning the method?

Thanks

VINEETO: Before it was ended The Actual Freedom mailing list had been running since May 1998 and in this time more than a hundred people had received answers to their raised objections and had received responses to countless questions, including those ‘of practical matters concerning the method’. Further Richard, Peter and I wrote on a couple of other mailing lists and answered various other questions concerning actualism and an actual freedom. All these answers have been archived on the Actual Freedom website.

Additionally I have categorized those archived correspondences into 134 topics with links to related writings and selected correspondences and I have also compiled a selection of about 200 commonly raised objections and frequently asked questions. Peter wrote an introduction into an actual freedom, which is available for free, and Richard wrote several articles specifically on the application of the actualism method.

If you peruse the provided material with diligence and application you will find that 99% of your questions are already answered in one or another of the correspondences. However, I am very happy to answer the remaining 1% of your questions of practical matters concerning the method.

PS: I can also highly recommend Peter’s Journal in which he eloquently describes his application of the actualism method and how it has changed his life.

15.1.2007

RESPONDENT: It took me a year of reading the AF site to grasp the simplicity of attentiveness and the question haietmoba. However, I have yet to unravel any substantial triggers for major emotions yet. I’m finding it hard to identify the beliefs that are behind these emotions. I don’t know the percentage of the site I’ve read up to now but I find the site to be lacking in examples of beliefs that were uncovered in the process. I know that it is down to me to do this myself but demonstrations do help. There is plenty of debunking for more general beliefs of spiritualism, but not many for specific feelings. It would be helpful to have a list of some exposed beliefs and the emotions they had supported.

Boredom is a good example of the difficulty I’m having. I’ve used the Google search function to find and read as many pages including ‘boredom’ as I can but I’m finding no satisfying clues to underlying beliefs. You say that one root of your boredom was the moral to earn one’s right to be here by doing something useful. I don’t think this is the root of my boredom. Like most people, I felt the same kind of boredom when I was a child and I doubt that it was because I felt the need to earn my right to be there. It was not my identity as ‘an appreciated and valued member of society’ that made me feel boredom as a kid. The pages I’ve read on boredom seem a little incomplete as you either give only one layer or mention no exposed beliefs at all, leaving as a mystery how you ‘dismantled and eliminated the cause of boredom’. Was the moral to work the sole cause of your boredom? Were you ever bored as a child and if so what caused that?

VINEETO: What I remember discovering when I investigated my boredom was that I had distanced myself and disidentified from all my unwanted, ‘negative’ emotions and consequently life had lost its immediacy lustre and interest. I had to turn around 180 degrees from my previously acquired social and spiritual practice of being cool / not being my emotions and retrace the long way back to recognizing that ‘I’ *am* my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’. Or as Richard put it –

Richard: ‘It is impossible for one to intelligently observe what is going on within if one does not at the same time acknowledge the occurrence of one’s various feeling-tones with attentiveness. This is especially true with the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful). In order to observe one’s own fear, for instance, one must admit to the fact that one is afraid. Nor can one examine one’s own depression, for another example, without acknowledging it fully. The same is true for irritation and agitation and frustration and all those other uncomfortable emotional and passionate moods. One cannot examine something fully if one is busy denying its existence’. Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness

RESPONDENT: My boredom happens when I’m doing nothing – in this respect it seems it’s very similar to the boredom that others feel. Are there any other common beliefs that tend to underlie the feeling?

VINEETO: Do I understand you rightly saying that you resent being here?

20.1.2007

RESPONDENT: My boredom happens when I’m doing nothing – in this respect it seems it’s very similar to the boredom that others feel. Are there any other common beliefs that tend to underlie the feeling?

VINEETO: Do I understand you rightly saying that you resent being here?

RESPONDENT: I don’t think I’ve ever said to you that I resent being here. It is often true though. Are you saying that feeling boredom when doing nothing is the same as resenting being here? Perhaps you could instead help me by giving some of the beliefs you had underlying resentment of being here? Were the only two layers of your boredom the social moral to work and resentment of being here?

VINEETO: There is, of course, the mother of all beliefs that ‘You can’t change human nature’.

As long as this belief is allowed to fester, no change will ever be allowed to happen.

Besides, if boredom is your main problem you might be simply too bored to get off your bum and do something about being bored? Haven’t you had enough of being bored with life when there is so much to discover and enjoy?

PS: If you type ‘resentment site:www.actualfreedom.com.au’ into Google you will get about 570 results.

For ‘resent being here site:www.actualfreedom.com.au’ there are 78 results.

Lots to discover about resentment …

18.2.2007

RESPONDENT: If virtually all happiness-impediments and bad feelings are removed, will ‘I’ be left feeling good just about being here, even though ‘I’ am still the parasite? In other words, is uncaused happiness really possible for a ‘self’? It certainly makes sense for matter experiencing itself as a human organism, but why does a ‘self’ ever delight in being here?

One way I can comprehend it is that one is far less a ‘self’ in these moments, is that possible?

VINEETO: Yes ‘I’ can. The human brain can be de-programmed and re-programmed and becoming aware of ‘my’ automatic responses, beliefs, worldview and general socialisation I can interrupt the habitual pathways of the brain and forge new ones. The more you don’t follow the temptation of bad moods, annoyance, anxiety or yearning for love, for instance, the easier it becomes to experience life as being happy, innocuous and carefree.

Here is how Peter explained it in his journal –

Peter: It became a process of re-wiring my brain – untangling the beliefs to replace the crazed and muddled circuitry with facts and common sense. ‘Silly and sensible’ replaced ‘right and wrong’, ‘good and bad’. An ease and calmness began to pervade everything, as I no longer had to keep up an effort to maintain appearances or fulfil any expectations of society or God. I remember being so relieved at not having to maintain a spiritual identity any more – it had been such a load for so long! Now there was simply no room for God in my life, no need for any authority of any sort – in short no need to believe in anything at all – no need to ‘fervently wish something to be true’, despite the facts to the contrary.’ Peter’s Journal, God

And again –

Peter: As I have indicated, the first step is to fully take on board the modern discoveries that ‘who’ we think we are and ‘who’ we feel we are is nothing other than a social identity overlaying an instinctual identity – and that both are nothing more than operating programs in our brain.

This alien identity, or ‘self’, stands in the way of the already existing purity and perfection of the actual world becoming apparent and this is made startlingly clear in the ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience or peak experience.

From this experience one is clearly able to identify this alien entity as the source of one’s malice and sorrow, and one merrily sets in motion the process that will lead to living the pure consciousness experience, 24 hrs. a day, every day.

The first step is to actively demolish the first layer, one’s social identity – all the beliefs, morals, ethics and psittacisms that each of us have been programmed with since birth. In my case it was Peter the son, Peter the man, Peter the father, Peter the spiritual believer, Peter the good, Peter the bad, Peter the builder, etc, etc. It is only when I had substantially eliminated or deleted this program that I could clearly look at, and sensibly investigate, the core instinctual being that is ‘me’.

This second stage is where all seekers, up to now, have been seduced into denial of the ‘bad’ instinctual passions of fear and aggression and attempted to transcend them in order to develop a new spiritual identity based on the ‘good’ passions. One needs to be guided by pure intent to avoid this atavistic seduction and instinctual grasp for survival (nurture) and self-aggrandizement (desire) and to dig deep to actively eliminate the insidious robotic influence that the instinctual passions have on one’s actions and thinking.

Finally the day comes when the whole program becomes so shaky and so nebulous that it crashes as one sees and experiences the fact that ‘who’ I am is nothing other than an illusion, given substance and credence by the chemical surges from the ancient instinctual brain.

This de-programming works exactly like the delete button on your computer. As you see something being redundant, preventing you from being happy now, or causing you to make someone else unhappy – delete! If it comes back again, see what it is, name the feeling, root around, see if you can function without it, delete it and empty the recycle bin this time. And get back as quick as you can to the sensate, sensual enjoyment of this moment of being alive. Each deletion and subsequent tangible freedom from malice and sorrow gives you the confidence to delete a bit more and soon you find yourself actively searching through each experience to see what is preventing you from being happy and harmless here, now, in this only moment you can be alive.

‘Self’-immolation is such an adventure ... and such fun.

I can’t recommend it highly enough. Peter, List B, No 5, 22.4.2000

You may also check out the answers to Objection No. 20.

When you try it in practice you will see that it indeed works with ‘me’ being more and more in the background.