VINEETO: Hi,

RESPONDENT: It is a grey drizzly day but there is a warmth in the air. I enjoy these days for being inside able to gaze out the window while I do small tasks that I allow to build up. Writing to the freedom page is one of those things I have been thinking of doing. I infrequently read the pages but I often gain some good pieces of information when I do.

VINEETO: It’s good to hear from you again and that you are gaining some good information from the mailing list. If you find you have a particular issue, concern or worry running at some time you can always dip into The Actual Freedom Trust website itself where there is a wealth of information and correspondence, categorized by topic for ease of access.

RESPONDENT: Besides all that... I write because I am interested in other people’s thoughts on the understanding of how men traditionally think and how when learning about actual freedom it was best communicated. My partner has just finished reading Peter’s journal and has begun to search deeper within himself about his reactions to life, but as a female I seem to be unable to comprehend some of his views and attitudes as they arise.

VINEETO: For me, the path to Actual Freedom began with me conducting an extensive investigation into what exactly constitutes male and female conditioning simply because I figured that this gender conditioning was the main reason that man and woman cannot live together in peace and harmony. In the process of this investigation I have explored what exactly makes me tick as a woman – the program of beliefs and instincts with its resulting feelings and emotions. Along the path to freedom I have gradually evaluated and discarded all of the so-called female attributes and values, which women so proudly claim as their main territory – expressing emotions and feelings, feminine insight and intuition, love, nurture and nourishment. I found that my desperately holding on to these attributes and values caused me to fight a continuous battle within myself, and against others, as to which is right and which is wrong – the male version of demanding, desiring, rationalising and displaying reason or the female version of demanding, desiring, emotionalising and displaying emotions. I have found that both versions – both the male and the female – are silly, useless and redundant.

My main focus was to question and examine my own ‘views and attitudes’ as a female in order to arrive at sound, verifiable facts and refreshing non-affective common sense. It was only by relying on down-to-earth facts and common sense that I began to be able to communicate with Peter without emotionally reacting to what he was saying, neither trying to please him nor trying to fight him.

I was also interested in how the male half of the world thinks and feels as it had always been somewhat of a mystery to me what went on in ‘the other camp’. I found that as I began to question my own female programming, I naturally became curious as to how the other half were programmed. Whilst I had my very own ‘spy’, or ‘whistleblower’, from the other camp to fill me in, one can also glean the necessary information as to how the other gender is programmed by a process of curiosity, investigation and objective observation as to how men are programmed.

However, it is vital to put things in the right order – which is first things first. In order to become free from my female identity, I had to investigate my own restrictive ‘views and attitudes’ first. After all, it is these emotionally charged views and attitudes that stand in the way from my experiencing peace in the world-as-it-is … and with people-as-they-are.

The first major breakthrough in becoming free of my female identity was when I investigated my pining for a man’s love and support. This is what I wrote at the time –

[Vineeto]: One thing that I particularly didn’t like about falling in love was the pining. Whenever I was not with Peter I felt I was tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself. Digging into what could be the reason for my pining, I discovered what I call the ‘Cinderella-syndrome’ – the romantic dream that most women have about the perfect and noble man. We are not only looking for someone who takes care of us when our own strength fails us, but also for someone who gives perspective, meaning, definition and identity to our lives, be it as father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life. According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, 44 years old and as silly as a teenager!

After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. In the end, I had to admit that, whatever it was, it had not the slightest thing to do with anything that Peter could do for me.

I wanted to be perfect and I had to do it myself. I still had to clean myself up. Just having found a probable good mate had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t the best I could be; that I wasn’t free. I decided there and then to face the challenge, to abandon the love-dream and go for the actual experience – meeting another human being as intimately as possible instead of looking up to him and waiting for him to be the ‘hero of my dreams’.

That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself. I had recovered my autonomy – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness. A Bit of Vineeto

With this realization I had unmasked the female dream in me and, by my determination to not let it stand in the way of my living with another person in peace and harmony, I rendered the dream impotent.

After this event there was a tangible crack in my perception of ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. And once I allowed the first big rift in my female identity, anything was possible. It was a great encouragement to explore further. If I had been on the wrong path with my Cinderella dream, then I could be down the wrong alley in anything that I thought and felt to be right! To examine the remaining aspects of my female identity was not always easy, sometimes even downright scary, but the adventure called me onwards – the adventure to discover actual people in an actual world outside of, and completely independent from, my affective dream world.

It is a grand adventure!

RESPONDENT: I admit to having been quite rigid about my own opinions but now I allow my self to hear and to allow that which he says to become something which becomes a practical part of my understanding. That is I put it to the test to see if it is real for me or I put it to the test to find the truth of it.

VINEETO: It is fascinating when, with increasing ‘self’-awareness, the world begins to look different. There are cracks in one’s ‘rigid … opinions’, the perception softens as one starts to see beyond the morals and ethics of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. I remember how I was frequently amazed when I began to discover other people as they are, outside of my desires, dreams and fears. Increasingly I was able to perceive them as fellow human beings who went about their business of being alive. The trick was to question my own beliefs and ideas, opinions and principles and replace my morals and ethics with a discernment of what is silly and what is sensible.

It takes effort and persistence to nibble away at all of one’s feelings, beliefs and opinions that constitute the social identity but it is certainly an effort well worth making.

RESPONDENT: But all that aside I am still not achieving what I think I understand he would like me to, so what is it that I am missing in this communication between us??? So I thank you for sharing your understanding on this topic of communication.

VINEETO: The way I came to live in peace and harmony with a man was that I became free from being a woman.

First there is the social aspect of being a woman, the female role with its beliefs, sentiments and behaviour we have been trained to adopt since early childhood. It consists of all the shoulds and should nots, the right codes of conduct, the collective accepted behaviour of being a woman and the social taboos that are deemed unquestionable. You can clearly see what is social programming because it varies from culture to culture, depends upon religion and spiritual beliefs, is subject to generational and fashion swings and is imposed and maintained by peer pressure.

Then there is the instinctual aspect of being a woman, centred upon instinctual mating and procreation of the species. The program of sexual instinctual passion drove me to search for a man and get pregnant – and then the consequent need to secure the protection of the potential father kicked in. Curiously I found that my decision not to have any children and to be sterilised did not change this underlying instinctual urge at all – I still thought and felt myself to be a woman first and a human being second.

I found that as long as both the social and instinctual aspects of my identity had a strong grip on me, communication was impossible. Only when I examined and investigated my own programming was I able to see the other as a fellow human being and only then communication was really possible.

As for comprehending another’s ‘views and attitudes’, I have found that despite the fact that I have studied the human condition for several years now, I am still often baffled and bewildered at many of the attitudes and behaviours of human beings. In fact, the more I examined and thusly weakened my own identity, the more incomprehensible it is for me that most other people don’t seem to be interested in achieving the same quality of life for themselves. But I have come to see and begun to understand that this choice is their own cup of tea – it has nothing to do with my own happiness and harmlessness. If I find that I make myself dependant upon another’s happiness, or feel responsible for another’s happiness, then I have something to look at.

The wonderful thing about actualism is that everyone can only do it for themselves, in their own time and at their own pace.

21.4.2003

RESPONDENT: Greetings again Vineeto, I have been waiting for an answer to arrive that many people have pointed out to me.

VINEETO: Just as an aside – when I stopped believing in the wisdom of others in whatever form, I also stopped waiting for answers to my dilemmas from somewhere out there in ‘The Universe’. If I want to know something then I know that I have to go and look for the answer myself, particularly when it is about the issue of how to live happily and harmlessly.

Firstly, how to live in peace with my fellow human beings is not something other people are qualified to advise me about because it is obvious from the course of history in general and from people’s behaviour in particular that they do not know how to live in peace. Secondly, the obstacles to living happily and harmlessly lie with me and therefore the answers as to how to remove the obstacles also lie with me.

The answers to how to live without malice and sorrow are obtained by constantly observing, contemplating and questioning my own beliefs, values and feelings with the sincere intent to find out where, how and what I need to change in order to be without malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: They say there is something I haven’t dealt with. Something that stops me from being honest.

VINEETO: A lot of New Age-spiritual-therapy behaviour is only thinly disguised malice, revenge or spite. ‘I have to be honest with you’ or ‘honestly, I have to tell you that …’ or ‘I’d just like to share with you … ’ are usually the opening lines of someone telling you something demeaning or nasty so as to cut you down to size.

In my endeavour to become as happy and as harmless as humanly possible I did not see any point at all in sharing my moody thoughts or resentful feelings with anyone else because that only serves to contaminate the possibility of a pleasant and peaceful interaction with my fellow human beings. Because I understood that I am the only one responsible for my thoughts and feelings, which means that I am the only person that I can change and need to change, I decided to do the only thing I can do to practically contribute to peace on earth – clean myself up. Now I can gaily be myself and there is scant danger of ever contaminating a get-together with resentful feelings or sad stories.

However, it is obvious in the process of investigating and examining myself that being sincere and honest with myself is of vital importance because fooling myself or being dishonest with myself would just be a waste of time.

RESPONDENT: Last night I was asking myself why and what could this possibly be?! I know I have sorted many things but to think more may be hidden under the surface had me querying. ‘I have no anger toward...’ ‘I am doing what I want....’ ‘I feel pleasure with life’...or is this not so??

VINEETO: The pivotal question for me to answer when I came across actualism was ‘what it is that I want to do with my life?’ After many years of pursuing various self-centred goals in both the real world and the spiritual world, which resulted in a hollow dis-satisfaction, I found out that what I want most in my life is to be genuinely happy. And it was very obvious that the only way to be genuinely happy is to also be harmless because any happiness gained at other people’s expense or dependant on other people’s compliance is an undignifying, foul tasting and sick affair.

In the course of practicing actualism I have found many, many things ‘hidden under the surface’ and I deliberately brought them to the surface – into the bright light of awareness – where my beliefs and values could be examined and my feelings and instinctual passions could be experienced, when and as they occurred, and their utterly ‘self’-centred nature could be experientially understood.

RESPONDENT: Sure enough, some thoughts or scenarios that I have always remembered came flashing back to mind. One of when I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old. My father had finished painting some shelves green. I cried and cried, clinging on to my mother as if something awful had happened. My father yelled at me, what I don’t recall, but clearly I wasn’t pleased the colour wasn’t correct. How would I at that age know what would be correct. The theme that begins to arise is disappointment. So I can associate many things to being disappointed. Not enough time to achieve my goal for the day. I set myself up for the disappointment. And of course until now not realised the internal struggle that I have dealt with and perhaps impose unconsciously on those around me.

VINEETO: You seem to be confusing the methods of spiritual-type therapy – seeking to lay blame on others for one’s own feelings of malice or sorrow in order to maintain one’s innate feelings of self-righteousness – and the actualism method of becoming aware of the instinctual ‘self’-propelled nature of your own feelings of malice and sorrow in order to become free of the human condition.

They are two different methods with two diametrically opposite aims.

If your aim is to become a ‘good’, ‘honest’, socially adjusted, morally uptight and spiritually valuable person, then you follow therapy and spiritual advice.

If your aim is to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they are, then the question ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’, when applied with persistence and sincere intent, is sufficient to uncover whatever feeling is currently preventing you from experiencing the already existing peace of the actual world.

Take the example of the feeling of disappointment that you mentioned. As an actualist I know that I am the only one responsible for my feeling disappointment. As such I stopped any of my former habitual efforts of finding the external culprit and began exploring the source in me that caused me to feel disappointed. Inevitably I discovered that the cause of my disappointment were the demands, expectations and hopes that I had either unwittingly taken on board from others or that had been instilled in me by blind nature. As I experientially explored these ‘self’-centred demands, expectations and hopes, I found deeper layers of feelings and instinctual passions that feed those debilitating demands and hopes – feelings such as inadequacy, loneliness, anxiety, the need to belong and, at the core, ‘my’ instinctual fear of survival.

These feelings are the direct result of the genetically inherited animal-instinctual survival passions and not, as believed by therapists and spiritualists, learnt reactive behaviour resulting from ‘bad’ childhood events. Because of this lack of understanding – or failure to face facts – any and all such therapies are but scraping the surface of one’s conditioning, analogous to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Emotions and feelings are part and parcel of the genetically encoded instinctual package that every human being is endowed with at birth and if you don’t just want to rearrange it superficially, but want to become actually happy and harmless, then the whole package needs to go, all of ‘me’.

RESPONDENT: I would like to hear what you say on this matter. I couldn’t find much on the web site.

VINEETO: I am not surprised that you ‘couldn’t find much on the web site’, because actualism is non-spiritual and non-therapeutical. Actualism tackles the root of the problem – the psychological and psychic identity within this flesh-and-blood-body, ‘he’ or ‘she’ who continually spoils the peace, perfection and delight of being alive right here, right now.

• In order to find out the difference between actualism and therapy, you could have a look at my correspondence on therapy.

• Useful topics could be honesty, authority and its third alternative naiveté with respective correspondence

• For information about how you can investigate your feelings, not only the feeling of disappointment, but the whole range of human emotions I recommend the Library page on Affected Feelings and related correspondence.

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