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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 60
VINEETO: Hi, RESPONDENT: A few days on the road have served their purpose. Instead of happy and harmless fun, there was nothing but darkness, misery and confusion – some of the worst I’ve known in years. As a result, my indecision is over. The importance of this stuff has finally sunk in. I have realised that ‘I’ actually am a parasite, and that a life lived in the grip of this parasite is a life wasted. I no longer have any wish to change, improve, refine, cultivate, gloss over, dissociate from, heal, or transcend this entity. There is nothing worth salvaging here, so this body is ready to be rid of its ‘owner’. In the past I have been wary and skeptical of the idea that a self can somehow be pulled up by the roots. (Self uprooting self, how could that work?). Now it has become clear that the native intelligence of a human being is not ‘owned’ by the self – the self just habitually feels itself to be owner of the entire organism, including this native intelligence. It is not. The native intelligence can be used to understand the roots of the self in the instinctual passions, and do the necessary work to dismantle the fictional self-sustaining world that the self creates. At least, this is plausible enough to put it to the test in prolonged practice. The memory of past PCEs serve as reassurance that the end of ‘me’ is not the end of life – more like the beginning, in fact. Past moral scruples about ‘self’-immolation are gone. Just as in January, I
set out with the best intentions, only to find that ‘I’ cunningly aborted the whole process in almost exactly the same way as before. First I
dredged up ancient memories of myself as a child, memories of unfulfilled hopes and dreams that might still have a chance if only I could start
again and do it right this time, memories of my father, memories of the early years with my girlfriend, thoughts of the two of us suffering the
vicissitudes of old age together, and a dozen other emotional tricks that work on a person in the night to evoke compassion and nurture for this
‘self’ and every ‘self’. But this wretched thing is totally unscrupulous. It can delude itself with the noblest ideals, the most tender
feelings and the most ruthless selfishness, all in the same day. I can see clearly, unemotionally, that there is no genuine freedom for ‘me’ VINEETO: Ah, you discovered that you are fatally attracted. What’s your plan?
VINEETO: Ah, you discovered that you are fatally attracted. RESPONDENT: Yes, the other options seem like half-measures and/or band-aid solutions now. VINEETO: They certainly are. * VINEETO: What’s your plan? RESPONDENT: Well, now that it’s a question of means rather than ends, I’m happy stick to practicalities and try out the advice of those who have been here before me. I’m trying to put actualism into practice as prescribed paying attention to how I am experiencing this moment, finding out what prevents this moment from being good -> great -> excellent -> perfect, learning about the structure and strategies of ‘me’; identifying the instinctual passions at the root of my being; understanding the source of my thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, fantasies, opinions, actions, etc; minimising the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings (by feeling them, getting to know them intimately, observing what triggers them, observing their consequences, observing how they are related to each other, recognising certain repetitive patterns of feeling/behaviour and nipping them in the bud when appropriate, etc); using the freed up affective energy to enjoy being here as this flesh ‘n’ blood, a living part of this physical universe. VINEETO: Yep. And when I did all this I found that as a consequence my behaviour towards other people changed dramatically because I became more considerate and inclusive in my actions rather than exclusively looking after ‘my’ interests. Investigating my beliefs and feelings also resulted in some radical changes because my genuine intent meant that I was compelled to act upon the realizations and understandings that my ‘self’-investigations revealed. RESPONDENT: That’s the overall plan. The main focus for now is experiencing this moment, and taking it from there when problems arise. This is already a bit of a change for me. Usually I start out with thoughts/impressions/desires and trace them upwards or outwards, finding out what they mean, what they’re worth, whether they’re true/false, what I can do with them, etc. I’m learning to work in the other direction too, i.e. to start with a thought/impression/whatever and trace it downwards into the bedrock of feeling from which it emerged. I’m sure this is going to be an interesting process. Glad to have put the dithering and sniping behind now. It wasn’t much fun to finally realise that ‘I’ am a lost cause, but I couldn’t really get into this until I’d clutched at every possible ‘self’-sustaining straw (which is what I’ve been doing for nigh on 17 years). VINEETO: Oh, it’s a very interesting process indeed, the most exciting adventure I have ever undertaken … and the most sensible as well. It might have been a little easier for me to accept ‘that ‘I’ am a lost cause’, as you say, because when I joined the spiritual movement I took on board that I as ego was standing in the road of experiencing happiness – it’s just that nobody had dared to question ‘me’ as soul. What was difficult for me at first, when I came across actualism, was to acknowledge that all of the wise men down the ages had got it wrong, not just a bit, but utterly and completely. RESPONDENT: I can almost hear other people saying: yeah, right, give up all the other ‘self’-sustaining straws and adopt actualism as the last refuge of a cunning self. I would have said the same a couple of weeks ago. But the bottom line has to be: let’s see what happens in practice. It’s the only way to find out. Early signs are good, and I don’t see any reason why it can’t continue that way. VINEETO: To go by my experience, that’s what the ‘self’ is invariably going to do as part
of ‘my’ survival strategy when one sets out on a path to ‘self’-immolation – to try and make actualism into another belief system, to
turn the practical question of how am I experiencing this moment of being alive into a dulling mantra, to transmogrify one’s realisations into a
message for the world at large rather than put them into practice oneself. However, these ‘self’-survival strategies are only minor stages in
the adventure of discovering how ‘I’ tick because whenever I become aware of these tricks this very awareness combined with the sincerity to
act upon my insights will render them impotent. No 47 once wrote a good description about how he discovered and dealt with what he termed
‘Actualist Calenture’ What I found important to remember again and again – because it has been a deep-seated religious and ethical conditioning to feel shame and guilt when the ‘dark side’ of one’s own nature surfaces – was to be friends with myself because this enterprise can only be successful with ‘my’ full permission and cooperation – it is ‘me’ who has to stubbornly instigate and constantly fuel the process of actualism, and particularly so in the early stages. This also meant that I had to be particularly aware of another one of ‘my’ survival tricks – trying to become a ‘self’ devoid of feelings, which is not what actualism is about at all. You said in a recent post –
There is a very clear and significant role for ‘me’ in this process of becoming free from the human condition because ‘I’ am the only one who can do the job of dismantling ‘me’ to the point where ‘self’-immolation becomes possible. If not ‘me’, who else? If ‘I’ am not interested in undoing my shackles, then who else? ‘I’ don’t merely ‘acquiesce and cede control’ – I actively use ‘my’ passion for peace-on-earth to find out where I need to change in order to become harmless, I use ‘my’ desire for happiness to discover where I need to abandon being grumpy, melancholic, sad and depressed, I use ‘my’ yearning for stillness in order to find out where I am driven by frenzy and consumed by fear and I use ‘my’ longing for genuine harmony in order to determine where ‘my’ feelings of love and nurture stand in the way of an actual intimacy with my fellow human beings. And I use ‘my’ altruistic passion to bring about a final end to the bloody war-torn history of humanity in another flesh and blood body in order to keep ‘me’ on track in this unnatural process of taking myself apart and making my ‘self’ redundant. These passions are what fuel and sustain my intent to become free from the Human Condition. And then, towards the end of the process, this intent itself ensures that as my instinctual aggressiveness and selfishness diminishes, my desire for peace is slowly replaced by an increasing experience of the actuality of peace-on-earth, as are the other passions slowly replaced by the tangible experience of the actuality of harmony, equanimity, happiness and intimacy. The altruistic passion to facilitate peace-on-earth will also give me the courage and determination to take the ultimate step into oblivion.
VINEETO: ‘I’ don’t merely ‘acquiesce and cede control’ – I actively use ‘my’ passion for peace-on-earth to find out where I need to change in order to become harmless, I use ‘my’ desire for happiness to discover where I need to abandon being grumpy, melancholic, sad and depressed, I use ‘my’ yearning for stillness in order to find out where I am driven by frenzy and consumed by fear and I use ‘my’ longing for genuine harmony in order to determine where ‘my’ feelings of love and nurture stand in the way of an actual intimacy with my fellow human beings. And I use ‘my’ altruistic passion to bring about a final end to the bloody war-torn history of humanity in another flesh and blood body in order to keep ‘me’ on track in this unnatural process of taking myself apart and making my ‘self’ redundant. RESPONDENT: Ok, thanks for the feedback here. I was wary about using some types of affective energy to disempower other types of affective energy, … VINEETO: Given that ‘I’ am an affective being, ‘affective energy’ as such can
only cease when ‘being’ in its entirety ceases to exist. Any attempt to separate one’s being from one’s emotions will only result in
disidentification and dissociation and when ‘I’ pretend to be aloof or when I am disconnected from what I feel it is much harder to recognize
emotions as and when they are happening, let alone be able to investigate them. You can recognize when you are disconnected from your emotions
whenever you experience life as dull, when you are disinterested in being alive, when you are bored or comfortably numb, when you feel a grey
calmness that appears to be emotionless. I had RESPONDENT: … but at the same time I was concerned that avoiding this might result in dissociation (by which I mean a kind of disidentification with the ordinary ‘me’ and a re-identification with a split-off portion of ‘me’ that masquerading as ... something independent). Thankyou for clarifying this. VINEETO: Disidentification is our normal state because from very early on children are trained to repress their unwanted emotions, a condition which quite a few people later increase by adopting the teachings of Eastern mysticism. Actualism – at least at the beginning – is often a process of recognizing and then undoing this conditioning of pushing certain feelings under the carpet. It is a process of simply acknowledging that it is me who is feeling sad, lonely, angry, frightened, desirous, mad, annoyed, etc. As a simple guideline and a way of avoiding any confusion about the matter – unless I am having a PCE, it is always ‘me’ in action. RESPONDENT: Another concern is the time factor. It has become quite clear that everything that happens, happens now. VINEETO: Yes, everything happens now and the more I become aware that it is always this moment the more the question as to how I am experiencing this moment of being alive is of utmost importance. RESPONDENT: I can see two non-optimal possibilities: (1) Regarding the goal of AF as a distant possibility that must be earned with years of hard work maybe prevents it from happening a.s.a.p. VINEETO: The goal of actualism is to be happy and harmless now in order that one may become free from the human condition as soon as possible – or to put it another way, it is obviously impossible to expect to become free of malice and sorrow whilst one is busy feeling malevolent and unhappy. I don’t see how this goal to be happy and harmless now should ‘prevent it from happening a.s.a.p.’? RESPONDENT: (2) I don’t want to fall for the shortcut that goes half-way and makes it all but impossible to go the rest of the way, if you know what I mean. VINEETO: I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘the shortcut that goes half-way’ – are you talking about an imaginary freedom such as a permanent ASC (which is not ‘half-way’ but rather the wrong direction) or are you talking about a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow as being the half-way that ‘makes it all but impossible to go the rest of the way’ … or do you mean something else altogether? Whatever the case, I can only recommend to not let the fear of not being able to go all the way prevent you from beginning the journey. In my experience the courage and the knowledge as to how to proceed only became available when I began walking the walk. Each step of this exploration into my psyche is a step into unknown territory – the only guide you have are your own PCEs and the reports from practicing actualists about their particular experiences on the path. RESPONDENT: My current plan is to just do it now, and to try to make sure that I’m doing it right. Do you think it’s better to have a ‘road map’, or to just stick with now? VINEETO: Isn’t the ‘road map’ the description of how to do it ‘right’? Or are you talking about a different ‘road map’? The only thing that I really needed to get ‘right’ was my intent because, as Peter explained in Once you are sure of your intent, sincerity and integrity will guarantee that you avoid the various pitfalls on the way.
VINEETO: You commented on something I wrote to No 32 – RESPONDENT No 32: The spiritual world seems hilarious now, an aberration, but I remember it hasn’t always been like that. VINEETO: Yes, if it wasn’t for the fact that people are either killing, maiming and dying for their beliefs or turning away and retreating ‘inside’ it would all be a comic entertainment. What I find most hilarious is that some people really believe that they can gain freedom by redefining the meaning of the word freedom, for example ‘I am already free, I only need to stop searching’. Another popular fallacy is the idea that one can become free from one’s spiritual beliefs by merely redefining the word spiritual or that one can become happy by watering down the meaning of the word happiness. RESPONDENT: Could you be more specific please? An example perhaps? VINEETO: Over the years there have been many correspondents to this mailing list who consider their particular spiritual teaching as non-spiritual, thus making a nonsense of the meaning of the word non-spiritual. Only lately one correspondent announced that he practiced Byron Katie’s methods and believed in the Advaita Vedanta teachings and yet had no reservations about labelling himself as being non-spiritual. Yet another correspondent is convinced that UG Krishnamurti is non-spiritual despite the fact that he is living in a state of undivided consciousness. This correspondent further believes that UG Krishnamurti’s state is synonymous with Actual Freedom and complains that we are hung up on the words ‘undivided consciousness’. One correspondent was convinced that his practice of Zen-Buddhism and Byron Katie’s teachings was definitely non-spiritual, again making a nonsense of the meaning of the word non-spiritual. There are many other examples and if you look at the list of This technique of re-labelling one’s beliefs as non-spiritual is akin to driving a Ford with a Rolls-Royce emblem mounted at the front and a Rolls-Royce nametag stuck at the back. I understand the reason why people try the technique of getting rid of their spiritual beliefs by labelling them as non-spiritual – whilst they find something attractive in actualism they are loath to give up what they believe because what they believe is an integral part of ‘who’ they think and feel they are. Re-labelling one’s spiritual beliefs to be non-spiritual or watering down the word non-spiritual to include things that are spiritual is but to shoot oneself in the foot because this ‘trick’ only makes the process of uncovering one’s beliefs an impossibility – it is impossible to be aware of something whilst one is busy denying it exists. I happen to know a thing or two about investigating spiritual beliefs because when I met Peter, and we agreed to look at everything that was in the way of us living in peace and harmony, I first stalled at questioning my obviously spiritual beliefs – it was too scary a topic to investigate at the beginning of my ‘self’-investigation. However, I was ready to look at any beliefs that we raised in our mutual discussions about issues that caused either of us difficulty in being able to harmoniously live together – beliefs such as gender-related beliefs, my beliefs and feelings about beauty, love, intuition, traditional alternative medicine, so-called health foods, sexual taboos and so on. I was surprised at the extent to which many of these other beliefs related to, or indeed were foundered on, spiritual beliefs. In general the way I set about the task of investigating my beliefs was to continuously pay attention to my feelings. Every time I noticed that I felt annoyed, irritated, resentful, offended aggrieved or sad about a particular issue that happened in the day, I resisted the automatic urge to wallow in the feelings or to battle it out with someone. As soon as I got back to feeling good I was then able to think about the issue for myself and I then checked out if I had felt this way because of a particular belief I held. For example, if I noticed that I became annoyed by the preachings of a fundamental Christian then it could only be because I believed that some other religious or spiritual belief was better, if I was frustrated by a man’s inability to express his feelings then it could only be because I believed that I was better at expressing my feelings than him, if I was pissed of at other drivers making mistakes when they drove, then it could only be because I believed that I never made any mistakes when I drove, if I got upset about that the other did not support my ideas on health foods, it could only be because I had doubts about the facts of the matter myself, and so on. If I got upset about any issue or any event, the essential thing for me to remember was to always investigate what I believed and felt to be right and good and true, and not ever to lay the blame for my feelings on what others had said or done. I always had to keep in mind that it was me who I wanted to change, it was my tricky ‘self’ I wanted to uncover and only by changing me could I become unconditionally happy and unconditionally harmless.
VINEETO: Maybe this is an apt moment to reiterate something that is essential for an actualist to keep in mind during his or her explorations – the aim and process of actualism is not to suppress feelings and emotions in order to achieve ‘merely another trinket, an external, artificial object to be gained’, as you perceive it, but to become aware of one’s feelings and emotions in order to be able to explore them deeply and exhaustively. The automatic socially-conditioned reaction is to wheedle one’s way out of feeling the bad feelings – those that are considered bad and immoral or wrong and unethical – by repressing the feelings and if this doesn’t work we have leant to revert to denial and/or deceit. Consequently the essential first step in becoming aware of one’s invidious feelings is to be aware of one’s habit of suppressing, avoiding or denying them. In order for the actualism method to work it is crucial to first get in touch with one’s feelings (a common expression meaning to become aware of one’s feelings) because if I want to find out about ‘me’ in all of my guises I can’t afford to only investigate the ‘better’ half of my emotions and ignore, repress or deny ‘my’ dark side. To allow oneself to experience whatever feeling is happening often needs some investigation into what Peter has termed the ‘guardians at the gate’ – the moral judgements and ethical evaluations that trigger feelings such as guilt, shame, defiance or righteousness whenever one starts to become aware of one’s dark side and begins to feel one’s dark feelings. It is important to remember that one needs to neither express one’s non-felicitous feelings nor wallow in them in order to become aware of them – after all the most important thing for an actualist is to be happy and harmless – and the aim is always, as soon as possible, to get back to feeling good about being here or feeling excellent about being alive. When you do get back to feeling happy and being harmless then you can put your feet up and spend some time contemplating on what it was that triggered you to stop feeling happy or being harmless. If you sincerely want to be happy and harmless you will then find that it is vital to drop that part of your social identity, be it a belief, a moral, an ethic, a value, a concept, a habit, that is causing you to be unhappy, sad, resentful, annoyed, frustrated, jealous, and so on. RESPONDENT: Ok, can we have a practical example of dealing with these ‘dark’ feelings? For example: Your companion sometimes annoys me to the point where I would like to break his front teeth and make him choke on the shards. I do not want to feel this way, either for my sake or for his. So ... I wait until the feeling passes. VINEETO: First, you did not ‘wait until the feeling passes’. You have expressed your anger publicly on this mailing list and not just once but several times. Second, whenever I became aware that I was angry I did not wait until my anger passed, I simply stopped being angry because I am intelligent enough to know that being angry means that I am not being harmless and my intent is to be harmless and happy. Stopping being angry then allowed me be to get back to feeling good again which then put me into the position of being able to investigate what it was in me that caused me to get angry in the first place. If you cannot stop being angry because being right is more important to you than being harmless, then actualism is clearly not for you. RESPONDENT: Then I begin to reflect on the cause(s). Which piece of ‘me’, which piece of my social identity or instinctual ‘self’-hood is involved? VINEETO: When you allow yourself to get to the stage that you are so angry that you fantasize about, and write about, killing someone, the issue is not just an issue of your social identity (your beliefs and morals and ethics and such) – this is ‘me’ at the core of my ‘being’, the instinctual survival passions, in action. RESPONDENT: Is it because he challenges my beliefs and threatens ‘my’ existence? No. VINEETO: Whenever any aspect of one’s social identity is threatened an instinctual reaction is kicks in – the stronger ‘I’ perceive the threat to be, the stronger the instinctual reaction. When you are so angry that you want to kill someone then you can be certain that the other has brought into question a core aspect of your social identity, which you feel threatens ‘your’ very existence. In this case the discussion was about your belief that you don’t harbour spiritual beliefs. If it were not a belief, you wouldn’t feel threatened and you would not be angry. If it were a fact that you are free from all spiritual beliefs you would be able to be virtually happy and harmless, virtually free from feeling any animosity and anguish. RESPONDENT: Is it because I am jealous of him being happy and harmless while I am not? No. VINEETO: The fact is that Peter is happy and harmless whereas you have both acknowledged and demonstrated that you are not. RESPONDENT: Is it because he is Richard’s ‘right hand man’, and I envy his status in the ‘actualist community’? No. VINEETO: The fact is that Peter has been a committed actualist since 1997, whilst you are busy, as you say below, ‘reflecting on what a bugger it is that the ‘best game in town’ is unavailable to me, primarily at this stage on account of one of its foremost advocates’. If it is not envy that you are feeling then it is whichever feeling you have for the ‘bugger’ whose front teeth you want to break. RESPONDENT: What is it then? To the best of my understanding: it is because I feel that meaningful dialogue with him is utterly impossible. VINEETO: It was you who came to this mailing list presumably because you were interested in learning something. Yet for months you have been strutting the stage with your own new theories, telling us actualists that we have got it wrong and becoming increasingly frustrated and angry at Peter in particular because he is not ‘as receptive to new information’ as you expect him to be. I’m reminded of the fact that whenever in my life I fell in love with a man I very quickly wanted to mould him according to my image of the ideal man and then I wondered why we were continuously fighting. The good thing about actualism is that it can never be moulded into what ‘I’ want it to be. As you may recall from your own pure consciousness experience actuality only becomes apparent when ‘I’ disappear in toto. RESPONDENT: I feel that he is about as receptive to new information as a brick wall is to human heads. VINEETO: The Peter I know and live with is none of these things. Your feeling about him has nothing to do with fact and everything to do with passionate imagination. RESPONDENT: Incidentally, when I had this impression a couple of months back I asked my brother and several other people to look at some correspondence without giving away any of my opinions. My brother said words to the effect that: the only way to get through to this guy would be to drill a hole in his forehead, insert a stick of dynamite, light the fuse and stand back. ‘This guy’ happened to be Peter. The other people who I asked to read this correspondence reported similar impressions. So ... I know that the cause of this impression is not just in my imagination; at the very least I know that there is something in Peter’s actual behaviour that causes this reaction. VINEETO: Just because your friends agree with your feelings does not magically turn your feelings into facts. They are still feelings, and violent feelings at that. All you have done is confirm that your feelings are shared by a group of like-minded people. The next step is to publicize the violent feelings of a group of like-minded people and gather together yet more like-minded people and very soon a witch-hunt is in full swing. It’s quite amazing the tricks ‘I’ will get up to, and the lengths that ‘I’ will go to, in order to survive. RESPONDENT: I also know that he neither knows nor cares about this. VINEETO: He knows now – you have made the extent of your anger very explicit, in very graphic terms. And because anger always negates any capacity for clear thinking to happen, it probably has escaped your attention that Peter cares enough for his fellow human beings to ‘stick his head above the parapet’ and share with them his experience about the method of actualism. He also cares enough for his fellow human beings to persistently and patiently stick to the facts even when these facts, as facts inevitably do, are pulling the rug from under someone’s cherished beliefs and the person gets annoyed. After all, actualism is about becoming aware of and abandoning one’s beliefs, not catering or pampering to them. If you don’t want to listen to what he has to say about actualism then don’t write to him. RESPONDENT: So, it becomes a question of what to do about it. Ok. I can’t change him. It is not my business to try to change him. The only person I can change is myself, right? VINEETO: You have already discarded the possibility that you need to change yourself because you have answered negative to all the options that your being angry could have something to do with your beliefs and your instinctual passions. If you don’t want to make the effort to get rid of your own feelings of anger then the only option left is to blame the other for your anger. No intent to change – no change. RESPONDENT: Ok. So ... which aspect of myself can I eliminate? Shall I throw away the part of myself that seeks to understand and be understood? No. VINEETO: Seeking to understand is one thing while seeking to be understood is more often than not ‘me’ seeking agreement from others that ‘I’ am right. RESPONDENT: Shall I throw away the part of myself that appreciates the difference between truth and lies? No. VINEETO: There is no difference between your truth and your lies because they are both feeling-fed opinions – feelings not facts are the most common arbiter for what is true and what is false within the human condition. Truth is always a subjective truth, ‘my’ truth, ‘your’ truth or the ‘Ultimate Truth’. RESPONDENT: So ... which part of myself shall I throw away? Any suggestions? VINEETO: All of ‘me’. You said so yourself recently to another correspondent –
Given that you asked for a suggestion, three choices come to mind. You could give up. You could try tackling a few smaller issues that make you angry (being annoyed at the weather, at ‘bad’ drivers, at traffic jams and so on and then build up your confidence such that you can tackle bigger issues. You could take the plunge and tackle the issue that is confronting you at the moment, the part that is obviously causing you to be angry, the ‘No 60’ who feels he needs to be right at any cost. * VINEETO: As you can see, actualism is all about diminishing one’s identity to the point where one becomes virtually happy and harmless such that ‘self’-immolation can happen – it has nothing to do with re-programming, re-interpreting, re-defining, re-labelling, re-shuffling, acquiring trinkets or replacing one part of one’s identity with another more shiny outfit – if applied with sincerity and intent the method of actualism will evoke actual change and that’s why many apparently find it too frightening to commit to. But once you get over the hump, it’s the best game to play in town. RESPONDENT: I have just been for a four hour walk on the beach, reflecting on what a bugger it is that the ‘best game in town’ is unavailable to me, primarily at this stage on account of one of its foremost advocates. What an absurd state of affairs. VINEETO: I wonder why you asked for my suggestion when you have apparently already decided to give up and have already laid the blame on someone else. As the Romans used to say, ‘quod erat demonstrandum’ – it is herewith demonstrated that you can’t change yourself because Peter does not agree with you. Come to think of it, three months ago, you did not even know that he existed and now he is allegedly an unsurmountable impediment to your freedom. However, an actual freedom from the human condition is not as unavailable to you as you make it out to be, it is something that everyone does for oneself, by oneself and the only one standing is the way of your freedom from malice and sorrow is ‘you’.
RESPONDENT to No 49: No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t cognitive dissonance in my case. I think I understand the ideas behind actualism quite well. There is a simpler explanation for my occasional (and now almost chronic) annoyance with certain people on this mailing list; it has little to do with the topic of conversation, but a lot to do with the way in which it is conducted. Eg ... <snipped imagined scenario> VINEETO: Given that you have been unhappy about your conversations with actualists and with ‘the way in which it is conducted’ for several months now, so much so that you leave the table, so to speak, only to come back a few days or a few weeks later with the same issue unresolved, here is a suggestion. Instead of focussing on who out there triggers your feeling upset and instead of feeling frustrated that they won’t change in order to accommodate ‘you’, you could focus your attentiveness on what it is that is being triggered by those interactions. In this way you are not only able to bypass the whole issue of who is right and who is wrong but you will get straight to the nub of what actualism is about – becoming aware of and conducting your own investigation into your own feelings, your own convictions, your own beliefs, your own attitudes, and your own instinctual passions when, and as, they are happening, such that you can become increasingly more happy and less harmful to others. Of course this does presuppose that you do indeed want to become happy and harmless.
RESPONDENT to No 37: I know I have been a pain in the arse regarding ‘spirituality’ in this mailing list. Hopefully the issue can be buried now, at least as far as my personal beliefs are concerned. It has never been my intent to deny having a ‘spiritual outlook’ on life. It has been important to me to distinguish this from holding spiritual beliefs, particularly belief in some kind of supernatural agency which exists beyond space and time and is not subject to physical laws. VINEETO: I wonder why it is so important to you to distinguish between spiritual beliefs ‘in some kind of supernatural agency’ and ‘having a ‘spiritual outlook’ on life’. Given that you said you are interested in becoming free from the human condition in toto which includes becoming free from all spiritual belief including one’s spiritual outlook, why is it so important to you to make a distinction between the two? RESPONDENT: This should have been an easy and simple matter to clear up. The fact that it has been so damned difficult to draw this distinction here makes me very reluctant to keep participating in these dialogues. I do not want to work so hard to communicate with people who (it seems to me) are only interested in speaking at others, not to them, for selfish purposes of their own. Thank you for being the exception. VINEETO: What you perceive as the ‘selfish purpose of their own’ is actualists elucidating just what is entailed in becoming free of the human condition in toto and passing on their personal experiences of the process they underwent or are currently undergoing. Speaking for myself, I am speaking to the No 60 who once clearly stated that he has recognized that ‘‘I’ am the problem’ –
If ‘you’, ‘the other No 60’ – for lack of a better term – have taken back the controls then it is understandable that ‘you’ feel that ‘you’ are not being properly spoken to. To put this in the context of my own investigations – when I first inquired into actualism and decided to give it a go I had also inevitably taken on board that all of what I had believed and felt to be true was invalid, that all of what ‘I’ was as a social-instinctual entity was standing in the road of actual peace becoming apparent. In my first major pure consciousness experience I clearly understood that ‘me’ in my totality is preventing actuality from becoming apparent and as a consequence I did not spend much time defending the various beliefs, convictions, opinions or outlooks I held – I was more interested in finding out in what way Richard experiences life and in what way actuality is different to the normal day reality that I inevitably again experienced once my PCE ended. Incidentally I am reminded of something I wrote to Mark once about deliberately facilitating the death of ‘me’ –
RESPONDENT to No 37: I do not want to work so hard to communicate with people who (it seems to me) are only interested in speaking at others, not to them, for selfish purposes of their own. Thank you for being the exception. VINEETO: What you perceive as the ‘selfish purpose of their own’ is actualists elucidating just what is entailed in becoming free of the human condition in toto and passing on their personal experiences of the process they underwent or are currently undergoing. Speaking for myself, I am speaking * to* the No 60 who once clearly stated that he has recognized that ‘‘I’ am the problem’ –
If ‘you’, ‘the other No 60’ – for lack of a better term – have taken back the controls then it is understandable that ‘you’ feel that ‘you’ are not being properly spoken to. RESPONDENT: I wonder why you think anything has changed in that respect ...? VINEETO: When I realized – fully realized – ‘that ‘I’ am the problem’, in other words that ‘I’ am standing in the way of the perfection and purity of actuality to become apparent, I applied myself to the task of facilitating ‘my’ demise, both ego and soul, both thinker and feeler by utilizing the method of actualism. This task has involved an on-going attentiveness to detect and change my habits, to investigate and disempower any infelicitous feelings I have, to actively uncover my beliefs, to enquire into my convictions, to disable my ‘self’-defences – in short to get my head out of the clouds and get my feet back on to the ground whenever I noticed that I was not harmless or happy. I have had neither the time nor the interest nor the intent to divert from the fact ‘that ‘I’ am the problem’, let alone waste my time laying the blame for ‘my’ feelings on someone else.
RESPONDENT: I have found that the question ‘Why does this moment suck?’ works much better for me than the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This might sound silly, might be silly in fact, but that’s the way it is. For me, ‘Why does this moment suck?’ works better because: (1) If the moment doesn’t suck, the question is harmless and absurd, and it might even enhance one’s enjoyment of the fact that this moment is a really good one. (2) If the moment does suck (and there’s a strong chance that it will), I find the question slightly less irritating than ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ because (a) it somehow makes one feel less guilty and useless for not feeling so good; and (b) it immediately puts the focus on identifying and dispensing with the cause of the imperfection. (3) It somehow makes whatever is spoiling this moment seem less daunting to overcome. VINEETO: Asking such a question implies that it is this moment which sucks and that one only needs to change the circumstances of this moment in order to enjoy it. However the purity and perfection that is directly experienced in a pure consciousness experience reveals that it is always only the identity inside this flesh-and-blood body which causes one to experience this moment as ‘sucking’ as in being unpleasant, boring, painful, miserable, excruciating, irritating or just plain flat and that it is ‘me’ that I need to change in order to appreciate this moment of being alive. Secondly, to ask ‘why does this moment suck?’ leaves out the crucial aspect of the actualism method, which is not only to become happier about being here but also to become harmless as well. As an example, I remember in the past whenever I expressed my hostility or irritation, I never experienced that the moment sucked but I was awash with feelings of liberation and relief, albeit temporarily – however my feelings of liberation and relief were always had at the expense of another person’s wellbeing. The actualism question is designed to bring to light all of one’s beliefs, feelings and attitudes that stand in the way of being both harmless and happy – thereby avoiding the usual pitfalls and limitations inherent in other methods of self-investigation. RESPONDENT: (4) ‘... this moment of being alive’ has always had a slightly sanctimonious air about it, to me. I’m sure it didn’t have that tone for Richard, but it does for me. VINEETO: It is one of the traits of the human condition to instantaneously and automatically attempt to change the circumstances that cause feelings of annoyance or irritation rather than concentrate on changing ‘me’ and investigate why one feels annoyed or irritated – which is what the actualism method is all about. If you stick with the original question of the actualism method – a method that made one person actually free and several others virtually free from the human condition – then you have the opportunity of uncovering whatever the religious/ spiritual/ philosophical conditioning is that causes you to feel that the simple descriptive expression of ‘this moment of being alive’ has ‘a slightly sanctimonious air’. With the usual actualist disclaimer … it is only a suggestion, though.
RESPONDENT: I have found that the question ‘Why does this moment suck?’ works much better for me than the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This might sound silly, might be silly in fact, but that’s the way it is. For me, ‘Why does this moment suck?’ works better because: (1) If the moment doesn’t suck, the question is harmless and absurd, and it might even enhance one’s enjoyment of the fact that this moment is a really good one. (2) If the moment does suck (and there’s a strong chance that it will), I find the question slightly less irritating than ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ because (a) it somehow makes one feel less guilty and useless for not feeling so good; and (b) it immediately puts the focus on identifying and dispensing with the cause of the imperfection. (3) It somehow makes whatever is spoiling this moment seem less daunting to overcome. VINEETO: Asking such a question implies that it is this moment which sucks and that one only needs to change the circumstances of this moment in order to enjoy it. RESPONDENT: Yes, I can see that it could be construed that way, and that would indeed convey the wrong impression. VINEETO: I did not construe anything, I took what you were saying at face value. The question ‘why does this moment suck?’ has ‘this moment’ as its subject and ‘suck’ as its verb which by simple grammatical rules conveys that this moment sucks and ‘why’ questions the reason. RESPONDENT: Implicit in the asking of ‘How does this moment suck?’ or ‘Why does this moment suck?’ is a constant awareness that, if something is wrong with this moment, it’s because of ‘me’; something ‘I’ am doing / thinking / feeling / imagining is spoiling what would otherwise be a perfect moment. VINEETO: From what you are now saying it appears that an explicit translation of your question would read something like this – ‘What is it that ‘‘I’ am doing / thinking / feeling / imagining’ which makes me experience this moment as sucking?’ However, despite your assertion that this question ‘immediately puts the focus on identifying and
dispensing with the cause of the imperfection’ (2b above), you have since identified the cause of why the moment sucks in your post to No 37
– that, whatever the situation, the moment sucks ‘in the sense that an Olympic silver medal ‘sucks’’ Personally I don’t see how your question ‘why does this moment suck’ in combination with your assertion that it will suck as long as you are not actually free can ever facilitate a gradual diminishing of your resentment of being here and a gradual increase in your enjoyment of being alive. * VINEETO: Secondly, to ask ‘why does this moment suck?’ leaves out the crucial aspect of the actualism method, which is not only to become happier about being here but also to become harmless as well. As an example, I remember in the past whenever I expressed my hostility or irritation, I never experienced that the moment sucked but I was awash with feelings of liberation and relief, albeit temporarily –however my feelings of liberation and relief were always had at the expense of another person’s wellbeing. RESPONDENT: Your point that harmlessness is just as important a part of actualism as happiness is not going to be disputed here. I know what you mean about feelings of liberation and relief, and I would include those under the very wide umbrella of moments which ‘suck’. Basically, if it’s not a PCE, it ‘sucks’ in some sense, no? VINEETO: My experience of life in virtual freedom is quite different. After I had practiced the actualism method for a few months, making being happy and harmless the most important thing in my life, I noticed that my basic resentment at having to be here – typified by the phrase ‘this moment sucks’ – began to disappear and I increasingly began to enjoy being here, which in turn encouraged me to run the actualism question more regularly and more precisely until it became a wordless constant state of attentiveness. Nowadays I have excellent days every day and hardly ever experience moments that are spoiled by contrary emotions and feelings. If I labelled such excellence as ‘sucking’ because I am not yet actually free it would be a gross misrepresentation of how I experience being alive and not only would it be counterproductive to my own happiness but I would invariably burden others with my feelings of resentment and frustration. Life does not suck at all, life is quite wonderful as it is and being virtually free from malice and sorrow by far exceeds any expectations I ever had and being virtually free from malice and sorrow is certainly far, far better than being normal or being in love or having a spiritual, an out-of-this-world mystical or a paranormal experience. In my experience, to label feeling excellent, joyous, exuberant and happy as ‘it sucks in some sense’ does nothing to encourage felicitous feelings, on the contrary, it denigrates the experience of being alive to the point where becoming happy and harmless isn’t possible. RESPONDENT: That’s the way I’m looking at it. Anything less than a PCE contains an imperfection (however slight) that can be investigated. (An advantage I find in ‘how does this moment suck?’ is that I’m less likely to settle for second best; that is, I’m less likely to drift into the inadvertent use of the question as a ‘mantra’, inducing a ‘comfortably numb’ state, which others have commented on before). VINEETO: Whenever I found myself using the actualism question as a repetitious mantra I knew I wasn’t interested in finding out the answer to the question of how I am experience life right now. Realizing that, I then concentrated on finding out what prevented me from being interested in exploring how I experienced this moment of being alive and thus I was straight back into investigating how ‘I’ ticked. If you want to avoid settling for second then the best way is not change the question but answer it. RESPONDENT: I tend to look upon harmlessness as an inevitable side-effect of ‘self’-free happiness. VINEETO: It is, in fact the other way round – the intent to be harmless and to live in peace with one’s fellow human beings is the only way to crack the intrinsic instinctual selfishness of the human condition. RESPONDENT: In the absence of ‘me’, there is an intrinsic benevolence here. It can’t be simulated by moral strictures; the only thing that is going to bring it about is the demise of ‘me’; VINEETO: Yes, in a PCE, in the absence of ‘me’ one experiences the benevolence that is intrinsic to the actual world. However, when the PCE fades, then the real job begins for an actualist which is to actualize one’s insights gained in a PCE and do the nitty-gritty business of uncovering, understanding and putting a stop to the multitudinous cunning ploys that ‘I’ invariably produce spoiling the already existing perfection. RESPONDENT: … and in the interim, the pure intent to facilitate same is the only workable substitute. VINEETO: Pure intent is not an interim ‘workable substitute’ – it is in fact the very means to bring about ‘the demise of ‘me’’. RESPONDENT: And when even that is insufficient: neither express nor repress, but study it, make a note of the circumstances in which it arose, figure out which aspect of ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ is involved, understand how silly it is to let such a thing spoil this perfect moment, and try not to fall for it again. Correct? VINEETO: When you say ‘when even that is insufficient’ I am reminded of the note that one manufacturer prints on the lid of paint cans – ‘If all else fails read the instructions’. When I came across actualism ‘all else’ had failed and because I was interested in becoming free of the human condition, I decided that the best, easiest and only way to do so was to do what Richard had done to become free of the human condition – i.e. I followed the instructions and they worked wonders. * VINEETO: The actualism question is designed to bring to light all of one’s beliefs, feelings and attitudes that stand in the way of being both harmless and happy – thereby avoiding the usual pitfalls and limitations inherent in other methods of self-investigation. RESPONDENT: (4) ‘... this moment of being alive’ has always had a slightly sanctimonious air about it, to me. I’m sure it didn’t have that tone for Richard, but it does for me. VINEETO: It is one of the traits of the human condition to instantaneously and automatically attempt to change the circumstances that cause feelings of annoyance or irritation rather than concentrate on changing ‘me’ and investigate why one feels annoyed or irritated – which is what the actualism method is all about. RESPONDENT: Yes. As mentioned above, the ‘How/Why does this moment suck?’ is aimed squarely at ‘me’. Nowhere else but ‘me’. VINEETO: And when you don’t experience this moment as sucking, then asking how you are experiencing this moment of being alive also acts to remind you to appreciate the sense of wellbeing that comes from feeling good about being here and it can even provoke one into daring to feel excellent about being here. * VINEETO: If you stick with the original question of the actualism method – a method that made one person actually free and several others virtually free from the human condition – then you have the opportunity of uncovering whatever the religious/spiritual/philosophical conditioning is that causes you to feel that the simple descriptive expression of ‘this moment of being alive’ has ‘a slightly sanctimonious air’. With the usual actualist disclaimer … it is only a suggestion, though. RESPONDENT: Ha! I can explain this better now. ‘Sanctimonious’ was the wrong word. The ‘problem’ is that I tend to hear the words ‘this moment of being alive’ as if they’re spoken (whispered seductively, even) by the corny romantic lead in a Harold Robbins novel, or maybe Gone With The Wind ;-) VINEETO: You are certainly not alone in having an aversion to practicing actualism – there have been many people who have come up with their own particular version of the simple straightforward question that has no other purpose than to focus one’s attentiveness on what is really going on ‘under the bonnet’ as it were. RESPONDENT: Which is, of course, rather silly. VINEETO: In my experience with actualism, when I understand that something is really, really silly, then sincerity and integrity demand of me that I stop falling into the trap of feeling this way again, that I stop believing something to be true despite facts to the contrary, that I stop indulging in the instinctual passions when I know the harm it does to me and others, and so on. In short, when I understand something to be really silly, I change. Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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