VINEETO: You asked – [Respondent]:  Peter or Vineeto, have either of you reached your goal?

What I wrote on May 29 this year is still valid today –

[Vineeto]: When I started actualism I was well aware, due to Irene’s experience, that even if one is a good way into virtual freedom one can still make a turnabout ‘due to some feeling later on’. For several years I was concerned that I couldn’t be absolutely sure that I wouldn’t do the same as Irene, I wasn’t sure of the validity and duration of my successes with the actualism method and I was aware that I couldn’t rely on myself with 100% certainty … that is until I had experientially explored the great temptation of altered states of consciousness for myself by myself as well as make an exploration of my darkest instinctual corners and my greatest fears.

I had an intermediate goal on the wide and wondrous path to ‘self’-immolation – to reach the point of no-return where I was 100% certain that I would never ever turn back to being ‘normal’ or of becoming self-aggrandized. I would often check around in my mind, so to speak, to see if the road to returning to be normal or spiritual was still there, until one day I realized that there was no place to return to – I realized that I had irrevocably burnt the bridges.

Now I feel like, metaphorically speaking, that I am walking towards the edge of a jumping board into nothing. Very thrilling indeed. Vineeto, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 33, 29.5.2005

I can’t give you any more information as to the timing of the impending event. One thing is for sure, it is going to happen and when it will happen it will be this moment, as it is always this moment.

You also wrote in another letter a couple of days earlier –

RESPONDENT: I would like to know if my understanding is correct. I am setting a bar of feeling good as ‘me’. A ‘self’ feeling the best a ‘self’ can feel. Is this correct?

VINEETO: Yep – as long as I am not actually free ‘I’ am a feeling being. Given that the psychological/psychic identity is fundamentally a feeling identity, perpetually vacillating between love and compassion (the so-called good feelings) and malice and sorrow (the so-called bad feelings), the most sensible thing to do is to aim for the felicitous feelings, the best one can aim for whilst still being a feeling being.

RESPONDENT: Also how is this different from the spiritualist indulgence in the good and the suppression of the bad? I realize that an Actualist investigates the bad rather than suppressing, but what of the good? I guess it goes back to the question I had earlier about happiness being an affective feeling.

VINEETO: Feeling good, feeling happy and feeling excellent are felicitous feelings whereas the ‘good’ feelings, such as love, trust, beauty and compassion are but the flipside of the ‘bad’ feelings and as much responsible for the mayhem in the world as their dark counterparts.

Have you not noticed that hatred is spawned from the feeling of love, that wars are fought for the sake of love of kin and country or the love of an ideology, that many a fear is born out of desire just as sorrow is born out of not achieving what one desires, that feelings of vengeance are born from losing whom or what one held dear?

All feelings, be they good or bad, arise from the same source, the animal-instinctual survival passions. The very best one can do whilst remaining a feeling being is to aim for the felicitous/ innocuous feelings, which are the only feelings that don’t add fuel to the passionate identity inside.

From the opening page of the Actual Freedom Trust website –

Richard: The way of becoming actually free is both simple and practical. One starts by dismantling the sense of social identity that has been overlaid, from birth onward, over the innate self until one is virtually free from all the social mores and psittacisms … those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning. One can be virtually free from all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions … and all the other schemes and dreams. One can become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to produce what one thinks and feels oneself to be ... a wayward social identity careering around in confusion and illusion. A ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is.

One can become virtually free from all the insidious feelings – the emotions and passions and calentures – that fuel the mind and give credence to all the illusions and delusions and fantasies and hallucinations that masquerade as visions of The Truth. One can become virtually free of all that which has encumbered humans with misery and despair and live in a state of virtual freedom … which is beyond ‘normal’ human expectations anyway. Then, and only then, can the day of destiny dawn wherein one becomes actually free. One will have obtained release from one’s fate and achieved one’s birthright … and the world will be all the better for it.

It is now possible. Actual Freedom Homepage

RESPONDENT: It seems to me that at the root of almost all of my sorrow and malice is the fear of not belonging. The herd mentality seems to be ironically the very structure of the so called individual. Before investigating actualism, I use to wonder what possessed me to fantasize about various self aggrandizing situations. To indulge in imaginary self presentations. I feel 99% of it is based on the desire to belong. Amazing that I spend so much time worrying in one way or another about belonging and not even realizing that that is what is happening.

VINEETO: Yes, it is quite amazing how many of one’s thoughts are really feelings. Before I began practicing actualism I wasn’t even aware that I was worrying almost all the time about how I fitted or not fitted in with other people. Yet, when I finally decided that what I want to do with my life is to totally commit myself to becoming free from the human condition and when I made this the most important thing in my life, my worry about other people’s opinions and thoughts and the way I fitted or not fitted in with the chosen group of people gradually became less important to the point of not being a worry at all today.

The more I was pursuing my own goal – becoming free – the more I enjoyed and appreciated this moment of being alive and consequently the less I needed other people’s approval and support to the point that I am now totally autonomous, standing on my own two feet, utterly untroubled by anyone’s opinion about what I am, what I am doing, or how I live my life (with the qualifier that I obey the social protocols and legal laws of the country I live in because it makes imminent sense to do so).

RESPONDENT: One thing that makes me certain that actualism is different from spiritual practices is that I don’t feel superior, set apart or deluded into believing I am something I am not. I am simply a human being investigating myself in an attempt to become happy and harmless. As long as I can look at my problems I don’t feel overwhelmed by them, because after all I can look at it, and if I can look at it clearly it will no longer be a problem.

VINEETO: Yes, that describes well the utterly down-to-earthness of the actualism method in contrast to spiritual practice where I was busy building and nurturing a make-believe superior identity in the hope that one day it might take over completely.

In actualism I do the very opposite, I actively dismantle and diminish ‘who’ I think and feel I am in order that ‘what I am’ can become more and more apparent.

Actualism Homepage

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.