Please note that Vineeto’s correspondence below was written by the feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ while ‘she’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom.

Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List

Correspondent No 97

Topics covered

Are you well and truly fed up with the way your emotions and feelings dominate the way you are experiencing life? I began by learning all I could about what an actual freedom from the human condition entails * in my own process of disentangling myself from being a disciple I discovered two components to religious belief, in order to get to the roots of my feelings of love and loyalty I had to have a close look at my general attitude towards authority * I had to take stock of my life so far and then thoroughly examine the new paradigm that was on offer, it was my burning desire to know for sure what actually exists independent of human feelings and beliefs that caused the bubble of ‘me’ to temporarily burst

 

9.4.2006

VINEETO: Welcome to the Actual Freedom Mailing list.

VINEETO  to No 59: ‘According to your own words ‘the Work’ doesn’t invalidate your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and concepts. Whereas in actualism I questioned and investigated all of my beliefs, I took apart all aspects of my social identity and I inquired into all of my good and bad feelings because I have realized that my beliefs and my good and bad feelings keep my identity in place and prevent me from being happy and harmless.

There is a diametrical difference between actualism and Byron Katie’s methodology, not only in goal but also in technique.’ to No 59, 9.12.2003

RESPONDENT: I’m very interested in what you’re talking about here – how did you go about questioning beliefs – I understand the attentiveness to see ‘what’s happening in my experience right now – oh I’m not feeling happy and harmless – I’m feeling mad and isolated and angry and resentful and oh I can trace that back to a zillion years ago when that guy said ‘blah blah’ – and I felt attacked and believed I’d done something terribly wrong’. That’s the surface thoughts – I could dig a bit deeper and ask myself what am I believing here and it could go along the lines of a number of thoughts – including – ‘I’ve done something terribly wrong – right and wrong exist – I’ve betrayed God – betrayal is possible – that guys right and I’m wrong – He knows more than me about everything – I can be attacked – attack is possible – I’m justified in being angry and feeling guilty – there is a ‘me’ and ‘him’ – what he says is the truth – what he says about anything is really true...

These are some of the beliefs associated with one situation when ‘I’ arose and got in the way of everything – now how do I really go about investigating these beliefs that are associated with the I – how do I really inquire into their nature and the nature of my own identity – and really undo this ‘persona’ or ‘me’ that is in the way of everything and pure perception and wholeness.

VINEETO: Let me ask you at the start of this conversation – are you well and truly fed up with the way your emotions and feelings and accumulated beliefs/truths totally dominate the way you are experiencing life to the extent that you, just like everyone else afflicted with the human condition, only occasionally feel really happy and are rarely ever completely harmless?

The reason I ask this question is because unless you are ‘utterly and butterly’ fed up with ‘you’ and all that this entails, all we would be talking about would be protestations to becoming free from particular pet beliefs and your particular personal objections to being happy and harmless.

If your answer to this question is an unequivocal ‘yes!’ then the ‘how’ to get there will be much easier to comprehend.

Richard explains the ‘how’ in his concise article of ‘This Moment of Being Alive’ and elaborates the actualism method further in his Selected Correspondences. Additionally, the Actual Freedom Trust website has two sections of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ and ‘Commonly Raised Objections’ that might answer a few possibly arising queries when you delve into finding out about an actual freedom. Part of my own process of becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow is described in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’.

RESPONDENT: HOW DO I REALLY question ‘me’ and see its impossibility and its falsity? – All perceived problems seem to be linked to this sense of ‘me’, all defense and attack is really defense and attack between apparent ‘me’s’, holding a sense of separation in place and when that drops away miraculously ‘wallah’ – all is well – I thought if you’re purpose of doing ‘Byron Katie’s the work’ was to discover the validity of what you think you think or believe, then questioning the beliefs validity and discovering that I might be mistaken about their reality, leads to these beliefs or thoughts no longer being given any reality so I really see they have no meaning in and of themselves and the associated feelings no longer arise – even so again using this method of inquiry gets a bit tricky when looking at the ‘I’ and questioning it’s validity – it gets into that conundrum of ‘who’s asking the question?’

Please share your approaches to these sort situations or beliefs etc. arising in the mind? – How you ‘tackled’ them – how you really approached investigation to make a thorough exploration and undoing of the self-concept and associated beliefs?

VINEETO: I began by learning all I could about what an actual freedom from the human condition entails and in what way an actual freedom is *diametrically* opposite to spiritual freedom and to *all* of the spiritual beliefs and methods I had accumulated and applied in the past. The more I proceeded to understand the difference between an actual freedom from the human condition and an imaginary-affective-spiritual freedom from some of one’s social conditioning, the more I began to understand the full extent of my own spiritual beliefs that I had willingly and unwittingly taken up in the course of my life … and understanding something to be a belief, and not a fact, renders this particular belief null and void.

Of course, some beliefs were more persistent than others and I very quickly came to recognize that this persistence is a sure sign that more of ‘me’ was entangled in these beliefs and invested in maintaining them. On those occasions I found that there would inevitably be strong feelings associated with questioning the validity or falsity of particular beliefs. However, as I was sufficiently fed up with the failure of spiritual/ new-age therapeutic methods and beliefs to bring peace and happiness into my life, I was sufficiently motivated to eventually move past my sometimes strong feelings of fear, doubt, hesitation, confusion and irritation that inevitably arose. I soon understood that those feelings were but a sign of ‘me’ distracting me from my determined goal – to become as happy and as harmless as humanly possible – and this understanding meant that I was increasingly able to nip arising such affective distractions from being happy and harmless in the bud.

16.4.2006

RESPONDENT: I’ve just been reading your writings about ‘How to investigate your feelings’ and am currently looking at the teacher, follower, seeker, devotee, authority identities that seem to be the underpinning of all special relationships – I don’t know whether you wrote down you’re questions and inquiry as you looked at your feelings of love and loyalty for your former teacher and all the feelings of abandonment and loss that went with it – I’d really like to read over them or perhaps talk to you a bit about this whole deconstruction process – I really need to see/understand this whole structure of identity plainly and clearly in order to see I can let it go – I used your questions today to have a look at a specific grievance

VINEETO: Personally, it took two months and a lot of discussions with Peter until I began to grasp, and then understand experientially, what the term ‘spiritual’ really means. In my years of spiritual search, the term ‘spiritual’ implied a superior way of life to crass materialism, following the highest aspirations of mankind, a dedication to be good and to be part of the group of people who also aspire to the same goal. The day I finally understood the literal meaning of the word ‘spirit-ual’, a whole new world opened up. Suddenly I understood that I – like everyone else – was producing this spiritual, non-physical world in my head and heart – with my very spirit, so to speak – and this world consisted of spiritual morals, ethics, ideas, beliefs, emotions, loyalties, pride and the belief in the immortality of the soul.

I also began to understand that spirituality teaches one to enhance the ‘good’ affective feelings and distance oneself from /dissociate from the ‘bad’ and unpleasant feelings. One is actively encouraged to indulge one’s intuition, trust, love, loyalty, belief, faith, hope and imagination and is encouraged to ‘feel out’ a situation. This is diametrically opposite to what one needs to do if one aspires to become actually free of the human condition whereby one explores the actuality of the situation by applying thought, common sense, contemplation, practicality, intelligence and undertakes an investigation into verifiable facts of the situation.

Actualism is not really a ‘deconstruction process’ as you call it because when one begins to inquiry into one’s beliefs and discovers that they are based on hearsay, belief, trust and faith and not on facts, they disappear of their own accord, in a similar way as you stopped believing in the existence of a tooth fairy and Santa Claus once you found out the facts of the matter. ‘Deconstruction’ per se could well lead to feelings of utter meaninglessness which in turn can lead to the despairing feelings of nihilism or the angry feelings of anarchy – all of which is in marked contrast to the groundswell of happiness and harmlessness that is revealed if one taps into one’s innate naiveté and dares to run with it as it were.

To get back to your question, in my own process of disentangling myself from being a disciple I discovered two components to religious belief – one was the lure of ‘immortality, Truth, Timelessness’, and my aspiration to achieve an imaginary perfection in enlightenment, and the other was love and loyalty, my affective belief in the master’s ultimate authority and in my inferiority and thus dependency on his wisdom and compassion.

For me, questioning authority itself and tracing it back to my belief in God, by whatever name, was the first step out of the spiritual world, and questioning the authority of the master (either as a God-like figure or a father-like figure or as a bit of both) was the second step. When my belief in and my need for authority disappeared, my feelings of love and loyalty for the master successively disappeared as well. I was then able to watch videotapes of Rajneesh’s discourses without the blinding/ distorting veil of love and trust, and I squirmed in disbelief at the lies, inanities, half-truths, power games and outright ancient mumble jumble that was suddenly revealed. In my spiritual years I had used the discourses as a hypnotic device to be lulled into ‘silencing the mind’, feeling good and feeling love for all – however, this time, without the affective cloak the ‘great words of Wisdom’ looked shockingly inane.

Of course, for some time I tried to find excuses for Rajneesh as well as the other god-men, but eventually that turned out to be an impossible task the more I allowed myself to admit to having been conned through and through by one who was a master of his trade. God-men are nothing but con men, sucking and luring admiring disciples into their scheme of self-aggrandizement, and most of the time they seem to be convinced of their own delusion. But they are bound to have times of doubt or even clarity, when the delusion is less thick – that’s why Richard says the enlightened ones have ‘feet of clay’. Nobody except Richard, particularly no enlightened master, has ever dared to ask the obvious question – why, with all this all-encompassing Love and Compassion is there no improvement upon peace on earth after 3,500 years of enlightened history? They claim to have all the knowledge and yet they are leading everyone into the land of fantasy and fervent imagination.

However, when I first started to investigate the issue of my spiritual loyalty, my thoughts tended to shift from this uncomfortable subject as a way of avoiding the issue, I invented diversions and furphies not to stick to the issue at hand, I experienced hot and cold flushes, I caught myself wanting to start a fight, I suddenly became tired if confronted with the issue, etc. … you might get the picture. The whole cunning ‘me’ swung into action so as to desperately defend ‘my’ precious beliefs and feelings in exactly the same way an addict feels that he is fighting for survival when his drugs are withdrawn.

Only pure intent and stubborn determination to get to the bottom of this addiction-like dependency on being a believing, belonging and feeling ‘being’ allows one to continue whittling away at whatever stands in the way of becoming unconditionally happy and harmless.

RESPONDENT: I’ve been holding for which was acutely triggered 5 years ago and really it had been triggered by the same one 6 years before that – there seems to be every human issue that could arise bound up with this one and I’m a bit at a loss how to really delve into it and get my teeth into it and get some real deconstruction happening rather than just floating around on the surface – Please let me know if I could speak to you sometime or have a look at how you got into and approached these relationships.

VINEETO: As an actualist I discovered that in order to get to the roots of my feelings of love and loyalty I had to have a close look at my general attitude towards authority, something that had plagued me in most of my relationships during my life. I discovered that the only way to stand on my own two feet was to tackle and dissolve the emotionally charged issue of authority. I had to look at all of my feelings towards people who I ascribed authority to, particularly those who claimed a special knowledge of what was right and wrong, true and untrue, good and bad – in short, a moral, ethical and spiritual authority. I realized their power over me was derived from and maintained by my belief that there is an ultimate absolute authority in those matters, a Supreme Ruler of moral codes, a Weigher of Souls, a Divine Intelligence, a Big Daddy, a Higher Power of some sort who instated and enforced those values. It didn’t make any difference that I had abandoned the belief in a personal God in my youth because the spiritual belief in an all-encompassing divine energy running the universe kept me obedient, dependant and fearful.

The final realisation that dissolved my problems with authority forever is recorded in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’ –

[Vineeto]: One evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realisation. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery.

This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’. But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear.

When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master.

Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free. ‘A Bit of Vineeto’

For me, the end of God was at the same time the end of hope, trust, faith and postponement, the end of debilitating waiting and cowardly pondering, the end of humbling myself in the face of an almighty invisible power, the end of a stupefying fear of God’s judgement of my right and wrong deeds. The end of my belief in God also freed me of the belief/trust in and the loyalty for God’s earthly representatives such as my former master and all the righteous moral authorities that I had either dutifully followed and/or dutifully rebelled against. The end of my belief in God and my belief in an afterlife marked the beginning of standing on my own two feet with dignity and joy and for the very first time of relying on my intelligence and my common sense to find out the meaning of life for myself.

Ah, what a joy.

23.4.2006

VINEETO: To get back to your question, in my own process of disentangling myself from being a disciple I discovered two components to religious belief – one was the lure of ‘immortality, Truth, Timelessness’, and my aspiration to achieve an imaginary perfection in enlightenment, and the other was love and loyalty, my affective belief in the master’s ultimate authority and in my inferiority and thus dependency on his wisdom and compassion. For me, questioning authority itself and tracing it back to my belief in God, by whatever name, was the first step out of the spiritual world, and questioning the authority of the master (either as a God-like figure or a father-like figure or as a bit of both) was the second step. <snip>

For me, the end of God was at the same time the end of hope, trust, faith and postponement, the end of debilitating waiting and cowardly pondering, the end of humbling myself in the face of an almighty invisible power, the end of a stupefying fear of God’s judgement of my right and wrong deeds. The end of my belief in God also freed me of the belief/ trust in and the loyalty for God’s earthly representatives such as my former master and all the righteous moral authorities that I had either dutifully followed and/or dutifully rebelled against. The end of my belief in God and my belief in an afterlife marked the beginning of standing on my own two feet with dignity and joy and for the very first time of relying on my intelligence and my common sense to find out the meaning of life for myself.

RESPONDENT: I can certainly relate to a lot of what I think you’re saying here – there seems to be in me a stubborn resistance to looking in-depthly at the beliefs I’m holding about God and my authority problem, in fact I’m constantly distracting myself from really looking at it – I can remember when I moved to Byron Bay or around that time thinking ‘well what now, here I am, I can do anything I think of but really I’m just filling in time, waiting to die so in that sense I can see there was a motivation driven by a need to exist and have a sense of permanence and purpose and meaning and this brought about the need to have someone in my life who ‘knew’ – but the love and loyalty and my belief in the master’s ultimate authority and my own inferiority and dependency on some ‘other’ wiser knowing ‘one’ despite what he may have or may not have been saying is keeping me in hell – also I’m familiar with the emotionality and faux feelings of love and hypnotic silences that really have fuck all to do with anything and really feel pretty dead and manufactured – and this thing of defence arises where I want to make excuses for the other and say ‘oh it really didn’t have anything to do with him’ – it was just my failure to understand when really I’m completely pissed off that I fell for the whole fucking show and was such a fucking dependent wimpy fuck who was still looking for a knight in shining armour to take care of me and be my guide and see me as their special charge – and of course my faux feelings of love are rife with feelings of resentment and hostility because he has something I haven’t – it’s all pretty nauseating and pathetic really and wanting to be the innocent one and blame the enlightened one for not helping me and making sure I was seeing clearly what the hell I was doing so it could be undone or seen through might be a better expression – I’m reading where you said ‘I had to look at my feelings towards people I’d ascribed authority too’ and I immediately feel reactive and some sort of pressure rise up in me – there’s definitely feelings of hostility and resentment couple with a sense of sadness and loss – like I’m not going to be loved without those ones – I can’t really be happy without those special ones – like they really have something to offer me – I have to leave off now – I’m going into feeling overwhelmed which I think is probably part of the whole defence strategy when I even think about looking at this whole scenario ...

VINEETO: Before you get further overwhelmed by a whole gamut of emotions and feelings about actualism I can only suggest to begin at the beginning – presumably what it was that attracted you to actualism in the first place – and start at the start – presumably what it is that is currently preventing you from devoting your life to becoming happy and harmless in order that you can become actually free of the human condition in toto.

For me beginning at the beginning meant that before I was ready to question what I had been believing and intensely practicing all those years I had to take stock of my life so far and then thoroughly examine the new paradigm that was on offer –

  • What had I achieved so far on the spiritual path compared with the hopes that I had at the start of my spiritual journey and the promises that were made?

  • What did I want to do with the rest of my life – apart from ‘waiting to die’?

  • How could I determine that an actual freedom from the human condition is the genuine article so as to avoid yet again doing nothing more than replacing one belief with another belief?

To sort out these questions to my satisfaction took about three to six months – the first two questions required a good deal of introspection and self-evaluation of the down-to-earth sensible kind as opposed to the usual spiritual kind of reflection which requires a denial of what I really am – an ageing and very mortal flesh and blood body. And given my attraction to actualism I needed to be 100% sure that I was not falling into another trap of merely believing another’s report and I also needed to be certain that I was ready to leave the spiritual fold that I had belonged to for so long before I could completely abandon spiritualism and move on to something new.

This introspection and self-evaluation was often a time of intense emotional upheaval and I needed focus and determination to come back to my original questions and intent to find out the facts beneath the muddy waters of my surging emotions. I also was not content with ‘maybe Richard is right and maybe the Enlightened Ones have failed’ – I wanted nothing less than 100% certainty in order to go ahead and change course.

It certainly helped that everything that Richard was reporting from the actual world made sense to me – in other words, what he was saying was simple, sensible, straight-forward, matter of fact and down-to-earth and I could understand it for myself whenever my emotions weren’t interfering in this process of understanding. My determination to get to the bottom of the matter finally resolved when my ‘self’ temporarily disappeared and gave way to a pure consciousness experience, and with it disappeared my uncertainty how to determine what is fact/actual and what is belief/ faith/ metaphysics or spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

In fact, it was my burning desire to know for sure what actually exists independent of human feelings and beliefs that brought my inquiry to a peak and caused the bubble of ‘me’ to temporarily burst. In a PCE I experienced, without doubt, for myself, that there is indeed an actual world already here, all the time, and that this actuality exists regardless of whether human beings believe in it, imagine it to be ephemeral/secondary, object to it, love it or rile against it.

The unadulterated, ‘self’-less, experience of the actual world then becomes your guiding light and you need never to believe anybody anything ever again.

RESPONDENT: Thanks for your reply.

VINEETO: You are welcome.

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