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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 98
RESPONDENT: Vineeto says ‘...one can either focus
on sensate experiencing, thereby avoiding undesirable affective experiencing – trying to become an un-feeling ‘self’...’ VINEETO: As No 108 (R) and No 66 have already pointed out, coming to one’s senses is not the same as focussing (only) on sensate experiencing whilst simultaneously neglecting, avoiding, denying, repressing or dissociating from whatever affective feelings are going on at the time. This makes no sense. Here is the text you quoted in context –
As becomes obvious when the quote is read in full, I was talking about the danger of slipping into a non-thinking, dissociated and un-feeling ‘self’ by mistaking the actualism method as being yet another version of the passive/selective awareness of Eastern mysticism – passive as in evoking no fundamental change and selective as in avoiding the dark side that is present in every instinctual being. More than a few people have mis-interpreted the actualism method as a tool for ignoring or dissociating from one’s affective feelings by focussing on and identifying with one’s senses and then wondering why this scheme did not work to evince the desired happiness and innocuousness. As Richard only recently pointed out –
When I ask myself how am I experiencing this moment of being alive then this question automatically focuses my attention both on my senses and on the feelings and emotions which prevent me from fully enjoying the sensate delights of being alive. By being constantly aware what it is that is preventing me from enjoying being alive now I am actively coming to my senses, literally and figuratively. Or to put it another way – actualism does require that you engage brain to come to your senses, as in not being so silly of wasting this moment by not being happy while doing whatever you happen to be doing and/or by not being harmless towards your fellow human beings.
RESPONDENT: Vineeto: ‘Now it seems important to
identify the more subtle feelings, moods and affections that indicate ‘me’ coming to the foreground. And they are more the
‘good’ feelings and the ‘no-feelings’ – as I called them once – that I need to be aware of.’ It seems that I rarely get strong obvious feelings such as anger, most of my time is spent with subtle lacklustre feelings. The actualism method seems to be much harder to get working during such times. By ‘harder’ I mean I’m left feeling happy and harmless far less often. With the obvious feelings, it seems like it is so easy: this person did this/that and I reacted like this... But with these subtle dull feelings, the cause is often a thought or sequence of thoughts, which I think are harder to trace-back in memory, especially when in the grip of these feelings. The ‘no-feelings’ that Vineeto talks about in that quote seem to be the predominant ones for me. Do you think it is practically harder to identify, ‘lock-on’ and be attentive to the neutral feelings? By the way, as I write this I noticed – as you did previously – a hilarious subtle background feeling/ attitude of ‘tell me how to get this to work because it doesn’t work for me at all ever and never can or will’. Silly ‘me’. I bet the days of that attitude are numbered. VINEETO: The phrase I would use now, in hindsight, for those ‘no-feelings’ of lack-lustre and listlessness is resentment of being here. Within the human condition there is a basic resentment of not wanting to be here, wanting to be somewhere else, waiting for something else to happen than what is happening now, as a basic attitude to life, which is then reinforced by the various religious and spiritual conditioning that life on earth is essentially suffering and that the real life will only happen for the spirit after you die. This resentment to being here, as this body, in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are, was what was responsible for my dull feelings, no-feelings, my listlessness, my boredom, my waiting for something else to happen, in short, it had permeated almost all experience of life in that it had cast a dulling shade over everything I experienced. The way to deal with resentment in the actualism method is the same way you deal with all other feelings that interfere with you being happy and harmless – when paying attention to how you experience this moment of being alive, you notice it, then label it which helps you realise that it would be silly to carry on with it when you can instead enjoy being alive. With a steady increase in attentiveness the shift of resenting being here to appreciating being here becomes progressively easier until you finally kick the insidious habit of resentment altogether and delight in being alive for the simple reason that you are alive. RESPONDENT: Also, the way I used to think about feelings was that there is a neutral no-feeling state, and good or bad feelings are positively added (as chemicals in the brain) on to that base-line. This may be why I’m inclined to use negative words like ‘lack-lustre’ or ‘mal-content’. Could you explain more why my old model was wrong (if that explained it clearly enough)? VINEETO: As ‘I’ am a feeling ‘being’ I cannot experience life devoid of feelings (unless in a PCE) – any ‘no-feelings’ are still feelings of dullness, lacklustre-ness, listlessness, resentment or boredom or are the result of one repressing one’s feelings and as such are not neutral at all. From the three kinds of feelings – good feelings, bad feelings and felicitous/ innocuous feelings – the felicitous/ innocuous feelings are in fact the neutral feelings in that they render ‘me’ useless as my experience of life is already enchanting and delightful while both the good and the bad feelings give ‘me’ credence and sustenance and thus increase the dominance of ‘me’ as a feeler. As Richard recommends –
RESPONDENT: I’m getting more and more in touch with my feelings – probably for the first time in my life. My first post here was about how for long periods I could not detect any feelings. The dull listlessness and resentment of being here – still being the predominant ones for me – are increasingly noticed as feelings. VINEETO: Dull listlessness and resentfulness are indeed feelings and not very pleasant ones at that – indeed they can literally ruin your day. RESPONDENT: A problem I’m still having is remembering the triggers of these feelings. They are practically my default state. It’s not as simple as a ‘he said that’ ‘she did that’. It seems to be thoughts or patterns of thoughts that sustain the resentment. Surely remembering exact thoughts from hours ago is harder than remembering ‘external’ events? VINEETO: If, as you say, feeling dull listlessness and resentment is practically your default state, regardless of whatever current events or current circumstances or personal interactions, then I can only suggest that you may need to take a good look as to why this is so. In other words, rather than focussing on details at this stage, maybe a general overall assessment or stocktaking as to whether or not you want to be free of these feelings and whether or not you are willing to pay the price that this change will involve may well be in order. I am reminded of what you wrote to Richard recently –
With a default attitude towards life and the universe such as this it comes to no surprise that the feelings of dullness, resentment and listlessness are the predominant ones for you and having such an attitude demonstrates well why it is necessary to investigate all of one’s beliefs, attitudes, worldviews and philosophical outlooks towards life if one wants to become happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: I imagine the answer is to remember when I last felt good and trace forward. I continue to find this very difficult. Remembering the last time I felt good in effect means remembering when the actualism method last worked for me. The loss of felicity at that time was usually very hard to detect, being a slow change brought on by certain thoughts. Also, the non-felicitous feelings triggered the last time are different from those that I would currently feel, it has never been the one same bad feeling from the last time I felt good. Is this to be expected until attentiveness is more regular in one’s life? VINEETO: Whenever I could not remember which particular incident, event or circumstance had triggered my last outbreak of feeling bad I would look around inside, as it were, and find the belief/ attitude/ worldview/ outlook that fed and maintained my current feeling-state. Equipped with this information I then did whatever was needed to feel good again in order to be able to have a closer look at, become more aware of and, if necessary, understand comprehensively the underlying feeling pattern – the belief system – that had caused me to feel miserable in the first place. * VINEETO to No. 101: ‘When you practice the actualism method, it’s important to remember to examine the feeling in question only after you managed to get back to feeling good’ RESPONDENT: Remembering the triggers and examining the feeling are hard to do while in the grip of the listlessness or resentment. I know of no other way to get back to feeling good though. VINEETO: Have you ever watched a child getting upset when their favourite toy is taken away by another child for instance and then the mother or teacher steps in and diverts their attention by pointing to a bird flying by or a showing them a fragrant colourful flower or inviting them to join a different game that’s going on. Young children are usually able to very quickly forget their previous upset and accept the nudge to being happy again whereas adults often insist on the seriousness/ importance of their own particular problem and/or feeling and choose to continue to feel bad. When you set your aim to become happy and harmless you enter into an agreement with yourself, so to speak, to not let anything stand in the way of getting back to feeling good – in other words you make a conscious decision to make feeling good about being here, right now, your default feeling state. This intent in turn helps to re-kindle one’s own long-lost naiveté which then helps you to return to feeling good for no other reason than that you are alive and conscious in this spectacular abundant universe. As an adult you have the added bonus of being able to take note of the triggers that had caused you to stop feeling good in order to avoid this particular pitfall the next time round.
RESPONDENT: Thanks once again for a very helpful reply Vineeto. VINEETO: Given your subsequent questions, what exactly was it that was helpful in my reply? * RESPONDENT: I’m getting more and more in touch with my feelings – probably for the first time in my life. My first post here was about how for long periods I could not detect any feelings. The dull listlessness and resentment of being here – still being the predominant ones for me – are increasingly noticed as feelings. <snip> VINEETO: If, as you say, feeling dull listlessness and resentment is practically your default state, regardless of whatever current events or current circumstances or personal interactions, then I can only suggest that you may need to take a good look as to why this is so. In other words, rather than focussing on details at this stage, maybe a general overall assessment or stocktaking as to whether or not you want to be free of these feelings and whether or not you are willing to pay the price that this change will involve may well be in order. I am reminded of what you wrote to Richard recently –
With a default attitude towards life and the universe such as this it comes to no surprise that the feelings of dullness, resentment and listlessness are the predominant ones for you and having such an attitude demonstrates well why it is necessary to investigate all of one’s beliefs, attitudes, worldviews and philosophical outlooks towards life if one wants to become happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: I didn’t think those statements reflect a certain attitude, they were arguments for the purpose of greater intellectual understanding of AF. VINEETO: To invent ‘arguments for the purpose of greater intellectual understanding’ is a sure-fire way of distancing oneself from and obscuring/ denying one’s real feelings and beliefs. If you really want to find out why dull listlessness is your present default state then I can only recommend to *experientially* inquire into your feelings, beliefs and attitude towards the universe and the meaning of life in order to find out what causes you to feel predominantly ‘the dull listlessness and resentment of being here’. RESPONDENT: Perhaps an attitude tends to come with it, but I (think I) see that any form of malism is silly. VINEETO: If you think you ‘see that any form of malism is silly’ then why do you maintain the feeling of ‘resentment of being here’? RESPONDENT: As far as I see, the only reason to think there ‘must be more to life’ is if you remember glimpsing the ‘more’ – which I do by the way. Human life evolved on this planet through natural selection – a process which has no regard for quality of life ... and notions of ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ came about the first time a human thought/felt it. VINEETO: When I had a pure consciousness experience, if that is what you allude to with ‘glimpsing the ‘more’’, I did not merely ‘think’ that there must be more to life – I knew that indeed there is more to life. This experiential knowledge provided me with the intent and the drive to put actualism into practice in order to experience this ‘more to life’ as often as possible. * VINEETO: When you set your aim to become happy and harmless you enter into an agreement with yourself, so to speak, to not let anything stand in the way of getting back to feeling good – in other words you make a conscious decision to make feeling good about being here, right now, your default feeling state. This intent in turn helps to re-kindle one’s own long-lost naiveté which then helps you to return to feeling good for no other reason than that you are alive and conscious in this spectacular abundant universe. As an adult you have the added bonus of being able to take note of the triggers that had caused you to stop feeling good in order to avoid this particular pitfall the next time round. RESPONDENT:
I wonder if this is a point of disagreement between yourself then and Peter because this again shows the ‘contradiction’ No. 92 pointed out. Peter seems to be saying here that getting back to feeling good is what happens as a result of the investigation – as Richard also seems to say. You’ve discussed this point before in a previous correspondence with Richard –
VINEETO: Getting back to feeling good is not ‘a result of the investigation’ but is a result of one’s intent to be as happy and harmless as humanly possible – ‘happiness has to be chosen by focussing on felicity’, as No. 37 wrote. The result of investigating your beliefs and feelings is a continued and increasingly uninterrupted happiness and harmlessness for the simple reason that less and less events will trigger any non-felicitous feelings. As you have probably noticed yourself, when you are in the clasp of depression or in a fit of rage or gripped by fear it is impossible to think straight, let alone to sort out the underlying reasons, beliefs, convictions and/or expectations as to why you feeling the way you are feeling? The only thing you can do is note the feelings that are happening and note what triggered those feelings. This is what actualists sometimes call ‘milking the feeling for what it’s worth’ or getting all the information you need to out of the situation for later examination. Once you have the information you want you get yourself out of feeling bad as quickly as possible. When you are back to feeling good then you can sit down, put up your feet and reflect on what happened, what pattern was played out, what possible belief, worldview, opinion, principle or habit, caused you to automatically respond to a situation in this way, i.e. which aspect of your identity stuffed up your being happy, in order to avoid falling into the same trap next time. There is nothing contradictory at all about Peter’s and my descriptions about putting the actualism method into practice (I know because living with Peter we regularly talk about everything pertaining to our daily lives and haven’t had a disagreement on how we are practicing actualism yet). You will come to find out for yourself when you will put the actualism method into practice for yourself instead of finding apparent contradictions as ‘arguments for the purpose of greater intellectual understanding of AF’. RESPONDENT: Anyway, I understand your point about intent being the way to getting back to feeling good and then investigating afterwards. Both seem to be correct but I feel like I need the two points to be acknowledged as differing. VINEETO: If you still think they are two points instead of one then why don’t you try out both the apparently differing ways when you inquire into your feelings of ‘dull listlessness and resentment of being here’, for instance. I’ll be interested to hear of your experiential report as to what works best for you.
Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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