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Vineeto’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Gary
VINEETO: Hello Gary, I seem to have difficulty thinking about, or writing about the human condition. There is an overall sense of ‘what was all the fuss about?’ or ‘Gee, I can hardly remember that love, or anger, or sorrow, or being addicted to a spiritual hero ever gave me any trouble. I read with interest Peter’s last post to you where he talked about his own ‘laziness’ of relating the process of actualism as being like the end of an era, and it seems to make sense to me to let others talk about their experiences on the path of becoming free from beliefs and emotions. Their experiences and adventures are much fresher and more recent and they can write with vividness about it. I enjoy your posts immensely and am happy as Larry when I post them on to the website, colouring and formatting them nicely and filing parts of it into their appropriate files in the ‘Selected Topics’. Being a librarian suits me perfectly well. * VINEETO: Nevertheless, when you introduced the subject of addictions, I had a muse about my own experiences with it. Having worked in a drug institution during my short career as a social worker, at the time I thought a lot about what addictions are and what are the possible causes and solutions for addicted people. After two years working with young heroin addicts, however, I had to admit that I didn’t have any sensible alternative to offer and my ‘social’ work seemed to be pointless – so I quit to explore what else there was to life apart from normal day reality, marriage or drugs. Needless to say that in my 17 years of exploring Eastern religion I didn’t find the answer to being happy, peaceful and harmless – but I learned a lot more about what doesn’t work. GARY: I found an interesting quotation this morning on a website I visit infrequently. The author stated the following:
The chemical and hormonal changes that are involved in the tender instincts, of which the feeling of ‘love’ or affection are derivatives, are salves for the ordinary ‘mistrust, fear, jealousy, worry, and feelings of inadequacy’ that you mentioned above – what amounts to ‘normal’ behaviour for mature adults. Keeping up a constant supply of the love substance, whether in the form of a sexual/romantic partner, attachment to special ‘friends’ or family members, or finding and emulating Divine Love supposedly emanating from enlightened beings, is indeed an addiction with devastating effects. In my discussions with people about the subject of love, I find considerable denial and minimization of the insalubrious effects of love, both human and divine, whilst elevating and enthroning the positive aspects – denial similar to the kind encountered in addictive users of other chemical substances. VINEETO: Erich Fromm sums up the reason for addiction as follows –
While Fromm and others only name ‘separateness’ as the driving force to escape reality and blame our culture for it, actualism goes to the root cause. It is not culture that causes us to feel separate from our physical surroundings and our fellow human beings, but the fact that who ‘I’ think and feel ‘I’ am is a psychological and psychic entity, i.e. non-physical. As such, feeling separate can only be treated by eradicating ‘me’, the very producer of feeling separate from this magnificent sparkling coruscating universe. What seems common to all addictions is the desire to feel good by going ‘somewhere else’, by escaping everyday reality of malice and sorrow, pressure and anxiety into an imaginary feel-good world produced by synthetic or biological drugs. Being in love, watching a thriller, being absorbed in devotional spiritual practice, doing extensive physical exercise, engaging in dangerous sports, even being part of the crowd watching a soccer match – all that produces chemical changes in the brain, and makes one temporarily forget the unresolved emotional turmoil and anxiety one is usually living in. Substance abuse is only the secondary symptom of the basic problem in that instinctually nobody wants to be here on this planet in the first place. Mind-altering substances and their subsequent addictions offer a short-term ticket to ‘somewhere else’, be it a fix, a sniff, a drink, pigging out on food, on chocolate, or be it a heady love affair or a devotional relationship with a spiritual guru. The less I am able to feel good in my everyday life, the more I am prone to look for ways ‘out of here’. My main addiction to avoid feeling my confusion, separateness, loneliness, fear, resentment and sorrow has been to work, to be continuously busy and to not have any idle time to think or feel what was going on underneath. My other addiction was clinging to my partner for comfort and reassurance despite the fact that we didn’t get on with each other. Only when I started to apply the method of actualism could I begin to dare to really acknowledge what was going on in my feeling department, because now I had the tools to investigate and eliminate the cause of my anxiety, my dependency, my sorrow, my anger, my insecurity and my loneliness. Neither suppressing nor expressing my emotions but becoming aware and investigating the cause of the feelings did the trick – it stopped me running away from my bad feelings and stopped me chasing the good feelings. The vividness and a magical splendour of actuality that becomes apparent when both bad and good feelings disappear, is far superior to any ‘feeling good’ that drugs, love, praise or Divine Love can every deliver. GARY: Like yourself, I have come to see that ‘love’ comprises a whole constellation of moods, emotions, behaviours, and beliefs. At its most fundamental, there are the tender instincts of nurture and desire. These fundamental instincts are then further articulated and elaborated through the process of conditioning and learning into the whole complex constellation of human drives and emotions. I have found that it is impossible to refrain from love, which is a bit like trying to outrun my shadow – a patent impossibility. But I can investigate these various emotions, moods and passions, and it is a fascinating and engaging work indeed. Eventually ‘I’ am becoming a bit threadbare – the moods and emotions are not running my life, nor am I blindly careering about looking for love and acceptance. This ties in with autonomy – I am becoming more and more autonomous. At an earlier point in my explorations, I naively thought that by expunging the word ‘love’ from my vocabulary, I would be eliminating the emotional hold these emotions have on me. I have not found that to be the case. The moods and feelings arise from time to time, but the difference is that they are noticed and there is this self-questioning process always going on. My partner still tells me, just about every morning, that she loves me. I do not say the words back, but neither do I cringe or recoil in embarrassment. She still evidently believes in the promise of love, from what I can tell, whereas I do not. That doesn’t mean that we cannot enjoy each other’s company and continue to share our lives and our cosy little home together. But the curious thing is the surreptitious thrill of delight to hear the words spoken, something that many, if not most, people living in the Human Condition feel they cannot do without. Again, there is the recognition and awareness that these words ‘I love you’ are the soul’s balm. They are music to my soul’s ears: ‘I’ stand up and take notice emphatically when offered love and acceptance by others, whether employer, co-workers, partner, etc. But again, one asks oneself ‘why’? And at what cost? VINEETO: I like it when you say
because this is exactly my experience. To not believe in the promise of love is one thing, but to actually investigate the feelings of love one has to keep the word ‘love’ in one’s vocabulary. I found love, and its big brother ‘compassion for all’, a much more sticky emotion than, for instance, anger. Love lets you belong – to a person, to a group, to a nation and to humanity as a whole. Investigating love and the tender instincts is all about examining the feeling of belonging and the fear of standing on my own feet. Your expression ‘these words ‘I love you’ are the soul’s balm. They are music to my soul’s ears’ hit the nail on the head. My ‘soul’, this passionate imaginary ‘me’, needs continuous emotional affirmation from others or needs to feel connected to others in order to stay alive – for ‘I’ am non-actual, ‘I’ do not exist other than by feeling and imagination. You might have noticed that when you accept people’s praise or love, you are at the same time susceptible to their critiques and condemnations as well – one cannot have one without the other. With nobody to love me or hate me, and with nobody to love or hate, my soul eventually withers away and I become anonymous. Actual Freedom is about getting rid of the soul altogether, so it neither flourishes nor suffers. This is when I become autonomous.
VINEETO: There was a story on the news the other day about a plane taking up 10 skydivers. The first one to jump became accidentally entangled in the tail of the plane and it broke off. The pilot, seeing the seriousness of the situation, did the only sensible thing and told everybody to ‘Get out’ and then he jumped as well. In the last four years I have dug into the Human Condition to make sense of it in order to understand how it works which has helped me a lot to become free of it. Now when I look at the Human Condition it does not make sense at all – it is simply madness. The only sensible thing for me left to say – and to do – is to ‘Get out’. GARY: I have noticed in just about all psychological writings the concept of the ‘self’ is very important. Indeed, it is central to any description of human beings and what makes them tick. Although I have but a passing acquaintance with the work of Erich Fromm, I see that in his writings he talks of the importance of having an ‘integrated’ self: that psychological health is derived from integrating the various aspects of the self and achieving an optimal balance within oneself. To the various theorists who posit the importance of a healthy, integrated ‘self’, actualism would make no sense at all and indeed would be thought to be a dangerous and insane enterprise. Because actualism posits that what is known as the ‘self’ is actually the root cause of our troubles. Once I peeled through the layers of my social conditioning and social identity, I found that at the core ‘I’ am but a shivering, hunkered-down, frightened creature seeking biological survival at all costs. It almost seems in a way that when one gets to the bedrock human primitive instinctual passions, one runs right up against a wall which is unmoveable and impregnable. Richard’s discovery, that it is actually possible to eradicate the animal instincts, is greeted with scepticism from every corner and, were it not for the Pure Consciousness Experience, impossible to believe. VINEETO: Addiction is a fascinating issue in the sense that becoming aware of and getting tired of one’s addictions might give someone the necessary kick in the bum to do something about the underlying emotions that drive us to do really silly things over and over again. Yet I know so many people who delight in complaining about life in general and their own situation in particular and are very addicted to the cycle of suffering and need for sympathy to be followed by suffering more for more sympathy. As a bleeding heart liberal who has been moved to alleviate such emotional suffering I was inevitably confronted with the addiction to suffering itself. This strange addiction is only understandable when one takes into account, as you observed, that at the core ‘‘I’ am but a shivering, hunkered-down, frightened creature seeking biological survival at all costs’. Suffering keeps ‘me’ in existence and as such ‘I’ have a vital investment to keep suffering. As such, actualism is only for those who, by their own volition, have enough of their own suffering and of their own malice and can see the silliness of this sorry-go-round both in themselves and in others. Only then do I stop trying to help, blame or change others instead of changing myself and only then do I stop imposing my malice and suffering on others instead of putting a permanent stop to that which causes me to be malicious and sorrowful. GARY: Erich Fromm’s assertion that the addict seeks orgiastic states as a release from the feeling of separateness I would have to confirm from my own experience, from both experience with chemical substances and from relationships. Very early on in my use of various mood-altering chemicals, including certainly alcohol, I was most interested in getting completely obliterated – ‘out of my skull’ – whether perhaps due to genetic predisposition to addiction (in my case a definite factor as alcoholism runs in the family) or some combination of unfavourable conditions early in life, not the least of which was a drinking mother – I found that chemicals were the perfect release from crushing feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and numbing emptiness and what seemed to be the meaninglessness of existence. Concurrent with my chemical addiction was addiction to various friends and family members, a disabling interpersonal dependency in which I clung to and manipulated others to prop up what felt to me to be a meaningless and empty life. But I also discovered, later as a teenager and young adult, through the use of psychedelic substances such as LSD and mescaline, that these chemicals opened a portal in the mind through which the physical world of the senses could be experienced more directly and more vibrantly than ever possible in the ‘normal’ state. Lest I sound like I am advocating the use of these substances, I am not. I have not used any since at – the latest – 1980. But one PCE I had reminded me strongly of being on a low dose of LSD – I had the sense again of a portal in the mind opening up and of a vibrancy and clarity of perception being possible strikingly in contrast to the ordinary, ‘normal’ state. The fact that this extraordinary state can be experienced without the use of chemical aids is tantalizing. VINEETO: Human history and particularly religious history is littered with accounts where drugs have played a very important role in inducing extraordinary experiences, orgiastic states, religious experiences, revelations, epiphanies, and various altered states of consciousness, or even pure consciousness experiences like magical non-affective nature experiences. It is not the drug itself that is addictive, although a physical craving can develop with the use of some drugs. The psychological addiction is due to the fact that deep down ‘I’ don’t want to change and I don’t want to disrupt the delicate balance of my precious ‘self’. Then, those experiences of ‘getting out of my skull’ are confined to the ‘safe’ environment of a temporary chemical i.e. drug-induced change – safe, because ‘I’ know that after a reasonable period of time ‘I’ will again resume being my familiar ‘self’. From the perspective of a suffering but thriving ‘self’ the chance of a temporary return to those obliterating ‘out of it’ spaces becomes the addiction. Today I can see why, 25 years ago, I could never convince my heroin addicted clients to permanently get rid of their debilitating habit – addiction was their very identity. Yet it still evades me why, for everyone, suffering is so much more desirable than a life without a sorrowful and malicious ‘self’, now that there is a third alternative available. I looked up the word tantalizing and it is a very descriptive word for a drug-experience –
The ‘holiday from self’ that the drugs provide are but a tease, just as a PCE is but a tease. It is up to me to use this tease of what is possible as a stepping stone to actual permanent change instead of forever hankering for the next ‘holiday from self’ while remaining safely anchored within the Human Condition. For a committed actualist, a PCE is not a tantalizing tease because I know that it is possible to become actually free and I am ready to do whatever is needed to evince the change needed to become actually free. In a pure consciousness experience this freedom is so very obvious already always here – it is only ‘me’ who is not capable, by ‘my’ very nature, of being here. * VINEETO: My main addiction to avoid feeling my confusion, separateness, loneliness, fear, resentment and sorrow has been to work, to be continuously busy and to not have any idle time to think or feel what was going on underneath. My other addiction was clinging to my partner for comfort and reassurance despite the fact that we didn’t get on with each other. GARY: Being ‘continuously busy’ is an appealing way to avoid the crushing and uncomfortable feelings that are at the core of being a ‘self’. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with being busy or being productive, but it can also be a way of escaping from one’s feelings and emotions. I too experience the subtle lure of being busy – I have a very busy job right now. I find that at times I am not busy I get ‘bored’ and distracted easily – in the extreme these states lead to a kind of inertia – I lose interest in things I am usually interested in and sometimes wallow in the uncomfortable feelings. Running the ‘How am I ...?’ question has resulted in a situation where I recognize these feelings and emotions much more quickly and clearly, but I have much more investigation to do, as I find the experience of being bored and listless creeping in at times, especially on the weekends when I feel I ‘should’ really being enjoying myself. Anything which interferes with my enjoyment and delight in the present moment of being alive is an object for examination and investigation, as I no longer want to ‘get out of it’ as I once did. Only when I started to apply the method of actualism could I begin to dare to really acknowledge what was going on in my feeling department, because now I had the tools to investigate and eliminate the cause of my anxiety, my dependency, my sorrow, my anger, my insecurity and my loneliness. Neither suppressing nor expressing my emotions but becoming aware and investigating the cause of the feelings did the trick – it stopped me running away from my bad feelings and stopped me chasing the good feelings. The vividness and a magical splendour of actuality that becomes apparent when both bad and good feelings disappear, is far superior to any ‘feeling good’ that drugs, love, praise or Divine Love can every deliver. VINEETO: Boredom was an interesting emotion for me to investigate. It had several connotations and layers to it. The first and most obvious was that I should be doing something useful, that I should earn my right to be here – quite ridiculous really as I am here already and have always been here without ‘earning’ my right to be here at all! But the necessity to work for one’s survival was passed on to me as a moral to never just sit there, to use my time effectively, to prove my worth by producing something of value for me or others, to earn my right to exist. These morals are instilled before one is able to earn one’s own food and shelter, and as such, those values are not factually connected to the action of providing for oneself. It took me some time to fully appreciate that earning sufficient money for food and shelter is a necessity but need not be an obsession and that I was busy doing things just to re-invent and maintain my social identity. Underlying boredom I sometimes found emotions that came to the surface when I did not keep them down by being continually busy and occupied. Then boredom became an ally, in that doing nothing would reveal the next thing to investigate, the next issue to look at. Also, boredom can kick in when I realize that by doing nothing in particular, my identity is thinning out, my importance disappears and my self-centred ‘meaning of life’ evaporates. Beneath the thin veneer of boredom and uselessness I am becoming increasingly aware that ‘I’ am not needed at all. GARY: I used to get a bit confused by actualist’s descriptions of ‘feeling good’, ‘feeling fine’, and ‘feeling excellent’, and tried to differentiate how this contrasted with other feeling and emotional states because after all ‘feelings are feelings’. I still cannot determine if the feeling-good part of the so-called excellence experience or PCE is a feeling or a sensation. My memory of PCEs I have had is that there is certain exhilaration associated with it. Not a manic type high at all, or even a drug-like euphoria, but there certainly is an exhilarating, ever-fresh, yes, vividness is a good word, and there is an exceptional clarity to it all which is the chief difference so far as I am concerned. The PCE is characterized by an incredible clarity of perception and sensation. The most ordinary and mundane objects are fascinating in their own right and everything is imbued with a clarity and liveliness that is missing in the ordinary ‘normal’ state. So the experience itself must be one chiefly of sensuousness and not emotion. Nevertheless one can speak of ‘feeling excellent’ as the word ‘feeling’ can also refer to the faculty of sensation. I’ve probably taken something here and over-complicated it all, but I thought I would mention it. When both bad and good feelings disappear, something so exceptional happens that everything else pales by comparison. The realization that ‘I’ am the only thing standing in the way of this magical perfection and purity turns what is initially an interest into a full-time obsession to experience the best that life on this planet can offer. VINEETO: Only in a pure consciousness experience is my feeling-fed self temporarily absent. The rest of the time ‘I’ am a feeling being, however inconspicuous. ‘My’ best choice is to feel good – or to feel excellent – which is the closest I can get to experience the world as it is. Feeling excellent means that no specific emotion spoils my experience of the day, thinking only happens when needed for the particular action I am involved in, my senses are heightened compared to normal-day reality and I immensely enjoy simply being alive. However, a simmering hesitation, a vague holding back, an awareness of a controller, a slight sense of ‘me’ lurking in the background marks a very noticeable difference to a ‘self-less’ experience. A PCE, as you have described it, is not a feeling-experience. It is magical purity, experiencing everything in its directness, a stillness that has always been here, with psychedelic colours and glimmering textures, distinctly multi-layered sounds, sensations without filter and I am aware of sensately and reflectively experiencing the world and I am also aware of being aware. This apperception adds the depth and magic to everything experienced, fear disappears and I am no longer separate from the universe that lives me. For me, a PCE always starts as if a curtain rips in my head that then opens the view to this magical wondrous being here. * VINEETO: My ‘soul’, this passionate imaginary ‘me’, needs continuous emotional affirmation from others or needs to feel connected to others in order to stay alive – for ‘I’ am non-actual, ‘I’ do not exist other than by feeling and imagination. GARY: One of the things that I have been questioning is the notion of the importance throughout life of what is referred to as ‘attachment’. Again, it is psychological terminology, to be sure. But it is more or less assumed that attachment to others, first one’s mother or caretakers in the beginning of life, and then later other adults and one’s peers, is important throughout life and that healthy attachments are the hallmark of mental health. One can get attached to so many things as a substitute gratification – one can get attached to one’s job, a religion, a hero, substances, sex, etc, etc. What drives this attachment or ‘need to feel connected to others in order to stay alive’? We are dealing with something fundamental and basic to the experience of being a human being living in this world with other human beings. We are dealing here with the primitive instincts, are we not? The experience of attachment is ubiquitous, but perhaps it needs to be carefully defined. When I use the term I mean this sense of being connected to another. It involves dependency, looking to another to meet certain emotional needs, for affirmation, for praise and reward, for companionship, etc. Attachment may involve the deep experience of romantic ‘love’ but not necessarily. I think it is more or less assumed that when one is emotionally ‘healthy’ one’s attachments to others are carefully modulated and controlled, but nevertheless one is attached so it is only ‘natural’ that one experiences grief and sadness if one’s partner is sick or depressed or, in the extreme, dies. Hardly anyone would question the validity of these ‘normal’ feelings and reactions to extreme events but I do. I have found that, in addition to questioning the feel-good experience of ‘love’ and affection, I have been looking into this sense of being attached, connected to someone else. And there is a sense of identification: that this is ‘my’ partner, or ‘my’ girlfriend or boyfriend, or that I share ‘my’ life with someone. VINEETO: Personally, the word attachment came to my attention through the spiritual teachings where I learned I should not be attached. Attachment as such was a bad thing, the concept was to become unattached to one’s body, one’s emotions, one’s relationships, one’s desires, one’s actions, until only the completely unattached higher self, the real ‘ME’ would remain. In actualism, I deliberately went in the other direction – a full commitment to being ‘attached’ and then exploring the ramifications of it. I found that I am not merely attached to my emotions but ‘I’ am my emotions, I am not merely attached to objects of my desire but ‘I’ am my desire. Wanting to get rid of my attachments I had to get rid of ‘me’. And in the course of discovering what ‘me’ consists of I found ‘me’ in each and every state of love and hate, in every attachment and repulsion, in every dependency and need for independence, in each fear and every instance of pride. That’s what makes investigating one’s attachments really thrilling. I found it was vitally important to fully commit myself to my relationship – 110% – in order to overcome my spiritual conditioning of being non-attached or aloof so I could then explore all of the emotions I had been avoiding experiencing. To commit oneself totally to something is utterly delicious and is the only way to get at the roots of whatever I have been avoiding by being half-hearted, aloof or detached. Not only was it great adventure and liberation to root out my dependencies with Peter, for instance, but the reward came almost instantly, making way for a sparkling intimacy, obvious parity and uninterrupted harmony. Love and affection pale into insignificance compared to the delight of enjoying the direct intimate company of another actual human being each moment again. GARY: Recently my partner came down with an inexplicable and rather puzzling disturbance of her hearing and balance and is now going for tests and diagnosis. There is the unpleasant possibility that it may involve a tumour or some sort or other. I found that this development rather threw me for a loop, I began to feel vaguely anxious, rehearsing the possibility that I might lose her or that she would become progressively more and more impaired, etc. All this made me investigate into my attachment to my mate and just what is involved emotionally for me. It made me think of other losses in my life, it kind of dredged some other things up. People get sick, they have ill health, they grow old and die – all these things we have experienced or are going to experience. There should be no dread of these things happening, as happen they surely will one way or another. Neither should there be a kind of grim resignation and acceptance of life’s bumps and grinds. It gets, I think, to the crux of the matter: one need not be attached to others. One need not suffer pain of any kind due to another’s infirmities. One need not be depressed and sad because one’s partner is depressed and sad. One can be free from all these emotional reactions. But then, that is not ‘normal’, is it? VINEETO: No, Gary, that’s not ‘normal’ at all. That’s far, far better than ‘normal’. And yet becoming free of one’s emotions is considered callous, unfeeling, dead, zombie-like, uncaring and – in its extreme – insane. People sometimes get resentful when I don’t support their sadness by sympathizing or when I am not affectionately expressing my love and friendship. And yet I noticed that, as a fact, I care more about them than their so-called friends who I have seen expressing great sympathy and love for them and then putting them down in the next sentence or exploiting them at the next opportunity. I paid great attention whenever I suffered with another’s sadness or fear or was shaken by their anger or desire. This exploration has inevitably led me to be aware of my own sadness, loneliness, fear and anger that I had conveniently delegated into feeling compassion or sympathy for the other, or repulsion or fear of the other. The more I dug into my own psychic world of affections, emotions and then instinctual passions, the more I understood everyone’s psychic world and in understanding it I could examine my investment in being part of this world – and then step out of it. Actualism is the ultimate escapism in that you leave all of suffering and malicious humanity behind – which is ‘you’ – and come here into the actual world to play. But, as you say ‘that’s not normal’ at all – that’s unbelievable, unimaginable and utterly delightful. Good to talk to you.
VINEETO: I have radically snipped big parts of the conversation in order to concentrate on the last few topics you have raised. There is such an amazing lot one can talk about when investigating the human condition in oneself, and for the last four years I have had hours of talking with Peter about particular issues as they came to the surface. Now we have less investigative-type discussions and our conversations are more about the sensate experiences of the day, the growing garden, the people we meet, the food we eat, the paradise we live in, the projects we engage in and the delightful stuff of everyday life. * VINEETO: I looked up the word tantalizing and it is a very descriptive word for a drug-experience –
The ‘holiday from self’ that the drugs provide are but a tease, just as a PCE is but a tease. It is up to me to use this tease of what is possible as a stepping stone to actual permanent change instead of forever hankering for the next ‘holiday from self’ while remaining safely anchored within the Human Condition. GARY: This is a very good example of thoughtful probing of language, thought, and the underlying meaning of what is written. I had not been aware of the meaning of tantalizing in this connection, but I see it now. And in particular, I see that it involves an expectation of something in the future, something which obviously is not the actual. And I was just talking with someone else about the whole business of having expectations. Really there is no sense in having expectations, as there is no sense in faith, trust, and hope. Expectation is closely allied with hope. It is not the actual. Rather it is one’s desire in action, no? VINEETO: Yes, expectation is desire in action and by having expectations one usually ends up not living this moment by comparing it with what I would rather have happened and complaining about life as it is now. The spiritual solution is not to desire anything. Through ‘mindful action’ the seeker aspires to become his or her ‘real self’, becoming detached from the physical world and in denial of his or her own savage passions. This strategy is clearly laid out in the Four Noble Truths of Mr. Buddha which are, to date, the guiding principles of most serious spiritual seekers –
In actualism, the desire to permanently experience freedom from my ‘self’ as experienced in a pure consciousness experience is turned into the driving force that leads me to relentlessly investigate all that prevents me from being here right now. Although I am but a feeling being as long as there is a ‘self’ alive and kicking, I can nevertheless put my instinctual passions to work for what I desire most – an actual freedom from the human condition. With attentiveness, desire can be turned into sincere intent, aggression into stubborn determination, nurture into altruism and fear becomes the thrilling gauge that indicates what to examine next. * VINEETO: For a committed actualist, a PCE is not a tantalizing tease because I know that it is possible to become actually free and I am ready to do whatever is needed to evince the change needed to become actually free. In a pure consciousness experience this freedom is so very obvious already always here – it is only ‘me’ who is not capable, by ‘my’ very nature, of being here. GARY: I like the ‘I am ready to do whatever is needed’ part. This is one of the things this list is useful for. One can draw renewed determination, redoubling one’s intent to be free, by reading the comments and thoughts of another. Thoughts such as this then serve as a stimulus, spurring one to dig in, to make the effort to become actually free. Reading my last sentence, I am now questioning the whole notion of effort. Is there an effort involved? If effort is involved, as I suspect it is, what type of effort? VINEETO: Of course, there is effort involved in actualism. It takes immense effort to incrementally extract oneself from the human condition and its primeval atavistic ties and it takes immense effort to keep moving 180 degrees in the opposite direction away from what everyone else is believing, feeling, defending, desiring and pursuing. The process of becoming free from the human condition is something altogether ‘unnatural’ i.e. it is going against our deepest instinctual gut-feelings. This makes actualism so unattractive to most people. People prefer to imagine being free rather than applying the effort that is needed to investigate one’s social and instinctual programming and initiate actual change. GARY: Additionally, your comments in this post, particularly the part about the PCE not being a tantalizing tease, have touched off another question for me. When one takes up the method of actualism, I think there is a tendency to conceptualize Actual Freedom as something that will happen, may or may not happen at some indeterminate point in the future. You have just said that, in the PCE, this freedom is so very obviously already always here. And I certainly agree with that from my own experience. Then, in a way, it doesn’t seem to make sense to even think or talk about becoming Actually Free, as some future state that may or may not happen, as the only thing that matters is this present moment and one’s experiencing of the present moment. I remember No 13 making some such statement that it doesn’t matter whether one will or will not become actually free in the future. So my question is this: is an Actual Freedom here or there? The PCE is a demonstration that an Actual Freedom is possible – it is the closest thing to an Actual Freedom. I almost want to say that it is convincing, but then that involves the action of believing, does it not? Does one have PCEs through one’s efforts – in other words, does one do something to bring them about? Or do they serendipitously occur on their own, without one doing anything? Because elsewhere, Richard states:
Pure intent, then, is not something I do, or is it? Actualists talk about Actual Freedom as something that is right here, right under our very noses. So, to be in a state of ‘frustrated expectancy’, hankering after the next PCE is a big mistake, I take it, because freedom is not off in the future somewhere, it is right here, right now. One is not going anywhere, so to speak. By running the ‘How am I...’ question, one is planted smack dab in the present moment, as the present moment is one’s only moment of being alive. There is an ‘already always existing perfection’ which characterizes this physical universe that is abundantly and freely available when ‘I’ am not. The PCE is such an experience of that perfection sans identity, no? Do I willingly conspire in my extinction? Is it correct to say that I cooperate in my elimination? What kind of effort does this involve? VINEETO: What is actually happening in this physical world is only happening here, right now, in this very moment. It is ‘me’ who cannot experience the pure perfection of this moment because ‘I’ am, by ‘my’ very nature, ever - absorbed in feeling, believing, wishing, fearing, wanting to be somewhere else and sometime else. To many it may sound like a paradox when on one side ‘I’ have to get off my bum, roll up my sleeves and pursue my investigations into the human condition in ‘me’, while on the other hand ‘I’ can never bring about, let alone experience, a pure consciousness experience or an actual freedom. Nevertheless, what I can do is to muster the sincere intent to become actually free and do whatever it takes to reach that goal – and in serendipitous moments a PCE will be invoked when in one slight shift from awareness to apperception (being aware of being aware) ‘I’ am temporarily in abeyance and the actual world becomes apparent. By applying the method stubbornly, diligently and patiently there eventually comes a point where I am able to consciously, willingly, without hesitation and with gay abandon agree to my own final demise. Then, and only then, it will happen of its own accord. * VINEETO: I found it was vitally important to fully commit myself to my relationship – 110% – in order to overcome my spiritual conditioning of being non-attached or aloof so I could then explore all of the emotions I had been avoiding experiencing. To commit oneself totally to something is utterly delicious and is the only way to get at the roots of whatever I have been avoiding by being half-hearted, aloof or detached. Not only was it great adventure and liberation to root out my dependencies with Peter, for instance, but the reward came almost instantly, making way for a sparkling intimacy, obvious parity and uninterrupted harmony. Love and affection pale into insignificance compared to the delight of enjoying the direct intimate company of another actual human being each moment again. GARY: I don’t know if I have ‘fully’ committed myself to my relationship. In some respects, I think I have. Yet in other respects, the thought of ‘fully’ committing myself rather frightens me. And that occurs with just about anything. Perhaps that is what makes it difficult for me to be here – I am still holding a part of ‘me’ in reserve. To be completely honest, I think I am aloof and detached about a lot of things. VINEETO: Yes, according to my experience it takes extensive investigation and some guts to shed one’s social and spiritual conditioning and one’s instinctual intuition of staying aloof as the safest way of going through life. Every bit of wisdom passed from old to young and from peer to peer advises you to ‘never put all your eggs in one basket’, to ‘maintain your identity intact in your relationship’, to ‘never commit yourself fully or else you will suffer when he or she leaves you’ and to ‘never show your hand to the other’. Given the irrevocable separation of human beings into two distinct gender groups, the other is considered but an intimate enemy. As you have reported yourself many times, actualism is getting down and getting dirty, getting fully involved and examining and investigating the emotions when they occur – not avoiding them. Living with Peter was for me the perfect opportunity to check out that I was becoming more and more free from my instinctual reactions and that I was not just imagining a cozy freedom for lack of challenge. Contrary to a spiritual freedom, which happens in one’s head and one’s heart, virtual freedom and actual freedom is lived in the marketplace, in interaction with people as they are, including my closest companion. When nothing upsets me in an intimate man-woman relationship, when I can live in perfect peace and harmony with my partner, then that is certainly an indication that I have tackled and eliminated a great deal of my social identity. Living together one to one in peace and harmony is the toughest test. The rewards for giving such a 100% commitment are beyond my wildest dreams, the ease and fun we are having together, not to mention the sexual-sensual play, are far beyond the promises of any romantic fairy-tale. Peter is my best mate, for us there are neither secrets nor separation, neither promises nor demands, neither anger nor hurt. I am perfectly happy with my own company and the presence of a companion is a delightful bonus on top of it. I always liked how Peter described a fully committed, yet free relationship in his journal –
* VINEETO: Actualism is the ultimate escapism in that you leave all of suffering and malicious humanity behind – which is ‘you’ – and come here into the actual world to play. But, as you say ‘that’s not normal’ at all – that’s unbelievable, unimaginable and utterly delightful. GARY: The realization that commitments frighten ‘me’ is something that seems important right now. I always hold myself back in situations, as if considering my next move. This guardedness and hesitancy causes me to be in my head a lot. My usual experience of everything is that it is deadly serious, and I think I am missing the point entirely that you make of ‘come here into the actual world to play’. Somewhere I feel I am really missing the boat – ‘I’ am way too serious. I have a lot of fears. VINEETO: Your report reminds me of my own struggles along the way and as far as I understand you from what you write, you seem to be sitting right in the middle of the – admittedly rocking – boat and not missing it at all. In my experience it is par for the course in the process to have ‘a lot of fears’, because by pursuing actualism I am stirring up these fears by deliberately questioning and investigating my social conditioning and becoming aware of my own raw instinctual programming. I am not merely coping with the fears that are part of the Human Condition, I am continually working towards my own demise. I remember from my previous ‘normal’ life that there was a noticeable fear once in a while, whereas in the process of actualism fear would hit me at regular intervals, as every investigation into ‘me’ would incrementally drive me away from the herd and closer to my own extinction. As Richard has warned us from the very beginning – to pursue your own demise takes nerves of steel and is ‘not for the weak of knee or the faint of heart’. As such, fear can be an indicator that you are getting close to leaving yet another bit of identity behind and close to dissolving yet another tie with humanity. The trick is to turn this fear into the thrill of investigation and the excitement of discovery, for actualism is the cutting edge of human endeavour. My main reason for having been serious, apart from fear itself, was my idea of ‘me’ becoming perfect. ‘I’ as an identity can perceive perfection only as something that ‘I’ achieve, that ‘I’ do or that ‘I’ can miss. Becoming perfect from the viewpoint of an identity is always an arduous and serious enterprise, like walking on a tightrope, something that can disappear with slackening control or even something that someone else can destroy or snatch from me in an unguarded moment. ‘My’ idea of perfection always has an opposite – imperfection – and, as such, it is always a struggle to maintain and is always a tantalizing, never fully achievable task typified by tension and self-beratement. The perfection of the actual world, however, has no opposite. An infinite and eternal universe is perfect by its very nature. This perfection is already always here and this becomes strikingly apparent when I become aware of ‘me’ uselessly struggling and ‘I’ start to ease off, give way, step aside and – as in a PCE – temporarily disappear. As the process begins to bring success and the iron grip of ‘me’ incrementally disappears, both seriousness and superficiality, both importance and meaninglessness, both urgency and indulgence eventually fade, and the universe simply becomes an enormous playground with sensory delights all over the place.
VINEETO: I had some thoughts about the ‘proverbial Dutch boy’ that I considered worth relating ... You wrote to Alan – GARY: Actualism is the study, the investigation of this ‘me’ who is standing in the way of experiencing a totally incomparable quality of life, second to none, which is freely available to all and sundry, once ‘I’ willingly self-immolate. Trouble is, ‘I’ will do just about anything to stay in existence. Like the proverbial Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, once I think I’ve got it under wraps, fresh new leaks of ‘me’ sprout up all over the place. Gary to Alan, 7.6.2001 VINEETO: I like your analogy because it describes very well how one can experience oneself when applying the method of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ for some time, as belief after belief gives way to the irrefutable obviousness of facts and one ‘self’-image after the other crumbles in the bright light of sharpening self-awareness. In the first months of my investigation I was thrilled and excited when I saw my beliefs tumbling, my morals thrown overboard and my ethical values gone out the window because they no longer made any sense. The challenge was to eliminate my social identity bit by bit, to question and examine my cherished beliefs, my ideas about right and wrong, good and bad and to shed my identity of belonging to a gender, a nationality, a profession, a race, a religious or spiritual group – in short everything that would give me definition, value and position as a member of society. Having looked again and again under the hood of the nice and the good girl that I usually was, I was at times shocked at what I discovered, as in ‘is that really ‘me’, is that who ‘I’ really am?’ However, some several months into my explorations, I remember a stage when I thought that I had done enough and cleaned up my remaining ‘self’ enough. Consequently, every time I experienced an emotion creeping up, I berated myself, resented that I still had feelings and wondered if I had missed a signpost and gone off the ‘right’ track. I had long discussions with Peter and Richard and read and re-read about the method of Actual Freedom until I had to admit that I had fallen into the trap of attempting to live as a ‘reduced self’, as much as possible devoid of feelings, and that this was the reason why I was feeling so stuck. When I examined this attitude a bit closer, I found it to be a remnant of my past spiritual teachings – despite my initial genuine investigations I had inadvertently transmogrified the method of actualism into the Buddhist-based teachings of transcending or sublimating my feelings instead of eliminating the ‘self’ that generates them. This ‘escape route’ will inevitably present itself as a ‘self’-preserving way of sweeping the remaining ‘self’ and its resultant emotions and feelings ‘under the carpet’ in order to remain ‘me’. At this point the challenge was to see myself coming closer and closer to the point that cleaning myself up was not the whole story – that I was in fact undeniably moving to a point of no return. In hindsight, I can say that attempting to be a rational, sensible but emotion-reduced ‘self’ via sublimated feelings was jamming my foot on the breaks in order ‘to stay in existence’. It took me many deep breaths to fully acknowledge that ‘I’ consist of nothing but my emotions and instinctual passions and that there won’t be any of ‘me’ left when all of the Human Condition in me is ‘cleaned up’. Or, to put it the other way round, it is impossible to clean myself up without simultaneously instigating my extinction. In actualism I am not merely sorting out and eliminating the good or bad attributes of ‘me’ – all of ‘me’ has to go. Once I fully comprehended the implications I could also see that there were only two options now – to abandon ship and turn back to ‘normal’ or to go full steam ahead and incite ‘my’ ‘self’-immolation. As I had already passed the point of no return because becoming ‘normal’ again was plain silly, I thought what the heck. By the way ... according to an American comedian, heck is a place not quite as bad as hell. Well, ‘what the heck’ soon turned into more and more delicious abandon, and ever since I have been busy discovering how absolutely safe the actual world is – whenever ‘I’ have stepped aside to be able to experience its sensual abundance and utter perfection. The instinctual passions of survival are deeply ingrained in us and this is why, in order to be able to investigate those passions, the ‘dyke’ of one’s social identity along with one’s fixations of good and bad, right and wrong, has to leak and eventually break. As long as one feels it is ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ to feel fear, aggression, lust or dependency, there is no possibility of scientifically observing, factually examining, deeply understanding and successively diminishing one’s instinctual passions. Only when I know ‘me’ in all of my instinctual variations do I know all that I have to leave behind. As history has demonstrated very clearly, a blind jump from being ‘normal’ can only lead to ‘me’ changing identity by becoming ‘My Real Self’. So, Gary, as you have discovered, actualism works successfully to ‘unwrap’, dismantle and eliminate what stands in the way of experiencing the actual – and as such the ‘Dutch boy’ may well be doomed to fail. I found, however, that I would never get more challenges than I could handle at one time, even if it sometimes initially felt that way. The trick is to remember not to take the discoveries of your emotions and beliefs as ‘leaks’ of an imperfect personality or as individual bad traits, but to understand them to be manifestations of our genetically inherited disease known as the Human Condition, i.e. common to all. The Human Condition by definition is common to all – however, each individual can instigate and facilitate their freedom only for himself and by himself. When you see that everyone is inflicted with the same instinctual animal passions, then ‘my’ shame, ‘my’ guilt and ‘my’ doubt begin to lose their grip in the face of this obvious observable fact. Then one’s investigation changes from ‘what is wrong with my belief?’ to ‘this is a belief and where in particular is it wrong?’ That’s when investigating the Human Condition, as it is manifest in everyone and in oneself, becomes such a thrilling and intriguing adventure, so much so that one becomes fascinated, rather than seriously concerned, about how ‘I’ tick. Actualism is about being sincere, not serious – after all, leaving the Human Condition behind is considered a mental disorder. Life is such a hoot!
VINEETO: A pleasure to hear from you. While the list seems to be hotting up by the hour these days, I am getting slower with my posts with an answering speed of about one letter per week. One reason is that there are so many other delightful things to do in the day like pottering in the garden, doing people’s books for money several days a week, having lunch in town or a cup of coffee and a chat with whoever comes along – be it the gardener, a client of Peter’s or a friend. And, of course, there is always the website to play with ... As an aside, did you like the hibiscus flower at the top of your correspondence pages which is, like the other flowers on the website, a cut-out from Peter’s photographs from around town? At the moment we are in full winter season, which means sparkling sunny days with often a cool or even chilly breeze from the south. The sunlight is less intense than in summer and brings out the colours in a more vivid way. It is the time of year when locals mainly populate the town mainly because the travellers from overseas are now enjoying spring/summer in Europe or the US. * VINEETO: I remember a stage when I thought that I had done enough and cleaned up my remaining ‘self’ enough. Consequently, every time I experienced an emotion creeping up, I berated myself, resented that I still had feelings and wondered if I had missed a signpost and gone off the ‘right’ track. GARY: Yes, I still discern that there are times, recently in fact, that I deride myself for experiencing unpleasant emotional states. I think there is a tendency still to think that I am doing something ‘wrong’ and that I am ‘failing’ in my investigations into ‘me’. I am aware at times of the ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ arising at these times, the result of a long period of socialization in which one has been schooled to conform to certain behaviours, attitudes, values and beliefs, according to one’s particular background, culture, gender, and other such socializing influences. VINEETO: Whenever I have examined particular persistent feelings of ‘‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’’ I found that I had to investigate a layer deeper than purely questioning my particular socialization. I found that my fears of not meeting the ‘‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’’ were sometimes not only my own personal standards but were closely linked to my fear of losing friends, losing my image of who I thought I was, and again and again the atavistic fear of falling off the plate called humanity. The need to belong is a strong instinctual survival mechanism and not so long ago it was indeed almost impossible to survive on one’s own without the support of one’s tribe. However, once I found that my particular feeling of not meeting my or other people’s standards was underscored by atavistic fears of being all on my own, it was relatively easy to stop focusing on ‘my’ individual failure or ‘my’ personal socialization and concentrate on examining this common-to-all instinctual passion. Then the reason for berating myself and blaming myself disappeared by itself – it is only natural that stepping out of humanity is causing fear – and it was at the same time clear beyond doubt that I would proceed despite the tremors. GARY: For instance, I am particularly prone to deride myself for feelings of anger. It is not surprising that in earlier years this feeling/emotion dominated ‘my’ existence. It goes in the same way that I am aware of deriding other people, in my mind, for expressing anger. Sometimes I have found myself wondering ‘Why do people get so ugly?’ (here I am using the word ‘ugly’ as a synonym for peevish, annoyed, irritated, aggressive, angry and so forth). I don’t like it when people express anger in my presence. I sometimes am ‘cowed’ by other’s expression of anger, ‘cowed’ in the sense of adopting a submissive stance. I was curious about this reaction, saw it happening a lot, and undertook to investigate it when it came up. This has been happening a lot and I am still investigating. VINEETO: Yes, I am rather astounded how people voluntarily and proudly air their smelly socks in public. It is one thing to feel angry and quite another to let one’s anger out on others. That’s why we actualists use the expression ‘keep your hands in your pockets’ while investigating the social identity and particularly while investigating the instinctual passions. Like you, I used to be ‘cowed’ by other people’s anger, and that is exactly the purpose of aggressive behaviour. Often others’ unexpressed anger had an even stronger effect on me, as aggressive vibes seem to intensify through denial and control. As feeling beings we are very susceptible to psychic emissions from others and this is part and parcel of our instinctual survival mechanism. Apart from considerations for my physical safety when somebody gets angry, I found that my core fear in these situations was to be ‘found out’ for the fraud ‘I’ am – as Alan said it so succinctly in his recent letter to Richard. It’s been an ongoing process from realizing for the first time in a pure consciousness experience that ‘I’ am a fraud to translating this realization into daily discoveries as to how much this alien impostress has been running, and ruining, my life. As I am the one who on my own accord is investigating my own fraudulent existence, nobody else can expose me more than I am already doing so myself! And I am not only admitting that ‘I’ am a fraud, ‘I’ am also ready and willing to take the cure – ‘self’-immolation. Once this commitment to eliminate my own aggression and my own taking offence is taken fully on board, then aggressive arrows of others simple fall flat on the ground. The aggression of others can only trigger fear and anger in me as long as I nourish malice in myself. When I start examining my own anger and maliciousness with the sincere intent to eradicate it source, ‘me’, then I can be confident that there is no glint of malice in what I say and write and therefore other people’s accusations simply look silly. Then whenever an accusation is made, I can use it for my own explorations, as I wrote to a rather belligerent correspondent, –
When I revisited this post that I had written four years ago, I could see my process of learning to think in action. I remember that each paragraph was the end product of mulling over topics, of sincere investigation into my emotions and of honest questioning of my beliefs. I remembered how I had enjoyed the process of discovery and the act of describing it to someone else. One thing, however, was always top priority in my writing – I needed to be 100% sure that I was in no way malicious, grumpy, resentful, spiteful, revengeful or aggressive in what I said. This means sticking to the facts and being aware of the slightest emotional reaction that I might have while making good use of it for investigative purposes each time it happens. Nowadays, having lived in virtual freedom for a sustained period, it has become effortless to be non-malicious and non-sorrowful, and should any emotion be triggered then it is easily spotted and quickly traced. No ‘should’s or shouldn’ts’ prevent me from freely acknowledging when there is a twig of a feeling, being guided by pure intent replaces the need to control and when seen for what it is, the emotion disappears as quickly as it arose. However, most of the reasons to get upset have disappeared altogether as there is no ‘self’-image to uphold and no compulsive need to defend or to maintain my identity. Writing with sincere intent and without malice and sorrow is such an excellent tool to examine one’s relation to other people, to aid one’s thinking, to oil one’s common sense, to set in motion one’s intelligence and to ride on the thrill of ‘living on the cutting edge of reality’ – as Richard termed it. I cannot recommend it highly enough. * VINEETO: I had long discussions with Peter and Richard and read and re-read about the method of Actual Freedom until I had to admit that I had fallen into the trap of attempting to live as a ‘reduced self’, as much as possible devoid of feelings, and that this was the reason why I was feeling so stuck. GARY: I think there is no doubt but what I have been feeling stuck in recent months. You may be pointing to a possible reason for my ‘stuckness’. VINEETO: You might consider that there is a difference between being stuck and feeling stuck. Feeling stuck may be connected to ‘me’ not meeting ‘my’ standards and in this way ‘me’ has come in through the backdoor once again. Whereas being stuck can be easily detected by asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and upon sincere questioning I will notice that I am simply postponing looking at, or addressing, a particular issue. There is nothing wrong with postponing – it’s just that I cannot raise the bar again to feeling excellent as long as I am avoiding the next issue. GARY: I have a question at this point: Is living in the condition known as Virtual Freedom the same thing as being a ‘reduced self’, or is it different? What is behind my question is this: I can see where consciously striving to reduce one’s ‘self’ by the method of repressing or suppressing one’s emotions and feelings results in a condition of being a ‘stripped down self’, as Richard has put it. But then it seems that by continuous practicing of the method of actualism one is, in a sense, entering into a ‘self’-reduction plan, as one finds that one’s identity is getting rather threadbare, withering on the vine, so to speak, but yet not completely absent from the scene, as there are the inevitable ‘bleed-throughs’ of feelings. Do you see what I am getting at? If one is denying, controlling, suppressing, and repressing, that is not what we are talking about at all here. Because one is then still doing the controlling, whereas we are talking about eliminating the controller, the ‘me’ that is reining in the emotions. I think you are talking about this latter process of controlling or reining in the emotions through control, suppression, and selection. VINEETO: I like your expression ‘entering into a ‘self’-reduction plan’ and I have always maintained that without substantially reducing the influence of the ‘self’ one cannot step out of one’s ‘self’ ... or, as Richard wrote to Alan recently –
What is certainly being reduced to a microscopic size is one’s spiritual and social identity – one’s spiritual values, morals and ethics and one’s identity as a parent, as a member of a gender, a race, a nation, a profession or any social-ideological-spiritual-religious movement. When this outer layer of the ‘self’ has been fully examined, its influence successively disappears out of one’s life and life becomes increasingly ‘unrehearsed’ as there is no identity-image to be constantly polished, produced or maintained. However, this social identity is only the outer layer of ‘me’, drilled into me from very early age in order to ensure the smooth operating of society. With diligence and awareness I reduce the influence of my social identity to a minimum so much so that life is experienced as a delight 99% of the time. Then the ‘inevitable ‘bleed-throughs’ of feelings’ that you speak of can then be traced to our raw instinctual passions, the very core of the survival program. At this stage of the process I came to understand that the core of ‘me’ cannot be reduced, but the excesses of the instinctual passions fall by the wayside as the felicitous feelings increase. This is where my misunderstanding of attempting to live as a ‘reduced self’ lay, despite the fact that Richard had been very clear about the method of dealing with emotions all along –
* VINEETO: When I examined this attitude a bit closer, I found it to be a remnant of my past spiritual teachings – despite my initial genuine investigations I had inadvertently transmogrified the method of actualism into the Buddhist-based teachings of transcending or sublimating my feelings instead of eliminating the ‘self’ that generates them. This ‘escape route’ will inevitably present itself as a ‘self’-preserving way of sweeping the remaining ‘self’ and its resultant emotions and feelings ‘under the carpet’ in order to remain ‘me’. At this point the challenge was to see myself coming closer and closer to the point that cleaning myself up was not the whole story – that I was in fact undeniably moving to a point of no return. In hindsight, I can say that attempting to be a rational, sensible but emotion-reduced ‘self’ via sublimated feelings was jamming my foot on the breaks in order ‘to stay in existence’. GARY: OK. I think we have talked about this before. You have helped me through sharing your experiences of sitting in your feelings, neither denying, suppressing, or controlling, and intimately experiencing first-hand the passions, emotions, and feelings that constitute the ‘Human Folly’. I see that many times I am ‘attempting to be a rational, sensible but emotion-reduced ‘self’ via sublimated feelings’. I was always taught that one should not let one’s feelings get the upper hand, that one should always be rational and sensible. A lot of times I shy away from feelings and emotions. I am a very reserved person. So where I am left? I don’t particularly like to express my feelings. If one is actively always reining in their feelings, it tends to drain away the exuberance and enjoyment of life, doesn’t it? So is it a matter of experiencing one’s feelings, even the feelings that one is trying to suppress and control, along with all the socially inculcated reasons for the control? VINEETO: Is it this bit that you are referring to when you said we had talked about this before? –
Looking through my earlier correspondence with you I also found the following piece of writing relevant to the question you raised and, being lazy, I will simply re-post it –
Please remember that what we are all doing this for the first time and do not berate yourself for not having ‘got’ it the first time. Actualism is brand-new in human history and rewiring one’s brain is not a one-night-stand, it takes a good while and often involves a continuous raking over the same territory until the changes are permanent. Investigating one’s emotions, neither expressing nor repressing them, is not something one reads about once and the click, tick and finished. I had to read, re-read and talk about every issue many times before I abolished some of the more stickier points of my misunderstandings and cognitive dissonances. Two things I found vital – I have to experience the emotion in order to be able to investigate it and
second, I neither express nor repress this emotion but explore it until I can experientially pinpoint what has caused it. When an emotion occurs,
either good or bad, I always look for the trigger event and then for the underlying reason. Actualism is not at all about expressing one’s
emotions – after all, how can you be harmless if you express your angry emotions and how can you be happy if you express you misery? The
investigation is a step-by-step process, piercing through one’s layers of ‘self’-defence, trickery, fear and doubt. Peter has given GARY: Actual Freedom, as I understand it, is about totally eliminating the control, pulling the rip chord, so to speak. This is something I am afraid to do. VINEETO: Not only ‘eliminating the control’ but eliminating the very reason why we need to use control – ‘I’ the social identity, the controller or ‘little man or woman in the head pulling the levers’ is needed to keep control to prevent ‘me’ the instinctual animal being from running amok. You said earlier that your identity is ‘withering on the vine, so to speak’ – when this identity has disappeared completely, both ‘I’ and me go together, there is nothing left to be controlled. * VINEETO: <snip>...ever since I have been busy discovering how absolutely safe the actual world is – whenever ‘I’ have stepped aside to be able to experience its sensual abundance and utter perfection. GARY: Yes, I have seen this too through my experiences of the PCE. Yet, ‘I’ am afraid to proceed to my extinction. VINEETO: How about another approach – are you able to stop, now that you have experienced in a PCE what is possible to live 24h a day, everyday? Are you able to devote yourself to a lesser goal? * VINEETO: The trick is to remember not to take the discoveries of your emotions and beliefs as ‘leaks’ of an imperfect personality or as individual bad traits, but to understand them to be manifestations of our genetically inherited disease known as the Human Condition, i.e. common to all. The Human Condition by definition is common to all – however, each individual can instigate and facilitate their freedom only for himself and by himself. GARY: Yes. One of the things recently I was looking into was my continued striving for perfection, my fear of making mistakes, and my enormous tendency to put myself down. I have absolutely no interest in ‘loving myself’ as propounded by today’s New Age therapists and self-help gurus. But I am intensely interested in freeing myself from the shame, guilt, fear, doubt, and insecurity of the Human Folly. At times, it seems that this condition is so deeply ingrained that it must be impossible to ever be free from it, but at other times, those ‘selfless’ intervals, freedom from the debilitating instinctual and emotional package is not only possible but actually happening. VINEETO: As a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity, one of my schemes was – if ‘I’ become perfect, then maybe ‘I’ can stay in existence? Of course, this does not work because ‘I’ can never be perfect, and to try it only brings back the stress, the guilt, the shame, the doubt and the embarrassment that I had begun to eliminate by investigating ‘me’. As for making mistakes – unless you are making mistakes, how to you want to find out what doesn’t work? A good question for me also was – whom am I trying to please, and why? Or to put it in another way – what is the name of the God that is going to punish you when you are doing wrong? The perfection I am seeking it not the petty perfection of ‘me’ not making any mistakes but what I am striving for is to live the incomparable perfection of the universe experienced in a pure consciousness experience. The only goal worth pursuing is to allow that perfection to become apparent unimpeded 24h a day, everyday, and that makes my every effort and every drama on the way worthwhile. As the day-to-day problems have successively disappeared out of my life in the course of virtually eliminating my malice and sorrow, it now is becoming increasingly effortless to at least mimic the perfection experienced in a PCE and crank up my naiveté and joie de vivre – the closest that I as an entity can come to actual innocence and the perfection of the actual world. As I seem to be having a copy and paste day – here is a description of perfection from Richard that I have always liked. It is only applicable when ‘I’ have done everything that ‘I’ could do to clean myself up. And one more thought – Richard talks about ‘developing a superb confidence and an overweening optimism’, which can only be attained by confidently knowing that nothing less than ‘self’-immolation will do. It means that I have checked out all the alternatives, I have made all the mistakes I had to make in order to eliminate what does not work. Then I know with surety that it is ‘me’ that is the ‘mistake’. Without ‘me’ the actual perfection can finally become apparent for this flesh-and-blood body. The thrill of thus writing myself out of existence is enormous...
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