April 14 2025

SONYA: Didn’t realise how long it has been since I last wrote on here. Lately, I’ve been kinda stuck I guess. These are the things I’ve been really struggling with:

So, regarding putting in the work in being happy and harmless. I’m really struggling lately to take it a step further. So here is my little tiny step I’m doing on my own so I can go further into this adventure into living what I really want deep down.

VINEETO: Hi Sonya,

Welcome back to the forum.

If your self-respect allows, I would like to make one or two comments on what you wrote. I appears you are making good progress regarding your problem No. 2 and meet your fear of failing head-on – and you are succeeding. It’s really the only way to deal with such fear – look at it without blinking, so to speak, and you notice that its intensity will diminish right away, and then you can proceed to do what you want to do.

No. 1 is more complex. First of all, you will perhaps be relieved to learn that every single feeling being deep down feels that there is something wrong with ‘being’ here, with being ‘me’. The reason is that ‘I’ as a feeling being am an impostor, a fraud, an alien entity, having taken charge over your flesh-and-blood body. This feeling of something being wrong with ‘you’ will not disappear except in a PCE or when actually free.

What you can do is to diminish the strength and influence of ‘me’ in your daily life by enjoying and appreciating being here and thus reduce the identity-enhancing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and increase the identity-diminishing happy and harmless feelings.

I don’t know how much you read of Richard’s writing, or how much you are interested to read – I can post some quotes here and you let me know if that is explanatory and beneficial for you.

Richard: ‘Being a ‘self’ is because the only way into this world of people, things and events is via the human spermatozoa fertilising the human ova ... thus every human being is endowed, by blind nature, with the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Thus ‘I’ am the end-point of myriads of survivors passing on their genes. ‘I’ am the product of the ‘success story’ of blind nature’s fear and aggression and nurture and desire. Being born of the biologically inherited instincts genetically encoded in the germ cells of the spermatozoa and the ova, ‘I’ am – genetically – umpteen tens of thousands of years old ... *‘my’ origins are lost in the mists of pre-history*. ‘I’ am so anciently old that *‘I’ may well have always existed* ... carried along on the reproductive cell-line, over countless millennia, from generation to generation. And ‘I’ am thus passed on into an inconceivably open-ended and hereditably transmissible future.

In other words: ‘I’ am fear and fear is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am aggression and aggression is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am nurture and nurture is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am desire and desire is ‘me’.

The instinctual passions are the very energy source of the rudimentary animal self (...)’. [emphases added]. (Richard, Homepage).

Richard: Yes, the sense of identity (‘I’ and ‘me’ or ‘self’ and ‘Self’ or ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ or ‘aham’ and ‘atman’ and so on) is the spanner in the works. I fail to see how anybody could even contemplate ridding this body of its alien entity without a clear and distinct knowledge of the ultimate goal. This is why I stress the importance of remembering one of your PCE’s (that all people have had at least once in their lives) and avoiding the cultural interpretations of the experience based upon the narcissistic tendency for the instinctual survival of ‘self’ in some (metaphysical) shape or form. Hence my exposé of the altered state of consciousness known as enlightenment. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 4, 26 January 1999).

Richard: I was born in Australia, of an English/ Scottish Hong Kong-born father and an English/ English Australia-born mother. With this British background, I was enculturated into believing that I was, literally, an Australian citizen ... but with British blood. Now, blood is blood ... there is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. Thus the wars and the suicides – the blood shed and the tears shed – are precipitated because of the absurdity of identification ... is not all this acculturation ridiculous! However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, I was so programmed as to be unable to discriminate fact from fiction. I had no terms of reference that I could use as a standard to determine which was which, as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but similarly conditioned into being an ‘ethnic’ human being.

Thus I bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker.

As I slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was deeply mired in by unravelling it in me, I discovered a second layer under ‘my’ acculturated ethnicity ... ‘I’ was brainwashed into being a ‘man’ and not simply a flesh and blood male body. Under the enculturated layers lies a further identity ... the genetically-inherited animal ‘self’. It took me years and years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’ – a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body. By identification as ‘me’, a psychological/ psychic entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’ ... I discovered that a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body and that this ‘walk-in’ was ‘me’.

So, superficially there is a composite conditioned social identity that encompasses:

1. A vocational identity as ‘employee’/‘employer’, ‘worker’/‘pensioner’, ‘junior/‘senior’ and so on.
2. A national identity as ‘English’, ‘American’, ‘Australian’ and etcetera.
3. A racial identity as ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘brown’ or whatever.
4. A religious/spiritual identity as a ‘Hindu’, a ‘Muslim’, a ‘Christian’, a ‘Buddhist’ ad infinitum.
5. A ideological identity as a ‘Capitalist’, a ‘Communist’, a ‘Monarchist’, a ‘Fascist’ and etcetera.
6. A political identity as a ‘Democrat’, a ‘Tory’, a ‘Republican’, a ‘Liberal’ and all the rest.
7. A family identity as ‘son’/‘daughter’, ‘brother’/‘sister’, ‘father’/‘mother’ and the whole raft of relatives.
8. A gender identity as ‘boy’/‘girl’, ‘man’/‘woman’.

These are related to roles, rank, positions, station, status, class, age, gender ... the whole organisation of hierarchical control. But behind all that – underlying all socialised classifications – is the persistent feeling of being an identity inhabiting the body: an affective ‘entity’ as in a deep, abiding and profound feeling of being an occupant, a tenant, a squatter or a phantom hiding behind a façade, a mask, a persona; as a subjective emotional psychological ‘self’ and/or a passionate psychic ‘being’ (‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) inhabiting the psyche; a deep feeling of being a ‘spirit’; a consciousness of the immanence of ‘presence’ (which exists immortally); an awareness of being an autological ‘being’ ... the realisation of ‘Being’ itself. In other words: everything you think, feel and instinctually know yourself to be.

Your feeling of being – the real ‘me’ – is evidenced when one says: ‘But what about me, nobody loves me for me’. For a woman it may be: ‘You only want me for my body ... and not for me’. For a man it may be: ‘You only want me for my money ... and not for me’. For a child it may be: ‘You only want to be my friend because of my toys (or sweets or whatever)’. That deep feeling of ‘me’ – that ‘being’ itself – is at the core of identity. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 28 January 1999)

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Sonya, 14 April 2025).

June 22 2025

VINEETO: Well, well, I was literally astounded that this was so eye-opening for you. At first, I thought it was too trite to write it out, it being the actualism method 101. What an effect a choice of a different expressions can make! Perhaps it has something to do with the serious conditioning of mainly the male of the species to not show or express fear of any kind – and therefore not to feel fear – whatever the circumstances. [Emphasis by Kuba]. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba7, 22 June 2025).

KUBA: Yes there is something of that kind exactly which I could sum it up with the admonition to – “keep yourself together”. I only have to go back to mine and Sonya’s wedding to demonstrate such a thing. That when the weight of the situation (it being a public event and the rest of it) begins to be felt there is the sense that Sonya could publicly express her potential anxiety or what have you, that perhaps it would even be seen as cute etc And then I as the man feel that I am to “be the rock”, that I must “keep it together”.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

Thank you for your long and perspicacious reply. It’s a good way to sum up one of the major social identity rules for a ‘man’ – to “keep it together”, as a provider and protector. Given that this particular conditioning is rooted in the social identity, i.e. the whole image/ persona you have imbibed from childhood onward of ‘who’ you should be, it would make sense to dismantle this identity first.

To explain, the social identity is overlaid over the instinctual passions attempting to curb the worst excesses but can be safely dismantled with an active pure intent in place.

Even though one can become actually free without having dismantled the whole of one’s social identity – if aspects of it bother you now then now is the time to examine those and may remove a lot of your present ‘jitters’. It will also remove various obstacles/ concerns which you may come across exploring the full range of naiveté and being as close to innocence as a ‘self’ can be.

There is a very useful and informative article on “The Formation and Persistence of the Social Identity” which Richard wrote only two years ago. He lists the various aspects of each person’s social identity, and you are presently looking at Points No. 8 and No. 9 of the list, but the others most likely apply as well. A summary can be found at the Library page on Social Identity with additional links to related topics and various selected correspondences.

I have also added a section in the “Basic to Full Freedom” article, called man/woman identity as well as the follow-up sexual identity. There is heaps of useful information both from Richard, as well as from ‘Peter’ and ‘Vineeto’ who explored a wide range of their own social identities during the in-control methodological virtual freedom.

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VINEETO: You said it well – “fear of the jitters” – it is the fear of fear which is the largest aspect of it, and once you allow the feeling itself without feeding it with fear of fear then what remains is mostly small potatoes.

KUBA: And this is exactly it, again taking the wedding situation as an example, it is not that there is an issue with fear per se, it is rather that by admitting/ showing/ being seen to be afraid I am “not keeping it together”.

VINEETO: Ha, there is a reason why an ongoing excellence experience is called Being-out-from-under-control – the control being determined by your social conditioning.

KUBA: This is a pretty fascinating topic actually because I can see this being a very core feature of being a ‘man’, the rock, the protector, the one that has it under control etc. What ‘I’ fear more than fear itself is being publicly known to be afraid. And of course this just becomes a layer cake of fear and anxiety.

But of course considering the kind of conditioning that has been enforced on men through history I can see just how strong this would be. That this would be one of ‘my’ worst fates as a ‘man’ – to publicly be known to be afraid.

VINEETO: This is certainly a promising field of investigation, and you will be surprised how freeing it is when the various layers of this conditioning fall by the wayside when you discover how redundant all these aspects of ‘you’, the guardian, really are when pure intent is guiding you.

KUBA: Of course it is not to do with publicly showing this or that, as it is about neither expressing nor repressing the fear and ‘being’ that fear without moving in either direction. But the most insidious outcome of this conditioning is that ‘I’ separate ‘myself’ from ‘my’ fear and thus lock it into that “layer cake”. Then ‘I’ can only crank up the aggression on ‘myself’ and fight this fear as if ‘I’ am fighting dragons and various other monsters. And of course in the process ‘I’ become callous, insensitive etc.

So what I can see is that initially this way of dealing with fear is what ‘I’ did to fit into ‘my’ role as a man. But once habituated this became a problem in its own right, because the only thing ‘I’ could ‘do’ with ‘my’ fear was to turn it into a layer cake and then fight with it.

VINEETO: It’s great that you see this because now your focus of attention has shifted to where the first problem is, not fear itself but the role you have accepted simply because you were born as a male flesh-and-blood body.

KUBA: And this aspect of using aggression to cover up / deal with ‘my’ feelings, this can be observed as a very common coping strategy for men. That to be emotional equals being weak / not keeping it together. Now I am not proposing the opposite of this (which is quite a popular flavour of belief these days) that “true strength lies in vulnerability” etc. This would simply be to move from suppression to expression.

VINEETO: It is more about untangling this whole mess and seeing that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’, that whatever feeling is currently taking place in the affective faculty – ‘I’ am ‘being’ that feeling. And once this is seen (with any feeling whatsoever) it is remarkably freeing.

Again, there is a third alternative – look at the specific morals and ethics and beliefs and attitudes and persona you have taken on board with their accompanying beliefs and principles and see if any of them is worth keeping (apart from paying lip service and obeying the laws of the land and social protocols).

Richard: Another part of what ‘I’ am made up of is beliefs: one’s sense of being a social identity is largely made up of beliefs ... beliefs as well as feelings. In fact, a belief is an emotion-backed thought ... passionate imagination. The vast majority of the beliefs that one carries are not invented by oneself; they were imbibed with the mother’s milk and added to thereupon up to the present day. They are inherited beliefs, put into the child with love and fear – reward and punishment – and added to as an adult out of awe and dread – the carrot and the stick – that power and authority engenders and thrives upon. It behoves one to examine each and every belief – especially those that pass for ‘truths’ – and watch them disappear out of one’s life forever. It is no wonder human beings are such a desperate lot. Beliefs and feelings are the bane of humankind ... they have been so instrumental in killing, maiming, torturing and otherwise causing such pain and suffering since the dawn of human history, that one wonders that they are given any credence at all these days. It is so liberating to be free of beliefs – of the action of believing itself – and feelings that I cannot recommend their elimination highly enough. [Emphases added]. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

KUBA: In fact it is as if now I understand the actualism method fully – In that I know there is not a single feeling that ‘I’ could experience which is not something ‘I’ am at the same time ‘being’. That is to say ‘I’ am no longer afraid of this and that feeling, they are not something coming from ‘out there’ to get ‘me’. And this applies without exception to anything at all that takes place in the affective faculty, which means ‘I’ always have a choice in how ‘I’ am experiencing this moment of being alive.

And taking the above into account whilst knowing experientially what is possible for ‘me’ to live, of course it is ‘being’ naïveté that is the optimum manner in which ‘I’ can experience this moment of being alive – there is no reason at all not to live it each moment again.

VINEETO: What I am suggesting, when I talk about the beliefs which make up one’s social identity is that when you look at a particular belief/ principle which includes a whole range of associated feelings, then once you are able to see through that particular belief and replace it with the factual evidence that it’s unnecessary, the whole range of associated feelings will also disappear.

KUBA: I will just add the below too :

Kuba: So it seems what is required is to find a way to remain in no1 indefinitely, which means finding a way to return there once ‘I’ come in with ‘my’ friction – “a funny feeling in the belly when anxiousness sets in”, hehe it is quite funny that ‘I’ could prevent ‘myself’ from meeting ‘my’ destiny over such a silly thing.

Vineeto: You don’t need to find the way back, you know it already. Occasional jitters are a natural part of the process. Allow the tenderness, it’s sweet and it’s fun, and the already existing perfection will each time become more and more apparent. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba7, 22 June 2025).

This really hit the nail on the head too, of course I don’t have to find it at all, in the same way I wouldn’t write something like – I can feel good some of the time so I need to find a way to feel good all of the time. It is the same way! If I can get back to feeling good once I can get back to feeling good every time. There is not a separate way for once and another for all of the time.

VINEETO: Yes, there is no separate way for any of your feelings, but if they are kept in situ by a feeling-fed thought, i.e. one or more beliefs, then you look at the belief(s) first.

You must be delighted to have found more puzzles to solve. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba8, 22 June 2025).

June 27 2025

KUBA: What a fascinating experience I just had! I can’t sleep now following it so I thought I might as well write about it.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

Isn’t this a great discovery! This apperceptive insight lived experientially is the end of believing any and all principles and concepts, axioms and ideals, tenets and illusions (as long as you comply with the legal laws and observe the social protocols).

Now there is nothing (credible) in the way to altruistically allow, with supreme confidence, the very core of ‘being’ itself – the selfish instinct for individual survival – to disappear into the same “‘nothing’ ‘behind it all’”.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba 8, 27 June 2025).

June 27 2025

KUBA: Yes indeed! And what a contrast I see now, there is ‘me’ who naturally feels/believes to be ultimately precious and intrinsically important and now that very same ‘me’ has been exposed to be nothing but an expression of a blind instinctual pattern.

And as such it is worth absolutely nothing, ‘my’ precious is worth absolutely nothing.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

Ha, I figured you can now make the connection to Geoffrey’s report.

When everything is swept out from under the carpet, there is nothing left to hide, to defend, to hold precious, or to fear.

Simply stillness – the stillness of infinite space and eternal time.

Cheers Vineeto

PS: But isn’t it amazing and miraculous that this “crude and blind pattern” has evolved human being to being sentient, sensible, sensuous, intelligent human beings capable of apperception and thus able to free themselves of the dictates of blind nature’s software and discover the actual world with all its wonders!

(Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba 8, 27 June 2025a).

October 6 2025

KUBA: Ok so got some movement on this front, at least the indignation part for sure. I realised that what is needed is not merely looking at various concepts such as justice or fairness but an altogether different paradigm, the clue being in the word benevolence. Basically it is about stepping out of that old way altogether, of right and wrong, punishment and justice, score-keeping, expectations etc.

With benevolence there is no calculation to decide if one is deserving of beneficence, there is only beneficence, rooted in fellowship regard, and this is just a far better way of living, actually it’s very charming.

VINEETO: Hi Kuba,

Indeed. There is an actual benevolence as well as equity and parity, magnanimity and generosity – nothing is missing when any of the rigid real-world principles and virtuous/ sinful concepts are being abandoned (as long as you live by the legal laws and social protocols of the country you are residing in). Besides –

Richard: There is only one person in this whole wide world that one can change ... myself. This is the most important point to understand thoroughly, otherwise one endlessly tries to change the other ... and as there are billions of ‘others’ it would be a life-time task with still no success at the end. If one grasps that the way to peace-on-earth is by changing oneself – and oneself only – then all of one’s interactions with others will undergo a radical transformation. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).

Isn’t it a wonderful and innocuous aim to become free from animosity and anguish –

Richard: When the psychological ego and psychic soul willingly relinquish their sovereignty and take their leave, the senses can act in the optimum. Just as when a normal person becomes blind and all their other senses are heightened, so too does the abdication result in a phenomenal increase in the pleasurable and luxurious sensitivity of being a corporeal body in this very physical world. The resultant benevolence produces easy good-will, kindness and altruism, for one is living in a friendly world … made all the more amiable because of the innate munificence and magnanimity of the purity of the perfection of the infinitude of the universe as is evidenced only at this moment in time. (Richard’s Journal, Article 34, pg 252)

KUBA: There is some movement on the thrills part too although it is not resolved. My mum the other day told me of some old stories when I was young and I got some new roller blades. I actually skipped school the following day and rode right up to the school entrance during lunchtime to show off. Now she mentioned this story as part of a point she was making that she has always nurtured my individuality. However I see now that what she was actually nurturing was licentiousness. And indeed I have come to associate license with freedom, and freedom to be ‘me’ as ‘I’ am is nothing at all like what the words actual freedom refer to. So it is like I am untangling this slowly, of this weird association where ‘I’ have been habitually giving free reign to self-centred urges and thinking that this means freedom. But the ‘freedom’ of licentiousness is more like anarchy, and this is where the hook is, ‘I’ get to operate without bounds and there is this thrill associated with it.

Actually I should probably clarify that my actual behaviour certainly does not verge into anything like anarchy or antisocial behaviour, but that is what the energy of those thrills is all about.

VINEETO: Even though you don’t act it out, this is a good insight to never confuse freedom with licentiousness. Anarchy is born of resentment against the restrictions of one’s social identity (and as such merely the other side of the coin), whereas benevolence and magnanimity inherent to the perfection and purity of the infinite universe, experienced as pure intent, allows one to safely dismantle all the rules and concepts of the social identity, one by one.

KUBA: It’s funny because yesterday I wrote that I need to decide what I want to do with my life, but the truth of it is that I already know, actually it’s not even an option that it could go any other way than towards the ending of the human condition. But this modus operandi of giving reign to self-centred urges, this is a major stumbling block in that it is impossible to be happy and harmless whilst it remains. In fact, to link it back to benevolence, this is like trying to mix oil and water, to give reign to self-centred urges and to be benevolent is literally 2 different directions.

Yesterday as I was working a hen do this really clicked on a deep level, the group had such a great time that they were naively jumping about and squealing by the end of it all. And it was so lovely to observe this, but all throughout this particular job I was well aware of how ‘my’ self-centred urges would only dirty this and so they played no part. When I got back in my car I could really see that these are 2 different directions to travel now, that if I want to enable more of what I saw during that job then ‘my’ self-centred urges will have to be left behind.

VINEETO: Excellent – now with this unambiguous clarity you can act, i.e. set out to whittle away at the addiction for excitement, thrill and buzz with an ongoing affective attentiveness, whenever and wherever the temptation arises –

Richard: And thus was it that ‘attentiveness’ became actualism’s designator for a particular tool for facilitating the actualism method – as distinct from and contrasted to ‘mindfulness’ being the buddhistic method, in and of itself, even unto secularised versions – so as to further distinguish the fact of the actualism method being so totally different to anything else (or, put another way, that the buddhistic ‘mindfulness’ method is another ball-game entirely).

(Please note: once it becomes second-nature – a non-verbal attitude to life; a wordless approach to living – an intuitive awareness, as in an affective monitoring of mood and temperament, dispenses with that initial diligence and perseverance). [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Andrew, 28 February 2016).

It is such an exciting adventure in itself to be a pioneer in pursuing something so new to human consciousness – what other thrill do you need!

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba 10, 6 October 2025).

October 18 2025

CHRONO: Hi Vineeto,

VINEETO: What you really mean by “being a ‘man’” is what you consider the role of a man, the social identity aspects that you swallowed hook, line and sinker (like everyone else). And it is well worth looking at these expectations/ obligations enshrined in the human condition what put so much pressure on you.

CHRONO: Yes I have seen these expectations/ obligations featured in many aspects of my life. In relation to male friends (primarily), it could be that I must maintain some outward appearance of confidence, being nonplussed, being “skilled”, being of high status, etc. With my partner, it feels like that I must be a place of safety and comfort for her (backed by the feeling of responsibility and seriousness) and that if I don’t then I have failed or am a failure. At work, it feels like I must always be excelling and must always know the answer. It could all come under some guise of being an ‘authority’. If I had to go a little further, I could say that all of that is about projecting power.

VINEETO: Hi Chrono,

Well said. Having recognized this you can now decline “projecting power” and experiment with allowing the naiveté which you talked about in your last message –

Chrono: Seeing this, I then also allowed myself on the same day to meet them right where they are and I am always delighted at how easy interactions are. People enjoy associating with me when I am enjoying my own association. When this happens, there’s a background feeling of ‘this can’t be’ or ‘something will go wrong’. But I find that even when people may become upset, my remaining in this delighting has a rather conciliatory effect..

VINEETO: While you are doing that you can also pop your head around the corner, so to speak, and recognize that in actuality you are already a man, a male human being, and in actuality this is already perfect. So when ‘I’, the identity, comes back in with all ‘my’ demands how ‘I’ should be, there is a salubrious actual perspective which allows you to look at those ‘problems’ in more naïve way and makes it all much less serious.

CHRONO: When I think on this, I can understand it intellectually. But in society it doesn’t seem enough. I think it’s about showing ‘my’ usefulness to society. Otherwise I could be discarded. Which means being ostracized, lonely, punished in some way. Everything that I am being perhaps in this entire journal is being kept in place by this fear of retribution from society and humanity. Perhaps another dare.

VINEETO: The dare is to become autonomous, less and less dependant on other people’s opinions and demands. It happens when you gradually find out that there is something better than having the fickle approval and praise from your contemporaries. There is an actual world right here, right now, and right under your nose. You may enjoy this story from Richard (Richard, List D, Rick, Wonder-land-tale).

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VINEETO: Indeed … you may even discover that behind the idea of a “being a man” needing “‘sexual prowess’” is hidden a yearning for intimacy. After all, a near-actual intimacy is something so new, it has to be lived to be discovered.

CHRONO: Yes, this hidden yearning is what I’m currently trying to locate. Which perhaps may only come about if I abandon the sexual drive as well. I am wondering if that drive has any role to play at all in any of this. I sometimes struggle to see how it could not arise at all unless one is already actually free.

VINEETO: Not so fast. You cannot abandon the sexual drive – it is an instinctual passion. It will only completely disappear when the whole identity becomes extinct. Any attempt to abandon the sexual drive will necessarily lead to suppression and repression. This is the old way which both Western and Eastern religions promoted for thousands of years, and if you only know a little bit of history you already know where it leads to.

What you can do is sincerely examine each of the various aspects of your acquired identity as a man, and if it interferes with being happy and harmless aim for as much naiveté as you dare, which already had such fortuitous outcome.

Here is a short excerpt from feeling being ‘Peter’ regarding male identity –

‘Peter’: What we found in our investigations has been quite shocking – a blow to that insidious feeling of pride that inevitably causes human beings to refuse to admit that their behaviour is just plain stupid and that ultimately prevents any possibility of radical, effective change. How could I have been so stupid? But the facts spoke for themselves. How could I have believed that simply because ‘everybody behaves that way’, I should also behave that way? How could I believe that everybody else was ‘getting it wrong’, and not me? Was I going to endlessly try and change every woman I was with or somehow try and find the ‘right one’ amongst the billions? How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me? (Peter’s Journal, Living Together)

This correspondence may be useful as well –

Gary: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to.
In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed.

‘Peter’: (…) Then there are other aspects of one’s social identity that demand attention if one is to ever get to the stage where one can see and treat one’s fellow human beings as fellow human beings and not continue to think and feel them to be separate ‘beings’. A man never meets a woman and sees her or treats her as a fellow human being because men and women have been instilled with opposing gender identities – identities that are mandated by each side in the battle of the sexes and are rife with mutual feelings of suspicion, fear, ignorance and superstition. Similarly, a father never meets a son and a mother never meets a daughter for each has a socially-imposed identity relative to each other – a complex set of social obligations, emotional demands and needs, expectations and resentments that serve to prevent each from either seeing or treating each other as fellow human beings. Similarly, an American never meets an Australian, a Lithuanian never meets a Nigerian and so on, for each believe they belong to a different culture and each call a particular piece of the planet ‘home’. The list goes on, but I won’t, for you will have got the gist by now.

What normally happens in relationships when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, is that the each party blames the other for failing to meet their needs, fulfill their expectations, nurture them sufficiently, respect their feelings, and such like. Often a begrudging compromise is reached in relationships or failure is allowed to run its natural course. As you well know from your experience with actualism, the only way out of this mess is to demolish one’s own social identity, piece-by-piece, element-by-element.
And the proof that this process works is that you begin to not only see but to treat the fellow human beings you come in contact with as exactly that – fellow human beings, regardless of their age, gender, kin, race, religion, culture, nationality, and so on. (Actualism, Peter, Selected Correspondence, Social Identity).

As you might see, loyalty plays a big part in keeping the social identity in place.

Cheers Vineeto (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono 2, 18 October 2025).