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(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Correspondence with Adam-H on Discuss Actualism Forum
ADAM-H: Just wanted to say, Vineeto, that I experienced a deep shift while reading that
post. But I really have felt the collective momentum that in my own experience is best described as a confidence that no matter what happens feeling good is the response that makes sense. Constantly seeing that mirrored back by everyone’s own unique and intelligent perspective is majorly helpful to fuel this confidence, although the ultimate fuel for it is the positive feedback of seeing how the more I have that confidence the better things get. 
VINEETO: Hi Adam, Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. It’s great news that you get so much confidence from the “collective momentum” on this list. After all, feeling beings are gregarious beings and respond to other people’s feelings and vibes. Now there is a choice for sharing felicitous and innocuous feelings and vibes, and simultaneously improve your own capacity for more enjoyment and appreciation by choosing to feel good in every situation. Also, it is marvellous that you derive your “ultimate fuel” from “the positive feedback of seeing how the more I have that confidence the better things get”. Have you considered tapping into pure intent via rememoration of your most outstanding PCE? Unless you have already done so, this will give you an even more reliable source of confidence, it being the final arbiter that you are on the right track as well as continuous inspiration and a constantly available guide for increasing naïveté in a real world of serious sophisticates. In any case, it is great to see that so many people are experiencing naiveté in one form or another now and it can only get better and more fun and enjoyment. Let us hear more of your exploits, it is always appreciated when someone shares their success with actualism. Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: The other big change in this time was entering into my first (still ongoing) long-term relationship with my girlfriend. We’ve been living together and spending almost all of our free time together all this time, in relatively good (but far from perfect) harmony and intimacy. There’s no other place in my life where there is such direct feedback for the quality of my actualism practice as there is in how I experience our relationship. When I’m not applying the actualism method, the relationship can feel unfair and stifling, while when I am applying it things can feel incredibly intimate to the point of feeling magical, like there is no separation between us. These ways of experiencing can alternate fairly rapidly where I feel like I can ascend and descend through that spectrum of experience in the course of a week. With ‘work stress’ on the other hand where relationships are much more measured and controlled, that same alternation in mode of experience is much more internal. VINEETO: Hi Adam, Welcome back to the forum. Great to hear your detailed report and success. As you have mentioned stress, and work stress in particular, maybe this is the topic to direct your affective attentiveness to in order to determine what causes you to feel this stress in the first place. There is not much point aiming for naiveté or even “care to be innocence personified” (which only an actually free person can be) before you are able to recognize, dismantle and abandon the triggers for feeling stressed. You say that stress equally affects your mood in your “first-time” relationship, so the feeling of stress can have multiple and diverse as yet unexamined reasons. Once you start paying close attention you will find a treasure-trove of exciting discoveries that can make your life instantly better when you understand each issue more fully as how ‘you’ tick – and thus be able to get back to feeling good and appreciating much more quickly. ADAM-H: My focus, inspired by the successes of several participants and their interactions with Vineeto, has mostly been on diving into naiveté. This has been a process of making an effort to recognize that I am my feelings, that I can choose how I want to be, and that being naiveté is essential to (or perhaps the same as?) being happy and harmless. VINEETO: This is excellent. Still stress, according to your report, seems to interrupt feeling good and needs to be addressed –
ADAM-H: I remember being particularly stirred by this from Vineeto:
especially the endorsement of Kuba’s ‘passionate care to be innocence personified’, recognizing that it had never really been part of how I approached actualism. VINEETO: Of course, it is beneficial to experiment with being naïve and use all the good
tips and information Claudiu
You can change Richard’s last sentence to “with a diminished identity in situ/ a diminished affective faculty extant” – then it becomes clear that the more diminished the identity becomes, naiveté will increase accordingly. ADAM-H: Since then, I’ve been attempting to galvanize that
passionate care which is for this body and everybody to flourish through ‘my’ seeking naivete, which is
inextricably linked to seeking my end. Directly recognizing that my calculating/ guileful tendencies are the very
thing that prevents happiness and harmless is a small step from seeing that my being is the very thing that
prevents perfection. VINEETO: Mmh, becoming more and more happy and increasingly harmless, i.e. considerate, in your daily life is the best thing you can do for your fellow beings right now, particular for your partner, and of course for yourself. In other words, when you emanate less and less stressful feelings and vibes and are able to neither suppress them nor acting on them, and/or eventually not having them arise in the first place, the less you contribute to stress circulating and multiplying. Start from where you are at, and with pure intent the progress of the actualism method will fall into place organically. It’s best to avoid creating conceptual maps, which you then try to follow, as this methodology, so tempting for many, only leads to strife (stress), self-deception, and ultimately disappointment ... and is in the very opposite to being naïve. I snipped the next section because Claudiu has already answered it. Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: Thanks Vineeto VINEETO: There is not much point aiming for naiveté or even “care to be innocence personified” (which only an actually free person can be) before you are able to recognize, dismantle and abandon the triggers for feeling stressed. You say that stress equally affects your mood in your “first-time” relationship, so the feeling of stress can have multiple and diverse as yet unexamined reasons. Once you start paying close attention you will find a treasure-trove of exciting discoveries that can make your life instantly better when you understand each issue more fully as how ‘you’ tick – and thus be able to get back to feeling good and appreciating much more quickly. ADAM-H: Interesting, it seems like your overall impression is that I’m putting the cart before the horse a bit. I can confirm that the investigation side of my practice has maybe been a bit light recently. I wouldn’t say I neglect it entirely but it certainly hasn’t been the focus. With the flavor of naivete powerfully enticing me right now, I’m definitely interested in making it more consistent, so thank you for the advice that the way to do so is more focus/ investigation on the issues that interrupt it. VINEETO: Hi Adam, You are welcome. It may well be only a ‘small cart’ that is ‘before the horse.’ Naturally, being stressed needs “‘good’ investigation”, as Geoffrey said in the quote below, so you can recognize and then decline what causes you stress. As ‘Vineeto’ observed early on, it’s often the ‘good’ feelings such as pride, ambition, loyalty, virtue, being ‘right’ and other feelings like this, which caused the ‘bad’ feelings such as stress to achieve the ‘good’ feeling or disappointment when not achieving it. And unless those ‘good’ feelings are recognized and acknowledged with the ‘bad’ feelings both will stay in situ.
Thus, when you found the trigger, you can get back to feeling good (not the same as having a ‘good’ feeling) and enjoy and appreciate being alive. Make sure, when feeling good that you’ve understood enough of what triggered the feeling so as to not have it happen again. Then naturally you can enjoy even more and increase this enjoyment with appreciation. * VINEETO: What feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that for ‘her’ being naïve was at first not easy to establish, ‘she’ had to have success in other areas with applying the actualism method consistently and rigorously, such as dismantling various beliefs, and all the while ‘she’ was determined to be ruthlessly honest with herself and being more and more sincere. Out of that sincerity ‘she’ then could allow ‘herself’ to be more and more unsophisticated and guileless. ADAM-H: I think I am on the same page in terms of the ruthless honesty with myself, and it is clear to me how the sincerity of that intention segues into naiveté. Basically if I am really honest about how and why I’m not happy and harmless, it segues into an experiential realization that ‘I’ am the problem, which segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful. VINEETO: That’s excellent and it already “segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful”. ADAM-H: The form that this takes for me right now is mostly focused on intentions and vibes more than beliefs, which may be a shortcoming. This is related to previous struggles going in circles of ‘philosophizing and psychologising’ in the past when my practice did have more focus on investigation. VINEETO: I’m not sure what you mean by “intentions” – are they certain plans for the future? Also I don’t know what you mean by being “focused on … vibes” – are you focused on your vibes (which are essentially your feelings), or are you trying to figure out other people’s vibes in order to respond accordingly? It is definitely more beneficial to pay affective attention to how you feel and what is preventing you from feeling good rather than guessing other people’s vibes in order to react according to your guesses. One, you can never be sure if these are your feelings or their feelings/vibes and two, your focus is on their feelings rather than your own. The only person you can change is yourself. ADAM-H: It’s somewhat rare that I get back to feeling good by
recognizing an unexamined belief, much more often it’s closer to a ‘resolution’ that I don’t want to
experience life this way, fuelled by the memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way,
plus the memory that once I am experiencing life in that other way all of those ‘problems’ will seem imaginary
and get dealt with in a manner that is effortless and harmless. Perhaps what is necessary is that once I get into
that state where all the problems melt away and seem imaginary, what I need to do is basically dive back into them
and closely examine how and why they seemed real vs. how and why they now seem imaginary? Or is there something more
fundamentally off with how I’m approaching things? VINEETO: Not fundamentally, just a little tweaking here and there … Mmh, resolutions generally don’t work as it’s a form of controlling yourself to feel in a certain way – if that is what you mean by “resolution”. Whereas recognizing that your feelings are caused by a certain belief and then are able to replace this belief with a fact, this will make the belief evaporate and thus no ‘resolution’ is required. You don’t need to believe in a fact, it just sits there, unsupported. “The memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way” can strengthen your intent to be/become more happy and harmless, and perhaps allows you to take life less seriously, less sophisticated, more naïvely. Actual change happens now, only this moment is actual. The past is not happening now neither is the future happening now – that’s why you don’t want to waste this moment by feeling stressed, remembering good intentions and bad decisions or planning/ wishing something in the future. Now is the only moment you are being alive. Realising this, again and again helps a lot to recognize that feeling bad is just silly. Here Richard tells a correspondent how to access naiveté whenever you want to –
(Richard, List D; Syd, 26 May 2009)
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: I’m not sure what you mean by “intentions” – are
they certain plans for the future? ADAM-H: Just for a little more clarity on what I meant by intentions and vibes – I did mean my own intentions and vibes. Effectively the ruthless honesty with myself is honesty about my own self-centeredness and harmfulness (which I was loosely referring to as intentions/ vibes), which segues into seeing that I’m the problem etc. VINEETO: Hi Adam, Thank you for the clarification. The way you describe yourself may be ruthless but not very friendly towards yourself. It’s a good idea to treat yourself as a friend and not someone you need to take down. There are already enough others who do that.
The actualism method is to enjoy and appreciate being alive – only when something happens, which diminishes this enjoyment and appreciation, then you get back to feeling good and from there look at what triggered the diminishment. There is no need to go out of your way to look for trouble. ADAM-H: I was trying to express how, overall, my practice of
actualism is focused on the core feelings and attitudes that I have that are opposed to happiness and harmless, less
so on the beliefs I have that are opposed to happiness and harmlessness. I’m thinking a bit more focus on beliefs
will be beneficial since I haven’t really been thinking about things in terms of beliefs, worldviews, psittacisms
lately. VINEETO: It’s not about which aspect of ‘me’ to focus on but on whatever is happening at this moment – if it’s a belief which causes diminishment in feeling good right now, then this is what you figure out; if it’s a habit, such as resentment or castigating yourself, then you acknowledge and decline this habit by replacing it with something better; if it is a certain attitude, then you look at that and work out in what way you can exchange it for a more beneficial attitude. As Geoffrey said, “It’s essentially that “good” investigation is just seeing what’s preventing me from feeling good right now. There’s no need to get any more complex.” Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: So I am running into some difficulty getting back to feeling good from a state of stress. Over the last week I observed myself moving from happy and harmless, to good feelings, and now to stress. Although I saw the good feelings replacing naiveté as it happened, I basically didn’t have enough motivation to stop it. It basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté, congratulating myself, and imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté. Now that the good feelings are replaced with bad, the motivation is there and I am definitely keeping this whole cycle in mind in hopes that it gives me more focus the next time around. Anyways, stress is what is here now preventing feeling good. The stress is about work (as per usual) and specifically fears about how I am replaceable and ultimately at the mercy of the whims of my boss. I’m also seeing that I’m embarrassed about having this stress, partly because I think it suggests I’m incompetent, and partly because I’ve dealt with it so many times in so many ways that I think I should have really figured it out by now. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll solve this right here and right now, I’ve been contemplating it
while writing this post for a while, but just wanted to get something into my journal while I’m in this spot. VINEETO: Hi Adam, The first thing that occurred to me was that you were feeling good and feeling naïve and then “it basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté” and you were “imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté”. It could well be that this hijacking of naiveté by ‘’me’ is what caused the original feelings of stress. To fulfil this imagination you would have to manufacture being naïve, which is the very opposite of being naïve, i.e. letting life live you, and therefore a stressful task rather than a joy to be. Because the feeling of stress continued you then found a likely cause transferring it all to work-related problems. I am not saying they don’t exist but the primary trigger was that your naiveté was taken over by the desire to being praised “for my naiveté” – in other words manifested as the co-joined twins of pride and humility, swinging from one end to the other. I suggest to get back to feeling good, or at least feeling ok, and then see if what I said makes sense to you. Perhaps it helps to understand more of this aspect of your social identity and thus can be declined so you will be able to get back to a more consistent feeling good. It’s also useful to remember that when you fight/ reject any of your feelings you add affective energy to that feeling and thus increase it. As a reminder, here Richard wrote in detail how to access sincere/ pure intent, which is essential for having success with the actualism method –
Let me know how it works for you. Cheers Vineeto
JOHN-E: There seems to be a problem with the PCE video. In the description of the download it says the file is 1.7Gb but the downloadable file is only 1gb and can’t be played beyond 34min even though the media player says the file is 59min. Maybe something went wrong with the encoding or possibly uploading of the file? ADAM-H: I had the same issue initially with the downloaded version, but playing the video on the server worked fine. I then found that by playing on the server and using the menu inside the online video player however, I could download the full file without the issue you’re describing. So I do think something is up with the download button for the PCE video specifically, the other two are working fully. VINEETO: Hi Adam and John, Thank you both for your feedback. I was able to figure out the glitch – the ‘download’ had capital letters in the link,
whereas the .mp4 file name had small letters ‘pce’. ADAM-H: Also just FYI, this page https://www.actualfreedom.com.au/sundry/orderformpaypal.htm is still linked in the site map. VINEETO: Thank you Adam, an oversight of mine which I have corrected now. ADAM-H: And p.p.s. thank you so much for making the videos and
journals freely available! I’m so psyched to watch them again, I haven’t had a DVD player or a digital copy in a long time. VINEETO: You are welcome. I was a pleasure to get it all organized with the help of a friendly practitioner of actualism and have it ready for uploading. I watched all the video just recently and they have a lot of different valuable information apart from the pleasure of the pleasant background surrounding during the conversations. Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: Hey Vineeto, I managed to get back to feeling good by contemplating how, if it came down to it, I would sacrifice the things I feel that I’m protecting (namely my job) if it meant I could be perfectly and continuously naive. I also had a moment of realizing that underneath the fears about my job was the fear that I wasn’t likeable (which related to job insecurity, hence my fears about the ‘whims’ of my boss). VINEETO: Hi Adam, Chrono has just posted a report Instead of “sacrifice the things I feel that I’m protecting” you can instead put everything on a preference basis –
And instead of wondering why other people do perhaps not like you, you can find out if you like yourself and if not why not. Is there perhaps a bad feeling lurking in the dark that you want to keep hidden, hidden from yourself? Something which perhaps requires some bright light of awareness? Something you can do something about with sincere intent to be happy and harmless? ADAM-H: Now that I am feeling better and contemplating your
suggestion, I definitely think it has some validity. Once I started hijacking the naiveté I started feeling insecure
about it continuing, and started being oversensitive to other people’s reactions to me. This instantly created a
cycle where I became more disingenuous trying to get people to like/ value me, which because it had the opposite
effect eventually lead to me giving up in a state of self-pity. Anyways, I’m now just tuning into the ‘inherent’
value of being naive, rather than what it gets for me. I’m not quite there but I’m peering over at the state of
‘gay abandon’ and trying to work up the daring to get back to it and let things take care of themselves, let life
live me, and give up on the careful control and manipulations. It’s still a little hard to believe everything won’t
fall apart though. VINEETO: You see, you can’t make naiveté happen, you can only allow yourself to be more naïve, in this moment – it is something outside the domain of the ‘controller’. It happens when you allow life to happen, not have it ‘your’ way. Hence a good way to start is to put everything on a preference basis, give up control a little – and don’t expect everything to happen at once (like a big leap to “the state of ‘gay abandon’”) – that again would be the opposite of being naïve. You can experiment when doing nothing in particular for a while, and not know what is going to happen next, feeling a bit foolish perhaps, that’s ok, then a bit more of that, allow the objections and recognize the silliness, then get back to feeling good. Just explore what happens without plans how it should turn out … Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO to JesusCarlos: Chrono has just posted a report ADAM-H: Yes I definitely have been seeing the connection between my fear of not being likeable with the knowledge that I have harmfulness hidden within me. The more I channel energy into happiness and harmlessness the less I feel like I have to fear from others, it leads to a positive reinforcement loop… whereas when I hide and ‘nurse’ harmful feelings the opposite happens. I think this is a phenomena I’ve been aware of, but the recognition of what point in this ‘loop’ I can actually make changes is something that’s never fully sunk in. The point where I can actually make changes is in being happy and harmless ... VINEETO: Hi Adam, This is excellent. Fully comprehending that you "can actually make changes" will give you the necessary interest, vitality and persistence to actually be happy and harmless. ADAM-H: … which brings me to some of the recent forum happenings that have inspired me to post again:
*
*
*
ADAM-H: I find myself getting stuck into what Kuba described with conditions to check off or actions to take that will lead to somehow receiving happy and harmlessness, as opposed to just being happy and harmless. It’s interesting how even in the very moment of trying to get back to feeling good I do this. VINEETO: This is a marvellous selection of quotes and well worth revisiting. What you describe is a deeply ingrained pattern, instilled and reinforced from early childhood, through school and all the other socialisation processes. The best thing you can do is become aware of it instance by instance, nip this habitual approach in the bud and get back on the wide and wondrous path. Once you notice it you are no longer stuck. ADAM-H: Last week some friends of my girlfriend came to visit who I’ve never fully gotten comfortable with, they still seem like ‘her friends’ not mine. In the moment I was (or told myself I was) trying so hard to be happy and harmless, all the while thinking to myself about how we didn’t really connect, how they were different from me, how nothing I was saying was ‘landing’, how nothing I was doing was ‘working’ to put them at ease or connect. I was also watching the tightness in my chest, the hesitancy and nervousness in my words, the suppressed resentment in my thoughts, thinking to myself ‘how do I fix this?’ Very much a case of not really seeing my feelings as being me, seeing my feelings instead as something that I "know better" than. VINEETO: Well, firstly it is a case of not being friendly with yourself. When you become aware of what is affectively happening, pat yourself on the back for spotting it, and then it is much easier to get back to feeling good. Only then it’s worth looking at the cause of what diminished your feeling good. ADAM-H: The difference between this and actually seeing that I am my feelings and choosing to be another way is huge experientially yet somehow hard for me to grasp conceptually. I think the key that helped me to grasp it was reading the above exchange between Kuba and Vineeto, and recognizing how even in that moment where I thought I was trying to apply the actualism method, I was still within that ‘reward/ punishment template’. VINEETO: Yes it is, and as one correspondent once said, who had tantrum-size trouble with the actualism, once seen "it is remarkably easy".
ADAM-H: To be even more specific, I think the exact ‘realization’ which helped me switch over was to realize that I could actually choose to enjoy the experience right now and that would be the reward in and of itself, rather than having in mind the reward as the way that the relationship dynamic would improve if I dealt with the annoying feelings I was experiencing. That realization led to coming directly face to face with my own objections to enjoying life in
that situation, at which point I realized how I was being silly to have those objections because they were
self-evidently making my life and everyone else’s life worse, and got back to feeling good. The path is not hard to
find it’s just I don’t want to walk down it, but seeing this really clearly is often enough to change my mind,
especially when the triviality of my highly specific reasons for not wanting to is illuminated. VINEETO: Indeed, and once you find out that this was the only obstacle, you not wanting
to enjoy life, it is really amusing and easy to redress, amend, readjust. It reminds me of Peter’s Virtual Freedom
DVD And now that you discovered how easy it is there is no reason to make this the most important aim in your life. Ain’t life wonderful. Cheers Vineeto
KUBA: Hmm ok I see the bottom line of this is that I am not willing to change myself. This makes a lot of sense, why I would rather go on excursions, because then I get to remain intact as I am now and fool myself into an escape fantasy. But to feel good each moment again for the rest of my life I have to change myself. Which is
also why only returning to feeling good is insufficient. Am I understanding correctly? All of those things cannot remain as they are if I expect things to be different. Which is to
say the Kuba who feels good for 23h 59m a day would be a vastly different person to the who that I am now. ADAM-H: This is pretty interesting. Thinking about this in
myself it seems like a sort of compartmentalization, where I compartmentalize my feeling bad away into certain times
of day or certain settings. It does seem like it’s fundamentally about avoiding the need to change, if I can change
the location/ timing of my bad feelings, I don’t need to fundamentally change (that’s the trick I play on
myself). VINEETO: Hi Adam, There is a term for this “compartmentalization” when it happens in a more extreme form – “the Cognitive Dissonance Theory”. Yet every feeling being is prone to it to some extent.
As such it is great when you discover one or several of your own “compartmentalization” and are able to make sense of what is going on. So, whenever you dare, you can look closer at a sticky aspect of why you are feeling bad and in what way you dare to change in order to resolve the issue. And when you take a step back and look at your problem from a broader perspective then you’ll find that nothing really matters in the long run.
From ‘Vineeto’s’ own experience, it helped to know about ‘cognitive dissonance’ and the sometimes atavistic fear associated with certain changes, yet ‘she’ also discovered that the change was never as scary (let alone dangerous) as imagined once addressed. The sincere/ pure intent to become more happy and harmless provided the impetus to eventually move forward. And with every reason/ trigger for feeling bad which is resolved/ dissolved there comes a relief that this ‘threat’ for change and the feeling stuck/ feeling bad is no longer present, and life becomes more enjoyable with the additional opportunity to appreciate being alive. Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: The biggest thing that’s happened in the last month or so has been an emphasis on continuity of feeling happy and harmless. I realized that my general practice had been to spend time reacting to things that upset me for a while before eventually trying to get back to feeling good, rather than immediately trying to get back to feeling good. This seemed like valid actualism practice, even though I was aware that I wasn’t doing it perfectly I thought this was a good way to make incremental progress. The problem with this approach was that it basically allowed me to stop making any progress in the direction of self-immolation, because I could compartmentalize myself and my feelings into short periods of time and create a safe space for ‘me’ there. Making it my actual goal (rather than a distant future goal) to be happy and harmless continuously is clearly so much more confrontational of myself, I actually have to change now if that is going to be my goal. VINEETO: Hi Adam, What you report appears to be progress on several fronts – Noticing that you can improve the time span to get back to feeling good – and you are doing
that and “make incremental progress”. This is excellent. You know now that merely wanting “to be happy and harmless continuously” is not compelling enough, one needs experiential input of facts (observed data from your own life) to give you impelling intent to actually do it. ADAM-H: I think my practice is definitely in the best place it’s ever been, and I can relate much better to things I’ve read on the AFT site. I’m also closely observing the emphasis on not creating new maps and just focusing on maintaining the happy and harmless feelings, the holiday atmosphere, as steadily as possible. In terms of actually doing something about the human condition, it’s clear that this is the only way to put my money where my mouth is. VINEETO: This is great to hear – the urge to create maps and future action plans and concepts can only divert your attention from the fact that this very moment, now, is the only moment you can actually/ dynamically experience, and any change can only happen now. ADAM-H: Where I still get off track is when I want to ‘be
somebody’, somebody important. It’s clear how I still have a competing motivation to be recognized, especially in
my career and work, and that keeps me from more wholeheartedly committing. I think that by fully acknowledging this
and sensibly evaluating ‘will this motivation deliver the goods?’ it is losing some influence. VINEETO: Ah, several people on the forum have recently talked about the same urge to “be somebody”. It is inherent to being a ‘self’. As a ‘self’ you need constant confirmation from others that ‘you’ exist.
The solution is rather simple – one can diminish the dominance of the ‘self’ by choosing to transfer the affective energy of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings towards the felicitous and innocuous feelings – and you have already decided to do that –
In other words, rather than following the ‘self’-enhancing urge to “be somebody”, whenever it appears, you give yourself permission to put everything on a preference basis –
Please note – the aim it not to become self-less as in unselfish, but less “self-centred”, more naïve. If you put everything on a preference basis you soon find out that this self-diminishing inclination makes being continuously happy and harmless much easier and increasingly fun, evincing marvel and wonder. Chrono said in a recent post to the forum – perhaps you can relate to it –
It’s a grand adventure. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO:
Please note – the aim it not to become self-less as in unselfish, but less “self-centred”, more naïve. If you put everything on a preference basis you soon find out that this self-diminishing inclination makes being continuously happy and harmless much easier and increasingly fun, evincing marvel and wonder. ADAM-H: I’ve been pondering the ‘put everything on a preference basis’ for the last few days. At various times in the past I tried to approach things through this lens and did not always have success. Like a lot of things with actualism it seems like the method and the goal are the same thing here. VINEETO: Hi Adam, As putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis goes against the instinctual drive of ‘self’-survival, it is to be expected that you “did not always have success”. Don’t let this discourage you, if you really want to become happy and harmless. ADAM-H: ‘I’ have some resentment that the method and the goal are the same thing, because it doesn’t give me something ‘I’ can do to maintain but reshape my influence. Techniques that allow ‘me’ to assert something unique and special about ‘me’ are much preferred haha. VINEETO: Ah, have you considered how feeling happy and harmless, even when 23hrs a day, compares to being spontaneously felicitous and innocuous every moment of your life? This is not merely a difference in degree but a qualitative difference in kind, so much so that it is inconceivable/ incomprehensible and unimaginable/ unbelievable to any identity whatsoever. It is entirely outside of ‘my’ territory. Is the resentment that you will need to accustom yourself to the permanent living of actuality or else it would blow your fuses?
 (Richard’s
Journal ©1997 The Actual Freedom Trust. Page: 150).
Or is the resentment perhaps that you, the interloper, intend to rule the roost for the rest of your physical life with all the misery and mayhem that this entails? ADAM-H: However, when ‘I’ keep in mind what it is like for
me and others when everything is on a preference basis, even ‘I’ can get on board with it after some coaxing. It’s
evident though, that it puts me on a direct course for self-immolation. VINEETO: Ha, a reluctant agreement “after some coaxing” … and then the instant ‘self-immolation-card’ presented as the ‘worst case’ fear-scenario. Remember, “illegitimi non carborandum” Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: ‘I’ have some resentment that the method and the goal are the same thing, because it doesn’t give me something ‘I’ can do to maintain but reshape my influence. Techniques that allow ‘me’ to assert something unique and special about ‘me’ are much preferred haha. VINEETO: Ah, have you considered how feeling happy and harmless, even when 23hrs a day, compares to being spontaneously felicitous and innocuous every moment of your life? This is not merely a difference in degree but a qualitative difference in kind, so much so that it is inconceivable/ incomprehensible and unimaginable/ unbelievable to any identity whatsoever. It is entirely outside of ‘my’ territory. ADAM-H: Hmm yes, being that does seem to be more than I comprehend. VINEETO: Hi Adam, I am not so sure if it is only a matter of comprehension – you talk about resentment and that you are seeking ‘self’-assertion techniques. I assume, you are aware that the aim of using the actualism method is the opposite – enjoyment and appreciation and a ‘self’-diminishing inclination. Let me ask you for clarity’s sake – what is it that you want to do with your life? Or … what is your overall aim in life? * VINEETO: Or is the resentment perhaps that you, the interloper, intend to rule the roost for the rest of your physical life with all the misery and mayhem that this entails? ADAM-H: Definitely more on this side. I want to be involved in
the living out of the happiness and harmlessness, I want to take credit for it. That’s part of why I tend to
corrupt actualism time and time again into something more clever and sophisticated than what it is I think. It is
becoming more clear to me how ‘I’ in my essence am diametrically opposed to the happiness and harmlessness, and
every time I take credit for it and turn it into my system it loses its purity and gradually degrades. VINEETO: This is quite perspicuous of you. Do you remember that you have seen a similar fact before, over than five months earlier? You wrote in your journal –
Now that you know that you can only have one, or the other, you can decisively find out which direction you want to proceed – ‘self’-enhancing techniques or a naïve felicity and innocuity. Once you know your intent, there is action possible based on this perspicacity (that ‘me’ taking credit spoils both naiveté and purity). Your destiny is entirely in your hands. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: I am not so sure if it is only a matter of comprehension – you talk about resentment and that you are seeking ‘self’-assertion techniques. I assume, you are aware that the aim of using the actualism method is the opposite – enjoyment and appreciation and a ‘self’-diminishing inclination. Let me ask you for clarity’s sake – what is it that you want to do with your life? Or … what is your overall aim in life? ADAM-H: Certainly there is no aim that I consciously hold higher than being spontaneously happy and harmless each moment again. But it is evidently not the only thing I want, because otherwise I would stop dilly dallying and focus on maximizing felicity each moment again. So in short – yes I agree that it’s more than a lack of comprehension that stands in my way. VINEETO: Hi Adam, This is good to know. I mainly asked this question for your own sake so that you, upon contemplation, see what you want first and foremost in your life. As you probably noticed, being happy and harmless is not a matter of will-power, hence calling your obstacles “dilly dallying” is rather a self-deprecating misnomer. The best way is to address each obstacle to being happy and harmless – unless you can easily nip it in the bud – and find out the cause and reason. Here is how I recently put it to Felix –
As you have clearly acknowledged to yourself that your avowed aim is to be “spontaneously happy and harmless each moment again”, you can more easily recognize whenever a feeling is leading your away from that destiny, and also more easily recognize that a feeling is not a fact. * VINEETO: Now that you know that you can only have one, or the other, you can decisively
find out which direction you want to proceed – ‘self’-enhancing techniques or a naïve felicity and innocuity.
Once you know your intent, there is action possible based on this perspicacity (that ‘me’ taking credit spoils
both naiveté and purity). ADAM-H: I am indeed more clearly aware that I can have only one
and not the other. This awareness is helping to convert my overarching ‘initiative’ that being
permanently happy and harmless is what I want to do with the rest of my life and nothing else really comes close into
more concrete action – that I have to actually be felicitous and
innocuous here and now in these particular circumstances and in spite of these particular uncertainties. VINEETO: Ha, it sounds like a terrible chore the way you put it “I have to actually be felicitous and innocuous” – don’t make it into a moral doctrine or precept to be obeyed else it gets corrupted into a tool to keep you miserable. How about ‘I prefer to be …’ and ‘I will do whatever necessary to look at, nip in the bud or investigate the obstacle to this happy condition’.
Best of success and a lot of naïve fun. Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: I’ve been trying to up the ante with how consistently happy and harmless I can be, and it’s lead to some moments where I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself and can’t get out of feeling bad. What it often seems like is when I’m trying to get back to feeling good (before more deeply investigating the issue) from whatever I’m feeling bad about, I have two main tactics:
VINEETO: Hi Adam-H, I get the impression, and I might be wrong, that you put a certain moral pressure on yourself when “trying to get back to feeling good” as if you renamed your normal moral code to actualism. Then upping the ante simply means that ‘you’ are at loggerheads with yourself that you must feel good … or else. The result is that for this you have to push away the unwanted uncomfortable feelings, which only gives fuel to ‘me’ and those feelings. So, the first thing is to relax, and become interested in what is going on. Someone shared that going back to before the incident which caused the dip in the good mood did help to get back to feeling good, at least sufficient enough to look into the cause of it. ADAM-H: Both of these have worked well at times, but I don’t feel like I can get either to work 100% of the time, I don’t have it down to a science. When it doesn’t work, it feels like the stress comes and goes in waves. I never fully getting back to feeling good, usually until more time passes and I’m distracted by other things in life or go to sleep. I find that for a few minutes I deeply contemplate one of these two perspectives and start feeling better and start seeing feeling bad as silly or at least unnecessary, then a new thought about the issue strikes me, and I start back down the feeling bad path. VINEETO: Richard’s suggestion is to first see, really see, the silliness of feeling bad – not with control like you do it – but as a genuine insight that it is a waste of time to feel bad when you could feel ok or neutral or good. For example –
Perhaps it is not about sudorifically upping the anti or “having a standoff” with yourself but really seeing that it is not worth your while feeling bad, ever. Then you can go back to look at what caused the dip in the mood and sincerely find out, possibly to never have it happen again. Or to put it differently, the commitment to being happy and harmless is not by trying to do but by cutting the fondness/ attachment to feeling bad, no matter what the reason. I know from experience, it wasn’t always easy but that it takes a readiness to ‘sacrifice’ one’s cherished feelings of bitter-sweetness, righteous anger, pining, or perhaps virtuous impatience – whatever it is that keeps you from feeling good. You can see that in my last sentence I added the ‘good’ feeling aspect to possible reasons for feeling bad, just to help your investigation later on into the reasons for feeling bad. There is a reason why feeling in a certain way is soo attractive, if not addictive. ADAM-H: I realize that the way I’m laying things out it seems
like what I think I need is more discipline/focus to get ‘all the way’ back to feeling good, but this is probably
an indicator I’m off track because I have heard many times that feeling good is not about willpower. There are
times where I simply get back to feeling good by contemplating one of these perspectives, so I know it’s possible
without some great effort, but I don’t really know why sometimes that doesn’t seem to do the trick. VINEETO: That’s your indicator that whenever it becomes sudorific you are using control and thus strengthen ‘me’. Whereas when you remember either your PCE or how good it feels to feel good, it may become simple. Perhaps remembering your long-lost childhood naiveté might help. Above all, be a friend to yourself –
Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: (…) I see again that the key is the genuine willingness/ readiness, it makes total sense to me and fits with my past intermittent experiences. When that willingness/ readiness is there, the practice is hardly even a practice, it’s effortless. But again it feels like this is just saying “here is what it is like when it works.” How does one make an identity… (end of initial reaction) VINEETO: Hi Adam, This is a very insightful post and well worth keeping for future references. When the readiness is there then there is no conflict, not one side trying and the other side resisting. ADAM-H: While writing that phrase out I had this thought “wait, I am that identity, I don’t have to ‘make’ it do anything I can just do it.” I can see how I reacted to bad feelings – by becoming a virtuously impatient identity whose narrative is a story about being special for wanting to feel good. As soon as I saw that, there was a feeling of having my ‘split’ self fuse back together with my relatively more naive but stressed self. This consolidated ‘me’ was able to then instantly go back to feeling good because it saw that it was silly to feel good when it was entirely up to me how to feel. I think this is the clearest I’ve ever been on the point that sincerity can unlock naivety. VINEETO: Excellent – when you had the realisation that “wait, I am that identity” that is the same as realising that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ – no conflict, simply the choice to be whatever feeling you prefer to be. It’s great, isn’t it, when you discover some of the tricks ‘I’ get up to – and once you see it, the trick no longer works and you do feel good. And this is the key to sincerity. So should you ever struggle to get out of feeling bad, look for this sincerity, the “willingness/ readiness” and see what happens. ADAM-H: It’s also clear to me how being my own best friend was missing. It’s interesting that being your own best friend sort of has two meanings:
VINEETO: I like that break-down, it makes it very clear. A friend doesn’t just say “there, there” and try to console you, a friend “won’t let yourself ruin your own day”. ADAM-H: This has been a contemplation lately, and that is there is a lot of subconscious stress, we get so used to it that it’s just “how things are”, reading what you have written really brought it into focus. What I mean is, I see these deeper issues reflecting in all aspects of life, but often don’t acknowledge them. So, they do “pop up” when I am in a better mood, and I know the experience of some simple intention (being determined to feel good), just not working like it did yesterday. VINEETO: This is also part of being a friend, to not let the “deeper issues” ruin your day. When you feel good you allow yourself to acknowledge them, look at them more dispassionately, and then an understanding will emerge of what’s the source of the trouble, and action can follow. When the intention is sincere, as you described above, it will reveal the various aspects of those “deeper issues” including the connected ‘good’ feelings, and you can similarly decide to no longer let them ruin your day. Sincerity and courage. ADAM-H: Reading what you wrote really brought this into focus just now. It reminds me that some issues are going to take time, we have to make space for ourselves, over time, to hear what it is we have buried under everyday issues. It definitely seems like it takes time, but I have a feeling whenever we are on the other side of this we will look back like all the other people who became actually free seem to and say “oh I guess I could have done that all along”. VINEETO: This “it takes time” can be an excuse of not yet having the courage to look, and as you say in hindsight one “could have done that all along”. But I also know there are gestation periods, when certain insights need to percolate in the background until they are ripe for action – after all, actualism is the most radical change one undertakes, bit by bit, moving outside the parameters of thousands of years of human ‘wisdom’. It certainly is a grand adventure. ADAM-H: I was reading Vineeto’s “Exploring
Death and Altered States of Consciousness This was great to read, thanks. Who am I trying to fool indeed. It’s funny to
realize that the self splitting into two is not about it “trying too hard” to make something happen as I
previously thought, it’s actually about try to make sure nothing happens. VINEETO: Ha, it was actually you who first said “I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself
and can’t get out of feeling bad” This quote might be helpful –
Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: The intent to try to appear happy and harmless rather than actually be happy and harmless is a particular ‘trick’ I don’t think I’ve gotten up to in quite a while. But I do agree that experientially locating the third alternative is vital for directing ‘me’ in the right direction, and without that firmly in place there are many ways in which “I” will delay or misdirect things. I think the connection that is in place for me is to naiveté which is probably less effective than a clear memory of a PCE, but is still a unique and hard to mistake aspect of the felicitous and innocuous feelings. It is at least in the direction of the end of ‘cunningness’ and a blessed release from the perversity of the loneliness and resentfulness of being a ‘calculating’ self. VINEETO: Hi Adam, That is good news – you discovered this particular trick and abandoned it for good as fooling yourself is obviously of no value. Finding the various ways how ‘you’ “will delay or misdirect” is something like a game once you are clear on your intent to be happy and harmless. ‘Vineeto’ enjoyed it after ‘she’ became a bit more acquainted with ‘her’ tricks and at some point called it “balloon-popping party” –
It was an imagination on ‘her’ part but it captured the understanding that it’s all about feeling good and not being bogged down by finding out how ‘she’ felt and that one can discover and remove the obstacles to feeling good and bring them to the bright light of awareness. Once you take yourself less serious and accept that you are as bad and as mad as everyone else, genetically endowed with instinctual passions, then there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by discovering how you ‘tick’. * SYD: You wrote the above about 4 years ago. Are you still going for PCEs (in addition to upping your baseline)? ADAM-H: I spent some time around then really focusing on PCEs, but ultimately continued to have more success by focusing on upping my baseline. The progress has still been slow over the long term, but has sped up a bit recently. Lately I do make time to spend 30 minutes per day with my only focus being the actualism method, but it hasn’t lead to a PCE, usually just to various levels of feeling good, occasionally getting to the point of feeling myself to be the ‘beer’ and not the ‘doer’. I still think of upping my baseline as being what actualism is fundamentally about more so than the ‘PCE practice’, and that’s
partly because I still find PCEs a bit mysterious and out of reach. VINEETO: A wise decision. In actualism there is no such thing as a “PCE practice” (it was the invention of some spiritualists from the DhO, together with so-called PCE-walks) – the very idea is an oxymoron because the PCE happens when you allow it to happen. You cannot control or structure yourself to have a PCE. Also, your idea to “spend 30 min per day with my only focus being the actualism method” is not what Richard meant when introducing the actualism method. It is something to do all day, in all situations – to be affectively aware and attentive to how you experience yourself affectively (i.e. how you feel) so that you can get back to feeling good whenever your mood drops below feeling good. Once you notice that, you get back to feeling good by recognizing it is a waste of this precious moment of being alive, and then –
If you only “spend 30 min per day with my only focus being the actualism method” then you allow yourself to be inattentive for about 15.5 hours per day to be sad or angry or grumpy or feel neutral. Thus, by doing nothing about it you reinforce the habit of letting those negative moods continue governing your life with the excuse that later on you will spend 30 mins of doing something about it.
There are many informative tool-tips in the article ‘This Moment of
Being Alive’ Whereas the 30 min per day easily becomes a duty, a chore, a daily ‘work-out’ like a session
at the gym, and that would certainly defeat the purpose of learning the art of how to have fun and feel good. I also
recommend Richard’s email to Claudiu in February 2016 Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: Thanks Vineeto for the reminders. I did have in mind that my ‘30 minutes a day’ would be in addition to ongoing in-daily-life actualism practice, but I think this is true:
It brought up the question: if the actualism method is to enjoy and appreciate being alive, why do I need to make an effort of spending time on it? Why is it not its own reward that I would just naturally spend my free time doing? VINEETO: Hi Adam, If you read more on the Actual Freedom website you will have it confirmed that your genetic
predisposition is fear, aggression, nurture and desire, which is additionally socially conditioned to somewhat
control the instinctual passions. You, the identity, having formed itself from those passions and beliefs, concepts,
etc. and is pre-dispositioned to remain as ‘you’ are. (See for instance Richard’s Selected Correspondence on
‘I’ As for effort, if you want to call intent, persistence and determination effort to perhaps overcome the habitual tendency of leaving things as they are then this might be informative –
Syd had a similar misconception(?) when he called an instance of not feeling good “a
glitch” as if the entire instinctual programming plus social identity was merely “a glitch” ADAM-H: This connected with my other recent contemplations about ‘having a standoff with myself’ and the ways and which I am still trying to force myself to feel good against my will. It’s obvious my efforts still involve this to some degree, even though I thought I ‘saw through it’. What I’m wondering is if this ‘internal split’ is always present at least in part until one is actually free? What you call “my efforts still involve this to some degree” is the difference
of a realisation and its actualisation. (See FAQ, Difference Between Realisation and Actualisation? The “internal split” will disappear once you recognize, at the core of your ‘being’, that you are as sad and as mad and as bad as everyone else, i.e. that you are instilled with the instinctual passions and its consequent social identity. Upon this penetrating recognition you can stop fighting to hide any occurring bad feelings and their twins of ‘good’ feelings. In other words you recognize each time that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feeling are ‘me’. Then putting the actualism method into practice as described in Richard’s article linked above should be a breeze. ADAM-H: In the same vein, a contemplation I’ve been running lately goes along these lines: If the things I felt bad about were truly just preferences, (e.g. feeling bad because the ice cream store ran out of chocolate and I had to get vanilla) then would it not be deeply obvious that feeling bad was silly? Since this is clear enough, then what separates the things that I actually do feel bad about from being preferences, and how can I see them in the same way as those ice cream flavours? VINEETO: And here continues the watering-down of the actualism method – first remove ‘effort’, i.e. determination, then postpone the disappearance of the “internal split” until you are actually free and now assuming that everything is a matter of “truly just preferences” and nothing else. I only list them like this to demonstrate how the identity “will get up to all kinds of tricks to retain and regain its ascendancy” so you can recognize further tricks as such when they occur. ADAM-H: This is a good way right now to bring me face to face
with conscious, heartfelt objections to treating things as preferences, which seems to be a prerequisite to
unconditional happiness and harmlessness, which is helping me unsplit myself. VINEETO: Before you aim for the far horizon of “unconditional happiness and harmlessness”, why not make feeling good your first priority in life. Putting everything on a preference basis may not be sufficient to further in-depth exploration (when strong fears and desires interfere with feeling good), especially when you call them “truly just preferences”. But when you have the intent to leave no stone unturned in order to blatantly imitate the actual, you will be successful.
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: And here continues the watering-down of the actualism method – first remove
‘effort’, i.e. determination, then postpone the disappearance of the “internal split” until
you are actually free and now assuming that everything is a matter of “truly just preferences” and
nothing else. I only list them like this to demonstrate how the identity “will get up to all kinds of tricks to
retain and regain its ascendancy” so you can recognize further tricks as such when they occur. ADAM-H: I want to clarify what I was saying here a bit. It was more like a thought experiment where I was trying to show myself how the things I cared about were not just preferences. I was basically pointing out to myself that “if the things I cared about were just preferences” then it would be deeply obvious that feeling bad was silly… which is not currently the case. The purpose of this contemplation was to try to bring myself closer to my feelings and heal that ‘internal split’. VINEETO: Hi Adam, Thank you for your clarification – it seems I unnecessarily jumped into the middle of your recording your thought-processes. ADAM-H: I did end up having success again healing that internal split this morning however, and I want to note down how it happened again for future reference. Also it was again so interesting how the instant that internal split went away I was instantly back to feeling good in a really deep and wholehearted way that continued throughout the entire day and improved how I related to everyone. The way the split resolved was by noticing that I was again in a similar trap as my recent ‘virtuous impatience’. Essentially what is happening is this:
Of course, calling it ‘catching a glimpse’ is maybe a bit misleading. It’s ‘me’ after all who is playing tricks on ‘me’, so it’s more about sincerity than skill or agility of some sort. VINEETO: As Kuba already said
* VINEETO: The “internal split” will disappear once you recognize, at the core of your ‘being’, that you are as sad and as mad and as bad as everyone else, i.e. that you are instilled with the instinctual passions and its consequent social identity. Upon this penetrating recognition you can stop fighting to hide any occurring bad feelings and their twins of ‘good’ feelings. In other words you recognize each time that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feeling are ‘me’. Then putting the actualism method into practice as described in Richard’s article linked above should be a breeze. ADAM-H: This is fascinating and also links up with what you said
in your response to Kuba VINEETO: Indeed, most of ‘my’ protestations about any feelings occurring originate in how I want to see myself and how others see me – a good person, a clever person, a good actualist, a successful (… fill in your own aspersions). When ‘I’ genuinely admit “I am the problem” each time, then there is really only one solution – dissolution – and that can be ultimately scary at the start. But this is where enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive come in, it is what you
do in the meantime, until you cannot maintain your ‘self’ any longer. And “the means to the end – an
ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end”.
Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: I’ve been having an experience lately where, having seen the direct rewards of healing the ‘internal split’, I’m becoming so much more willing to disclose my feelings to myself no matter how petty or unpleasant. This is in turn leading to a positive feedback mechanism where success is leading to more success. I’ve been thinking of actualism in terms of two ‘modes of failure’. One is “can’t get back to feeling good” the other is “won’t get back to feeling good”. When it feels more like a “can’t” that’s the sign I’m deceiving myself and I need to dial up the ‘being my own best friend’ energy and get to a place where I can clearly recognize what feeling I am ‘being’. I think the DhO pseudo-actualism practice history is what made it so difficult to figure this out, but I’ve made huge progress on this side lately. VINEETO: Hi Adam, An excellent example of common sense and sincerity in action. I am also reminded of what you realised a while ago –
As your best friend you it simply won’t do to allow ‘you’ to ruin your day with pretending that you “can’t get back to feeling good” when you actually can. ‘I can’t’ is merely a feeling, especially in regards feeling good, and a feeling is not a fact. ADAM-H: When it feels more like a “won’t” that’s when I need to focus more on things like rememorating feeling good and contemplating things like:
VINEETO: This is such a potent contemplation – widening one’s horizon. Richard used it once for ‘Vineeto’ when ‘she’ had asked him for help, being dejected that ‘she’ would never succeed in becoming actually free –
‘Her’ previous feeling conviction that ‘I can’t’ was suddenly seen for being utterly silly, replaced by an unshakeable determination to not get the buggers (in this case ‘her’ own feelings) get ‘her’ down. ADAM-H: It’s been helpful to consider both the immediate and the long term lately, in the sense that getting back to feeling good here and now is both an immediate benefit, but is also the only way forward so long as I wish to pursue the goals of peace on earth, perfect intimacy with others, etc. Having come this far in your reflections, you might, just for fun (nothing serious), contemplate that now is the only moment one can actively experience being alive – and the ramifications of that seen in the widest most possible context –
ADAM-H: I’ve been having memories of myself as a kid in summer lately – brought on by a
spontaneous and very intimate conversation I had with my girlfriend about nostalgia and remembering how we once experienced life. Instead of pursuing
the bittersweet sad tinge of nostalgia, I am making an earnest attempt to re-presentiate that way of being. VINEETO: A fortunate choice and again, the confirmation that sincerity is the key to naiveté. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Having come this far in your reflections, you might, just for fun (nothing serious), contemplate that now is the only moment one can actively experience being alive – and the ramifications of that seen in the widest most possible context –
ADAM-H: Thanks for the response, at the risk of trying to jump to an intellectual answer – is the essential ramification of this that “All one gets by waiting is yet more waiting. Any change can only happen now”? In any case, I will contemplate it and see what else comes up! VINEETO: Hi Adam, Yes, “any change can only happen now” and recognizing that can be the discover how potent it is when you experience it right now, right here –
Cheers Vineeto
ADAM-H: I’ve been having an experience lately of ‘determination’ in a good way the last couple days. The experience has been that I want to become actually free and I know what I need to do to get there, and it’s not even that hard. What I have to do is enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive, and just keep doing that, without digressions into telling myself a story about what actualism is and how I am pursuing it and how I will explain it to other people in the future. When that self-centric, self-aggrandizing modus operandi is not dominant, then all the things about how easy the method is start to make sense, and it feels like all ‘I’ need to do is remember to enjoy and appreciate life and ‘I’ will effortlessly recede into the background. This started the other day when out on a nice long walk alone over some sunny hills. I was starting to think about actualism and about how I really wanted to make progress. I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by the memory of how many similar moments I’ve had over the years, and with that there was a question of ‘how is this any different now, am I just walking over the same ground literally and figuratively, again?’ It reminded me of how people can spend their entire lives in conflict with themselves over
losing weight. They can have an internal narrative about the plans to lose weight and different strategies and
methods that basically goes on and on forever. Perhaps the narrative itself is a sort of ‘sustenance’ for me that
I take pleasure in, and it certainly works the same for actualism. Actually doing it is quite simple – sustaining
the narrative that I’m doing it or want to do it is a circus of complexity and diversion. Actually doing it goes
somewhere new – sustaining the narrative is walking in a circle composed of highs and lows. And of course – as a
note to myself, having this realization is not going somewhere new in and of itself, it will just be another high
unless I actually walk the walk. VINEETO: Hi Adam, This is an great illuminating description of figuring out how you ‘tick’, exposing how ‘you’ succeeded in keeping ‘you’ in place, and by the very exposure you disarmed this particular strategy. It was made possible by the sincere contemplation and acknowledgement that “sustaining the narrative is walking in a circle”. Now you are at the threshold of a new adventure – “actually walk the walk”. And this is how you actually change the supposedly unchangeable human nature. It is a pleasure to read of your insights, following them up with action and the ever deepening of your determination. Have fun. There is so much delight in chipping away at the “self-centric, self-aggrandizing modus operandi”, the “narrative”, whenever it gets in the way of simply enjoying and appreciating being alive, right here, right now. Cheers Vineeto
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