March 21 2026

CHRONO: Although it was last week, I wanted to write this wonderful experience I had before I forget. I had just gone for a walk in the park and was driving back home when I noticed the sky spontaneously. The sky showed up almost as if I had never seen it before and I became aware of being alive on this planet. And I mean this planet that is happening right now that everyone is alive in. I became aware of how everything was being provided for already. This planet had set itself up in such a way that we are here alive and aware of it. There was a complete friendliness to being alive. It was all happening right now all at once. I became aware of the cars around me and it was a marvel in that it had all arranged itself in a way that people could get to where they need to go easily. The most stand out feature again of all this was that it was all happening on its own without ‘me’. It has always been like this. Then it occurred to me that I too am happening on my own. I am a part of this planet, this universe. Just as it’s all happening on its own. It is not coming from or going somewhere. And I became perplexed afterwards. ‘I’ am such a strange occurrence. Almost like someone that shouldn’t be there but am there. An entire reality ... somewhere else. What exactly sustains ‘me’?

I am becoming more aware of underlying feelings that I am being that are not in alignment with what this experience shows. A common feeling that I notice now in many of the issues that I wrote about is the deep feeling of being trapped. So I instinctually and unwittingly have been chasing the ‘feeling of being free’. Which feeling of being free is always somewhere else and is being sustained by the feeling of being trapped. That is, there is a belief that freedom is somewhere and somewhen else. I’ve noticed this before when some form of feeling very good and some closeness starts to happen. I’ll start getting feelings of nostalgia and the closeness then is to be gotten somewhere else.

VINEETO: Hi Chrono,

What splendid descriptions of “experiencing being not of ‘me’”. You had plenty of leisure to look around, so to speak, and draw some valuable conclusions, especially the observation that you have been looking for the source of feeling good – “experiencing being not of ‘me’” – somewhere other than here on earth and now, in this very moment.

And you also reported that when “some closeness starts to happen”, often a ‘good’ feeling, in this case “nostalgia” swoops in and diverts you from further exploring this “closeness”. It is exactly this fine-tuned attentiveness which allows you to detect such diversions sooner rather than later, before they gather solidity, and then get back to your original exploration.

Lastly, when you say “sustained by the feeling of being trapped” you are probably aware that you are trapping yourself and ‘I’ am playing a trick on ‘me’ pretending the trapping is happening by someone else.

*

VINEETO: Given you raised the topic of “on the road to being insane and abnormal” – I highly recommend Richard’s two Selected Correspondences on Sanity, Insanity and the Third Alternative (whichever excerpts tickle your fancy). This correspondence of what sanity really is was a genuine eye-opener for ‘Vineeto’, and it took ‘her’ a while to digest how much “sanity is the problem and insanity is not the solution” –

CHRONO: Hi Vineeto,

I think the closest I would say is being in love or when I took a psychedelic substance once. But I can see that insanity seems to be a difference in degree to sanity rather than kind. So perhaps just as “being in love” is sane so it is when it’s taken all the way to the extreme to enlightenment. But I do see how much sanity is the problem.

VINEETO: It was similar for ‘Vineeto’ – to realise that being sane meant for ‘her’ accepting all the wars, murder, child abuse and general violence as being ‘normal’, i.e. sane, and therefore not safe at all. ‘She’ also had little experience of what insanity means – once a close friend had a longer lasting psychotic experience and it was quite terrifying for ‘her’. Throughout the whole time of actualism the fear of going inadvertently insane remained a prevalent threat, and ‘her’ out-from-control episode was testimony to that –

So both your assessments that “insanity seems to be a difference in degree to sanity rather than kind” and that “how much sanity is the problem” are to the point and will stand you in good stead when encountering any altered states of consciousness or atavistic fears regarding sanity and insanity such as you detailed below.

*

VINEETO: Well observed. When you say “how I wanted her to receive my thoughts” you would understand that she instinctually wants the same thing – so when you, for instance, stand back a while and allow her to express her thoughts and her feelings, there is a good chance she will want to understand yours. Your fear of “being uncaring” is responsible for needing to convince her that you are not uncaring (via having your thoughts received, rather than acting in a caring way such as listening attentively, for instance).

CHRONO: Ah actually your pointing this out helped me to notice it. My fear of being uncaring is what causes a lot of the suffering for me. What I realize now as I am typing this is that underlying the thought of abandoning compassion is the feeling that I will go insane. As in become a sociopath. But I am now swinging to the opposite. So what would it mean to abandon both? I cannot imagine it.

VINEETO: You have no need to “imagine it” – from the experience you described when “not being ‘me’” there were no concerns of being a “sociopath”, were there? As such you know as an experiential fact that minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings, i.e. minimising ‘me’, is outside the range of sane and insane, it is being salubrious. This fact answers your question directly – “to abandon both” you become more and more salubrious.

(…)

CHRONO: I did connect the dots after you pointed it out. The good feelings of “being a Saviour” are created to counter the bad feelings of “the charge of being uncaring”.

VINEETO: Empathetic caring is a different matter (empathy meaning ‘in-feeling’) –

Richard: Now, as the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was in an out-from-control virtual freedom for something like five months – although not named as such back then, of course, nor thought of in those terms – I can readily report how ‘he’ was more empathetic during that period than ‘he’ ever had been in all ‘his’ 34 years of existence. So much so, in fact, that I would be inclined to characterise a near-actual caring as an acutely-empathic caring. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #near-actual-intimacy)

By the way, Richard was accused many times of not caring (FFM, Actualists Don’t Care).

CHRONO: To some extent, I had been lumping all feeling caring such as sympathetic caring, compassionate caring, empathetic caring, etc as the same thing, but it makes sense to note the differences and seeing how empathetic caring plays a part until the end.

VINEETO: For a feeling being all caring is accompanied by feelings, so a useful discernment would be to be less guided by what others expect you to do, or you yourself feel obligated to do, according to traditional beliefs and concepts, but instead be harmless, considerate and benevolent.

CHRONO: Also interesting seeing that correspondence of people accusing Richard of not being caring when everything he’s done has been an actual caring in action. What it highlights for me is how actual caring is not guided by what others feel. In contrast to feeling caring, which seems to be all about affirming and endorsing ‘me’ (self-centred). Which further highlights that there’s really only one action that ‘I’ can do which would be the closest to actual caring.

VINEETO: Well said.

*

VINEETO: Now that you mentioned the “Saviour” twice, and having to avoid being accused of being selfish, uncaring, callous several times – isn’t it time to investigate the root of the problem – the worry about being selfish and uncaring – rather than activate compassion which you already know does nothing to alleviate the suffering?

The traditional cure to being selfish is to put the other before oneself – in other words, only seeing the dichotomy of being ‘selfish’ and being compassionate/unselfish as a choice. Actualism is about becoming less ‘self’-centric (less ego-centric or soul-centric), with the implicit understanding that it is the ‘self’ which is the problem, both in its selfish or its unselfish expression. For instance – (snip quote Richard, List D, Martin, 2 August 2016).

And because this concern of yours is so persistent, there might be an additional sticking point – the issue of belonging, perhaps?

CHRONO: I can see that if I look at the root of the problem – worry about being selfish and uncaring – then the underlying feelings are I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity. And the thought goes something like, “if I lose the connection to Humanity, then how can I care for them (while also receiving the reward of good feelings for that caring)?”. I am reminded of something my dad often said to me if I were to talk of these types of matters with him. It goes something like, ‘oh you think you know better than the billions of people that are alive right now?’. Which lesson I presume he wanted to impress on me was to humble myself. And which lesson seems to have worked because in being humbled, I am staying in line and being obedient. As opposed to going out of line and lashing out in some way.

VINEETO: This underlying atavistic fear of “I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity” is universal, only varying in strength and expression. Those cast out from the tribe could not survive on their own. I remember ‘Vineeto’ once had strong fears of being condemned/ burnt as a witch if anyone found out what a traitor to the human condition ‘she’ was.

‘Vineeto’: The psychic world of divine and evil, with its atavistic feelings and psychic power structures, is not to be dismissed lightly. It is not a small thing we are doing, stepping out of ancient psychic history and leaving behind at least 3,500 years of recorded superstition and belief, hope for heaven and fear of hell. I encountered fears of being burnt as a witch, expelled from the tribe or starved to death – which in not so recent history were not just psychic imagined fears. These fears all seem to be woven as an ancient memory in our brain cells and are automatically triggered the moment one dares to steps out of the tribal, religious or social group one has belonged to.

Two things always helped me to overcome those fear-attacks – one was the obvious fact that feelings are not actual. Nobody is actually persecuting me or physically threatening me. The other thing is the understanding that I am deliberately and actively dismantling my very ‘self’, all of ‘who I think and feel I am’ and of course that will rock the boat, it wouldn’t be an actual change if it didn’t! Then, the journey becomes really thrilling ... (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, Gary, 3.8.2000).

Such feelings are all part and parcel of being a pioneer. However, for actualism to work you don’t have to openly rebel, or act inappropriately – you progressively cease believing in the various rules and concepts whilst paying lip service, when necessary, with the sincere intent to be more felicitous and innocuous. It’s only when there is still a belief, or doubt, on a particular subject, that the person feels compelled to publicly act out either the belief or demonstratively act out the opposite.

*

VINEETO: It is unfortunate that it being a moving image and not just text, it had far more impact on you than such an improbably fantasy deserves. You better cast this image of how insults are absorbed out of your mind. Fact is that once you have the intent of not responding automatically to insults and slights, you actually root out the cause for feeling insulted from your own psyche, such as a certain self-image, pride, ideas what a man should do and similar concepts.

CHRONO: Your comment made me think about how much imagination plays a part in sustaining ‘me’. Imagining and ‘me’ seem to go hand in hand. It seems to be the very substance of ‘me’.

VINEETO: Yes, when you observe your feelings closely you will see that a lot of the feeling-created scenario in your mind is interwoven with imagined thoughts or action, and the more emotional you feel, the wilder the imagination progresses. They belong together –

Richard: All imagery is a product of the imaginative/ intuitive facility contained within the psyche – the affective faculty – born of the instinctual passions. When the instinctual passions are deleted, the entire psyche itself ceases to exist ... thus the imaginative apparatus also disappears in toto. (Richard, Actual Freedom List No. 10, 25 May 2000).

*

CHRONO: My question now is, if as a ‘being’, I am always involuntarily transmitting and receiving vibes and psychic currents, how can I as a ‘being’ have this affective and psychic attacking/ defending fall flat?

VINEETO: Simply by your intent to be happy and harmless and to keep feeling good. It’s a different value to the ‘battle’ of right and wrong, superior/ inferior others want to draw you into. In other words, you play a different game altogether.

CHRONO: Yes I am noticing that it is an entirely different value. Completely different from ‘me’. I cannot keep one part of ‘me’ while trying to eliminate the other part. It’s the entirety of ‘me’. All of ‘reality’

VINEETO: Specifically, you cannot keep the ‘good’ feelings, or what you value highly, such as pride, honour, virtue, belonging, whilst discarding the bad feelings. This does not work without suppression or hypocrisy.

And isn’t it a wonderful relief and joy when one portion of the inner push-and-pull battle has disappeared completely?

Cheers Vineeto

April 4 2026

VINEETO: What splendid descriptions of “experiencing being not of ‘me’”. You had plenty of leisure to look around, so to speak, and draw some valuable conclusions, especially the observation that you have been looking for the source of feeling good – “experiencing being not of ‘me’” – somewhere other than here on earth and now, in this very moment.

CHRONO: Hi Vineeto,

Yes, I had suspected it and this experiencing showed clearly that there is a benevolence already occurring right here. It also subsequently highlighted many things. That in ‘my’ most fundamental drive to survive, ‘I’ can only imagine that this source of feeling good be somewhere else (among other things). I can see the significance and the wonderful occurrence of being alive right now. It makes me wonder what exactly is at stake here. And I had been letting that question simmer. But because of this it makes perfect sense to commit to feeling good come what may. I have been able to do it in a very easy way now. And every time I do not feel good, it slowly highlights what is at stake. And every time I do not feel good, it’s a simple asking of “would I really rather feel this than feel good?”. The quality of it is much better than ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings.

VINEETO: Hi Chrono,

Even though it looks as if you are inching your way forward in answering your question “what is at stake” you gather the experiential answer each time you pose this question. And because you have followed your common sense that committing “to feeling good come what may” makes perfect sense, to abandon everything that stands in the way of feeling good also makes perfect sense.

*

VINEETO: And you also reported that when “some closeness starts to happen”, often a ‘good’ feeling, in this case “nostalgia” swoops in and diverts you from further exploring this “closeness”. It is exactly this fine-tuned attentiveness which allows you to detect such diversions sooner rather than later, before they gather solidity, and then get back to your original exploration.

CHRONO: I’ve noticed it more and more in action and have been easily able to get back on track. In committing to feeling good right now, I am also willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams. And any occurrence of nostalgia or some such bittersweet feelings is a hope for that feeling good somewhere and somewhen else. I can see the seductive nature of this chimera.

VINEETO: It’s a pleasure to read of your success – and all because your promise to yourself borne of common sense “to feeling good come what may”. Then everything else is of less importance and willingly given up.

*

VINEETO: Lastly, when you say “sustained by the feeling of being trapped” you are probably aware that you are trapping yourself and ‘I’ am playing a trick on ‘me’ pretending the trapping is happening by someone else.

CHRONO: The feeling of being trapped seems to be from not actively endorsing to being alive right now. It’s a sort of “holding back”. And the moment I actively endorse to being alive, the feeling good becomes more dynamic and more sensuous.

VINEETO: Exactly. Feeling being trapped is the passive approach, stemming from convinced that things in life happen to you as the hapless non-involved victim, mostly borne of the resentment of being here, as in “life is the pits and then you die”. Once you “actively endorse” being alive you are deliberately and joyously participate being alive and able to evoke your destiny. As it turns out you contemplated that very subject in your next paragraph.

CHRONO: It also showed why I do feel trapped. I secretly believe that I can escape death. It sounds odd to say but from ‘my’ perspective it feels like that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now is also to embrace death. This way I am enjoying AND appreciating being alive.

VINEETO: Do I understand you correctly – that you feel trapped because, even though you “secretly believe” you can escape death, you also know “that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now” you need to abandon this secret belief and instead embrace the fact that you are mortal?

Above you wrote “I am willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams” – is one of the dreams being able to “escape death”? The spiritual dream of immortality via an Altered State of Consciousness?

If that is what you are saying you have certainly hit the nail of the head – coming down to earth from lofty heights, embracing the very physicality of being alive, and as such also your mortality, is how you are able “to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now”.

*

VINEETO: You have no need to “imagine it” – from the experience you described when “not being ‘me’” there were no concerns of being a “sociopath”, were there? As such you know as an experiential fact that minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings, i.e. minimising ‘me’, is outside the range of sane and insane, it is being salubrious. This fact answers your question directly – “to abandon both” you become more and more salubrious.

CHRONO: Yes this experience is my current benchmark that I’ve been utilizing. Where there is nothing to “keep in check”. So there’s no need for control and that perhaps is hard to digest. That ‘I’ am not needed.

VINEETO: Indeed. It may take some time to accept and get used to this fact ‘I’ am redundant.

CHRONO: I was reading these questions and answers from Dona and Alan and there Geoffrey asks:

Geoffrey: Is this the ‘indirect’ connection between the commitment to feeling good and actual freedom: that this commitment to be honoured requires the examination of beliefs, that this examination constitutes a ‘whittling away’ at the identity, and that this ‘whittling away’, making the identity ‘insubstantial’, opens the possibility of self-immolation?

Dona: Richard got what you’re saying, but still says that you feel good because it feels good. There is no connection (direct or indirect) with feeling good and becoming actually Free.

Whittling away at beliefs does make the social identity “smaller”, but does NOT get rid of (or lessen) feelings. It might eliminate some of the “triggers”, but not the feelings themselves. Only becoming Actually Free does that. (Dona and Alan’s Report, 15 October 2017)

I am following the same train of thought that he is asking but it doesn’t seem like it was quite answered. I get the impression based on those answers that even a person feeling bad could just become actually free. Are those answers correct? Or perhaps a person that is feeling good is more likely to make the decision to become free? With that said, it does certainly make sense to feel good irregardless.

VINEETO: The next paragraph from Alan might be illuminating –

Alan: LOL. They both thought you are still trying to over complicate things. Instead of a direct connection you are now trying to find an indirect connection. There is no connection – direct or indirect. As has been reported above it is the ‘social identity’ which can be rendered less substantial, by the investigation and elimination of (mainly) beliefs and especially any ‘Truths’. (Dona and Alan’s Report, 15 October 2017)

And here is why there cannot ever be a connection, direct or indirect or implied –

Richard: Okay … this is important, vital, pivotal: ‘I’, the thinker, know that ‘I’ cannot do it … ‘I’ cannot disappear ‘myself’. Only the ‘utter fullness’ can, and the ‘utter fullness’ is ‘calling one’, each moment again, and it is only when ‘I’ fully comprehend – totally, completely, fundamentally – that to be living this ‘utter fullness’ is to be living ‘my’ destiny will one be able ‘to answer that call’. (Richard, List B, No 25f, 18 June 2000).

If there were a connection, then ‘I’ would not have to die. To put it differently – ‘my’ logical thinking to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ (or rather from ‘there’ to here) cannot conceive “that ‘I’ cannot do it” and that ‘I’ have to disappear for the actual world to become apparent. In fact it is impossible for ‘me’, by ‘my’ very nature, to conceive that ‘I’ will ever disappear. It can only be understood experientially in a PCE or moments of apperception – and then it is perfectly obvious.

CHRONO: Also very funny as I am asking in that correspondence that many years ago and expressing the same fears of going insane. Looks like I am exactly the same step away as I was then. Well, aside from feeling way better than I was then. But I am stunned at how long it has been.

Ha, can you see how you are depreciating the fact that you are “feeling way better than I was then” as in putting it to one side (“aside from”) while berating yourself “how long it has been”?

*

VINEETO: You have no need to “imagine it” – from the experience you described when “not being ‘me’” there were no concerns of being a “sociopath”, were there? As such you know as an experiential fact that minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings, i.e. minimising ‘me’, is outside the range of sane and insane, it is being salubrious. This fact answers your question directly – “to abandon both” you become more and more salubrious.

CHRONO: There were no concerns then. I realize that it seems like a long leap from here to there because of my loyalty to Humanity.

VINEETO: You may find this informative –

Richard: […] The peculiar aspect of this ‘disguised slavery’ system is, then, the vacuity of the peasant-mentality which dumbly perpetuates it.

In a nutshell: what the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body circa 1978-79 began calling a ‘peasant mentality’ was exemplified by that vast majority of peoples not only just dumbly accepting and perpetuating this undeniably-rigged socio-economic system (known to hipsters as ‘The Establishment’) as being ‘just the way it is’ but being fiercely loyal to it, into the bargain, and defensive of it amongst themselves (to the point of defending it unto death, even, in shooting wars against other peasants similarly defending their elite few).

I kid you not; on many an occasion back then, when that identity would share ‘his’ insights with ‘his’ fellow-peasants, they would object most strenuously – especially the salaried peasants (those ‘white-collar workers’ who fondly imagined themselves to be a cut above peasant-hood) – and would vigorously defend the status-quo in a manner not all that dissimilar to what is known in psychological/ psychiatric terms as ‘capture-bonding’ (popularly known as ‘The Stockholm Syndrome’, when localised, and ‘The Oslo Syndrome’, when communalised).

Interestingly enough, some symptoms of ‘capture-bonding’ have been identified, in regards to criminal hostage situations, prisoners of war/ concentration camp internees, controlling/ intimidating relationships (battered wives/ hen-pecked husbands/ abused children), cult members, incest victims, and the like, [...]

The hallmark of ‘peasant-mentality’ is, in a word, loyalty. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu3, 28 May 2015).

Hence your “loyalty to Humanity” has various aspects of the social identity/ peasant mentality, which you can each recognize, understand and abandon whenever they stand in the way of enjoying and appreciating being here.

*

VINEETO: For a feeling being all caring is accompanied by feelings, so a useful discernment would be to be less guided by what others expect you to do, or you yourself feel obligated to do, according to traditional beliefs and concepts, but instead be harmless, considerate and benevolent (…)
This underlying atavistic fear of “I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity” is universal, only varying in strength and expression. Those cast out from the tribe could not survive on their own. I remember ‘Vineeto’ once had strong fears of being condemned/ burnt as a witch if anyone found out what a traitor to the human condition ‘she’ was.

CHRONO: In keeping with seeing what is at stake, I see the nature of ‘my’ connection to Humanity is composed of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. I was speaking with my dad again yesterday and the conversation veered toward human nature. He was of the opinion that you cannot change human nature and that to do so would ensure that you could not function in society (citing the corporate politics that he has to play in his job). But he also agreed that “the bombs dropping” was sanity in action and that there can never be any solution. He seemed to intuitively understand what the nature of what I was saying was as he said if I were to become free from human nature then I would be found out and be tortured. It really felt like I was talking to the embodiment of Humanity. Subsequently, I was very appalled. I realized that there was no saving Humanity. Humanity wants to remain as it is and maintain the status quo. And by remaining a denizen, I am also one of its embodiments.

VINEETO: I understand you were appalled by realizing how remaining a “denizen” you are actively supporting ‘Humanity’ and it is no wonder ‘I’ come up with the most potent and threatening counter-argument to leaving humanity – that you will go insane. But as you more and more realise, the alternative to sanity is not insanity but the salubriousness of being less and less of ‘me’, in other words, being felicitous and innocuous and appreciative of being alive. When you understand this, then chipping away at your loyalty to humanity is no longer such a scary big deal.

*

VINEETO: And isn’t it a wonderful relief and joy when one portion of the inner push-and-pull battle has disappeared completely?

CHRONO: Yes, becoming aware of what is actually happening underneath has been an enormous help in declining these battles. Before I didn’t understand exactly what was happening so it would amount to suppressing or pretending.

VINEETO: Above you said “I am stunned at how long it has been” – to thoroughly and experientially understand how the human psyche works is a gradual process, and you are daily reaping the rewards.

Cheers Vineeto

April 14 2026

CHRONO: I’ve been back and forth and for the most part have been feeling neutral to good. There was one day where I was more in the feeling bad zone but that also didn’t hit the lows that it would have. I have been wondering about this committing to feeling good and its ramifications. With committing to feeling good, it means feeling good no matter the situation or circumstances. My life looked like it’s going in a different trajectory. I would be “giving up” a big part of who I currently thought and felt I was. I was wondering this for most of the day. At one point the feeling came back again that I would be punished. The thought of what my dad said of ‘I would be found out and tortured’ or ‘I wouldn’t be feeling good when they torture me’. And I had this realization that I would only be tortured because of ‘me’. All of the ‘me’ in every body. This was the nature of Humanity. To pull everyone down to its miserable depths. And this feeling went away right after.

VINEETO: Hi Chrono,

What you can also include in your considerations is that when you are feeling good, your intelligence and common sense works much, much better than when you are overwhelmed by feelings. As such, when feeling good, you are much more likely to act intelligently and give others no reason at all for “‘I would be found out and tortured’” or any such atavistic scares passed down the ages to keep people in line.

CHRONO: Then the next day I was thinking about how self-immolation only happens when I’m ready. Why make it a hard effort? I started thinking about the irrevocability of it. I got some strange discomfort in my head and chest that I’ve gotten before. It’s like ‘I’ have a locality, like I’m hidden somewhere inside the body, but not actually there either. Why do I hide and what am I hiding from? What is it to be here fully? I can’t seem to remember the exact details but I had this realization that what I’ve been trying to do is change ‘me’ (as in purify ‘me’ to be un-corrupt) and that ‘I’ cannot change ‘me’. ‘I’ am all of the feelings waiting to happen. ‘I’ am the very corruption. As long as this ‘me’ is in place, ‘I’ could become anything. Then the discomfort stopped and this was like great news because it meant that ‘I’ did not have to try to change ‘me’. And that is so effortful. I didn’t need to “solve” ‘me’. I just need to feel good.

VINEETO: This is an excellent insight and worth remembering whenever you are about to fall back into making “a hard effort” to purify ‘you’, the identity, instead of connecting to pure intent and feeling good. The “strange discomfort in my head and chest” is the psychosomatic reaction to the chemicals triggered by the feelings about ‘my’ survival being under threat.

CHRONO: What followed was an another bout of overflowing feeling good. I was talking with my co-workers and to customers. There was almost no self-consciousness and the conversation was effortlessly fun. I spoke completely unrehearsed. There were no favorites and there was heightened sensuousness. I noticed how I was feeling good and felt even more good. I experienced the dynamic and energizing nature of this moment. I experienced this dynamicness as me. I saw the universe as it occurs right now is always in motion. Always dynamic. Always new. Always interesting. Almost like always being at the edge of my seat. I occur only right here in this moment of being alive. Inseparable from being this flesh and blood body. I saw other people and they too were living this actuality but completely not noticing it. Or rather those flesh and blood bodies were living this actuality perhaps. This experiencing was again other to ‘me’. ‘I’ could never be like this. It is actually occurring. There could be no doubt or comparison. There were ripples of delight flowing throughout my body. It continued from work til I got home. And each moment I am missing out on this.

VINEETO: What a wonderful description of an excellence experience or PCE.

*

VINEETO: Even though it looks as if you are inching your way forward in answering your question “what is at stake” you gather the experiential answer each time you pose this question. And because you have followed your common sense that committing “to feeling good come what may” makes perfect sense, to abandon everything that stands in the way of feeling good also makes perfect sense.

It’s a pleasure to read of your success – and all because your promise to yourself borne of common sense “to feeling good come what may”. Then everything else is of less importance and willingly given up.

CHRONO: Hi Vineeto,

Yes it makes everything easier if I’ve made committing to feeling good right now the number 1 priority. It makes sense now why I’d be more stuck in certain bad feelings in the past for a long time. It’s because that commitment had not been made. Now that it has, it’s just a matter of returning to that commitment if I notice I’m not feeling good and also figuring out why.

VINEETO: It is indeed a very helpful commitment to make – when ‘it just makes sense to feel good’ is not enough to counter the swings of emotion which do occur from time to time, which then put common sense is in hibernation.

*

VINEETO: Do I understand you correctly – that you feel trapped because, even though you “secretly believe” you can escape death, you also know “that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now” you need to abandon this secret belief and instead embrace the fact that you are mortal?
Above you wrote “I am willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams” – is one of the dreams being able to “escape death”? The spiritual dream of immortality via an Altered State of Consciousness?

If that is what you are saying you have certainly hit the nail of the head – coming down to earth from lofty heights, embracing the very physicality of being alive, and as such also your mortality, is how you are able “to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now”.

CHRONO: Yes that is exactly correct. My original start to the “search for peace” was when I encountered Buddhism. At the time, it looked sensible to me as it seemed to offer a solution to the Human Condition. But I did not understand that its peace was otherworldly and “somewhere else”. It seemed attractive to ‘me’ because it also offered escaping death. Which I see was the main highlight for ‘me’. ‘I’ could be “somewhere else” where ‘I’ won’t die. And the entirety of it hinged on this belief. But by actively endorsing being alive here in this moment, I know that I am mortal and will die. To actively endorse being alive right now is to give up any otherworldly otherness. The ASC of being immortal is indeed one of the dreams that I am willing to give up.

VINEETO: Spiritual immortality being a very popular belief and you having held it for some time, it might take some contemplating and being aware of any reoccurrence of that dream of immortality. But the more you contemplate it sensibly the less it makes sense, being only supported by the passionate desire of ‘my’ survival.

*

VINEETO:

Richard: Okay … this is important, vital, pivotal: ‘I’, the thinker, know that ‘I’ cannot do it … ‘I’ cannot disappear ‘myself’. Only the ‘utter fullness’ can, and the ‘utter fullness’ is ‘calling one’, each moment again, and it is only when ‘I’ fully comprehend – totally, completely, fundamentally – that to be living this ‘utter fullness’ is to be living ‘my’ destiny will one be able ‘to answer that call’. (Richard, List B, No 25f, 18 June 2000).

If there were a connection, then ‘I’ would not have to die. To put it differently – ‘my’ logical thinking to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ (or rather from ‘there’ to here) cannot conceive “that ‘I’ cannot do it” and that ‘I’ have to disappear for the actual world to become apparent. In fact it is impossible for ‘me’, by ‘my’ very nature, to conceive that ‘I’ will ever disappear. It can only be understood experientially in a PCE or moments of apperception – and then it is perfectly obvious.

CHRONO: I think I understand and I wonder if there is a reluctance to see that this ‘utter fullness’ as my destiny has to do with death. But also maybe I am doing all this also because I have a simultaneous desire for death/ oblivion. Why is ‘my’ being so precious I wonder? What exactly is it that I am waiting for? What would make ‘me’ forsake ‘being’?

VINEETO: What Richard is referring to is a temporary experience this particular respondent reported. You said yourself in the second paragraph above that “I was thinking about how self-immolation only happens when I’m ready”. Obviously you are not ready for the ultimate step and need to find out more about “why is ‘my’ being so precious”. Don’t let your feeling good be spoiled with a ‘self’-created conflict of being impatient. It is just another trick of ‘me’ trying to stay in the picture. (…)

*

VINEETO:

Richard: […] The hallmark of ‘peasant-mentality’ is, in a word, loyalty. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu3, 28 May 2015).

Hence your “loyalty to Humanity” has various aspects of the social identity/ peasant mentality, which you can each recognize, understand and abandon whenever they stand in the way of enjoying and appreciating being here.

CHRONO: I realized that part of my loyalty to Humanity is because I think that ‘I’ can change Humanity. The same way that I thought that ‘I’ could change ‘me’ fundamentally. Very interesting.

VINEETO: Fascinating, isn’t it – the focus changes from changing oneself to changing Humanity instead. It’s a dead-end road which, if believed, could keep you busy for the rest of your life. The attraction is that then ‘I’ wouldn’t be alone but at what price! It is also very understandable given the misery and mayhem happening all around.

This quote from Richard’s Journal may be helpful –

Richard: My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being all started when I was nineteen years of age. I was in a war-torn foreign country, dressed in a jungle-green uniform and carrying a loaded rifle in my hands. This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and Country.

Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’ of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a despairing desperation, that was collectively shared by my fellow humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ... it was that some people were better at controlling their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampant. I saw that fear and aggression ruled the world ... and that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search for freedom from the Human Condition.

My attitude, all those years ago was this: ‘I’ was only interested in changing ‘myself’ fundamentally, radically, completely and utterly.

‘I’ was not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ tapped into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) that ‘I’ had during a peak experience in 1980. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself. Once set in motion, it is no longer a matter of choice: it is an irresistible pull. It is the adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage of exploration and discovery; to not only seek but to find. And once found, it is here for the term of one’s natural life – it is an irreversible mutation in consciousness. Once launched it is impossible to turn back and resume one’s normal life ... one has to be absolutely sure that this is what one truly wants.

Eighteen years ago ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the universe was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom of the real-world’ that ‘I’ had inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow and malice in every human being, ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free ... ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so delicious to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly – the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! [Emphasis added]. (Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword).

*

VINEETO: I understand you were appalled by realizing how remaining a “denizen” you are actively supporting ‘Humanity’, and it is no wonder ‘I’ come up with the most potent and threatening counter-argument to leaving humanity – that you will go insane. But as you more and more realise, the alternative to sanity is not insanity but the salubriousness of being less and less of ‘me’, in other words, being felicitous and innocuous and appreciative of being alive. When you understand this, then chipping away at your loyalty to humanity is no longer such a scary big deal.

CHRONO: I can see this now. Now instead of the fear of going insane, it has turned into a feeling of loneliness.

VINEETO: The above quote also answers your question of loneliness.

Richard: “‘I’ was not alone in this endeavour because ‘I’ tapped into the purity and perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe with a pure intent born out of a pure consciousness experience (PCE) …” (Richard’s Journal, 1997, Foreword).

Once you get the knack of connecting to pure intent and experience the benignity and benevolence inherent to the purity and perfection of the infinitude, i.e. of pure intent, then there is no room for loneliness. When you experienced what you described as “another bout of overflowing feeling good” there was no loneliness, even though no one else shared the same experience. The following quote might also help –

Mark: I have chosen not to tell acquaintances of this happening [health wise] as I have no wish to invoke pity, sympathy or such that would only serve to strengthen the ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’ of same. Two ‘selves’ live in totally different worlds so any sharing (of fear, grief, love) is not actually possible anyway! I have never before felt so at ease with aloneness (engendered by the gradual falling away of the shared beliefs of the ‘real’ world).

Richard: Aye, when loneliness ends, and one stands on one’s own two feet, this independence is a relief ... yet there is more. Even aloneness can end. Where you wrote (Part One) that ‘all I can do is proceed, with pure intent, to continue to nibble away at ‘me’, I can only recommend proceeding with all dispatch. When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ entirety, the separative entity’s isolation disappears too ... and an actual intimacy emerges that beggars comparison. This is because a person’s isolation is formed by the essence of their ‘being’... and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. (…)

With apperception, what one discovers, time and again, is that the personal boundaries that one feels so safely protected by, are made up of ‘my’ accrued beliefs as to who ‘I’ am. This is ‘my’ outline, as it were, shaped by other people’s description of ‘me’ ... a construct which gives ‘me’ asylum in each different group into which ‘I’ wish to enter. Yet the outline of this construct creates, simultaneously, an enormous distance between ‘me’ and the world outside. At those times of peak experience, the distance disappears all of a sudden as ‘I’ vanish and this world is right here, so close that there is no distance any more. This is closer than any affective intimacy ‘I’ have ever longed for. This is serendipity indeed. This is a direct experience of actuality ... and I have always been here like this ... so safely here. The outline, the boundary that created the distance, was all in ‘my’ reality. ‘I’ created a substitute security for this original safety ... a safety which has never known any threat, nor ever will. This genuine safety has no need for precautions. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Mark, 18 February 1999).

*

VINEETO: Above you said “I am stunned at how long it has been” – to thoroughly and experientially understand how the human psyche works is a gradual process, and you are daily reaping the rewards.

CHRONO: I am most definitely reaping the rewards more now and it is fascinating seeing all the workings of ‘me’.

VINEETO: Ha, every word you write confirms that. It is a pleasure to follow your process to more and more feel good.

Cheers Vineeto