January 23 2025

CROSSCHRONO: It has been a while since I wrote as I’ve gone thru a roller coaster of feelings and have come to a more calm and stable place. Of course it had to do with love but it gave me the impetus to move forward. Seeing and experiencing constantly that it does not work in bringing about a personal and interpersonal peace. I’ve also been hesitant in writing as I don’t like to write when I’m feeling not so great but maybe that might help in getting out of it too.

VINEETO: Hi CrossChrono,

Welcome back. What an excellent and rich report about your discoveries and insights!

CROSSCHRONO: After I wrote my previous response I had begun engaging in ‘nipping it in the bud’ of all the loving and related feelings that I came across. I started doing it as it seemed that was the only course of action. I had already seen and experienced that it brought much suffering. Due to this I started experiencing feelings of meaninglessness, desolation, and bleakness as far as the ‘eye’ can see. What it revealed was that love was a way to cover up my loneliness. ‘I’ created an imaginary version of another person based on a dream and how ‘I’ intuited them to be and then essentially pretended that ‘I’ could be in union with this imaginary ‘other’. An instinctual movement towards assuaging the essential loneliness. When I become vulnerable thru trust in love, I am hoping that this other person will reciprocate this state of vulnerability. But in the process, I am revealing my fundamental loneliness and aloneness. If this other does not match the dream of love, then I feel it more deeply than I have ever felt before. The whole process is illusionary. The other person that ‘I’ am dreaming of does not exist. They can never match the dream. And vice versa as well. A sad state of affairs. This is further compounded for me because it has occurred to me that many people actually ignore or pretend that the ‘bad’ side of love does not exist. People will tell me that ‘I’ am too focused on it. But I cannot ignore it because it’s always there. Something is off with the whole business of relating with other people. And it is from this, my genuine desire for peace springs forth. My desire so far has been to uncover everything I can so that it can be in plain view. I also feel a fear behind this of ‘who do I think I am’. Like an authority telling me to sit down and shut up.

VINEETO: In order to successfully ‘nip in the bud’ it’s essential to have understood the underlying patterns of the occurring feelings you want to ‘nip’. Obviously there is still some remnant investment in love, which is not surprising, as it is considered the highly-prized cure-all for loneliness and the mess of the human condition in general.

You have made some significant inroads into understanding love, especially knowing that it has a ‘bad’ side.

The key ingredient for feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ was, when ‘she’ investigated the pining aspect of love, ‘her’ childhood-inspired romantic dream of belonging to a man and therefrom having an iron-clad identity as a woman (A Bit of Vineeto, #love). Seeing this fact, thus abandoning the romantic dream, and reclaiming ‘her’ autonomy, was only the beginning of a longer process of weening ‘herself’ off the whole maze of female identity and man-woman relating in general.

You say “The other person that ‘I’ am dreaming of does not exist. They can never match the dream.” It goes further than that, love itself can never fulfil the dream it inherently promises – it’s an empty chimera and will never bridge the separation so longed for by the lonely isolated identities who fall for love’s glamorous promise.

If this fact, that love will not solve your problem of aloneness and loneliness, is allowed to sink in, as an irrefutable fact, love will lose its appeal and you can regain your autonomy and dignity as a person in your own right – and simultaneous recognize your partner’s own autonomy and dignity. It also dispenses with pining and jealousy in one fell swoop.

With autonomy and dignity restored you can then naively relate to your fellow human beings in an increasingly intimate way, unilaterally. I know from experience how much a woman can appreciate intimacy, even though she may not know that this is really what she is looking for when she says she wants love. You will find out yourself when you proceed interacting with your partner in an intimate rather than loving way. (Richard, Abditorium, Intimacy, #intimacy)

CROSSCHRONO: Anyways, I continued this process and due to this desolation I thought my partner would also start feeling the same way. They did not as far as I know and I actually kind of preferred this way of being over being in love. But nonetheless something else triggered possessiveness when my partner was talking with another man. I started feeling jealous and it put me in a state of muddled thinking. I nipped that in the bud. But then my partner brought up wanting to hang out with this other man and their partner. This again triggered the same feelings. This time it caused much suffering and it took some time to claw my way back out. Talking with my partner helped and they confirmed that it had been my own reaction which was making things seem the way they were. So I asked myself if I am repressing something. I genuinely wanted to know if I was but I kept going over and over thru the same old feelings. Then it became clear there was a missing ingredient: intent.

I realized that I would always run thru the same old feelings unless I consistently maintained the intent to be happy and harmless. I realized that it had to be an overreaching intent that had to be weaved thru my entire life for it to work and for me to not fall back thru the same ways of being. Some things I read on here and AFT website gave me clues. I had to do my part in ‘reaching’ as much as I could towards the actual. There were some clues in my everyday life as well. I would feel good when I had the genuine intent for it. The times that I did not feel good was when doubt came thru and I was not being sincere. There was some reason or belief that was in the way that prevented it from happening. I could not pretend to feel good because it intellectually made sense, I have to genuinely want it. Otherwise the instinctual ways of being will easily override any endeavour.

VINEETO: To have sincere intent is vital. I noticed an aspect in your report is about control, ‘me’ controlling ‘me’ to move into the direction ‘I’ think is right – and that approach is sudorific, at best. Even though the ingredient may be right, the outcome is still a serious enterprise of ‘you’ forcing yourself to be in a particular way.

Sincerity will allow you to unlock your hidden-away-during-puberty naiveté (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Naiveté), to allow yourself to become more and more guileless, artless, ingenuous, unsophisticated, open, aboveboard, direct, frank, straightforward, child-like but with adult sensibilities. With that sincere and naïve intent you will see that suddenly life becomes easier, more fun, more allowing things to happen rather than vigilantly directing them to happen.

More in the next section.

Cheers Vineeto

January 23 2025

CROSSCHRONO: Another clue that stuck out for me was the word ‘unilateral’. Richard writes that only unilateral action will do the trick. That means it is not dependent on others. I had the fear that I would lose my partner if I chose to just feel good. But thru the few times that I have chosen to be that way with her, it definitely was better in every way. In being that way, there was a freedom that love could never grant. I did not experience her thru my insecurities or other fears. She is a free person and another individual. Unlike love, this is a free intimacy and nothing like what my fears intuited it to be. In fact, I think love is a bondage and yet another way of being in thrall. Even writing that, I can feel Humanity shaking its finger at me.

VINEETO: Yes, acting unilaterally is a very important clue. Richard reports when ‘he’ first realized that nobody was in charge of the world.

Richard: I saw with a starkly-staring clarity how no one knew what was going on and – most importantly – how no one was ‘in charge’ of the world (unlike childhood schools where the headmaster or headmistress in charge is the ultimate preventative of playground fights going out-of-control lethal). There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race insofar as all gods and goddesses were but a figment of febrile imagination. (Richard, Personal Webpage)

Hence you can do with your life as you choose (as long as you obey the local laws and social protocol) and it depends on every person’s unilateral action to bring about peace-on-earth. It does not require the cooperation of a single person ... let alone “Humanity”. So whenever “Humanity” is “shaking its finger at me” you know you are on the right track.

Richard: If you have followed what I have written so far, you will see it is a question of attitude, predilection, disposition and intent, because one can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté, as I have said, is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity of the infinitude of this physical universe. To reiterate: this connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity.

To unilaterally relinquish one’s esteemed identity is to go in the face of all received wisdom. Any psychiatrist would readily advise against such a foolish move – they will state that one would fall into a condition of mental and emotional ill-health. They would diagnose that one is likely to suffer from a severe mental disorder – probably ‘Depersonalisation’ and ‘Derealisation’ – with its accompanying anxiety and panic attacks, resulting in the prescribing of anti-psychotropic medication and prolonged psychological counselling. To ‘lose one’s identity’ and to ‘lose contact with reality’ is considered a very serious psychiatric illness indeed. So one must proceed carefully – with the indispensable aid of pure intent – in order to dismantle, step by step, one’s accrued identity and reality. (Richard, List A, No. 26)

CROSSCHRONO: Then realizations had been hitting me back and forth for a bit. One thing that just smacked me in the face was like ‘all I have to do is feel good’. And this is easy. Whatever comes, I will do it feeling good. So I decided that I would not think about anything or do anything unless I was feeling good. This worked for quite a few days. I had the longest stretch of feeling good that I’ve ever experienced in a long time. Right around at the beginning of this I had another realization about being alive. It actually caught me by surprise. I was taking a shower and I became aware instantly that this entire time it has been this moment. It sounds like almost mundane. But quite literally, this entire time (forever) it has only been this moment. Even as I am writing this the implications of this are churning in my mind. All the ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ don’t have an actual existence. When I realized this, I became fascinated and I felt even more good automatically. So much safety and security in this moment. What a relief that only this moment exists. And another realization came some time after this one. Only I as this body can know that this moment exists. This one has been simmering for a little while longer. I am allowing it to gestate. There were a few other stand out experiences of perhaps a similar nature. […]

VINEETO: This is a serendipitous insight – only this flesh-and-blood body “can know that this moment exists”, and that now is the only moment you can actually experience. And given that this is the only moment you can actually experience, any time spent feeling bad is a waste of this precious actual moment. And with this experience comes the insight that there is “so much safety and security in this moment” – it is truly magical.

Remember those valuable insights – they need actualizing for them to take effect in your life.

Cheers Vineeto

January 23 2025

CROSSCHRONO: I also had some insight into authority. I’ve been seeing that very clearly that no one has any idea what they are doing in regards to living happily and harmlessly. I had been reading up on social identity and saw that there’s a semblance of peace in the world but not actual peace. No one was acknowledging the root cause of why there has not been any peace in the world. They are doing anything but addressing it (the same as I had been). So there is a widespread insincerity. Everyone is playing pretend and I also had internalized this and pretended like everyone else. By choosing to feel good irregardless of circumstances, I sometimes feel I am standing up to all of Humanity. How dare I feel good while the world suffers (or something like that)? Yet I feel more authentic when I am feeling good than at any other time. It’s the doubt casted by my internalizing of Humanity’s many ways of being that pull me back every time. By choosing to be how Humanity is, I give up being authentic. Now I see all of this is because Humanity has not actually addressed the root cause of there not being any peace.

VINEETO: It's excellent that you more and more recognize the insincerity in ‘humanity’s’ morals and ethics because that will let you it shrug off more easily when you feel that ‘humanity’ is shaking its finger at you. There really is no such thing as humanity, it is a collectively felt phantom – there are only flesh-and-blood human beings (albeit all subject to instinctual passions and the identity formed thereof). As such the feeling that humanity is pulling you back is felt as real (as in you should obey the moral and ethical rules) but it is not actual. “Humanity has not actually addressed the root cause of there not being any peace” because it cannot – only individuals humans can do that – and it is delicious to slip out from under ‘humanity’s’ internalized yoke and devote one’s life to something really worth-while that can result in the perfection of actuality becoming apparent.

CROSSCHRONO: So I had a unique experience after that. Unique because I had not experienced something like it before. So seeing as how Humanity does not know what it is doing, were there any real rules? Could I just become actually free if I wanted to? I had been contemplating this at home and then when I was at work as well. It was a particularly slow day at work so I just reflected on it more. As I was feeling somewhere between neutral to good at the time, I thought of this moment and how it has been this moment this whole time. I became aware of a ‘bigness’ or immensity. Not quite sure of how else to describe it. It grew and it was as if my awareness was drifting into outer space without any central focus. My normal way of being I’d describe as ‘indolent’ in the sense of I stayed the same fundamentally. But now I was electrified, invigorated, and exhilarated. It felt like something was performing surgery in my head. As awareness ‘grew’, I saw all of ‘me’ as a point and felt the sensation of it at my navel area. It reminded me of the ‘pale blue dot’. Except all of me was this pale blue dot. I felt all of sorrow and was on the verge of tears but the tears would not come. I’m not quite sure why after that, but I came back down to earth. I was back to normal and felt kind of frustrated after that. I felt frustrated that I couldn’t allow it to proceed further. The following days I allowed myself to slip below neutral. Then I once again gathered sufficient intent to feel good again. […]

VINEETO: To me it sounds like a description of having made a connection with pure intent. The contrast to being normal can be quite overwhelming so your pulling back is a natural reaction. Let this awareness grow again via fascinated attention and reflective contemplation all the way to apperceptive awareness.

Richard: Apperceptive awareness can be evoked by paying exclusive attention to being fully alive right now. This moment is your only moment of being alive … one is never alive at any other time than now. And, wherever you are, one is always here … even if you start walking over to ‘there’, along the way to ‘there’ you are always here … and when you arrive ‘there’, it too is here. Thus attention becomes a fascination with the fact that one is always here … and it is already now. Fascination leads to reflective contemplation. As one is already here, and it is always now … then one has arrived before one starts. The potent combination of attention, fascination, reflection and contemplation produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. (Library, Topics, Apperception)

What an exciting adventure it is to be on the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom.

I really enjoyed your whole report.

Cheers Vineeto

January 25 2025

VINEETO: In order to successfully ‘nip in the bud’ it’s essential to have understood the underlying patterns of the occurring feelings you want to ‘nip’. Obviously there is still some remnant investment in love, which is not surprising, as it is considered the highly-prized cure-all for loneliness and the mess of the human condition in general.

CROSSCHRONO: Yes this was my understanding as well but I had not been making any further headway in clearing it up completely so that it’s just second nature to not go in that direction. I thought maybe I just had to actively nip it in the bud and that perhaps it was a habitual action in going towards love. I’ve seen the underlying patterns too many times so I thought maybe I was just being crazy to keep “investigating” it.
But this in particular caught my eye:

Perhaps I need to go further and ween myself as well. I had noticed that love and my relation to it plays into the male identity too. When I think about it, it feels like that to be successful in love also means being successful in society in general. Those who can outwardly show that they are successful in their relationships are seen as exemplars of knowing the secret to living a happy life. And I think that coupled with the psychological authority set in place and built upon since childhood serves to create a persistent doubt that “they” know something that I don’t.

VINEETO: Hi CrossChrono,

You are very welcome.

I see you already discovered more to understand love and man-woman relating from an additional aspect – the identity of being a ‘man’ in society’s eyes. This “persistent doubt” is nothing other than your social conditioning you have been subject to from an early age – of course you feel “that “they” know something that I don’t”.

However, if you look more closely at the individuals who make up ‘society’, it will become obvious to you that the ‘happy’ and “successful in their relationships” façade is just that. Just study women’s magazines, watch the news, observe your neighbours and workmates, and you find that what is presented in Hollywood movies is not the whole picture. Here, for instance, are ‘Peter’s’ observation from his Journal –