VINEETO: Hi Felix,

This is a very good description of your struggles with the actualism method and the insights you obtained from it what to do and especially what not to do.

FELIX: Part of the “secret” of actualism seems to be that the road is only wide once you are past a lot of your own obstacles. In my case the entrance to the road might as well have been a pinhole. I remember Geoffrey saying something similar back in the day. I don’t mean to make it sound hard, I’m just stating how it was for me. 

VINEETO: Given that you say “the entrance to the road might as well have been a pinhole” – perhaps this very simple suggestion might help you to find the wide and wondrous path in future. When some strong emotion occurs, mark this as a flashing red light.

Red light in traffic means STOP. Not just go slow but stop. Don’t cross the road when the red light is flashing, not in traffic and not in the actualism method. Before thinking about the trigger, the emotion, the problem, do whatever you can to get to feeling neutral, then to feeling (reasonably) good. Play a game, have a shower, have a cuppa, anything to get to feeling neutral.

Then, and only then, you can try to contemplate the silliness of feeling bad –

Only when you feel good and you can look at the problem, which caused you to feel bad, in a *dispassionate* way, only then your contemplation and investigation and puzzling things out is worthwhile and can lead to some sensible results and even resolution.

FELIX: I know I used to write a lot about “actively enjoying” etc but what I was really trying to do back then was to go over the self….like trying to override my real desires and feelings and instincts and resentment for being alive by brute force. It’s not the way. You can’t pretend that the self is not there, and then abuse it or suppress it or manipulate it to get some outcome. The self needs to be treated with care, graciously and gently like you’d treat a little kid almost. It will cling so hard to what it thinks it wants with a powerful grip, and investigating is a way of gently prying it’s toys away from its little hands.

VINEETO: That is spot on. “You can’t pretend that the self is not there” because that pretence *is* the self, creating its own duplicate, pretending to having a fight with itself – in order to distract you from feeling good. It’s a pure diversion tactic. Once you wake up to this cunning pattern, it will be easier not to fall for the same trick over and over again

I wouldn’t say that “the self needs to be treated with care”, as if you and the self are not one and the same, rather that you need to learn to be a friend to yourself. That means sometimes it (which is ‘you’) needs gentle guidance via pure intent, sometimes ‘you’, the more sensible adult needs to step in to call an end to a tantrum-throwing angry child. Calling an end means STOP, as described above. That means sometimes it  (which is ‘you’) needs gentle guidance via pure intent, sometimes ‘you’, the more sensible adult needs to step in to call an end to a tantrum-throwing angry child. Calling an end means STOP, as described above.

I wish you great success.

Cheers Vineeto

August 8 2024

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

Thank you for your appreciation and the message full of good news.

FELIX: One thing I’m starting to see a LOT of is the role of shame in hampering real investigation. Identifying as the thinker, and too scared and ashamed to face my “dangerous” feelings, I only ever knew how to beat myself up and suppress unwanted emotions. I felt and believed deep down I was just too bad, an irredeemable “lost cause” who couldn’t live up to Richard or the goal of being happy and harmless. And I had all the feelings to back it up.

VINEETO: Now that you are feeling good, even excellent, and with a memory of an outstanding EE only yesterday – can you recognize how shame and feeling ashamed is a mere tactic of you the feeling being, to distract you from changing? 

And can you also comprehend, how equally your belief that you are “an irredeemable “lost cause” who couldn’t live up to Richard” is a habit, initially a survival habit, which is now no longer necessary nor beneficial to maintain? If you can understand this as a realization then you can decline this belief each time you become aware of it … and in one scoop two large obstacles will be removed and allow you to “not fall back into the same old”.

FELIX: Coming back to normal life, this EE has allowed me to up-level, and not fall back into the same old. I can feel that my brain is starting to understand more and more what is working and what isn’t (on a somewhat rudimentary “hotter” or “colder” basis). As such feeling bad feels wrong, and is much easier to untie – especially by tracing back to last night.

Anyway just wanted to drop a line. Cheers!

VINEETO: Yes! That is exactly it – “feeling bad feels wrong” and a clear indicator towards more and more enjoying and appreciating being here and being alive right now.

It’s wonderful to behold.

Cheers Vineeto

October 29 2024

FELIX: Just wanted to say that today my entire place in the world has shifted.

It’s like I reached the very limit of my solutions, and being all out of ammunition, I could only give in to the ease and delight of being here.

This feeling good state arose so naturally, and had no airs or pretence. There was no neediness to it, or doubt, or self castigation, or frustration, or burn out, or anything else. 

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

This is great. It looks it “arose so naturally” … but you also know why it happened – you “reached the very limit of my solutions”.

This is worth printing and sticking on your fridge as a reminder. Whenever ‘your’ solutions, i.e. your habitual reactions and responses, don’t work to make you feel good and delightful, stand still and allow the shift, and allow to happen what has happened today.

I remember that similar shifts happened to you a few times before, but you forgot, or didn’t recognize how they came about, and eventually your habitual responses took over and introduced stress and seriousness again. This time you can pay attention at the slightest diminishment of your present state of feeling good and catch it at the beginning before it can slip and revert back to the serious, stressful way of life.

This “noticing” is nothing serious, just a bit of attention, now that you know again how *good* it feels to feel good. With an intent to keep feeling good and paying attention you can keep feeling good.

FELIX: I stood there and questioned, from this point of view, my whole orientation towards life. Not in some mindfucky way, but just a kind of “noticing” of that feeling good quality. Why couldn’t this be my default state?

VINEETO: Exactly, why couldn’t it! Now you can *actualize* this realization in this matter-of-fact way you experience today.

FELIX: This was very matter of fact, not having to “reach” for something ethereal or divine. Clarity and sensibility came in and cleaned up a lot of stuff. I realised this actualism thing is not so damn serious. My life isn’t so damn serious. And I did not have to be the absolute genius of the world or climb a metaphorical Mt Everest in order to just be here. I saw it was more like a subtle shift in adjustment that was needed.

Not a big deal…no need for pressure.

VINEETO: Yes, and that is the very proof that you have all the tools – the intelligence, the basic understanding which is needed to reach this “subtle shift in adjustment” … now the question is, do you have the right amount of (non-serious but sincere) intent to keep it going and make feeling good indeed your “default state”?

You can do it if you want it ♫♪ ♫ ♪

Cheers Vineeto

November 3 2024

FELIX: Hey Vineeto,

Glad to report that what is happening now is not a repetition of the same cycles I have experienced for the last 4 or 5 years.

There are two things happenings:

1. I seem to have brought my ongoing “chronic stress condition”, with its concomitant escape/addiction issues (mainly sexual) and warped perceptions to an end, at last.

In a nutshell…and without wanting to make it sound too easy….you could say I FINALLY learned to decline to go down my usual self-sabotaging routes.

Since then, feeling good has been arising very easily – which is all quite simple and delightful.

I’m just inviting it more and more, which is as much about staying out of the way and not getting triggered than anything else.

Whereas before, I was in fact a traumatised psyche – effectively “permatriggered” – and so there was (seemingly) no place of safe feeling good to aim for or go back to. 

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

What good tidings! According to your report you seem to have said a final goodbye to your “chronic stress condition” due to your “escape/addiction issues”. What an incredible success.

After all, you had indulged in it and suffered from it long enough to have grown tired of it and finally “learned to decline”.

Well done. And now the next stage – to get used to “not getting triggered” so that you can continue feeling good.

FELIX: I’m reminded how Richard once told me his main goal using the actualism method originally was “to not get triggered”. That makes a LOT of sense now – it is just so much easier to be feeling good first and then avoid triggers.

2. My overall “window” into the world, seen through my eyes but experienced in a 3D physical sense, is totally changing.

My nervous system has relaxed, I feel much more comfortable in my body and everything around me is much more pleasurable. I am experiencing that holiday feeling. It’s amazing to experience myself so differently and so all of a sudden. The deep fears that were lashing and lacerating me with stress minute in minute out are gone and I’m starting to feel rejuvenated and healthy.

VINEETO: This sounds truly wonderful. The great thing is that despite your long “chronic stress condition” you still remember how the actualism method works and now you can finally benefit putting it into practice.

Now is the right time, the “holiday feeling” time, to get used to being attentive enough to avoid any triggers, and if they do happen to get back to feeling good as quickly as possible.

FELIX: Now that I’m getting used to feel good it’s making it a lot easier to “rewire” myself. Letting go of beliefs is much much easier, as affectively I am no longer tied to them, indulging them or enslaved to them.

Now, in a relaxed way I’m making sure I don’t go back to my old ways.

I wouldn’t want to anyway.

VINEETO: This is an excellent plan, this is the meaning of what you do “in the meantime” … to enjoy and appreciate, and this way life can only get better and better.

I am so pleased for you, you had given yourself such a hard time.

Cheers Vineeto

November 7 2024

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

So many good posts and insights! Before you end up stressing yourself from the sheer amount of what you want to do differently, let me comment on some of what you wrote –

FELIX: Probably the biggest thing I’ve found is this. So much of my “determination” and “drive” to pursue actualism has been driven by FEAR. This fear points away from itself oh so cunningly …. I’d even wake up already stressed, and then of course you feel fearful and want to escape. Which can either be something actualism related or something completely different.
For me it has pointed me towards being intense about actualism, being very very hard on myself, and trying as hard as possible. 

VINEETO: And:

FELIX: This was my way of trying to put a lid on the feeling being. To not be caring toward myself or others. This lack of friendliness within caused my nervous system to absolutely tighten and freeze and lock up - pretty much on an ongoing basis. I just wanted to shut everything down and “achieve” what I needed to. I didn’t want to mess things up so I ignored myself.
Now, I feel I am finally doing something different. There is a sensitivity, an attentiveness and a WILLINGNESS to just try in a sincere way, without pressure, but plenty of intent. I can feel it all pulling into one energy, it’s very open, and integrated.

VINEETO: One of the best help for feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ was Richard’s advice very early on to be a friend to oneself, and given that you have identified this as one of the last things you had paid attention to in your stressful period, here is a timely reminder –

[Richard]: One thing I did, way back when I started doing that method, was to make sure I would never, ever, tell myself off for slipping back into the old ways – after all ‘I am only human’ and it is bound to happen from time-to-time – and instead I would pat myself on the back for being astute enough to notice that I had slipped back and thus get on with the business of being happy and harmless again ... and feeling good about myself for being able to do so.

It is important to be friends with oneself – only I get to live with myself twenty four hours of the day (other people can and do move away) – and if I am at war with myself, disciplining myself, telling myself off, I am alienating the only person who can truly help me in all this.

In short: be nice to yourself, not nasty ... there are already enough people doing that anyway. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 50, 11 October 2003).

Whenever you catch yourself being hard on yourself, stop, pat yourself on the back for recognizing this pattern re-emerging, and get back feeling good by declining those ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ demands which are designed to give you a hard time. “A hard time” is a clear sign that you are no longer on the “wide and wondrous path” so you can abandon those with the clear knowledge that they are not part of actualism anyway.

FELIX: I have been hunting myself for not being able to turn “myself” into a good person. I’m starting to see that’s the whole game, I’m seeing the limits of being a self – that there is no winning. Why have I tried my whole life to be a winner then? Attempting that is pure stress.
I feel ready to do something else, to lose almost, as an action. And it’s like I can feel some support there, that I won’t be “alone in this endeavour”. That it’s possible. 

VINEETO: Exactly, actualism is not at all about being a “good person” – which is again using real-world values to determine what you ‘should’ do. Being sincere and naïve is far more valuable both for you and for those you interact with. Neither is the aim to be “a winner” (in everything you do) because it comes from the same internalised moral/ethical template. Here is something for you to chuckle about –

[Richard]: Both winning and losing are a fact of life ... nobody, but nobody, can be a winner all of the time, at all things, on all occasions, without exception.

[Respondent]: I see. That is a basic, simple, common sense, matter of fact way of seeing it. And yet I barely was able to discern that that was what you were getting at. Interesting.

[Richard]: The word ‘loser’ does not have anywhere near the same connotations in this neck of the woods (at least not for my generation anyway) as it does in your part of the world ... whereas the word ‘failure’ (as in ‘I am a failure’) does.

Speaking personally, and by any objective criteria, I am a failure big-time: I was a high-school dropout; I was a wartime coward/a peacetime pacifist; I was still a teenager when first married/my first marriage was a shotgun wedding; I had a mental breakdown/identity crisis in my early thirties; I lost my sanity, my wife, my family, my house, my car, my business, my career; I was a homeless person for five years/a bare-footed vagrant sleeping rough; I remarried only to lose my second wife, after the loss of insanity, of identity, of feelings, of reality, of truth, due to the total and permanent incapacity to be loving/ compassionate and/or affectionate/ empathetic; I am classified as suffering from a chronic and incurable psychotic disorder/ I am derealised, depersonalised, alexithymic, anhedonic; I have no ambition whatsoever/no aim in life at all; I often sit around doing nothing/ quite thoughtless; I am a teetotaller/I rarely socialise; I neither belong to any public organisation, club, guild, or fraternity/sorority by whatever description, nor go to parties, bars, dances, discos or any other similar social venue; neither do I play competitive sports, support any team or player, or even attend any such sporting events; my main hobbies, apart from boating/ swimming on occasion, are watching television/pottering about the internet; by going public with my life story I am quite often the recipient of derision, disparagement, scorn, mockery, disdain, belittlement, vilification, denigration, contempt, castigation, disapprobation, denunciation, and condemnation (and discrimination as evidenced by bad-mouthing, backbiting, slander, libel, defamation and a whole range of slurs, smears, censures, admonishments, reproaches, reprovals, and so on) and ... and, to cut a long story short, I am currently living in what some call sin (a life of fornication with a live-in divorcée whilst still married to another).

What a failure (a loser) I am, eh? (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 68d, 17 October 2005)

And yet despite all these failures by societal standards, the identity ‘Richard’ succeeded in what ‘he’ had set as ‘his’ priority in life. And a lot of being able to achieve his ultimate aim was made possible by discovering/ re-awakening his dormant naiveté, which made him both liking and likeable. As such, sorting out your priorities will help you determine in which areas you want to succeed and which ones are rather side-issues.

FELIX: This usually reveals the beliefs that are operating. Usually a lot of shoulds about what I should be doing, what I should be achieving, what I need to improve about myself to justify being here. Also some mean questions like why do people not want to be around me, what’s wrong with me? Etc etc. A fried nervous system certainly helps to perpetuate this dynamic.

VINEETO: Yep, whenever the way you feel dips below the line of feeling good, you know what to look for. You wrote in a previous message –

FELIX: I’m reminded how Richard once told me his main goal using the actualism method originally was “to not get triggered”. That makes a LOT of sense now – it is just so much easier to be feeling good first and then avoid triggers.

VINEETO: It sounds like the most sensible line of approach to start with – and when there are too many different triggers, get back to feeling good first and then do one, then perhaps another at your leisure. There are not as many different triggers as you might believe at first.

Enjoy.

Cheers Vineeto

November 11 2024

FELIX: I’m reminded how Richard once told me his main goal using the actualism method originally was “to not get triggered”. That makes a LOT of sense now – it is just so much easier to be feeling good first and then avoid triggers.

VINEETO: It sounds like the most sensible line of approach to start with – and when there are too many different triggers, get back to feeling good first and then do one, then perhaps another at your leisure. There are not as many different triggers as you might believe at first.

FELIX: Thanks Vineeto your support and encouragement on here has been invaluable. I think what you are doing is really helpful especially when most of us are doing this online and with no one in our lives that knows about it.

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

You are very welcome Felix. It is such a delight when I see your the feedback in action, that what I write facilitates one or more of you to feel good, or feel better, or puzzle out some apparent obstacle satisfactorily.

Here is an example of how someone phrased it well when they puzzled out how best to apply the actualism method as intended –

“This is when I first saw this aspect of the actualism method: that, at the end of the day, whatever diminishes enjoyment is just an affective habit to be *declined* and that it is as simple as that. Yes, investigation and exploration are necessary in the beginning to tease out just what that habit is; but once understood, I can just decline so as to have fun sooner than later. In the TMOBA article, Richard alludes to this as “no matter what it is” and “usually some habitual reactive response”. It was amusing to see myself converge on the simplicity of the method as Richard laid out (which, to be frank, has always seemed simplistic!).”

And Kuba confirmed this very recently –

Kuba: The ‘difficulty’ in actualism is due to the fact that all that ‘I’ have learnt in ‘my’ life was an encumbrance. The ease in actualism is unlocked when one stops being sophisticated haha.

So, be sincere and from there allow yourself to be naïve (i.e. unsophisticated, which at the start may look a bit like being a fool to you) and feeling good/great will almost come naturally.

Cheers Vineeto

November 23 2024

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

You are making some good observations.

FELIX: One thing I think now is that if I want to be actually free, it follows that I wouldn’t choose to put myself in high pressure situations again and again …

I think it’s quite common to slip from an unnoticed “so so” state to a worse state - it’s quite natural in fact because it’s just a more developed version of feeling so so. That’s why it’s much better to catch it early and really develop the familiarity within a substantial feeling good. That’s what I’m working on at the moment.

VINEETO: As you have reported that you have lived a long time in this intensity of stress it’s obvious that your sensors (like heat-sensors in the kitchen) need readjusting. Feeling “so so” is already a warning sight, it being on the slope to feeling bad, and you can adjust your sensors, i.e. your affective awareness, about how you experience this moment of being alive, to recognize this as the point to pay immediate attention to.

With some sincere (and often fascinating) contemplation (from the vantage point of feeling good) why you developed this stressful habit in the first place you can work out why you were compelled, again and again, “to put myself in high pressure situations again and again”.

Long-standing habits like this often have deep roots (for instance a survival strategy once deemed vital but which is no longer needed or even sensible/ salubrious now).

Once you experientially understand the affective/ instinctual root of this compulsive past habit, and thus expose it to the bright light of awareness, it loses its previously gripping influence so much so that you eventually will forget you ever had this habit/attitude in the first place. It is quite magical.

Cheers Vineeto

December 2 2024

FELIX: … for the sake of accuracy let me clear up my own comment. I still meant “feeling state”, I was trying to say that sometimes it’s not just the case of having a feeling but something that is much more stable and fixed like an overarching state (same way someone might get into a loving state).

But what I’ve found with time is that getting out of these states is the exact same as with anything else – getting back to feeling good. It just takes a lot of intent…

VINEETO: Hi Felix,

I think it is vital that you described your present situation as a “feeling state” because it reveals that not only are a lot of feelings happening but that they are set up in a way to keep each other in place … until you find the capstone of the upside down pyramid, so to speak, and crash the whole “state”. The second quote I posted yesterday (Actualism, ActualVineeto, Frank, 1 December 2024) may be a clue for you –

Richard: If it be not fun to track oneself in all of one’s doings then one might as well ‘give up the chase and relax’ ... however what you describe as a modus operandi does not make sense to me (‘go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax’).

To need to (and to be able to) ‘relax’ means there must be tension in the first place to relax from ... thus the tracking down has changed from tracking down the ‘same emotions’ or the ‘same repetitive thoughts’ to tracking down the tension ... and you did not notice that the game had changed horses in mid-stream. The need to ‘relax’ is a flashing red light that the game-play has changed: ‘when did this tension start?’; how did this tension begin?’; ‘what was the event that initiated this tension?’; ‘what were the feelings at the time?’; ‘what was the thought associated with that feeling?’ ... and so on. Usually one has only to track back a few minutes or a few hours ... yesterday afternoon at the most. Then one is free from both the tension and the ‘Tried and True’ cure of ‘relax’.

Speaking personally, I never relaxed in all those years of application and diligence, patience and perseverance ... upon exposure to the bright light of awareness the tension always disappeared. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Gary, 28 January 2001).

In other words, you are not only looking for one specific feeling but rather what is the stressor, the issue which again and again causes you to feel stressful and anxious. You give three clues –

FELIX: For the record I’m not a Buddhist or Vipassana person. As for what caused my burnout, it was life trauma (before I found actualism), though my interpretation of the actualism method made me much more burnt out than I already was.

Looking back I can see I was so darn anxious, existing in a slow-burn existential panic, and feeling good seemed impossible at the time. I wanted to become actually free at any cost, but was stuck in functional freeze and had no sensitivity for myself as a feeling being. Meanwhile I was still exhausted and still trying to live up to real world expectations as well. Recipe for disaster really. [emphases added].

VINEETO: So the stressor, the cause for anxiety, is 1) not being friend with yourself, 2) to live up to expectations, and 3) your interpretation of the actualism, which is most likely formed by the same internalized real-world expectations and a disregard for your own well-being. Now you can start looking at such modus operandi and those expectations to find out which are sensible and which are simply not just silly but unliveable.

Also, keep in mind that ‘you’, the ‘self’, arising from the instinctual survival passions, is very very cunning when it comes to maintain ‘your’ survival – and will corrupt the very means of escape, the actualism method, and use it to keep you entrapped.

For instance, any words written about the actualism methods are tools, not rules – there is a big difference, lol.

Here is an idea, the actualism method is not “sudorific” –

Richard: I might add, though, that naïveté does away with all that ‘heavy lifting’ you spoke of in an earlier e-mail. Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘From what I can glean so far, virtual freedom is a period of ‘heavy lifting’. (‘Introduction’; Friday, 27 July 2003).

Where you have gleaned this diaphoretic impression from has got me stumped ... here is but one of the many ways I describe the actualism practice:

• [Richard]: ‘... the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity/ innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way.

One is thus soon back on track ... and all because of everyday events. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 38, 20 February 2003).

Or even more specifically to the point of your ‘heavy lifting’ comment:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘If it is the experiencer that makes efforts to be aware and stay aware, the centre is strengthened, not dissolved, right?

• [Richard]: ‘Since when has naiveté been sudorific? (Richard, List B, No 12q, 5 January 2003).

In short: if it be not either easy (effortless) or fun (enjoyable) then there is something to look at until it is again. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 46, 9 August 2003).

It could well be that an increase in naiveté will do the trick for you as well? It’s easy, ask Ian. 

Cheers Vineeto