July 20, 2024

JESUSCARLOS: I had a PCE or “vision of perfection” of that actual world in which there is no drama, no need, no resistance, no defense mechanism. Only a vast stillness, a sweetness permeating everything and a great sense of humor: I recorded, with all clarity, that in the actual and free world there is no seriousness, only an absolute sincerity product of the purity inherent to this universe. With all this, it only remained for me to express “I have absolute confidence in this universe, since it has brought me to this moment.”

A final note: during the PCE I was able to ask myself a couple of times, is this what I want? And the answer was: definitely yes!

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

This is perhaps the most comprehensive and all-encompassing PCE-report I have read. It has all the ingredients a leisurely experienced PCE can have, including establishing the golden clew to access pure intent.

Now, it seems, there is nothing in the way to you enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive each moment of your life.

You only need to actualize what you already know and have described so well.

And as now is the only moment you can experience being alive why not do it now?

With appreciation

Vineeto

November 5, 2024

VINEETO: Hi Jesus.Carlos,

It is a pleasure to read your excellent progress report.

JESUSCARLOS: Although dismantling the political and activist identity is bringing enormous benefits, it has above all been the exploration of love that has brought the most. What I can say for now is that I have been replacing a way of relating to my partner based on compulsive attraction with a way based on sweetness and care (and this substitution has not been a forced decision, rather I would say that it has been the product of experience and sincere observation). I can recognize that this care has above all to do with not imposing my agenda on her and fully understanding that she is a human being with her own autonomy, desires and needs. It has helped me to remember Richard’s commitment to giving himself completely to someone else with the firm intention of managing to live in an absolutely peaceful, harmonious and beneficial way for both. I feel less and less compulsive, in fact there are already days or maybe weeks in which I do not experience again the level of anxiety that I felt before the PCE. From time to time it is reactivated for a short period, and by simply attending to it, observing it, without expressing it or repressing it, it allows its prompt disappearance. 

VINEETO: Now that you recognize your partner as a fellow human being in her own right rather then as extension of your “compulsive attraction” which had automatically made you perceive her as your ‘possession’ being responsible, amongst other feelings, for all that anxiety you report. You are now able to experience more and more the delicious benefits of intimacy, which is vastly superior to the feelings of love it replaces. This intimacy can be deliberately increased with sincerity and naiveté and with sensuous attentiveness (see Grace’s scale of intimacy (Richard, Abditorium, Intimacy).

JESUSCARLOS: To remember all the suffering and pain that I have experienced, or in which I have been a participant, even the cause, and the sincerity with which today I can say that I do not want even one millimeter more of all of it. On the contrary.

That clarity that arises from that sincerity reestablishes the connection. And also naivety.

VINEETO: Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ had similar sympathy and compassion for the hardships and, sometimes overwhelming, suffering of human beings she observed in the news and could relate to from some of ‘her’ own emotional struggles. Towards the end this vital interest developed into “a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” (nowadays paraphrased as ‘near-actual-caring’) which facilitated ‘her’ self-immolation. Here is part of Richard’s summary of it:

RICHARD: [...]

4. This moment-to-moment experiencing of a caring which is not self-centred/ self-centric provided ‘her’ with the experiential convincement that actualising such caring, via ‘self’-immolation, was the only solution to the human condition; this ‘hands-on’ understanding as a dynamically present feeling-being – an impressively distinct contrast to having been abeyant during PCE’s – left ‘her’ with absolutely no choice (lest ‘she’ be forever “rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic”).

5. Since a near-actual caring is, of course, epitomised by a vital interest in the suffering of all human beings coming to an end, forever, as a number one priority, then ‘her’ single-minded focus was essentially centred upon the most immediate way of ensuring this long-awaited global event could begin to take effect the soonest ... to wit: bringing ‘her’ own inevitable demise, at physical death, forward into a liminal imminence.

6. Because the means ‘she’ elected to utilise towards these ends was the near-actual intimacy which goes hand-in-hand with a near-actual caring (per favour that afore-mentioned absence of self-centredness/ self-centricity which typifies being out-from-control) it is apposite to defer to what Vineeto herself wrote on the 20th of January 2010, only fifteen days after her pivotal moment/ definitive event, as its refreshingly simple directness speaks for itself.

Viz.: [...]

‘The final clue was again about caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. Only when I cared enough to give all of ‘me’ to another person, to give them what they want most, was I then ready to give it to the one I cared for most, the one I was closest to, and then I was able to leave all remnant concerns and inhibitions of my identity behind.

And that’s what happened”. (Direct Route, No.20, 20 January 2010).

(Out-from-Control Reports, Vineeto)

JESUSCARLOS: Finally: since this weekend I have begun to understand more clearly what it means to decide how to feel, moment by moment (or when it is necessary to make a decision, since the consistency of feeling good, or excellent, etc. has been broken). I confess with all sincerity that until recently it seemed very difficult for me to understand or even accept this possibility. My tendency was rather that of a victim of circumstances. Feeling without agency at certain moments and in a negative sense (“the beer” is, in a positive sense, the disappearance of the “dooer’s” agency). This has begun to change significantly. Now I see and recognize that I do have that power, that decision is in my hands. Why not always decide to feel good, and beyond? It seems more and more absurd to me. And wonderful.

VINEETO: This is really wonderful that you have recognized, and are actualizing, that how you feel is in your hands (and not due to some favourable or unfavourable event) and this enables you to feel good again each time after feeling/ good/feeling excellent slips below the line.

Such a delight to read, thank you.

Cheers Vineeto

November 6, 2024

JESUSCARLOS: Dear Vineeto , thank you very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it a lot, and I read all your comments to the rest of the participants in this forum, because it is being very helpful to me in clarifying my doubts and giving me an increasingly stronger push towards the path to freedom.

VINEETO: Dear JesusCarlos,

Thank you for your positive feedback – I delighted how you can pick up clues to clear your doubts and help you enjoying and appreciating more and more and thus continue your journey towards your ultimate destiny.

JESUSCARLOS: I found it very meaningful that you shared with me what the transformation of “sympathy and compassion for the…suffering of human beings” into ‘near-actual-caring’ was like for you towards the end. I have no doubt that my two more powerful aspirations/ motivation forces are actual intimacy and actual care.

VINEETO: Yes, as Richard says – “This perpetual enjoyment and appreciation is facilitated by feeling as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible.” Harmless, i.e. being caring and considerate, is just as important as being happy – you cannot have one without the other. You cannot feel that you don’t care, shut yourself off or feel antagonism towards another and still feel happy. You can, upon recognition, channel the affective energy of feeling “sympathy and compassion for the … suffering of human beings” towards felicitous feelings by turning them into appreciation that there is now a solution, a possible end, because an actual freedom can deliver the goods, for ‘this body, that body and everybody’.

In ‘my’ spiritual years I had pushed away caring for humanity at large, there was just too much misery to bear and no solution. However, when I discovered actualism, there was a solution, not just for ‘me’ but eventually for everybody. And it naturally followed that ‘I’ dedicated my life to peace-on-earth, something ‘I’ had always secretly wished for but which always seemed impossible. It was such a joy and uplifting force to finally do something worthwhile with ‘my’ life. And it’s still my favourite topic.

JESUSCARLOS: Today, after some years, I was watching again the DVD “out of control” and some phrases and moments really struck me:
16:30 “instead of living in the present… let the universe live your life… the entire universe could do a better job…”
25:35 (‘Vineeto’ tears of sweetness)
34:31 “…it is selfish to stay in the real world…awfully selfish…”
It was a boost to see this particular video again!

VINEETO: I agree, there is a lot of delightful and useful information in that video, also about ‘nurture’ (I have watched it myself again a few months ago).

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.

JESUSCARLOS: Golden Kuba!!

VINEETO: Ha, and the opposite to being sophisticated is being naïve!

It is so much fun to discover and allow naiveté, to be like a child again (with adult sensibilities) and to more be like what you are rather than what (internalized) other people want you to be. I have it on good authority that remembering to be naive can/will boost your baseline of feeling good to feeling excellent. It’s the opposite of stressing, telling yourself off or pushing hard – it’s being playful, liking yourself and others and enjoying and appreciation being here without any cause or condition, just enjoying being alive. (see also: A Quaint Clay-Pit Tale).

Cheers Vineeto

December 14, 2024

JESUSCARLOS: I remember the last Vipassana retreat I did (2019), 10 days, in which a guy sitting next to me shared his experience after 25 years of practice: “each time I sit, for several hours, the most I can, I see myself as a soldier with a flamethrower, burning all the impurities, of my being that have punished this body for many lives.” I was terrified and that was when I finally realized that that was not my path.

Now I realize that at least he had a point: the body is not to blame, it is “I” who has subjected and punished it all this time.

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

This is a great story and a valuable insight you took away with you when you gave up Vipassana for good.

JESUSCARLOS: It is “I” who must disappear, abandon the throne, set it free. But the method was not correct, you cannot free the body by subjecting yourself to intense days, leaving it physically immobile, something not natural for this body made by this universe, to move and enjoy being aware of itself and everything that surrounds and stimulates it.

VINEETO: Yes, it is ‘I’ who stands in the way of becoming actually free but it is also ‘me’ which stands in the way.

What the Vipassana doctrine means by ‘I’ is only one part, the ego, that “must disappear”, they leave the soul or capital-S ‘Self’ (‘me’, the instinctual passions) intact to continue to create its havoc. Therefore it’s no use to further extract or keep any ‘wisdom’ of what you may have osmotically (inadvertently) absorbed, rather make sure there is nothing of that nature lurking to confuse and lead astray. Claudiu and Kuba have a lot more experience with this topic and can warn you of its pitfalls.

The way to becoming actually free is to consciously and knowingly imitate the actual, which you have experienced in your PCEs. To do that ‘you’ set the minimum standard of experience for yourself: feeling good. If ‘you’ are not feeling good then ‘you’ have something to look at to find out why. This way attentiveness to the cause of diminished enjoyment and appreciation restores felicity and innocuity. In other words, you are being affectively attentive to those ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings, which prevent you from enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive. Acknowledging that you are your feelings you can channel the affective energy into the felicitous feelings of delight, wonder, marvelling, enjoyment and appreciation to the point of activating naiveté where you like yourself and your fellow human beings and discover the fun of being alive.

Sometimes you might have to do a closer inspection to one or the other of your ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings when they prove to be more than habitual but rather sticky because of a passionate belief or a persistent adherence.

JESUSCARLOS: So I make peace with myself and establish the commitment to be generous with this body, support of everything “I” am and true actual reality.

VINEETO: Just for clarification – the above description of the actualism method is not to “support of everything “I” am” because that would mean you want to support your ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings, which only strengthen your ‘self’ and keep it in existence.

To “be generous with this body” doesn’t make much sense to me – when you take care of your affective moods your body benefits automatically. What is beneficial is to be a friend to yourself and not blame yourself for what you discover about yourself.

Also, there is no such thing as “true actual reality” –

RICHARD: [...] I get to comprehend what you mean by ‘actual reality’ each time you write ... it is a good description and I may borrow it, if I may, when writing to others about settling for second-best. [emphasis added].
Editorial note: there can be no such thing as ‘actual reality’ in the actual world]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 1 February 1999).

RESPONDENT: 2. Actual reality (second best as you call it). We are identified as a witness to the world of thoughts, emotions, feelings, instincts, etc. We can be ruthless and loving without feeling identified with either action. We experience bliss whenever we become a witness. Everything is happening to us. We are being pulled and pushed around by our heart.

RICHARD: Yes, well said. The term ‘actual reality’ is No. 12’s phrase by which I understand was meant what is really going on ‘within’ as compared with the facade or image one socially presents to others ... and fools oneself into believing. Such observation is useful as a preliminary step in one’s journey into one’s psyche – which is the human psyche – but to remain ‘being authentic’ is to remain a ‘sannyasin’ forever. Unless this inner reality is expunged, all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will continue for ever and a day.

To become the spiritual ‘witness’ is to have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of tender feelings, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of savage feelings and – by calling this bundle ‘Intelligence’ – to eventually realise oneself to be the unitive and centreless ontological entity (called ‘God’ by any other name) swimming in the ‘Ocean Of Oneness’ ... unborn and undying; birthless and deathless; timeless and spaceless; formless and ceaseless; immortal and immutable. Yet, unbeknown to those who perform this prestidigitation, to be divinity is to be cacodemonic ... diabolical in the sense that the savage feelings are kept subliminally alive. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 18 February 1999).

See, how your own term “true actual reality” fits in with Respondent No. 12’s spiritual adherence in the above conversations?

‘Reality’ is an actualist term for the real world, the world where ‘I’ and ‘me’ reign supreme, and there is nothing actual about the real world of feelings and beliefs. Those two worlds never meet because no identity can ever experience the actual world. You only get to experience the actual world when the identity is in abeyance.

JESUSCARLOS: I no longer need to relax my body, I need to relax the one who tenses it because he believes he has difficult missions to accomplish in this real world.

VINEETO: I suggest you not only “relax the one who tenses it” but find out exactly is the cause for the tension, which is an affective cause. Be curious, be investigative, be persistent, until you discover the emotional cause of the tension, and from there you have a choice to decline being upset, tense, anxious, worried or sad. It is eminently possible to decline each and every ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotion but there is more to it than “relax the one who tenses it”. Sitting back and relaxing happens after you have done the homework.

Cheers Vineeto

December 15, 2024

VINEETO: To “be generous with this body” doesn’t make much sense to me – when you take care of your affective moods your body benefits automatically. What is beneficial is to be a friend to yourself and not blame yourself for what you discover about yourself.

Also, there is no such thing as “true actual reality”

JESUSCARLOS: Thank you Vineeto ! Got it.

Not only did I express my ideas wrongly, but, as you say, I wasn’t looking at the problem correctly. It makes total sense to me what you suggest I rectify. I need to go deeper into my research to detect what exactly is the cause of my stress and anxiety. I know it’s me, both as an ego and a soul. But more than knowing it intellectually I need to see it experientially. Now I can see that I lost the connection with pure intent and I am simply operating from the old habits that I already know and are useful to me to defend myself in the jungle.

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

You are right, intellectually knowing is not enough, you need to understand how your mind, i.e. your feelings and being, ticks. Again, the actualism method is of great help – paying ongoing affective attention to how you experience yourself informs you what diminished feeling good. You find what triggered this diminishment and get back to feeling good. Then you have a look at the problem.

It may just be a habitual response and will disappear when you decide to decline to go along with it. In the long run none of those “old habits” “are useful to me to defend myself in the jungle” because they only perpetuate the conflict and therefore you are feeling worried and stressful. Remember that by acknowledging that you are your feelings to are able to change how you feel.

Or you find that it is a more complex pattern, then you nut out why you consider the world a jungle, why you feel that you have to protect/ defend yourself, in other words protect /defend the feeling being inside your flesh-and-blood body, thereby harming it by stress.

For instance, you can ponder/ feel out if resentment plays a part, like Claudiu discovered. The other helpful thing to keep in mind is to be a friend to yourself and don’t blame yourself for anything you might discover in the depth of your psyche – it’s all par for the course since we all do this business of being alive for the first time.

Cheers Vineeto

December 15, 2024

VINEETO:

RICHARD: To become the spiritual ‘witness’ is to have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of tender feelings, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of savage feelings and – by calling this bundle ‘Intelligence’ – to eventually realise oneself to be the unitive and centreless ontological entity (called ‘God’ by any other name) swimming in the ‘Ocean Of Oneness’ … unborn and undying; birthless and deathless; timeless and spaceless; formless and ceaseless; immortal and immutable. Yet, unbeknown to those who perform this prestidigitation, to be divinity is to be cacodemonic … diabolical in the sense that the savage feelings are kept subliminally alive. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 18 February 1999).

JESUSCARLOS: I’ll be extra careful with this!

As I am navigating in an extremely aggressive territory, I think that just these feelings are more active than before, and I am not recognizing them enough. They are doubly dangerous because they can feel like good feelings, because they serve to magnify me and give me strength, when “I need it most” because I perceive threats from others. But that’s not being harmless and considerate. Now I can see more clearly what is happening to me (or rather: what I’m doing).

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

When you say “these [savage] feelings are more active than before” at least you haven’t repressed them and are able to identify when they are happening. The best way to deal with anger and aggression is to neither suppress nor express them and thus allow the third alternative to hove into view. Richard gave a vivid detailed description how ‘he’ effectively got rid of full-blown anger (after he had identified and eliminated ‘his’ resentment of being alive) –

Richard (speaking in the third person on the 13th of January, 2013):
In the late-afternoon of an otherwise typical summer’s day, in 1981, a six-foot-two man was standing in the kitchen of his ex-farmhouse being soundly berated, as was also typical, by his four-foot-eleven wife; he was in a bind, a double-bind, in fact, and of his own making insofar as he had formed the intent, a few weeks earlier (on the 1st of January), to live life as it had been in their all-too-brief honeymoon period a little over fourteen years previously; his intent to do so was formed as a way of having it segue into the pristine purity of the four-hour perfection experience, indelibly imprinted in his memory, which he had experienced in all its marvellous wonder in the mid-winter of the previous year; his wife, having impetuously agreed that day to travel in concert with him, had already succumbed to the same-old same-old and was out to have him crack, too, so that their life together could revert to normal (having put all that pie-in-the-sky romantic nonsense back where it belonged in the wishful-thinking department).

As he stood there, with the slowly-setting sun streaming yellow through the wide-open French doors leading out onto the brick-paved patio, he was quite aware that a similar scene had taken place only the day before, plus how he had managed to keep his act together only by the exigency of abruptly vacating the scene, until the barely suppressed anger she had invoked in him had subsided enough to return; he was acutely aware, also, that she had his number and, as far as she was concerned, it was only a matter of time before he too succumbed to the same-old same-old; and as he stood there he was uncomfortably aware that the same anger of yesterday was rising, slowly but inexorably, from the solar plexus up toward the rib-cage diaphragm.

There was no way he was going to suppress it – he’d had a lifetime of the failure of the ‘stiff upper lip’ approach – and he was damn’d if he was going to express it, either (for then this four-foot-eleven female would have triumphed over this six-foot-two male yet again); the vision of having to vacate the scene once more – and again and again off into a sombrely-looming future – was not at all an attractive option, yet, if all else failed, he supposed he could always make the unseemly dash to the door.

Thus he stood there still, despite feeling the anger rising ever upward, through the rib-cage diaphragm, and now suffusing the thoracic region with its all-too-familiar temptation.

And he could see her eyes begin to gleam, even through the wrathful glare which had transfixed him all the while, and he just knew she was zeroing in for the kill; his own anger was mounting, ever-simmering and seething it was brimming at the region of the lower throat by now; her face was flushed with purple, with nostrils quite distended, and spittle flecked her livid lips as her shrilling rose to fever pitch; he had left it too late to beat a hasty retreat and his throat muscles quivered as the brimming anger shimmered and shifted into a pre-shout mode born of old and ... and, wonder of wonders, that oh-so-familiar throat-muscle quivering skipped a beat or two and began to ease!

With a rapidly-mounting amazement and delight, he marvelled at the fact that he had, in some way, neither suppressed nor succumbed and that he had finally freed himself of domination by this four-foot-whatever fleshly package of seething anger and hatred that had usurped the mother of his and her children.

And as the slowly-setting sun streams golden from the west another world entirely hoves into view.

Pristine and pure, ever-fresh and new, peerless perfection permeates all and sundry, without exception, and he knows with a certainty that his life is never going to be the same ever again.

Ain’t life grand! (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression).

The story following this one at the same link is also very instructive.

Cheers Vineeto

December 16, 2024

VINEETO:

Richard: … one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/ justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends … justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on). (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression).

JESUSCARLOS: It has been wonderful to come home, after a weekend trip, and read this link you shared, Vineeto
On the way back, I was talking to my partner about exactly this. After having read your feedback yesterday (and Kuba’s), and having dismantled the shame I felt (not only seeing it as silly, but also recognizing the enormous opportunity to learn), due to the wounded pride of being exposed, I was able to recognize the underlying problem: the indignation I feel at the injustices that have been committed in the public service arena where I work. But, as Richard noted, this indignation is nothing more than an other human construct, a belief, a guardian, that I have made part of my personality.

VINEETO: Isn’t that wonderful. Yesterday Claudiu reports that he was dismantling his intellectual pride, and today you report the same about “wounded pride”! What synchronicity. And you could dismantle “the shame” as a similarly useless installation of your social identity. It’s like the onion (the identity) is peeling itself.

It is correct what you say about indignation and it’s easy to understand intellectually. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found it rather a sticky feeling with all its ‘noble’ connotations attached, and first ‘she’ had to acknowledge that there was nothing noble about being indignant and neither did anybody benefit from ‘her’ feeling indignant.

JESUSCARLOS: What is truly useful to do is not to feel offended by those threats around me, but to prevent these intellectually unacceptable injustices from affecting me emotionally. And act objectively. Otherwise what is articulated in me is the feeling and desire to take revenge, or to defend myself, or to attack before being attacked. And those are the triggers of continuous stress in the work environment.

VINEETO: Yes this is “truly useful” “not to feel offended”, and each time you do feel offended, there is another opportunity to discover something new about yourself. For instance why did what someone said offend you. What ideal is questioned by the other, what belief, even what ‘truth’, what ‘noble’ sentiment to defend? It is fascinating to detect, and then be able to decline, these newly discovered stumbling blocks … and you will see how quickly they diminish to a fraction of what there was at the start of your investigations. After each time discovery you can act more objectively and interrupt the otherwise endless cycle of ‘tit-for-tat’.

JESUSCARLOS: How fun it would be not to be affected, and just act from consideration for any human being, looking for the best solution, from the operation of free intelligence. But without becoming emotionally depressed if it is still not possible to achieve the best solution, because we are dealing with human beings with instincts and passions operating. To see the problem objectively, factually and not personally. 

How fun and beneficial and naive it would be to start dismantling the way of doing politics, where every means justifies the end. Instead of this ancient wisdom, appreciate and enjoy this only moment of being alive, as we work to solve the problems of urban management (or anything else).

VINEETO: Mmh, yes that is fun and beneficial and naïve, and it is eminently possible to be that … Presently it is wishful thinking but it gives you a wonderful motivation to be attentive to how you feel and what diminishes your feeling good each moment again.

JESUSCARLOS: We’ll see how it goes tomorrow! Thank you!

VINEETO: It’s a pleasure to talk about my favourite topic.

Cheers Vineeto

December 20, 2024

JESUSCARLOS: Yesterday I had a fundamentally bad time. At times neutral. But very rarely good. Let’s not say very good. This is in stark contrast to my experience on Tuesday night, where I deeply contacted my naivety and experienced a lot of pleasure in simply being alive. Today I woke up again with physical (I think I have a flu) and emotional discomfort. But within these few hours of the morning, I was able to feel good again. And I remember again how it is essential to make the decision to feel good, to choose to feel good and not follow old inclinations. It is a habit that I must overcome and now that I feel better I can observe it more carefully: I have resentment for the simple fact of being alive and that things are not always the way “I” want them. It may help to analyze why I want what I want, but if I look closer, I recognize that what I want is recognition. I long for recognition. I won’t say more because I will be observing that need throughout the day and finding a way to free myself from it.

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

This reaction seems quite natural. I see that in your previous post you said –

JesusCarlos: But this began to happen after rereading this wonderful text:  (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 16 December 2024) and Claudiu and Kuba’s last reflections, regarding how unnecessary I am now […]

Isn’t it amazing that you were be able to so quickly “feel good again”, due to having made “the decision to feel good”.

Longing “for recognition” is not something superficial, it is an inbuilt feature of the human condition. You not only “long for recognition”, ‘you’ need it for ‘your’ very existence. ‘You’, the identity’, being a contingent ‘being’, cannot exist on ‘your’ own – ‘you’ require constant confirmation to justify and confirm ‘your’ existence, else ‘your’ non-substantial nature will become apparent. With this comes a desire to hide and a fear of being exposed as a fraud, an impostor. I remember feeling being ‘Vineeto’s’ reaction to this alarming discovery quite well.

So you see, you discovered straight away what the solution to longing “for recognition” will ultimately be.

Cheers Vineeto

January 12, 2025

JESUSCARLOS: Lately I have been experiencing a persistent feeling of well-being. Emotions come and go, but against a background of happy, harmless feelings. Sometimes anxiety, fear, worry, but nothing that prevents me from enjoying being here and now. I find myself investigating how to go from feeling good to feeling excellent, with the same consistency (more appreciation perhaps). How exciting it is!

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

This is excellent. Definitely, appreciation will increase your feeling good, it multiplies feeling good every time you remember to sincerely appreciate being here. And when you recognize that now is the only moment you can actually experience being alive (remembering that neither the past nor the future are actually happening now) it will increase your appreciation of this very moment even more.

And the less your feeling good is interrupted by “anxiety, fear, worry” the easier it becomes appreciating being here. Do you take a closer look at anxiety, for instance, once you are back to feeling good, to find out what causes this anxiety to arise in the first place so that it won’t have to arise in the first place?

JESUSCARLOS: I can say that it was a giant step to identify resentment, to identify the need for recognition and the subsequent drama. It was very liberating to discover it, and to realize how silly it is.

VINEETO: This is good news.

JESUSCARLOS: Of course I am not free of it, but I don’t feel it anymore as a constant burden. Nipping in the bud?

VINEETO: Why do you say you are not free of the resentment after you identified it? Why did you allow it back into your life after you have realized how silly it is? If you fully recognize how silly it is there is no need to keep it – unless you nipped it in the bud too early and perhaps there is still something you need to understand about it so that it can disappear forever. Not feeling it “as a constant burden” is not good enough – fully understanding the silliness will allow you to drop it for good, never to return again. Just have another close look, it may just be a persistent habit which is equally silly to maintain.

Cheers Vineeto

January 13, 2025

VINEETO: Do you take a closer look at anxiety, for instance, once you are back to feeling good, to find out what causes this anxiety to arise in the first place so that it won’t have to arise in the first place?

JESUSCARLOS: Yes! Doing this has been essential to dismantle that old habit, that I and Felix share. It’s a weakening process right now.

VINEETO: That is excellent to hear.

*

VINEETO: Why do you say you are not free of the resentment after you identified it? Why did you allow it back into your life after you have realized how silly it is?

JESUSCARLOS: Oh! I said it in theoretical terms, but maybe I misunderstood something. When to my previous post you answered:

Vineeto: So you see, you discovered straight away what the solution to longing “for recognition” will ultimately be.

I concluded that only when ‘I’ self immolate, I can become free of this and every aspect of the human condition (the need of nurture and desire that are the instincts from which ‘I’ emerge) and that before it happens what I can do is to diminish it to a 99% degree.

VINEETO: Mmh, so you essentially understood it that you can put off the solution to your problem to when you self-immolate?

Here is the quote from ‘Vineeto’ in that previous post –

‘Vineeto’: Once I made the commitment to become free ‘I’ then agreed to be discovered and to be dismantled … and there is an inherent joy and relief in no longer having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 32b, 6.3.2005)

Did the fact of not “having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud” change anything in your “longing for recognition”?

JESUSCARLOS: But apart from this, it also makes sense to me that I need to look more closely at the problem to see if I can root it out. From what I have been researching and working on in therapy (cognitive-behavioral therapy), this aspect of my personality, the intense needing of recognition and approval, was born mainly in the first three years of my life, due to the particular dynamics that occurred in my family and was strengthened over time after not having been detected earlier and dismantled it (I didn’t knew any method to do it anyways). I am now 40 and it has been my main discovery since last year and especially in these last two months.

VINEETO: Mmh, all you get from therapy is a justification for any particular persistent feeling or problem. You can blame your upbringing, your peers, your teachers, your parents, society, capitalism or whatever else, it is merely justifying to have that problem or holding onto that problem. In therapy feeling beings treat other feeling beings with sympathy and compassion to make them fit better into the human condition. I am not saying to stop therapy, that is for you to decide. What I am saying is that it needs a lot more – to have the courage to acknowledge that one is addicted to being ‘me’ and commit oneself whole-heartedly to the task of becoming free from that addiction.

That’s why Richard says in This Moment of Being Alive

[Richard]: If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most. …

And this is because the actualism method is about one thing and one thing only –

[Richard]: … the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself. [emphasis added].

I admit, it does take courage to change oneself, to willingly diminish the influence and control ‘I’ have on my life – to stop feeling sad, or proud, or humble or malicious when those feelings happen. But unless ‘I’ “consciously and knowingly” set out to “imitating life in the actual world” everything ‘I’ do is just patchwork, to feel a little better than before but fundamentally stay as I am. Unless I have a “commitment to become free” and agree “to be discovered and to be dismantled” I might as well forget the whole business.

I keep being reminded of what Geoffrey wrote, cutting through the whole charade of ‘my’ precious feelings and ‘my’ precious identity –

Geoffrey: For a split second I saw like a veil in front of me. I saw how I could be on the other side of the ‘mirror’, on the safe side, the magical side, how I could… But there was a last second resistance: My precious! I will not give away my precious!

Later on the way back, I was thinking about this ‘precious’ thing, how only here on this tiny planet right now there are 7 billion people just as ‘unique’ and ‘precious’ as my self, when it clicked… and I burst into laughter. This was simply hilarious. Everybody is so precious. I must then be SO precious hahaha.

Every little ‘me’ waging wars against other little ‘me’ because they are so precious. Whereas they are just the same product of evolution and animal passions, with the same hiding place, the same hunger, the same dirtiness. You can’t be serious!

I saw without a shadow of a doubt that ‘I’ am the cause of every evil, corruption, dirt… just because ‘I’ am ‘so precious’. How ‘I’ mess everything up for myself and everybody just because ‘I’ am. And not some dissociated ‘I’ with enough quotes not to be me, but me right now thinking this. [emphasis added]. (Becoming Free Reports, Geoffrey).

Cheers Vineeto

January 17, 2025

JESUSCARLOS: Today I woke up feeling stuck in my process. When observing my feelings during the early hours of the morning, I discovered aggression. Anger. Nothing really strong, a state of subtle discomfort. Some bitterness. For some reason, this old pattern of resentment in general was reactivated. What I can detect is that it has to do with the fact that I feel threatened in my new work environment. Defence mechanisms were activated. That ancestral animal that I was able to recognize, integrate and eventually send to rest during the July PCE. At that time, that instinct was active in relation to the fear of feeling rejected by my partner. Today is this other situation, of feeling under attack in the work environment. This quote that I put above reminds me that the only way to continue, and get out of stagnation, is to recover the pure intent, lower my arms and not seek to defend myself. Instead, from a sincere intent (to use the terms more precisely), try to look at the situation anew and act harmlessly.

The only thing I will gain by acting aggressively, or defensively, is more of a perception of being under attack. I want to change perspective and learn to live in harmony with my fellow human beings even in this environment. But I’m having a hard time seeing the silliness of the situation.

VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos,

Can it be that the problems you listed are related to your resentment you talked about a month ago – not getting recognition.

JesusCarlos: I recognize that what I want is recognition. I long for recognition.

Here is part of my reply to you –

Vineeto: Longing “for recognition“ is not something superficial, it is an inbuilt feature of the human condition. You not only “long for recognition“, ‘you’ need it for ‘your’ very existence. ‘You’, the identity’, being a contingent ‘being’, cannot exist on ‘your’ own – ‘you’ require constant confirmation to justify and confirm ‘your’ existence, else ‘your’ non-substantial nature will become apparent. (Actualism, ActualVineeto, JesusCarlos, 20 December 2024)

Naturally you experience “the fear of feeling rejected by my partner“ and “feeling under attack in the work environment“. In this modus operandi you are competing with every other feeling being for the highest amount of recognition you can get, just as they are doing, and you are naturally in battle with every person you are in contact with. A lose-lose situation.

The alternative is to get back to feeling good and recognize that you can be a friend to yourself and treat others as fellow human beings rather than competitors in a futile battle for recognition of a fake ‘identity’.

With the help of remembering your “July PCE“ maybe this conversation of Richard’s can give you a hint how to proceed –

RICHARD: When one has an insight into an aspect of the Human Condition, there is action ... and this action is the actualising of the experience so that one’s personality is changed, irrevocably. Otherwise, I agree, the experience, the insight, becomes knowledge ... and knowledge is dead. Dead, that is, until it is activated and lived in one’s daily life. Sagacity lies in the living of a realisation … (Richard, List B, No. 20, 14 Feb 1998)

RESPONDENT: Can an insight, one moment of insight, have an effect here? Does this not call for something that is from moment to moment, ongoing.

RICHARD: Yes, indeed it can. One fundamental moment of insight can alter the entire course of one’s life wherein becoming free of the Human Condition is no longer a matter of choice – it is an irresistible pull. And, yes, then there is something that is from moment to moment, ongoing. I choose to call this something: ‘Pure Intent’. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of this physical universe. 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 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. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 20, 17 Feb 1998)

The key to unlock naiveté is sincerity, “which is that intimate aspect of oneself that is usually kept hidden away for fear of seeming foolish (a simpleton) ... it is like being a child again but with adult sensibilities (wherein one can separate out the distinction between being naïve and being gullible/ trusting).“ (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 79, 7 June 2006).

With naiveté operating in your life you can like yourself and like others … and it is a wonderful way of experiencing each moment, far more enjoyable and inducive in providing fun, appreciation and dignity in your life than any battle for recognition can ever deliver.

Cheers Vineeto