See: Sundry, Facts and Groupthink, Global Warming

See  Richard, List D: Jonathan

October 20 2013

JONATHAN: I hope you’re in good health. I’m writing to see if you would be willing to hang out in ballina over coffee and breakfast. It would be my treat. I’m enjoying some positive advances in becoming free and am considering hopping a flight to see if another visit will deliver the goods. And, also, to double check my progress. If this is merely another ASC then it’s best I find out sooner than later.

VINEETO: Hi Jon,

Thank you for your inquiry – I am in good health and excellent.

As for your plan to visit Ballina again, I don’t think you need to bear the expense and dislocation to ‘doublecheck [your] process’ as you are writing some quite informative emails on the Yahoo mailing list.

Here are some excerpts of your very recent posts that indicate a misunderstanding that can easily lead to disassociation or is an expression of disassociation –

• [Jonathan]: (...) But once perfection is seen as in a PCE then it’s just a matter of embracing what you know is actual. That said, to embrace one thing requires you to reject another. And the act of rejecting is often an emotional one (often bitter) which takes one away from perfection. (Message 15589 October 15 2013 5:45 pm)

One does not need to reject anything in order to ‘embrace’ what is actual. It seems to indicate that what you think ‘you know is actual’ is not part of the actual world. In actualism, when you understand that something you do is silly, it falls away by the simply act of seeing that fact. If you have to reject something in order to enable you ‘embracing what you know is actual’ then you create a dichotomy where one aspect of ‘you’ is in conflict with another aspect of ‘you’. I have talked about this, mainly to Srid, during your visit – there is neither policing nor sacrifice required in actualism – on the contrary, that would be utterly counterproductive. You just see a fact for what is it and the very seeing of this particular fact evaporates the lies and beliefs that had obscured the fact. No rejection at all is required.

• [Jonathan]: (...) Human sorrow is imaginary (though the chemicals or lack thereof are actual) so stop imagining your own sorrow. Stop imagining something that doesn’t exist in actuality. (Message 15592 October 15 2013 6:15 pm)

Human sorrow is *not* imaginary – it is the very essence of the human soul, of ‘being’ itself. Again, you would have to split one part of ‘yourself’ from the rest of ‘you’ in order to classify it as merely imagination. ‘You’ are your feelings and your feelings are ‘you’ and those feelings only disappear when the identity disappears. Unless you acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings, you will always come up with tricky ways to keep one aspect of ‘you’ in existence, disguised as [fill in your own discoveries here], while pretending to yourself to have made advances in becoming free when you have merely rearranged the deckchairs. (Mind you, this is a very common occurrence when one is embarking on the path of leaving one’s ‘self’ behind, so no need to beat yourself up for it. Just remember that ‘I’ am a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity programmed to stay in existence at all cost – hence the necessity of being scrupulously honest with oneself).

Now, because ‘I’ am my feelings, the only way to make progress towards an actual freedom is to become affectively aware of how I experience this moment in order to be able to minimise both the good and the bad feelings and to maximize the felicitous/innocuous feelings – hence the emphasis on enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, no matter what the circumstances. This is the only way to weaken the influence of ‘me’ on the flesh-and-blood body as the good and the bad feelings only make ‘me’ stronger and bigger.

• [Jonathan]: (...) The passions they [the females] engender are wildly powerful. But if I cut those passions off before the imagination takes hold then they are revealed to be only chemicals and chemicals only. I find that my desire to help the world gives me the strength to forsake the imagination in that regard. (...). Of course ‘i’ still remain but the place where I am walking is right here in the actual world. And the air that I am breathing and the keys that I am touching are and have always been actual. In fact, everything is actual except the imagination and that faculty is so obviously not actual and has never been. (Message 15602 October 18 2013 9:45 pm)

VINEETO: If you are trying to cut off your passions, you are splitting yourself into parts. It’s either repression or dissociation. Then you engender the help of do-gooder feelings (of helping the world) in order to cut off your unwanted feelings. As I said above, it doesn’t work that way. It is not just imagination that is the problem, it is ‘you’ in your entirety that is the problem. Only utter sincerity can cut through the wild array of tricks an identity comes up with.

As for ‘I find it utterly wonderful that I am already here in the actual world’ – ‘you’ are *not* already here in the actual world. This was the point Richard was being firm about at the fish-and-chip shop on your second-last day. You wrote in your report on the Yahoo list that you got angry about it ... but did you actually take notice of the information that Richard was trying to impart to you because it is really, really important to understand this point? All identities have an inner world and an outer world and what you call ‘here in the actual world’ is in fact the identity’s outer world (in your case masquerading as the actual world). Another trick of the inherently cunning identity to avoid being seen for what it is – an impostor, a fake, a fraud.

*

JONATHAN: I haven’t decided if I want to take the trip or not. I figured I’d check with you to see if you’d be able to accommodate a few mornings or afternoons. Because if you can’t then that would make my decision for me. But I figure I should take some time off work anyways, because, work seems to stir up all the passions and they override Here and Now. At work I’m always back defending the identity and I figure that if a biological adaptation is to occur, a prolonged period of living Here and Now is necessary. So I need to live Here and Now in order to allow the adaptation to occur and since that means taking time away from poker then I may as well fly to Australia. If you aren’t in ballina or can’t spare the time then I’ll probably rent a cabin by the water for a week or two. I’m not exactly sure. I’ll flush it out over the next few days and see what your response brings.

VINEETO: I see from your posts on the mailing list that you have now taken a holiday in order to be more able to ‘experience perfection’ without the interference of work –

• [Jonathan]: This time, I had planned to use my free time to experience perfection over and over again. And I thought that in doing so the biological adaptation necessary for AF would be more likely. And work was interfering with my experience of perfection. Though I’m no longer miserable while working, I can’t say that I’m carefree and happy either. My defenses seem to be always up while there. (Message 15598 October 17 2013 1:35 pm)

First of all, Virtual Freedom is never described as ‘a prolonged period of living Here and Now’. That is you making up stuff from a superficial scanning of the Actual Freedom website. You can check the Library for the terms ‘Here’ and ‘Now’ and you will see what I mean.

Further, Richard said many times, both in writing and to you and Srid in person, that actualism works best in the marketplace, i.e. do *not* retreat from the world of people, things, and events like the spiritual people do. I can understand that taking time off is a nice thing to do and it is even more beneficial if you can find the knack to maintain the holiday-mode when returning to work. All it requires is to pay diligent attention (to how you feel each moment again) in order to catch yourself when the mood wants to change back to the familiar resentful/defensive mode and then you decline to revert back to that non-carefree and non-happy attitude. It is possible and Richard just recently related to me how ‘Richard’, the identity, discovered that it was possible and how pleased ‘he’ was when ‘he’ succeeded.

What’s the point in being a Sunday-actualist?

To sum it up, I don’t see that you would have to spend a considerable sum of money to fly to Australia at this point as this email can easily get you back on track. And, to reiterate what Richard said to you at the fish-and-chip shop by the harbour, you do yourself a great disfavour by not reading the Actual Freedom website more thoroughly.

As for the deliverance of ‘the goods’ you had in mind, that won’t happen until *all of you* is on board.

When you enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive (in all events and in all situations) and thus increasingly let the universe live your life, then ‘you’ will inevitably become more and more redundant (and thus weakened for lack of ‘self’-nourishment) by the sheer fact that living life becomes easier and more and more enjoyable. When most of your waking time is enjoyable without exception, then ‘you’ have nothing left to do and can fully acquiesce to manumit the flesh-and-blood body from ‘your’ control.

Then the conditions are ripe for magic to happen.

Cheers Vineeto

Continued from Richard, List D: Jonathan

July 19 2024

JONATHAN: Maybe the primary objection to self immolation is not being sure whether one wants to be by oneself in a fantastical place that isn’t real vs being among others in a place that is real.

The words depersonalization and derealization come to mind. I just experienced actual not as something that is more real than real or Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive. Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just experienced. A synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was. Any word at all could be used to describe it as the place has no parallels. Something conveying a magic like quality well known to be fantastical fiction might convey how unreal it is: Genie land, pixie world, fairy land, a spontaneous song and dance with no choreography and no duration where the stage itself is singing and dancing and there is no audience…

So a question I need to ponder is do I want to live by myself in that completely unreal world of pixie dust and theory-less music and plotless pomp or live with my very real friends and real family and my real tribes and anti-tribes solidly centered in reality. Which, say what you will of it, is, at least, real.

VINEETO: Ha, what a brilliant cynical put-down of an actual freedom from the human condition, by someone who likes bluffing, because in reality he is clearly afraid to leave his seemingly safe cage when the doors are wide open, and he could instead enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive.

One of Aesop’s fables comes to mind

C’est la vie, hey.

Cheers Vineeto

July 21 2024

VINEETO: Hi Jon,

Let’s start with some facts.

JONATHAN: Maybe the primary objection to self immolation is not being sure whether one wants to be by oneself in a fantastical place that isn’t real vs being among others in a place that is real.

The words depersonalization and derealization come to mind. I just experienced actual not as something that is more real than real or Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive. Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just experienced. A synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was. Any word at all could be used to describe it as the place has no parallels. Something conveying a magic like quality well known to be fantastical fiction might convey how unreal it is: Genie land, pixie world, fairy land, a spontaneous song and dance with no choreography and no duration where the stage itself is singing and dancing and there is no audience… [emphases added]

“it was so *easy* and simple to just be there” 

“The light was golden, every little swaying movement of the trees just emphasised the stillness. There was an utterly brilliant clarity and peace”

“I had a micro-pce a couple nights ago watching my fingers make a paper plane, just doing it on their own”. 

“And then in a PCE I am that very pure intent.”

You say you had experienced PCEs in the past, so with a bit of honest discernment you could have seen the difference for yourself.

JONATHAN to Vineeto: I just took a course on how to bluff more effectively. But that’s poker not anywhere else.

VINEETO: […] because in reality he is afraid to leave his seemingly safe cage when the doors are wide open, and he could instead enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive.

JONATHAN to Vineeto: That is exactly what I was trying to convey! I was looking for objections to staying as near to the actual world as I was. My focus then and there was on my objections. I am absolutely afraid of leaving my “seemingly safe cage”. That’s exactly what I wanted to convey 

[Richard]: I have written before (on my portion of The Actual Freedom Trust website) about personally experiencing a major dissociative state, of an extended duration during a period of my life in a war-zone as a youth, which was not unlike being in the centre of a cyclone – all about raged fear and hatred, anger and aggression – and in that unreality all was calm, peaceful (and ‘fearless’).

[Peter:] Another doubt that emerged about this time was that if I was to throw out spirituality could it be that I would just end up back where I had started, but without love, trust, faith and hope: the very things that made life at least bearable? Would I find myself in some bleak awfulness, some grey world, empty of everything? One day I had a flash of stark barrenness, a glimpse of stark reality – but I knew from my peak experiences that this was simply fear and, sure enough, being only fear, it did not last.

Besides, your very description of the experience is rather revealing:

JONATHAN: I just experienced actual not as something that is more real than real or Real2.0 or super real but as something that is unreal. So unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive. Actual and real being synonyms in normal conversation, I found it at odds with the world I just experienced. A synonym for real didn’t seem to convey how unreal it was […]

VINEETO: You can’t have it both ways – either your is ‘actual’ is used synonymous with real or it is “so unreal that the word Actual seemed counter-intuitive”. Neither of these two descriptions reflect anything of the actual world. As such your very claim that this is why you have objections to an actual freedom are simply a red herring, a “nothing burger” 

I also look askance at your statement that “lead me to a place that seemed both foreign and a lot closer to the actual world”. It may be your subjective impression but the way you write shows no indication that you are “a lot closer to the actual world”.

*

JONATHAN: Leading others astray didn’t occur to me.

VINEETO: You also said:

JONATHAN: I simply lack the leverage to do that. 

VINEETO: Who are you kidding – have you forgotten the Cause of Bias thread which generated 219 posts, caused a stir and a rift in the halls of the Discuss Actualism Forum and was merely based on a strawman and a red-herring carelessly introduced but fervently defended by you? Viz:

[Richard]: JonnyPitt’s “Cause of Bias” thread is flawed from the get-go inasmuch his basic premiss regarding bias not being a product of ‘self’(*) is a premiss based upon calumny thence traducement (i.e., upon a strawman and a red-herring thence flat-out lies about “bad arguments” and “cognitive limitations” similar to “tone deafness” or “dyslexia” plus further lies, built upon those flat-out lies, about Richard and Vineeto being “stubbornly irrational”, and (allegedly) on the record with some “verifiably bat-shit crazy opinions”). (tool-tip after “flawed-from-the-get-go”).

(*)Footnote:

Cause of Bias? Message № 01; JonnyPitt; 6 Feb 2023.

What causes bias? I don’t think it’s self. What else can it be? 

[Richard]: Incidentally, and just in case it has escaped any casual reader’s notice, the entire “Cause of Bias” thread at the Discuss Actualism Online forum is rendered null and void by the marked absence of examples of bias from those in whom identity in toto is extinct. 

And now you have started another red herring/nothing burger with this “unreality”=PCE. Can you comprehend that with such a history your claim of “lack of leverage” is rather unconvincing and that therefore your assertion that your “inaccurate” information would cause no harm to anyone is equally erroneous?

JONATHAN: The actual world is pretty foreign when you’re not in it. When you still have access to all your anxieties yet see a world where those anxieties don’t exist and it’s like well i can stay here or go back – I think some interesting thoughts occur, some conversations can take place where words like unreal and foreign are bandied about. But maybe this an ASC.

VINEETO: Those statements are very clearly not made while in a PCE, in an EE or even when feeling good. They are made when in the grips of the ‘self’, which is “a lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning” identity –

Hence my previous suggestion that “it’s more fruitful to examine those fears and objections from a more dispassionate perspective, i.e. after you get back to feeling good first”. and I add a suggestion to only write on the forum when you are feeling good.

*

JONATHAN: An objection must remain, right? Otherwise, I’d have immolated, no?

VINEETO: Ha I think you fallen for James’ simplistic formula – What I had said was –

Vineeto to Claudiu: Become more and more friends with ‘me’ in that ‘I’ agree on more and more points that ‘I’ am indeed redundant to the stage where ‘I’ joyously acquiesce to lay down ‘my’ burden (it is indeed experienced as a burden) and fulfil ‘my’ deep-down yearning to finally go into oblivion.

When there is no objection left there is only joyous anticipation and no fear at all. 

This is when one is out-from-control, in a different way of being, in an ongoing excellence experience. Your next step is to recognize that fear is a burden, not a necessity for survival.

JONATHAN: I think living without fear is an objection I have. I think the danger of having no fear is the objection. However, the foreignness I described has lessened. It feels more normal to have this level of reduced defensiveness, this level of reduced boredom, this level of assuredness that everything will be fine, this level of reduced responsibility and neediness. It’s still not totally normal though.

VINEETO: Ok, now you are getting closer to the real cause of why you introduced this thread but you are still defending the feeling that you feel. You are defending your ‘self’, the human condition. You haven’t decided yet that you want to live life without this feeling hampering you.

The way the actualism method works is to get back to feeling good *before* investigating any aspect of the trigger that made you feel bad.

Once you are feeling good -- which may take some time to accomplish -- look at the trigger (if it was an intense feeling which in your case it is) in a dispassionate way. Don’t embrace it, don’t defend it, don’t object to it, be as honest as you can, in other words, don’t feed it. When you stop feeding it, it will automatically shrink to at least half its intensity, if not more. Feelings can’t sustain themselves unless ‘I’ continue to feed it.

Then you can begin to contemplate in a rational manner, perhaps gather some information, for instance. See what the fear is about – ask yourself some questions. Can you really not live /survive without it? How come other actually free people can and you think you cannot? Is fear attractive you, does it have any endearing features (apart from being real)? Can you perhaps see that fear is there in order to keep you trapped within the human condition so that you stay as you are, that you do not have to change? Is it perhaps the fear to change? Do you want to change despite the fear? Do you want to perhaps be able to enjoy and appreciate being alive?

Btw, enjoyment and appreciation is not the same as you termed it – “wonder and satisfaction”

JONATHAN: I’m not used to thinking that everything will work out and I really don’t need to worry.

VINEETO: That is not what an actual freedom is about, even though it’s true that without instinctual passion is it much easier to meet the challenges that being alive presents. (See how you water down the magnificence of experiencing being pure intent personified as a flesh-and-blood human being, even the possibility to living peace-on-earth, by defining it from the myopic ‘self’-centred perspective of ‘what do ‘I’ get out of it?)

JONATHAN: […] It’s just different thinking like that. And I think that’s still an objection. Maybe I should worry more. Ya know. If I don’t worry then christ shit might hit the fan and I won’t be prepared.

VINEETO: Ha, do you really think, if you worry enough those things won’t happen, and if they are happening, you will be prepared for everything? I guess you do think that, but you do so because you are not yet feeling good – life looks a lot different when you allow yourself to stop feeding the present feeling and allow a bit more naiveté to flourish. It will not automatically pay your electricity bill but you have been able to pay so far whether you worried about it or not.

Look at it this way – the universe has kept you alive and well so far, given you your skills and talents to accomplish staying alive, whether you additionally worried or not. Your ‘self’ and your feelings have not contributed, on the contrary, they have stuffed up a lot and caused a lot of unnecessary problems. ‘You’ are not needed, ‘you’ are redundant.

RICHARD: Yet all sentient beings are a product of nature. Nature endows all sentient beings with the instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire, right? You are suggesting that this nature might be better of scrapping human beings for some other ‘less aggressive’ being. Yet it was nature that made human beings aggressive in the first place. Do you see the circular nature of what you are saying?

RESPONDENT: I am not so sure. Fright is the intelligent response to danger.

RICHARD: Not so ... fright is the instinctual reaction to danger [and a lot of imagined danger at that]. You are still believing that instincts are intelligent. Instincts are killing people. 

Cheers Vineeto 

December 1 2024

It is indeed a good post, sticking to one coherent subject matter, as you say yourself at the end.

JON: Good post. Tx. Really on point. I appreciate that. Way to stick to one coherent subject matter. lol

VINEETO: This is how productive thinking works. Great you remembered to pat yourself on the back.

When I first met Richard, after years of spiritual search where thinking was discouraged, I was delighted to be encouraged to use my brain again in the way it is capable of. Richard gave me one guideline – when exploring one topic to find out answers I hadn’t thought of before, he said, always come back to the ‘trunk’, the original question of inquiry. You can branch out, jump from branch to branch, but then come back to the original question. This way whatever has been discovered by the discursive way of thinking will be fed into advancing the original question. That’s how productive contemplation can work best.

JON: Along similar lines to what Vineeto wrote to Henry regarding preferences and what Claudiu wrote some 2 days ago regarding mortality, I experienced how the real world revolves around some climax or another.

VINEETO: Here is what I pick out from your thought process – you “experienced how the real world revolves around some climax or another”, that you are always chasing some excitement (like most people), some valued goal, and when that is achieved, or not achieved, the excitement disappears.

JON: But the actual world has no climaxes. The stream of benignity and benevolence doesn’t have one. Perfection can only exist without them. Climaxes need to exist outside time. We psychological entities are always in some relationship with a climax of some sort. Take that away and the feeling is freeing yet peculiar. One can say the climax is always ongoing.

VINEETO: This seems to be guesswork or a projected imagined quality rather than thinking, as you also say that “it seems pure intent is utterly unhuman”, which means you have not experienced either pure intent or “the stream of benignity and benevolence” or “perfection” – or at least can’t remember those qualities from when you experienced it. What is correct is that there is no emotional climax.

JON: One of the great obstacles I have to moving closer to freedom is that those times when I’m closer than usual there is an onset of confusion and/or boredom as in what’s next, okay so what now. 

VINEETO: That is a good insight. It’s akin to Claudiu’s reporting yesterday –

Claudiu: A major thing is seeing a deeply ingrained and conditioned habit of avoidance I have. I came to see its habitual, a fear of anything unfamiliar or not already unknown. But then I ask myself (hooving closer to actuality) is anything actually wrong happening?

Now, if you asked yourself, “is anything actually wrong happening?” you might discover that it’s ok to feel confusion/ boredom … because it might well be a way for you to discover a glimpse of your childhood naďveté. Viz.:

JON: I also like observing children. My gf has two of them. It’s delicious seeing how utterly ignorant they are and can’t help themselves but to be. It’s hilarious.

VINEETO: Naiveté starts with having fun for no reason at all, to allow yourself to feel confused, not being in line with adult seriousness, being coy, unsure, a bit like a fool and a bit like a happy child, and very alive. See if you can access this naďveté, and discover that it eventually allows you to like yourself and consequently like others too. You can even marvel at the fact of being alive with childlike sensuosity. Naďveté will make enjoying and appreciating very, very easy.

“Kindness” is a very poor substitute, more like a duty when you can feel naďve instead, and then moving on to be naďve, and consequently feel more alive and more enjoy being alive. It doesn’t require one climax after another, which only leaves you empty after it’s finished. Being naďve opens your eyes to a world you have long forgotten … and you can, if you allow it, experience sincere intent and even allow a PCE to happen (where you can get a connection to pure intent).

JON: But sufficient pure intent would clear that up. It seems pure intent is utterly unhuman. And climaxes or the need for them, the need for a story with a beginning and at least one climax, is human. Pure intent isn’t human. I’d say the closest human attribute it has could be described as kindness. 

VINEETO: You say that “pure intent is utterly unhuman” because it is not in your human experience. But the word “intent” in this phrase is the feeling being’s sincere intent to bring about the purity one has experienced (if you could only remember it) at least one time in one’s life. The purity is of the actual world, the intent is from the feeling being wanting to (eventually) live in the actual world. 

[Correction: [Richard]: “pure intent, born out of the connection between one’s inherent naiveté and the perfection of the infinitude of this physical universe” – therefore wanting to live in the actual world is sincere intent, “pure intent” is that which “must be outside of the human condition” (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan-b, 13 Dec 1999).].

So now that you come this far in your contemplation, why not give naďveté a try. All you need to do is putting aside your pride and its counterpart humility (which everyone is inflicted with to the detriment of the human race). Here is what Richard said about naďveté –

So you see, being a fool would be the opposite of being naďve.