|
(List D refers to Richard’s List D
Vineeto’s Correspondence with Scout on Discuss Actualism Forum
KUBA: This is yet another reason why actualism is experiential because all words have been invented by feeling beings and therefore on their own they cannot quite convey actuality, they will simply go around in circles and never reveal the actual nature of this universe. Eternal will be taken to mean a very long lapse of time or infinite a very long stretch of space and yet the actual experience of infinitude is outside of those descriptions. All of those real world descriptions still infer some ultimate movement/distance to time/ space. Whereas actual time and space exist within the stillness of infinitude. Even writing the word “within” seems to screw it up As in that stillness is the very infinite
and eternal nature of this universe. VINEETO: Yes, I had the same thought when I read it – the word “within” didn’t seem to be quite right and then your last sentence expressed it exactly. Only someone experiencing (or having experienced) actuality can say this with utter confidence. It is indeed experiential. SCOUT: May I ask – what does this mean? It feels directly in opposition to the Richard
quote you shared in Henry’s thread KUBA (to Scout): I’ll have a go at this in the meantime “You have all the time in the universe” is referring specifically to one’s experience as a flesh and blood body only, one exists where time has no duration. It is impossible to ever ‘run out of time’ as time does not move in actuality. Whereas as an identity ‘I’ am locked out of eternal time and instead ‘I’ exist precariously across the past, present and future. This is where ‘I’ am always managing, anticipating and running out of time. As it is always this moment, this body does not move through time like the identity moves across the past, present and future. Rather this body exists securely in eternal time. In eternal time there is no distance to be travelled between ‘then’ and ‘now’ as the immediate is the ultimate, whereas ‘I’ am forever shifting between these thin slivers of ‘real time’, desperately trying to hold, manage and anticipate each one. I think I have just answered in part my own question – of why is it that where time has no
duration there is such safety. Because all this painful psychological/psychic activity which comes from ‘managing
time’ (whilst being forever locked out of actual time) ceases when one exists in eternal time. Everything is in its
place already as one is not actually going anywhere or coming from somewhere. VINEETO: Yes, one can never run out of time in actuality, it is always now, and I am always here and the universe being perfect and pure everything is already perfect. To answer Scout’s question more in detail, here is a quote from Richard’s journal –
SCOUT: Interesting, I’ve had experiences on psychedelics where psychological time ceased to exist as I’d previously known it, as well as the anxiety around it – but there was still change and a direction to change. there was no longer anticipation or anxiety surrounding where that change was leading, just presence. Is that the “eternity” Vineeto and Richard discuss? time is not a concern or even really felt because the mind stops creating a past or future. but there is still always the change and there is only so much change I will experience before all experience ends. But maybe that doesn’t matter when I’m not worried about what’s not happening now. the
sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah? VINEETO: Hi Scout, You cannot think your way into this, it is indeed experiential. Have you ever experienced that when you are feeling good, time seems to fly while when you are sad or worried time seems to go on forever? This is a perfect example of ‘personal’ time, it’s all coloured by ‘me’, how ‘I’ feel, what ‘I’ want (or don’t want). Contemplate just this sentence: “To ‘be’ is to take this moment of being alive personally … as being proof of ‘my’ subjective existence” and then, in attentive contemplation become fascinated by the very fact that ‘you’ and 8 billion other people all have their own personal experience of time. It can’t be that time is like this, can it? There is an alternative how to think about this – apperceptiveness. You can try it out in a quiet moment.
Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Thank you for the thoughtful responses Vineeto, I will explore. VINEETO: Hi Scout, You are very welcome. Seeing you enjoyed the responses, I like to explore your original question a bit further. SCOUT: Interesting, I’ve had experiences on psychedelics where psychological time ceased to exist as I’d previously known it, as well as the anxiety around it – but there was still change and a direction to change. there was no longer anticipation or anxiety surrounding where that change was leading, just presence. VINEETO: Yes, events change but when ‘I’ am in abeyance either in a PCE or when actually free, it is evidently obvious that time does not move, no matter which events take place in the arena of time. Here is a stillness that is all around, unimaginable, inconceivable and utterly magical. To explain, when ‘I’ am in abeyance then ‘I’ am no longer the centre around which ‘my’ perception and ‘my’ world view revolves. When ‘I’ am in abeyance, or extinguished, there is no “presence”, there is no centre, there is only here, this place in space and now, this moment in time. I am not sure what you mean when you say “just presence”? Could it be that this “presence” was ‘Being’ or ‘Me’? It would be good to explore so you do not take a possible ASC as your lodestone. SCOUT: Is that the “eternity” Vineeto and Richard discuss? Time is not a concern or even really felt because the mind stops creating a past or future. but there is still always the change and there is only so much change I will experience before all experience ends. VINEETO: Given that you are not sure then it is better not to rely on those experiences, especially as most experiences with psychedelics turn out to be ASCs. Viz.:
SCOUT: But maybe that doesn’t matter when I’m not worried about what’s not happening
now. The sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah? VINEETO: It does matter a great deal. You would want a clear experience of the actual world in order to guide you, and when you rely on something that very likely was an ASC then you are getting confused at best. If you were really “not worried about what’s not happening now” then you would be enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive to the point of continuously feeling excellent – but that is not the case, is it? And you wouldn’t have to ask if “the sense of the ”clock ticking“ is mostly just fear yeah? The “clock ticking” means you live in real-world time of past, present, future, like every other feeling being, and have conveniently convinced yourself of the belief that you are “not worried about what’s not happening now” while the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ instinctual passions are happening unobserved. Don’t you want to find out how you tick, how your mind really works, how you can genuinely feel felicitous and innocuous 23 hrs 59 min a day? Wouldn’t that be worthy of your fascinated attention? Here is a short quote from Richard’s correspondence with a spiritualist regarding eternity for your amusement –
(Richard, List B, No. 42b, 7 Dec 2001).
Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Thanks for elaborating further. I’ve had experiences on psychedelics that were definitely ASCs but also ones that were definitely PCEs, which stand as the goalpost I have oriented my whole life around and they’re how I was able to recognize the truth in yours and Richard’s writings. VINEETO: I am not sure what you mean when you say “just presence”? Could it be that this “presence” was ‘Being’ or ‘Me’? It would be good to explore so you do not take a possible ASC as your lodestone. SCOUT: Good catch, I was using spiritual lingo here but what I really meant was just raw, un-centered senses and the inescapable present moment – like it was impossible for there to be anything other than what was immediately physically happening because whatever imaginary centerpoint that usually mediates my conscious experience and imagines a past and a future was entirely gone. VINEETO: Hi Scout, Thank you for clarifying. It’s really good that you can clearly tell the difference and thus don’t accidentally go down the wrong alley. * VINEETO: If you were really “not worried about what’s not happening now” then you would be enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive to the point of continuously feeling excellent – but that is not the case, is it? And you wouldn’t have to ask if “the sense of the “clock ticking” is mostly just fear yeah?” SCOUT: I also may have mis-communicated here as that comment was more intended as conjecture than stating how I actually feel right now. I’m pretty ill and exhausted most of the time and I definitely still worry about it. As you pointed out though, conjecture is kind of an empty mental exercise compared to aiming to actually become free. Thank you for clarifying this as well. It’s become more apparent what you would like to achieve. * VINEETO: Don’t you want to find out how you tick, … SCOUT: Yes, so badly. I feel bad pretty often. I try to set my bearings and observe myself
honestly and keep getting lost in the weeds. But I can see my confusion and stress make my body sicker than it already is. I want to stop torturing myself
and to be well. Ah, now we are talking, lol. Here is something I recently wrote to another and they reported instant success, so I wonder if it will work for you as well … First let me tell you a fundamental fact one needs to recognize in order to successfully apply
the actualism method or any other advice I can give you – you do not have feelings, you are your
feelings. Without recognizing this the method won’t work. (I recommend a long piece of correspondence with No. 60
on the Actual Freedom list To explain: humans are born as feeling beings, babies cry before they can think, and before they even develop a sense of self – so feelings come first. But then thinking sets in and one starts to think that you have feelings which come and go and try to manipulate those feelings, blame yourself for the unwanted ones and chase the ones that you like feeling. That is a sort of subtle dissociation and it doesn’t allow you to choose how you feel, for instance felicitous. So that is an understanding which needs to happen first, at a fundamental level. You are this swirling vortex created by ever-changing instinctual passions and it is not your fault (because everyone is born that way). With this firmly in mind you can stop blaming yourself and you will find that the moment you do that, the feeling itself will diminish (not disappear) but lose some of its strength. The reason is that fighting the feeling you are feeding it. Now when you put this in practice and notice the effect, you can pat yourself on the back that you had your first insight and success. Be a friend to yourself (the only one you are with 24hrs a day). The other benefit of recognizing and accepting that you are your feelings is that you are not a victim, neither a victim of your own feelings nor a victim of other people’s feelings. This quote from Richard might be helpful as well –
Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Don’t you want to find out how you tick, … SCOUT: Yes, so badly. I feel bad pretty often. I try to set my
bearings and observe myself honestly and keep getting lost in the weeds. But I can see my confusion and stress make
my body sicker than it already is. I want to stop torturing myself and to be well. VINEETO: Ah, now we are talking, lol. Here is something I recently wrote to another and they reported instant success, so I wonder if it will work for you as well […] This quote from Richard might be helpful as well
SCOUT: This forum is an anti-groupthink groupthink. […] VINEETO: Hello Scout, It looks like your try at the actualism method wasn’t very successful and hence you did exactly what Richard observed in the above quote, except you are turning the blame outwards – you blame the forum members and Richard himself in order to avoid getting closer to “the end of ‘me’“). That’s understandable. What is less understandable is that you come up with the lamest allegation I have ever seen – “anti-groupthink groupthink“. Ha! What does that make you – anti-anti-groupthink think? Or perhaps a member of non-anti groupthink after all? And what about the comparisons you provide, those followers of enlightened or ‘quasi-enlightened’
persons and those following the teachings of the 10-bull story – according to you their teaching is similar to what
Richard is supposedly saying. Are those followers of the “groupthink“ variety or also
“anti-groupthink“ people? Again, my question is, which side are you voting for (since to you it is a matter of numbers who is called “groupthink“ – are you the lone defender of anti-anti-groupthink? Or do you perchance just want to mount a critique and stir some commotion before you slink away because you couldn’t make a success of the actualism method? Did you know that one of the essential requirements for the actualism method to work is that one is ruthless honest with oneself? Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: I read the CRO’s, I’m not trying to retread old territory. I didn’t see any quotes raised there for discussion indicating that others had maybe gone all the way before, which constitutes potential proof. VINEETO: Exactly, no examples by those who raised the question that another had “gone all the way“. You suggest that it was “potential proof“. Even you yourself cannot confidently state that it would be. Ha. Have you ever heard that one cannot disprove something that does not exist? For instance, can you prove with confidence that a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people-eater does not exist somewhere in this infinite universe? It is comparable to Fallacy No. 10 – burden of proof fallacy. [The legal example: People accused of crimes are presumed innocent. The burden of proving that they are guilty rests on the prosecutor. The accused doesn't have to prove anything.] SCOUT: I’m not done with the method and will continue applying it; it just feels
excruciatingly slow, and I am hungry for change, so I am trying to ascertain as much as I can about what I am
exploring to ensure I am not spinning my wheels. I probably still am, unconsciously, to some extent. VINEETO: That is good to hear. The fact that it is “excruciatingly slow“ perhaps has something do with not understanding, or misunderstanding, the actualism method. Perhaps you could explain where exactly you get stuck when being affectively attentive to how you experience being alive, and after getting back to feeling good, examine the trigger for the diminishment of your enjoying this moment of being alive. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Being affectively attentive is very painful and exhausting. If I do not suppress or indulge sometimes it still takes literally hours for even neutrality to emerge, and it is pretty fleeting before the next wave of feelings arise. I am agitated and exhausted and in physical pain pretty often, and inviting even more pain by not dissociating when stuff comes up feels like a rough prospect. I recurrently fall back to numbing, because the effort of paying attention to the pain in the way I need to in order for it to pass and not puppet my reactions is daunting and slow to pay dividends. Of course the numbing does not pay dividends at all, quite the opposite, but in the moment I am
beyond grateful to be relieved from the pain, if only for a little. VINEETO: Are you saying that the moment you become aware how you experience yourself, the fact of being aware makes the experience “painful and exhausting“? Or has it been like that all along, and you were refusing to/afraid to acknowledge it? Either way, first, stop the habitual response – stop fighting your pain and stop fighting the feelings you experience. Any battle against yourself only fuels the feelings and the [somatic] pain by increasing the power of ‘you’ to make you feel bad. Personally, feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that the moment she stopped fighting the feeling (i.e. by being afraid of it), it instantly diminished. From there, seeing the success of stopping the battle against yourself, you might be able to get to a reasonable feeling good, a little better than neutral. Then have a look at your resentment. Perhaps you can see (to a small degree at first) how silly
it is to waste energy in objecting to being here, since it is a fact that you are here. Then whenever you get
a chance, explore this resentment
Once you become fairly confident with these two aspects via experiential confirmation (the only proof which counts) you can have a look at how to change how you feel. It requires giving up dissociation, even if only temporarily, until you become more confident. Once you genuinely recognize and acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings (including your feelings about pain) then you find that you do have a choice about how you want to experience being alive. Here one of Richard’s co-respondents explains this in detail –
Let me know how you go. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Are you saying that the moment you become aware how you experience yourself, the fact of being aware makes the experience “painful and exhausting”? Or has it been like that all along, and you were refusing to/afraid to acknowledge it? SCOUT: The latter, but lending it attention makes the pain feel more acute than numbing it (even though I remain low-grade agitated while numbing too). I’ve been trying to work on not fighting it, it’s just hard bc if I don’t it feels kind of overwhelming. VINEETO: Hi Scout, I understand that it is hard to get an entry into the actualism method when you have a long-habituated response to fear and pain and all other unpleasant feelings. The thing is if you want to get better, you will have to start somewhere, and your entry is to allow yourself to feel, so that you can notice how you fight this feeling … and then consciously stop resisting, fighting, complaining, rejecting it. Unless you actually do it, you can never find out if the feeling itself diminishes when you stop fighting it, or not. * VINEETO: Then have a look at your resentment. Perhaps you can see (to a small degree at first) how silly it is to waste energy in objecting to being here, since it is a fact that you are here. SCOUT: Yea I feel resentment a lot. I’m unable to work even a kind of chill home job right now bc I have been dealing with some weird medical symptoms that leave me constantly fatigued and slight stress provokes sometimes scary symptoms. I’m scared I won’t be able to support myself, but I’m also scared that things will get worse if I keep working since that’s been the trajectory thus far. I’m decently young too so most of my peers are out enjoying their lives and I’m in bed a lot of the time, I know comparatives aren’t helpful but I really wish I could function normally and that basic stuff like eating wasn’t a source of constant pain. I don’t think any of these feelings are serving me in getting better. But it feels like I can’t help it; when I sit with myself long enough I cry like a scared child in pain. VINEETO: Ok, resentment is a form of socially accepted anger (mostly turned in on oneself), and must have been brewing for a long time … so long that, not dealing with it, you developed psycho-somatic “scary symptoms” and aren’t able to earn a living. Therefore, this too seems to be a rather urgent topic to tackle sooner rather than later. Now that you acknowledge that resentment operates in you, you can go ahead and sincerely and dispassionately contemplate what the benefits and damages are that resentment creates. It must be fairly obvious to you that the harm outweighs the benefits by a large margin, no? A sincere and clear seeing of this fact will evince action (if/when there be sincere intent to be happy and harmless). Claudiu made a very perspicacious observation –
VINEETO: Once you genuinely recognize and acknowledge that ‘you’ are your feelings (including your feelings about pain) then you find that you do have a choice about how you want to experience being alive. SCOUT: I can’t see this clearly yet honestly. I see that I do have a choice as to whether to engage narratives around certain feelings with my attention, and that if I stop giving those narratives attention then the feelings lose their edge, and diminish sooner. I don’t feel in control of what emotions arise in a given moment at all, just in how I respond to them. I’ll keep exploring. I appreciate the engagement. VINEETO: You are welcome. You are indeed not “in control of what emotions arise” but you constantly try to be in control by fighting and objecting and resenting all these unwanted feelings which arise. Wanting to be in control requires a ‘controller’ and something to be ‘controlled’ (your feelings). Therefore you split yourself into two – a form of dissociation (additionally to the dissociation of suppressing the feelings themselves). When this dissociation stops (via personal insight into this self-inflicted phenomenon) then you can experientially grasp that the whole process (controller and controlled) is ‘you’, the psychological and psychic-emotional identity trying to prevent ‘you’ from changing the status quo. Perhaps you first need to succeed in not fighting nor suppressing unwanted feelings (and experience how they diminish when you don’t feed them by objecting) before you can grasp experientially that you don’t have feelings but that you are your feelings and that your feeling are ‘you’, the passionate instinctual identity. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: I’ve been applying the method pretty diligently these past few weeks. My previous focus had been on just giving attention to every moment regardless of what was coming up. But no emphasis on appreciation. this resulted in me feeling like coming to the present moment was a painful experience a lot of the time, and avoiding it. Now I emphasize savouring it. Even in the presence of pain, I find aspects of whatever is happening to cherish. It makes the pain much more manageable. And it’s led to me taking better care of myself which has reduced the bodily discomfort I’ve been experiencing. I get hit by waves of emotion. I don’t try to wrestle them down but I don’t indulge the narratives either; the root cause often reveals itself once the feelings subside. Pretty interesting. While riding the wave of somatically experiencing the emotion I enjoy my breath, and study what the feeling actually is. I’m starting to see the addictive cycle for myself. I also see fear. Silly irrational fear, like fear that if I become entirely ok with myself and I don’t need other people emotionally at all, then I’ll wind up entirely alone. That it’s my co-dependency that keeps me likable. Amidst upwellings of fear and sadness and mania, my baseline has become pretty much good. I think I can be ok even if I’m sick. But working on retraining my brain to appreciate whatever’s going on seems like it might actually physically help my illness too. I will keep applying the method. I feel like I love my life again. I feel so curious to know
myself deeper. And grateful that I can return to a grounded appreciation within myself again and again if I keep
reminding myself to. VINEETO: Hi Scout, This is an excellent report. Now that you had some success for your persistence with the actualism method you have the motivation and curiosity to “know myself deeper”. This quote from Richard regarding physical pain yet absence of suffering can give you further encouragement to decline when you notice an emotional objection to physical pain –
Additionally, the more you discover the triggers for stress, “fear and sadness and mania” and learn to decline to go down that path again and again, you are also reducing stress hormones like adrenaline, which can only have a beneficiary effect on your health and well-being. The more you appreciate your enjoyment of being alive (feeling good) the more both enjoyment and appreciation grow – it is quite magical. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: As you are not “this flesh & blood body experiencing life here and
now” unless you are in a PCE, this question cannot be answered as is. In a PCE you may experience to be
“nowhere in particular” and get a glimpse of what it is to “be anywhere at all, for infinity is everywhere all at once”. It is marvellous, albeit it
can be somewhat disorienting at first. SCOUT: This struck a chord with me. But namely because the
consciousness experiences I’ve had that mostly closely align with the state you and Richard describe – where the
psychological self/centre is completely gone, there are only senses and a direct awareness of infinity – were
actually pretty overwhelming. A lot of agitation/ remnants of fear were still present and were experienced very
acutely without the buffer of the psychological self, kind of reminiscent of the adjustment period Richard described,
and I definitely felt disoriented too. It makes those experiences feel like a little less of a compass for me because
they actually didn’t feel super desirable. Did you have an adjustment period too, once you arrived at full freedom?
Is this overwhelm/ transitional agitation just part of the experience? VINEETO: Hi Scout, As Claudiu already pointed out This should be good news for you because an actual freedom definitely has no “agitation/ remnants of fear” and is much, much better than you can imagine. Personally I did have a short adjustment period when I lost my centre of spatial reference permanently I wish you eminent success with your adventure of being alive. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: … because the consciousness experiences I’ve had that mostly closely align with the state you and Richard describe – where the psychological self/centre is completely gone, there are only senses and a direct awareness of infinity – were actually pretty overwhelming. A lot of agitation/ remnants of fear were still present and were experienced very acutely without the buffer of the psychological self, kind of reminiscent of the adjustment period Richard described, and I definitely felt disoriented too. It makes those experiences feel like a little less of a compass for me because they actually didn’t feel super desirable. Did you have an adjustment period too, once you arrived at full freedom? Is this overwhelm/ transitional agitation just part of the experience? VINEETO: <snip> SCOUT: However there are other parts of Richard/ Vineeto’s description like centerlessness and contact with infinity which I did not directly experience in those incredible moments (even though there felt like there was no “me”, and I had an understanding of infinity, there must have been some sense of centre and slight separation from it). The moments where the centre died and raw infinity coursed through me had a different flavour because they were so fundamentally different, it was very, very overwhelming and disorienting. But I guess as Vineeto said, it probably means there were still remnants of me left to feel this overwhelm. VINEETO: Hi Scout, As you have mentioned again “Richard/Vineeto’s description like centerlessness and contact with infinity” I am wondering if you can point me to the specific reports you are referring to in order that I can respond in a meaningful way. If you could also describe your own experiences in more detail so I can understand why you are comparing them to Richard’s and my descriptions. You say – “The moments where the centre died” – when one is actually free, there is no “centre” which can die, so I am puzzled in what way your experience was similar to the descriptions you read. SCOUT: So I guess I’ve never experienced it all at once – total
complete centerlessness and contact with infinity, at the same time that everything seems magical and fun and
perfect. The centerlessness actually quite surprised me when I first experienced it because I couldn’t fathom until
then how total the obliteration would be, and it had seemed to me that perfect happiness was possible with the far
more shallow disappearance of “me” that had revealed the meaning of life prior. I wonder if this is the
difference between basic and actual freedom. VINEETO: Can you say something more about the experience of how the “disappearance of ‘me’” appeared to you “far less shallow” in comparison to “total complete centerlessness”. While you are wondering “if this is the difference between basic and actual
freedom” – I am in fact wondering, in light of your descriptions so far, if your experiences of “total
complete centerlessness” were altered states of consciousness of the nature of an ‘actuality mimicking ASC’. It is not uncommon that the identity comes up with this cunning way to lead you away from, and
disorient you, on your adventure to become actually free. This is all par for the course of dismantling the human
condition. So I definitely suggest that you do not use these experiences as a compass or even indication of progress.
You may find Kuba’s posts Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: I’ve found some quotes from the website, specifically from Geoffrey and Vineeto, which capture the delineation I’m trying to describe in my post. Here is a description from Geoffrey after reaching basic freedom:
And a little later, as he was working on “abdicating the guardian”:
This second description aligns with my experiences of purity that felt, at the time, “perfect” – there was no “me” narrating or colouring experience with emotions, and the sensory world was the most rich, splendid, fascinating thing in and of itself. My fear of aging and death disappeared entirely with “me”. Each moment was so enjoyable that it was so blatantly obvious that the meaning of life was purely in the living of it. There was no bubble for me then, nothing to hold onto and no need to hold onto anything; it certainly felt like being “no one” compared to my normal waking reality. And yet, as Geoffrey described, traces of the past walls must have still existed, as I cannot say I had full apprehension of infinity in those moments, and even though I did not perceive a psychological self, my senses still seemed to orient themselves around some central point. VINEETO: Hi Scout, Thank you for the quotes that you say align with your experiences, particular the one from Geoffrey. This description refers to a time when Geoffrey had been basically free for about 5 years (1 July 2024), and describes the course of events when he became free from the ‘guardian’, the social identity in toto. From that vantage point of being free from the instinctual passions and the identity formed thereof plus being free from the tethers of the social identity (“no more dome over me ”) except “something like the trace of past walls”, Geoffrey accurately describes the progressing events as an ongoing actuality. However, what you report are temporary exceptional experiences which appear to align with Geoffrey’s descriptions apart from being ‘overwhelming’ and ‘scary’ and from which you returned “to my normal waking reality” which you further down describe as “‘I’ am nothing but pain”. Hence my suggestion in my previous post to you that these may well be experiences, possibly originating from a PCE but then flipping into those of the nature of an ‘actuality mimicking ASC’. In this type of ASC there is neither God nor any religious or spiritual connotations but imaginary features assembled from reports of people describing their experience of an actual freedom. The term “actuality mimicking” should give you at least pause to consider, given that you originally described them as “agitating” and “very, very overwhelming and disorienting” which is clearly an emotional reaction. SCOUT: The moments where I did feel in direct contact with infinity reminded me of Vineeto ‘s experience of transitioning from basic to actual freedom:
As opposed to the events where my experience more aligned with what Geoffrey described, my experiences that have been similar to what Vineeto describes here have been honestly too overwhelming to be enjoyable for the most part. In those moments, I recognized the normal waking “me” (and even the “traces of walls” from previous events that felt like PCEs) as a buffer shielding me from the full intensity of infinitude. In these events, there was no possibility for any trace of walls. There were only the senses of my body; whole, complete, entirely alone and yet inseparable from all of existence. There was no central organizing element to these senses, no spatiality whatsoever – each sense’s signals arose purely known unto themselves from nowhere to no one. Direct experience of the infinitude of all existence (though my body as a conduit of knowing this is entirely finite) came along with this. VINEETO: It is no surprise that you describe those experiences as “too overwhelming
to be enjoyable” because your introductory sentence says – “the moments where I did feel in
direct contact with infinity”, which again points to it not being a PCE, and hence you not actually being “in
direct contact with infinity”. Hence what you experienced as “the full intensity of infinitude”
would have most likely been the affective veneer the identity is pasting over actuality. (see SCOUT: I don’t think this was an ASC because God is an anthropomorphic notion and there felt like there was literally nothing in me that could project its sense of being onto the universe. The universe is the infinity of existence of which this body is just a tiny experiential prong, and there was no delineation between “my experience” and the sensations of this body being known to itself, so though I am a piece of infinity, for all intents and purposes this finite body is the entirety of what “I” as this life am and thus death will necessarily be absolute, because there was nothing in me to survive beyond the death of the senses. VINEETO: As I said above, in this type of ASC, ‘actuality mimicking ASC’, there is neither God nor any religious or spiritual connotations and your statement that “I don’t think this was an ASC because God is an anthropomorphic notion” looks like an after-the-event-thinking and logical deduction. Even your report that “I am a piece of infinity” is not a description of actuality. If you think the word ‘actuality mimicking ASC’ doesn’t fit, let me know which word works better for you – it is certainly not a PCE. ‘Vineeto’ had several altered states in ‘her’ early years of practicing actualism, and
they were quite powerful and convincing when they happened Look, I am not writing this to denigrate or belittle your experiences but to make you aware that the lost, lonely, frightened, and very cunning entity is capable of elaborate deceit which, if undetected, can successfully deter you from recognizing genuine pure intent vs. imagination-fuelled passionate experiences, and lead you on a path to nowhere with “immense agitation and disorientation”. I wish you to succeed to a genuine actual freedom and not be diverted to a state of make-belief, passionate, imaginary experience. Even if the content of such state is informed by actualist writings, it can still be corrupted and adulterated by the identity.
It is also important to keep in mind that you cannot become free from being in a PCE, nor by the ‘self’ “evaporating” in PCEs, but by naively enjoying and appreciating being alive, so much so that you become naiveté itself and give up the controls. Then one is able to make a once-in-a-lifetime deliberate and conscious decision to willingly and irremunerably ‘self’-immolate in toto. The doorway to an actual freedom has the word ‘extinction’ written on it, which can only happen while ‘I’ and ‘me’ are not in abeyance. SCOUT: These experiences have always come with immense agitation and disorientation. Traces of the emotional self must have not evaporated immediately with the spatial centre because there was raw, unadulterated panic (made significantly more intense by the absolute lack of buffer) that something had happened that I wouldn’t be able to undo and the body would be stuck in this energetically-overwhelming and orientation-less state, unable to navigate the world. Only in one such experience did the agitation start to calm down enough for the senses to start to recognize that things were okay and actually very complete, and the body was still capable of functioning, but usually the experiences have never lasted long enough that this level of resolution is reached. Interestingly though, every time “I” booted back up again obscuring that raw perception, it felt abundantly clear to me that “I” am nothing but pain, an uncomfortable fogging of the lens of reality. But it also made ample sense to me why most people distract themselves their entire lives in avoidance of that raw reality, because dropping into that suddenly was the most incomparably overwhelming experience of my life. If I’m being entirely honest, it hasn’t been super tempting to return there, it really scared me. But what set me on this journey was the prospect of returning to the states of Geoffrey’s description, where the centre is almost entirely gone and the splendour and lightness is so apparent. Maybe once I’m there, the step into complete centerlessness would be a far easier leap than the massive jump there from my current waking consciousness; I wonder if the size of this jump is the source of the panic. But I am travelling largely blind here, I might be misinterpreting these events as being closer
to actuality than they are. I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts Vineeto , whenever you get the
chance to read this behemoth of a description (and thank you very much for doing so if you do!) VINEETO: I am pleased to read that you have hesitation to return to those
“states”, and also that you are wondering if you “might be misinterpreting these events as being
closer to actuality than they are”. From my vantage point they are not close to actuality, made apparent by
the various feeling-words you used in your honest descriptions. What you called “raw reality” which
causes you “raw, unadulterated panic” is not at all what the actual world is like, as Claudiu
already demonstrated to you in the descriptions of his PCEs. You wrote in your previous post –
Here you first say it’s a PCE (how Vineeto and Richard describe it), then there is description of feelings (overwhelming, agitation, fear), then you say there is no psychological self (despite feelings being present), then you felt disoriented. I would say if you recognize that the first statement (it’s a PCE) is incorrect, then point 2 and 4 make sense and point 3 might have been a felt assumption drawn from the first statement. Hence the way forward is to pay diligent attention to how you feel, so that you can sort out the grain from the chaff. Perhaps a desire to escape from “‘I’ am nothing but pain” is contributing to a hasty classification of the experience? Only you can know how your mind ticks and the closer you pay diligent attention to the details of what is happening the easier it will be to recognize a genuine PCE when it’s happening. Then you can make an intimate connection and tie a golden thread or clew to that genuine PCE whereby one is sensitive to and receptive of the over-arching benignity and benevolence of the world of the PCE. This way you establish your connection to pure intent, which is essential to distinguish more easily your experience – if it’s a genuine PCEs or an imaginary feeling-fed experience only resembling (not actually being) whatever you have read in actualist literature. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Thank you both very much for you thoughtful responses Vineeto and Claudiu, these are really helpful. I don’t feel denigrated at all; I came to actualism after I started having lots of experiences like these because amidst all the chaotic overlays that existed in both the positive and negative experiences, I recognized the core truth in the writings as aligning with key parts of the experiences. But almost none (maybe none honestly) of my experiences have been fully “clean”, so it’s helpful to talk with people who are deeper into this and help tease apart what is real and what is my psyche resisting reality. I think part of the reason I ask about this in the first place is because I have felt things going further recently, becoming more and more aware of this quiet on the constant periphery of my experience which, if I start to surrender to it, I find in any given moment that all is good, and my senses take the forefront and become sharper and more enjoyable. But then my mind often snaps back and looks for something “wrong” or distracts me with some other pursuit. VINEETO: Hi Scout, You might still be influenced by your previous meditative training in that you blame ‘wrong thoughts’ on the way you feel, when you say – “then my mind often snaps back and looks for something ”wrong“”. What most likely alerts you to something being “wrong” is that feeling good has diminished or disappeared. Then you look for the trigger, get back to feeling good (just the basic feeling good) and then you can work out what this “something wrong” is all about be it a habit, a pattern or something else. This is exactly the way, which has worked for many here, how to diminish the psychological pain you so urgently want to escape from. SCOUT: So I think my mind clings to these past horrifying experiences as warnings that scary things might await if I go too far and go off the deep end. VINEETO: These past experience should indeed be a warning, especially if you are
contemplating taking DMT to rush into the next out-of-the-ordinary experience. The point is that there is already a
groove, a mental-emotional highway, so to speak, which your mind presently gravitates to – possibly originating
from previous meditation/ dissociation training or the fact that you are trying “have contact with
infinity” ( The more reliable and enjoyable way is to activate delight ( Ian had some excellent suggestions in his post to you suggesting “Start with being kind to yourself”. SCOUT: But Vineeto you are right in your assessment that I want to
escape “‘I’ as pain” and my hyper-analysis and fixation on these experiences is part of it. I am scared
of going from my current amount of psychological pain towards more pain too. Your responses are very encouraging that
these depths of pain, fear and disorientation are not related to becoming actually free and aren’t necessary parts
of getting in touch with reality. VINEETO: These experiences you described are certainly not part of becoming actually free – on the contrary. The reason we label them ‘actuality mimicking ASCs’ is because the identity tricks you into believing that this is actuality in order to scare you and convince you that you need to stay as ‘you’ are and then the passionate ‘I’/ ‘me’ can stay in control of your life. Attentiveness can help you to recognize these very tricks and decline. Hence the actualism method starts from where you are at, being attentive to how you feel in this very moment of being alive, and seeing how silly it is to waste this precious moment, now, the only moment you are actually experiencing by being scared, angry, sad, resentful, or fighting the feeling you feel. You know it is possible, you have already done and reported it on January 17 –
It’s certainly worth continuing on this path to feeling good with patience and perseverance – and also continuing to appreciate what you have already achieved. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Thanks Vineeto.
I have actually been taking Ian ’s advice deeply to heart and it has initiated a chapter of deep dismantling of a lot of habits of self-rejection and self-punishment, which I used to keep myself on the straight and narrow within society (I had a hard time keeping up and fitting in, so I moulded myself to conform through self-hatred). VINEETO: Hi Scout, You are very welcome. I am pleased to read you made good progress in dismantling “self-rejection and self-punishment”. Now it will be easier to also notice instances when you don’t like being here (resentment) and rid yourself of this debilitating habitual attitude to feeling good. * VINEETO: The reason we label them ‘actuality mimicking ASCs’ is because the identity tricks you into believing that this is actuality in order to scare you and convince you that you need to stay as ‘you’ are and then the passionate ‘I’/ ‘me’ can stay in control of your life. Attentiveness can help you to recognize these very tricks and decline. SCOUT: I will very much keep this pointer in mind. I noticed my
mind trying to panic me last night and remembered that reality is not bad at all, quite the opposite, and the panic
no longer had anything to grab onto and passed through. VINEETO: The more you succeed in paying attention to how you feel and how much it helps not to fight /feed the feeling, the more you are encouraged to keep going. Success breeds success. And pat yourself on the back for each success – it’s part of appreciating. BTW, it is not your “mind trying to panic” you but rather the feeling of fear/
panic happening first (by 12 milliseconds Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Becoming more naive sometimes has come with sadness. When I strip away my cynicism and numbness I just see a lot of hurt and scared people. I see how the people I love struggle and are in pain. I also see that they are finite and going to die. I remember being little and the enormity of all of those things was overwhelming and it devastated me and eventually I numbed out but now I see it again and I feel it deeply. VINEETO: Hi Scout, You describe very well why it is initially difficult to allow naiveté into one’s life. All the emotional pain and sorrow you feel when opening up can be quite overwhelming and devastating. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ could only allow feeling the full extent of this sorrow when ‘she’ knew with the certainty gained from the PCE that there was an actual solution to the millennia-old ubiquitous sorrow of the human condition. You may recall what I wrote to Kuba recently
It is nevertheless excellent that you can allow yourself to be “more naïve” which “sometimes has come with sadness”. Remember to also be appreciative of both your courage and sensitivity to humanity’s plight. SCOUT: I don’t really know how to move back to feeling good other than feeling these things when they hit me. If I try to redirect my attention I feel the ignored feelings buzzing in the background, where they can remain as agitation for days to weeks if I insist on not facing them. So I give the feelings my attention and they swallow me for a little and I sob harder than I’ve sobbed in memory. And then after that they start to recede. I don’t know if this goes against the method, it’s just kind of naturally started happening as I’ve started paying more direct attention to what’s going on in my mind and body. I know crying doesn’t change anything but it really demands to be felt, I can’t get around it. It has been making me kinder and more patient with people. But I also notice the desire to help people emerging, out of compassion. I’ve been noticing this without entertaining the fantasies too much because it seems silly to have someone who is not fully free of pain wanting to guide others out of pain. Towards what? I don’t know where I’m going, But I feel more raw than I’ve felt since childhood. VINEETO: I remember from ‘Vineeto’s’ experiences that it can take a while to feel out those intensive feelings. It also gives you a bit more information how ‘you’ tick (and by extent how every feeling being ticks at the core of their being). Henry is correct that when indulging in too much sorrow, you can be swallowed up and seduced by the bitter-sweetness of sorrow – but with fascinated attention you are bound to discover the right balance. Feeling “more raw than I’ve felt since childhood” is a good indicator that you have allowed naiveté to peek through your numbness, and years of hiding from behind those walls certainly needs getting used to. Be aware, i.e. be attentive, when this sorrow flips into compassion (=is suffering with others) because that might initially feel better but will only extend the sorrow. You can be helping others by feeling good yourself and instead be practically patient, considerate and friendly.
You observed it well – you would not know where to lead others, other than providing a living example how to live without resentment of being here, by enjoying and appreciating being alive, and thus prove wrong the ancient belief that ‘life is a vale of tears’. What also helps is to emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable –
SCOUT: Maybe this is part of the compulsion of self-immolation, because it feels like I as an emotional entity have to choose between being numb or feeling intense and destabilizing emotional pain in response to the misery of humanity. Humanity loves its weeping martyrs but honestly from an experiential perspective, being the martyr seems like kind of a raw deal. Sure it’s pretty blissful to feel loving and compassionate and connected but it seems inextricable: if feeling connected with other people supplies the druggy good feelings, then feeling disconnected from them or rejected by them produces bad feelings. If their happiness brings good feelings, then their misery brings bad ones. So I’m handing other people, who are often volatile and repressed and on some level unhappy, the reins to my well-being. I don’t like living this way.
VINEETO: Well said. You are discovering more and more about the human condition and why the old ways don’t work and never have. And now you have an alternative which works. Being naïve you can experiment with being both sensitive and sensible and appreciate the successes you have to enjoy life more than before. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: The instruction is simple but it really is quite challenging in practice, in that the internal emotional world can be viscerally painful. I’m a pretty sensitive person prone to being easily overwhelmed (this is an unhappy and uncomfortable existence, which is why I started seeking out a better way of living in the first place). I really don’t like pain, so often when something in my psyche hurts to look at, I will run away from the challenge. However, I find it hard to return to “feeling good” without direct acknowledgment of whatever it is standing in the way of that, so trying to numb and run away from the feeling I don’t like doesn’t help me. It’s like there’s this meta-layer of fear of my own psyche. The feelings themselves (grief, fear) can be intense, but they are often somatic and don’t last too long without the fuel of ongoing thought, and even amidst grief or fear I can watch what’s happening in my body and see where I am tensing in resistance to the feelings, which often hurts more than the feeling itself. What also often hurts more than the feeling is the anticipation that the feeling will be bad and painful, the resistance to experiencing it and the desire to escape. I can see that this dread is pointless because it just adds unnecessary pain to the necessary pain. VINEETO: Hi Scout, You discovered for yourself that “meta-layer of fear”, which I would call underlying layer of fear, prevents you to look at the painful/ sorrowful emotions. As such I would recommend again, what I wrote to you before –
And
SCOUT: It takes some real work to unlearn the resistances and avoidances I’ve spent a
lifetime leaning on. I can also see why it might be hard for people to do this without a clear PCE for reference; the
glimpses of peace I get are incredibly nice, but the addictive, dopaminergic pleasure derived from the habits I use
to escape myself is much more accessible, and offers a buzzier thrill. But it doesn’t feel real or complete in the
way that the peace feels. I think it might take me some time to break my addictions but the more I observe them
clearly, the more they start to fall away on their own.
VINEETO: Indeed, it does take some time but what it really takes is action. Observing is not
enough and they won’t fall away by themselves. Actualism is not the neo-buddhistic ‘noting’ which is nothing
but a dissociation practice. Check out (when you are feeling good) Claudiu’s excellent description from December
2012, what detrimental effect the MCTB advice given to him by the DhO participants had on him, and how he eventually
managed to extract himself from the habit of noting/ dissociation. When you observe that any exploration into suffering brings up fear, and also observe your habitual reaction of rejecting the fear, take action by deciding to stop fighting the fear (neither repressing nor expressing) – and see what happens. The more actively responsive you are to your observations of habitual resistance and actively decide to stop fighting the fear, the less time it takes to “break my addictions”. They don’t fall away on their own but you can replace the addictive behaviour with the more beneficial alternative. *
SCOUT: I don’t think I can emotionally accept it, can I? I just saw this video on Instagram (child abuse warning [snipped link]). It feels very painful to watch. It makes me feel compassion and the urge to do anything to help humanity because it’s the most fucking depressing thing in the world to see an innocent child screaming out for love and begging to have its needs met. (…) VINEETO: Just because you “don’t think” that this is possible, and then prove this with another feeling response (to two stories about child abuse) means that your “I don’t think” is factual. Wouldn’t you rather say you ‘don’t feel’ that this is possible? Can you think again, when you are feeling good, and make a sincere distinction between “intellectually unacceptable” and emotionally unacceptable? Presently you merely proved to yourself that your addiction to suffering is indeed unchangeable and therefore justified. Do you recognize the trick you play with yourself? You simply changed suffering about your own pain (which is too difficult to look at because of an underlying fear) to suffering for other people’s sake, especially in situations in which you can do nothing and where your own sympathy, empathy and compassion can offer no practical assistance. It only makes you suffer on their behalf on top of suffering on your own behalf so that you can feel less ‘selfish’.
With this change of suffering for others’ sake you now deepened/ enhanced your own suffering and thus made any changes to your addiction to suffering more unlikely. I am pointing this out so that you can begin to recognize your own tricks employed not to change (‘you’ the frightened identity, which is very inventive and cunning in order to remain in charge). SCOUT: But then what do I do? Notice myself feeling sad and outraged and see how it’s
ineffective? It hurts a lot to feel this way, that much is clear. My mind argues that it’s selfish to just focus on
eliminating pain for myself and cut myself off from the pain of others. It really breaks my heart. I want to help the
suffering stop. VINEETO: Claudiu pointed out quite rightly –
To genuinely, effectively and actually “help the suffering stop” you start with yourself, the only person you can change. An ‘unselfish’ self is still a self and there is no virtue in increasing the suffering by suffering for others while doing nothing to stop inflicting your own suffering on others (via psychic vibes for instance).
First stop fighting the fear when it arises and allow, in the experiencing of it, to get the information you need in order to get back to feeling good. When feeling good – with less emotional interference – you can think about what you have read and found sensible and apply the advice that makes sense to you. If it works to minimize your suffering, continue, if not contemplate again identify what other triggers keep you from feeling good. One thing is for sure, suffering on others’ behalf or feeling sorry for your own emotional pain is not working to “help the suffering stop”. Cheers Vineeto
VINEETO: Indeed, it does take some time but what it really takes is action. Observing is not enough and they won’t fall away by themselves. Actualism is not the neo-buddhistic ‘noting’ which is nothing but a dissociation practice. SCOUT: Good pointer, thank you. I definitely still retain some degree of buddhist passivity. VINEETO: What it takes is paying diligent attention whenever you notice a diminishment of feeling good, you take note of the trigger and then investigate the cause of the trigger – sometimes it is an old habit which you can decline, sometimes it is something deeper which needs further exploration. Don’t remain passive, which is obvious an acquired habit which only serves to keep you miserable. * VINEETO: Presently you merely proved to yourself that your addiction to suffering is indeed unchangeable and therefore justified. Do you recognize the trick you play with yourself? You simply changed suffering about your own pain (which is too difficult to look at because of an underlying fear) to suffering for other people’s sake, especially in situations in which you can do nothing and where your own sympathy, empathy and compassion can offer no practical assistance. It only makes you suffer on their behalf on top of suffering on your own behalf so that you can feel less ‘selfish’. SCOUT: Also true!! And it’s hard to let go of too because of tribal allegiances, because compassion and self-sacrifice is a high moral virtue within my family (who I am very close with). I’ve actually started questioning the tenets of compassion and martyrdom with them in the past and they bristled rather strongly so I dropped it. VINEETO: Ah, there you have uncovered one reason for maintaining this habit of remaining passive – loyalty. Excellent. There is no need to “questioning the tenets of compassion and martyrdom with them”, you only need to question those “tenets of compassion and martyrdom” with yourself. Be courageous to leave the nest because remaining in the fold of “tribal allegiances” has only served to keep you imprisoned with their demands of “suffering together” (com-passion). You do not need, nor can you change others. The only person you can and need to change is yourself. SCOUT: I guess their compassion, like mine, is limited in scope and
does not extend its mercy to those who don’t subscribe to a similar world view. At any rate, it definitely doesn’t
help anyone to linger in pain just because other people are in pain, for whatever reason. VINEETO: Ha, that is a high prize for receiving a sense of allegiance, don’t you think? Here is a snippet of conversation feeling being ‘Vineeto’ had with Richard on that very topic in 1997 –
There are more details on this topic in “Basic to Full Freedom
Be courageous and begin to take your life into your own hands. You already made the first step in discovering what is presently holding back. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: My responses here will be as scattered as my energy levels which have been consistently low the past couple months after a health flare but I have very much enjoyed reading all of your responses, and have thoughts too that I will muster the energy to write out at some point. VINEETO: Hi Scout, Welcome back. The last correspondence we had you talked about that you “definitely still retain some
degree of buddhist passivity” and that you struggle with the “high moral virtue” that
“compassion and martyrdom” had/have for you. Have you had any success in recognizing, contemplating and dismantling some of your feelings/ patterns/ principles and beliefs in tribal allegiance and loyalty, especially towards your family. Are these particular feelings/ patterns/ principles perhaps related to your experience of “consistently low” “energy levels” and “health flare”? SCOUT: For now though I have a question for Vineeto –
how do I nip emotions in the bud without suppressing them? What’s the difference? VINEETO: If the above is the case, that your present emotions and low “energy levels” are related to the issue of “compassion” (suffering together) and “martyrdom” then nipping in the bud is not the solution. The solution is dissolution of loyalty and addiction to belonging when you can clearly recognize and acknowledge that this interferes with your well-being and enjoying and appreciating of being alive. The difference between suppressing and nipping in the bud is significant. As you said in our
last correspondence that “I definitely still retain some degree of buddhist passivity” Nipping in the bud is only useful when you recognize a thought- or feeling pattern that you have already recognized, investigated and resolved and which may pop up as a habitual hang-over, so to speak.
I recommend re-reading the above article, especially after the third banner, and include the informative tool-tips. Each time you read it and can recognize it as your own applied experience, the understanding deepens. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Hi Vineeto, I have been sifting a lot through the majority of my social moors this past month and change, like loyalty and “politeness” and belonging. I would like to write about some of what I’ve been finding at some point but the exploration has unearthed a lot of uncomfortable ways in which I constantly punish and contort myself to beg for scraps of love. VINEETO: Hi Scout, While it is great that you have “unearthed” ways in which you “punish and contort” yourself, let me tell you that the way forward is to be friends with yourself – the human condition is something you were born with (and hence not responsible for) and not something to blame yourself for, let alone “punish and contort” yourself for. When you treat yourself in a friendly (not condemnatory) fashion you are also less in need “to beg for scraps of love”. You may even start genuinely liking yourself and consequently like your fellow human beings. What you can do instead is to feel good and appreciate that you been attentive enough to bring all this to light (as in regard this as the fascinating discovery it is and equally judge it cool that you have seen it) and then, when you are feeling good, have a more clear-eyed look at one of the issues you “unearthed” and assess if it is worth keeping it as a problem or perhaps discard it as being a silly habit, simply because it interferes with your sincere intent to be happy and harmless. This sincere intent will also guide you which “moors” you can safely loosen without harming yourself and your fellow human being. The necessity for morals/ ethics/ values/ principles cannot be cast aside/ dismantled until an essential prerequisite, pure intent, born of a pure consciousness experience, is genuinely established. SCOUT: The more I’ve become aware of this, the more I’ve been noticing an organic confidence start to emerge: not my previous false bravado used as a social tool to gain admiration, but just a calm self-assuredness that is comfortable saying and doing what it wants without constantly apologizing for itself. VINEETO: “A calm self-assuredness” is a good initial sign that you are on the right track. However, given the cunning of ‘you’, the identity, an affective attentiveness is advisable so that this “self-assuredness” and “organic confidence” can safely segue into being naïve, like a child again with adult sensibilities. I am saying this not because I expect you to become licentious or malicious but because I know from experience how the identity is endeavouring to retain/ regain control by swinging from one side to the opposite of the emotional spectrum. As such, all it takes is to be aware of/ attentive to the slightest diminishment of whatever degree of felicity/ innocuity one is currently experiencing and recognize it as a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way. SCOUT: My illness is a particularly nasty bout of long COVID, which keeps my energy levels fairly low even when my mental state is pleasant. However, my symptoms are greatly exacerbated by stress, be it physical or psychological, which has made me acutely aware of how much stress emotions place upon my body. I recently experienced a week-long systemic crash which left me bedridden in response to some intense emotions triggered by menstrual hormones. My doctors say avoiding triggering such crashes is key to recovery, which has given me all the more incentive to stop letting my usual emotional cycles run entirely unchecked and wreak actual physical havoc. VINEETO: This is great that even doctors recognize the role emotional stress plays in sabotaging your physical wellbeing. The solution is to channel all your identity-enhancing affective energy into the identity-diminishing felicitous and innocuous feelings. * VINEETO: Nipping in the bud is only useful when you recognize a thought- or feeling pattern that you have already recognized, investigated and resolved and which may pop up as a habitual hang-over, so to speak. SCOUT: Thanks for the distinction. This makes sense – I think sometimes I continue to humor the thought/ feeling cycles because I figure if they still hurt then they still have something to teach me that I haven’t fully explored. I don’t know whether that’s true. VINEETO: This quote from Richard may help –
SCOUT: For example my mom suffered a lot in her childhood and lives a scared life and thinking about this makes me cry. I guess I can’t say this thought/ emotion cycle is entirely without utility because it has helped me break a habitual callousness towards the anxiety of my mother and allows me to be patient and kind with her very easily. However I don’t know at what point continuing to cry over it becomes unnecessary. VINEETO: While it is beneficial to understand that your mother (like many others) had a difficult childhood, there is no reason why you should suffer yourself (feel sad and cry) because of it – this only perpetuates suffering but does never resolve it. “To cry over it” is entirely “unnecessary”, particularly as it already has “helped me break a habitual callousness”. There may perhaps be another reason why you are still crying for something that happened a long time ago – perhaps what I said above applies here – “the identity is endeavouring to retain/ regain control by swinging from one side to the opposite of the emotional spectrum”. And all this to avoid you feeling good! It’s a natural survival tactic of ‘you’, the identity to stay in situ, but it can be recognized with fascinated attentiveness and intelligence. SCOUT: The same is true of many of my tears inspired by compassion: it leads me to operate with less selfishness, more awareness of others, more attention to those who deal with painful disadvantages in life who I would have previously overlooked. But of course there’s a limit to the utility, and the tears certainly aren’t useful if they are contributing to stressing my system and thus keeping me ill and largely bedridden. VINEETO: Ha, indeed, it’s as if you are doing penance for a previously discovered “selfishness” instead of appreciating that you were able to identify it and leave it behind. Again, a cunning trick of ‘you’, the identity, to ensure that the cycle of suffering (and malice, in this case against yourself) never ends. The only way to escape the cycle of malice and sorrow is to channel all your affective energy into the felicitous and innocuous feelings. Btw, tears are a common way to fritter away affective energy which is more beneficially used to enjoy and appreciate being alive. SCOUT: I have more thoughts and observations that I will share
at another point. Thank you for you input and for the link you shared, they were helpful reads. VINEETO: I am looking forward to it, Scout. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: This is very related to another thing I have been musing. I live in the US and our current government is enacting policies which are skewing towards authoritarianism. They are acting abhorrently towards our immigrant populations, attempting to undermine intellectual institutions, and deregulating businesses allowing them greater license to extort, manipulate, and poison our population and environment. Their actions by and large feel very obviously bad for humanity to me, and I have been contending with feelings of intense anger and hatred. If the people in charge were shipped off to the same terrible prisons that they are sending immigrants to, if they were struck with awful disabilities like the people they are trying to pull social support away from, there is something in me that would be happy to see it. This is malice. My mind tries to justify it by saying that the function of hate is to eradicate things which
threaten our survival and wellbeing. For example, the desire to kill mosquitoes, which spread disease. However it is
pretty ineffective here since it isn’t really driving action, it’s mostly just another emotional stressor which
exacerbates my symptoms. And people being manipulated by media into hating each other is the whole thing that has led
the US to this point. I can’t really pretend there’s anything noble or functional about hatred there. VINEETO: Hi Scout, As you wrote this message to Kuba I’ll let him answer it. I’ll just make one short comment – it helps to research both sides of the political aisle and check on some factual evidence, if possible, of what either side is saying. Politics is a very tribal business and you don’t just want to follow any feelings of loyalty and belonging when you favour one side over the other. While malice and sorrow are prevalent in all human beings, including media and politician, there is also (more rare), genuine good will, common sense and caring for the community. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT to Sonya: Really interesting to hear that the two of you
are happily married without sharing the typical bond of “romantic love”. it’s also not an experience I’ve
had fully mutually, and like you said it’s very dominant in the feminine narrative, so I was spoon-fed this notion
that it’s the greatest thing I can possibly experience. I don’t know if it’s something I feel fully ready to
move past because it’s not something I’ve seen and experienced clearly for myself yet, I’m still curious
(though I am currently in an about-to-end relationship where I am seeing its uglier face). but it’s fascinating to
hear about your experience of partnership without it. VINEETO: Hi Scout, As you so rightly said, love is “very dominant in the feminine narrative” with the emphasis on “narrative”. It’s a fairy tale, supported by the feeling of love itself (when you fall in love) that if only you find the right man happiness is guaranteed for the rest of your life. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ first had to examine this narrative in herself when she found out, yet again, that love had its downsides. ‘She’ knew that from previous relationships but this one, with Peter, was supposed to be working properly. Here is ‘her’ report how ‘she’ overcame the first major obstacle –
There was more to come but perhaps this report appeals to you as a way of exploring why you at present don’t “feel fully ready to move past” love. Of course, to experience the benefits “of partnership without” love, love itself needs to move aside to make room for something superior to the ups and downs of love. You can utilise your present scepticism about love’s success to explore how those dreams you were “spoon-fed” are just that, dreams that never come true. Then an appreciation, a curiosity, a naïve fascination can emerge what else is possible between a man and a woman, and consideration and interested attention have room to come to the fore. As Sonya said –
You can also check out Article Two of Richard’s Journal, page 24 to find out what else is possible, and how. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: I remember reading this part of your writings with great fascination, thank you for sharing it again! VINEETO: According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ SCOUT: This is the crux of it, perfectly distilled. I want
someone else to figure out how to make me happy. I’ve tried so many different things but I always struggle and they
always fail eventually and I feel dissatisfied, and I soothe this dissatisfaction with the fantasy that the right
person will solve this problem for me, rather than me figuring out how to be my own fount of happiness. VINEETO: Hi Scout, You are very welcome. Ha, I can relate to that. ‘Vineeto’ in her twenties was looking for someone who had all the answers to life and would tell ‘her’ what to do – ‘she’ ended up in a spiritual commune with an enlightened master, and not until the master died, one-and-a-half decades later, did ‘she’ finally extract ‘her’ head from out-of-the-clouds, and look around if the aims and the results were really what ‘she’ wanted from life. You can solve this question much quicker, now that there is a third alternative to materialism and spiritualism available, and genuinely inquire in yourself if this is a way of life and an ultimate goal (actual, not imagined, purity and perfection) that you can whole-heartedly devote your life to. It is a wonderful, exciting and rewarding enterprise to do that. Cheers Vineeto
SCOUT: Honestly this discussion is very pertinent to my current experience, because my current relationship is starting to give me a sour taste in my mouth about the whole love thing. We’ve had persistent sexual issues due to a medical condition – this has always compromised the potential of our long-term partnership. I fell a little bit in love in the beginning but the physical disconnect led to me falling out of love, but I still deeply appreciate and care for the person he is so we’ve continued to try. However, he fell deeply in love. Now it’s been a year and a half, and the sexual issues are becoming untenable for me. When we talked today about the potential of breaking up though, he talks as if he would need to purge me from his life completely. This seems so silly to me because there is so much about how we interact that is pure and creative and delightful, and none of that needs to hinge on us having a sexual, monogamous dynamic. But being in love has turned this into a painful, all-or-nothing possessive relationship in his experience. VINEETO: Hi Scout, I found a wonderful and in-depth compilation from Richard about love and its detrimental implications –
As this is already far too long a quote, I highly recommend reading the rest of the correspondence at leisure, perhaps in its original from the beginning for the helpful tool-tips, especially the footnote[1] at the very end. It really is a comprehensive summary of several practicing actualists, and their experiences all point towards the same direction – that love by its very nature is doomed to fail. SCOUT: It makes me sad to think I might lose the company of
someone I get along with so well because of this. The alleged intimacy of romantic love seems to be highly
conditional. It’s funny because I was always worried that he "loved" me more because he was so doting
towards me due to being in love with me, while I remained pretty independent. But now that the security of the
relationship is compromised, it almost seems like the more grounded, less attached affection I’ve felt for him is
actually purer and deeper than what he has been feeling for me, because it’s not conditional and doesn’t demand
that he be anything to maintain it. VINEETO: Perhaps the above listed experiential reports help you to find out for yourself, by recounting your own experiences, that the alternative – a naïve intimacy – is worthwhile aiming for, with the full commitment of your own conviction. Who knows, in the process your companion might be inspired by your persistent exploration and living of the alternative and your success with it. He might eventually find your demonstrably being more happy and harmless (considerate) more attractive than the possessiveness and sufferings associated with an all-or-nothing love-affair. If not, at least you will benefit from naively being more able to be happy and harmless. Cheers Vineeto ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Footnote: [1]leaving her hurt, hurting and hurtful; e.g.: vindictive and vengeful: Viz.:
Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless Vineeto’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual
Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
