July 30, 2024

VINEETO: Hi Shashank,

Thank you for your welcome.

SHASHANK: […] By emotional issues, it could be that I have some level of generalized anxiety disorder which in turn leads to gut issues due to the whole gut-brain axis. Currently my plan is to eliminate all dietary causes as much as possible…and then perhaps visit a psychiatrist and get some sort of a minimum dose of SSRI to see if that improves the situation

The thing about my gut situation is that I don’t experience any major physical symptoms like severe pain or diarrhoea etc…but it dips my mood and makes me more prone to irritation and thereby not able to consistently feel good…

VINEETO: Knowing that you “have some level of generalized anxiety disorder, which in turn leads to gut issues”, then why are you contemplating all sorts of plans to deal with the symptoms, your gut issues, rather than addressing the cause, your “generalized anxiety disorder”, which as you say yourself, lies at the core of all the resulting physical problems? Doing so at an actualist mailing list, which offers the very solution to a life without anxiety, does not make sense.

Only one month ago you reported that –

SHASHANK: It’s an interesting thing that when my gut issues aren’t present, then mostly I am feeling good by default regardless of what is going on…and not just feeling neutral/ok.

VINEETO: So you do know how to feel good and appreciate being alive, yet the moment your gut gives you trouble you revert back to feeling bad. Have you thought about (when you feel good) to dispassionately contemplate this underlying source of your gut problems, i.e. the “generalized anxiety”, in order to find out if it is worthwhile maintaining it? If you find out that it is not worth maintaining, what is the real reason why you still hold onto it? Is it like Linus’ security blanket, which now has become a painful burden, or is there some other really serious and convincing reason to feed this anxiety, so much so that whenever it occurs you feel bad – instead of perhaps deciding that enough is enough?

To explain – anxiety has most likely been a survival pattern that was at some time necessary when you were very young, but now that you are old enough to be able to think and fend for yourself it is no longer useful, in fact it has become a painful and habitual obstacle to enjoying and appreciating being alive. This aspect of your identity can safely and sensibly be abandoned – all you need to do it to see it, with the intent to abandon it, and become aware whenever it pops up wanting to reinsert itself into your life.

One possible beneficial result of this course of action is that you might be able to avoid taking some “minimum dose of SSRI” with serious side-effects and also relieve your poor gut from unhealthy chemicals (like adrenaline and cortisol) produced by a constant feeling of anxiety.

You may remember what I wrote to James on July 14 –

You can also acknowledge and realize the fact that pain is part of being alive, especially when getting older. You take care with what is medically possible, but even more importantly, you stop objecting to having pain simply because it is useless and therefore silly to do so. You will also be surprised how much the feeling of pain is reduced when you no longer object to it. Miguel only recently confirmed this to you. [emphasis added].

As a feeling being ‘Vineeto’ has experienced this time and time again, and nowadays any pain that occurs is simply something going on in the background which does not interfere with thoroughly enjoying and appreciating being here. 

It is indeed possible to enjoy and appreciate being here even when pain is happening –

[Richard]: In other words, an apperceptive awareness of an actual happiness/ felicity is not dependent upon experiencing sensate (bodily) pleasure; an apperceptive awareness of an actual happiness/ felicity occurs all the while sensate (bodily) pain is happening as well.

[Richard]: And it is such good fun! Then, everything you do in your daily life, moment to moment, is taking advantage of multiple opportunities. Every moment again is an occasion to improve your lot ... when you are interacting with someone, either face to face or on the telephone ... or a back-ache: ‘Oh god, how terrible!’ ... another opportunity. It is bad enough to feel pain, why make it worse by adding an emotional suffering like ‘I feel terrible’? To feel terrible, emotionally, on top of the physical pain is simply silly when it is possible to disentangle oneself, emotionally, and still feel good about being alive, about being here. This is being sensible, is it not? To feel good, if not happy, all the time?

SHASHANK: Comparatively speaking, I have seen that physical pains like back or shoulder pains are much easier to bear !

Hi Vineeto If you can share a bit…what sort of painkillers did Richard have to take for his back situation and was it something he had to take daily ?

VINEETO: Here Richard explained about his back-pain – it doesn’t sound like “much easier to bear!” to me –

[Richard]: […] without going into too many details MRI scans showed what CT scans did not reveal (spondylolisthesis of L5, displaced forward at age 24, nowadays complicated by age-related bone stenosis pinching the right sciatic nerve ... resulting in a ‘breathless’, debilitating pain all the way down to the small toe).

For instance, towards the tail-end of the DVD video-shoot taken on the river bank (in which I did not talk much) it became increasingly difficult to stay sitting there ... indeed, I had to call an abrupt halt to the video-shoot, eventually.

There is no benefit telling you what medication Richard took – you will have to discuss your personal situation with your own doctor.

Cheers Vineeto

October 31, 2024

SHASHANK: A few days back while reading Vineeto mentioning about fraud in another post, I was trying to uncover what is this fraud about? For example if someone were to apply for a job without the necessary skills and claiming to have those skills, that would be a fraud about their skill set.

I’m not able to understand why is the identity a fraud…Is it because it doesn’t exist while only the actual body exists…so the fraud is about it’s existence ?

VINEETO: Hi Shashank,

You know from your own experience that there is no identity to be found when you are having a PCE. ‘You’ are not actual, but nevertheless very real, backed up by strong passions and deep feelings. This is not just ‘a belief’ that you can abandon because it seems like a good idea. This instinctual-emotional identity *is* your whole ‘being’ – and yet from the actual perspective, the one you have during a PCE, it is clearly not there at all.

Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ experienced this contradiction very strongly after several years of actualism and expressed this by naming this ‘sometimes-there-sometimes-not-there’ ‘being’ a fraud, an impostor – just to make the point clear that ‘it’, ‘me’ is not actual and deserves no support from my side (whenever sincere intent/pure intent are operating and guiding ‘her’ thoughts and actions). This clear labelling had an impact on the feeling-being because eventually feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ felt more and more that ‘she’ was indeed redundant, in fact rotten, and it was a shame and somewhat unbelievable ‘she’ was still holding onto ‘her’ existence. And this in turn brought to the surface the originally-dormant yearning for oblivion in the feeling-being itself – which all supported the aim of becoming actually free as soon as possible.

SHASHANK: Haha yes this kind of trickery I’ve often found and it’s good to catch it – It’s others not me !

KUBA: What it is, is a completely rotten to the core creation, what it presents itself to be is ‘acting for the benefit of all’.

Yes, this makes sense…so it’s more of a Social-Instinctual thing…I was thinking if there is a core fraud at the level of the instinctual being itself.?

VINEETO: “This kind of trickery” is certainly good to pay attention to and catch – it is just one of the whole array of tools ‘I’ have to fervently defend ‘my’ existence. Once you done it a few times, you can see the game, the fun sport in it, to expose each trick for what it is – ‘me’ defending the indefensible – and you, when intelligence and awareness are operating, getting the upper hand and consequently be more happy and more considerate and more enjoying life.

Remember though, it’s not “more of a Social-Instinctual thing” – phrasing/seeing it thisaway is a trick of dissociation in action – it’s you, the instinctually driven and socially conditioned identity you are referring to, and yes, this is “a core fraud” because not a skerrick of ‘you’ does exist in actuality.

Richard compared ‘being’ to a whirlpool of air/water –

“In that crystal-clear fully-lucid hypnopompic state ‘I’ was able to penetrate deeply into ‘myself’ at the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself) – or, rather, the penetration took place via ‘my’ full acquiescence – and there, in the centre of all the feelings swirling around, the essence of who ‘I’ am lay gorgeously exposed ... not all that unlike a beautiful rosy pearl, nestled coyly amidst the delicate fleshy tissue of its host, in its shimmering nacreous shell.

Except that the essence of who ‘I’ am was a void (and not a ‘thing’ like a pearl is) so the analogy of the void at the centre of whirlpool of water – which is the whirling water in motion – is more apt (albeit not conveying the ethereal radiant beauty of the rosy pearl analogy).

Or, in other words, the essence of who ‘I’ am is akin to the calm, still centre of a swirling cyclone/ hurricane/ typhoon.

The swirling air/whirling water is, of course, all the feelings – all of the emotions/ passions – which ‘I’ am comprised of (as in ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’).” (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 11a, 15 June 2013)

Cheers Vineeto

October 31 2024

SHASHANK: I was thinking if there is a core fraud at the level of the instinctual being itself.

KUBA: Yes I suspect it is fraudulence all the way through haha, in that ‘I’ don’t actually exist in the first place. But how useful this is for an entity who needs to allow their own extinction I am not sure.

VINEETO: The reason why I drew attention to this fact of fraudulence recently is because this was a major factor for ‘Vineeto’ to agree, on a deep instinctual/feeling level, to ‘her’ increasingly inevitable demise.

The motivation for ‘self’-immolation needs to encompass all of ‘you’ at a deep level of ‘being’ for allowing it to happen, and when ‘I’ recognize and acknowledge that deep down ‘I’ experience ‘my’ job of ‘self’-preservation as a constant burden, and with no genuinely advantageous point to boot for continuing to carry that burden, then you, who wants to be free to be what you are have won a major ally.

SHASHANK: Thanks Vineeto…really appreciate all of your clarifications.

VINEETO: Hi Shashank,

You are very welcome and it is a delight to write here on this forum with engaged actualists.

Cheers Vineeto

February 6 2025

VINEETO (to Kuba): Thank you for this perspective, it explains why ‘Vineeto’ did not recognize the peasant mentality and even after becoming actually free I took some time after Richard talked about it to wrap my mind around it.

SHASHANK: Hi Vineeto

So upon asking Richard about this he had clarified thusly. (Richard, List D, No. 32a, 19 June 2015). <snipped quote>

VINEETO: Hi Shashank,

Thank you for the link. I was well aware of that correspondence as I used it in the article “Basic to Full Actual Freedom” (From Basic Freedom to Full Freedom) which principally deals with the peasant mentality. I just now realized it was your correspondence.

The reason I wrote to Kuba that “‘Vineeto’ did not recognize the peasant mentality” was because when we discussed the issue of loyalty (regarding parents in the audio-taped dialogues) (Audio-Taped Dialogues, The Compassion Gained Through Forgiveness Binds) and regarding the spiritual community, the term peasant mentality was not mentioned, even though loyalty is the hallmark of ‘peasant-mentality’.

As Richard explained, ‘Vineeto’ “had shifted ‘her’ familially-inculcated and societally-instilled allegiance to ‘the system’ at large over onto the spiritual commune” and therefore had no issue with real-world peasant-mentality topics such as career, status, wealth and ‘disguised slavery’ except those applicable in the commune. For instance, the ‘slavery’ consisted of doing work without pay in order to belong to a slightly more privileged ‘inner’ circle.

As I explained in the above-mentioned article and in ‘Vineeto’s’ correspondence, it took ‘her’ several months to completely resolve the loyalty to the spiritual commune. By the time ‘Vineeto’ became actually free, all aspects of the peasant mentality had been fully resolved.

The penny dropped much later when it was discussed on the mailing list after the visit of Jonathan, Claudiu, Srinath, Alan and Adam in 2015 that peasant-mentality was the same issue as ‘Vineeto’s’ struggling with loyalty. Only then I fully understood intellectually how it all hangs together. I much appreciate your clarifying question at the time.

Perhaps this clears up the apparent contradiction.

Cheers Vineeto

February 18 2025

SHASHANK: There is one more thing I’ve found in this regard – If I were to get some pill to take and get actually free in 3 seconds, will I take it?

My answer is yes … which tells me that I won’t be thinking about irrevocability or maybe a bit perhaps … so the desire to be free is present but I’m not sure how to become free too … or the fact that l’m thinking of getting a pill to be free just indicates that I want freedom to easily fall into my lap instead of making that effort hehe.

VINEETO: Hi Shashank,

It seems that you are fooling yourself. If such a pill did exist and other people’s report would have given the guarantee that it results in your ‘being’ going extinct, instantly, upon you taking it, you would not even propose or contemplate to take it. It’s a safe fantasy because you know for a fact you will never be called upon to make your promise an actuality.

It is as simple as that. No effort required. In fact it is not effort (sudorific undertaking) which is required but the sincere intent to become blithe and benign, to enjoy and appreciate (and remove the obstacles which stand in the way).

Is your answer still “yes”?

Cheers Vineeto