Chrono: Thanks for your reply and pointers Vineeto!
Vineeto: Yesterday I watched the ‘Virtual Freedom’ video again and Peter reminded me of something I had almost forgotten – how hard it was at first to allow himself to be happy and harmless. What was one of the two main objections that he would have to go against the whole thrust of human ‘wisdom’, that one is not allowed to be happy.
Chrono: I just watched this video for the first time right now and my experience very much matches with what Peter is saying. Something Richard said also gave me some confidence, which is that (paraphrasing) suggestion that it is intelligence which makes it safe to look inside at the instinctual passions and then chooses the felicitous feelings with the pure intent to live it.
Hi Chrono,
I am pleased you found some things which match your experience in Peter’s video. Yes, intelligence certainly makes is fairly safe to experience one’s own strong feelings, especially when coupled with the sincere/ pure intent to become “happy and harmless”, “blithesome and benign”, “carefree and considerate”, “gay and benevolent”, as Richard laid it out in detail in the above copied correspondence to No. 13, 21 May 2009. (link)
You will have observed that the less you object to/ fight/ reject the (unwanted) feelings you experience and subsequently channel them into felicitous feelings, the better and cleaner your intelligence can operate, freed from a lot of confusing, intoxicating debris of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings.
To put it another way, you can loosen the controls on keeping unpleasant feelings under wrap (without expressing or suppressing) and let some more naiveté slip out, which is a safe way to slowly, almost surreptitiously, to escape the ‘common call to unhappiness’. The less you have to hide, from yourself and others, the more playful you can be.
Chrono: I’d say it’s a counter to the doubtful vibes and currents which suggest that I will go out of control or go crazy if I don’t go along with the herd. It highlights this sort of confusion deep inside of what I am. There’s an intelligence operating despite the instinctual passions.
There is indeed an intelligence operating, which will eventually reveal that all those dire predictions (go out of control or go crazy for instance) are just bluff of your own ‘being’ intending to keep you enthralled. It’s your own home-made fear which makes them appear so powerful. Think about it – you can clothe yourself, feed yourself, hold down a job to earn a livelihood … and can do a lot of other things. And the universe is keeping you alive by doing the breathing and digesting and sleeping etc for you. Just contemplate on it all when you are feeling good – it is simply marvellous.
Vineeto: 1 you can change yourself unilaterally (and only pay lip service when necessary) – in other words, you neither need permission nor allies in this game how happy and harmless can I feel
Chrono: As I reflect on this being unilateral, I realize that there’s a certain dare in trying to be happy and harmless. I REALLY want to be happy and harmless forever, but doing so goes against the fold and invokes a great fear. This gives rise to weirdly wanting to tell someone about what I am trying to do instead of just choosing to feel good without hoping for their approval.
You just did and have my full approval. 
Vineeto: Here is how feeling being ‘Vineeto’ described ‘her’ own discoveries – (snip quote re: commitment to eliminate my own aggression)
Chrono: When I reflect on this, I feel like I’ll be ridiculed for being felicitous and innocuous. But the difference this time unlike before is that I see that others don’t actually know something that I don’t (by their choosing to be malicious and sorrowful). This I think definitely comes from the ‘don’t fall out of line’ vibes and currents.
Most of what you feel others would be thinking and feeling is what you feel about “being felicitous and innocuous”. Most people are so busy with their own lives that they hardly take any notice of what you do, let alone how you feel. And the more you own your own fear (as a human being inflicted by no fault of your own with instinctual passions) the more you become autonomous, affectively independent of what you feel others would want you to be.
That’s when life becomes fun.
Chrono: The popular wisdom is that it’s ‘good’ and a caring thing to do to suffer along with another (or to feel compassionate). So is being happy and harmless when someone else suffers uncaring? There was one point a long time ago where I had a continuous bout of feeling good. One of my friends was feeling bad about something and I had chosen to feel good despite that. They accused me of being disconnected from reality. This actually shocked me and the memory still stays with me. It’s only now I am returning to re-evaluate this. Even now I wonder if perhaps I was being callous. Maybe I wasn’t being harmless in some way. I had given her whatever advice I thought was sensible at the time (while feeling good), but perhaps what she wanted was for me to feel bad along with her. I realize that this is what is considered caring in the real world.
I can understand that. The only thing you can do is check out if you were indeed callous in that situation, perhaps by trying to avoid feeling a ‘good’ feeling, for instance, or hiding a ‘bad’ feeling. If that was not the case and you were genuinely benevolent and harmless then you are not responsible for fulfilling the other’s expectations for your affective sympathy (i.e. feel bad because she felt bad).
Richard: My second wife would oft-times say to others how it was not always easy to live with me as ‘she’ was totally ignored (in ‘her’ view) by me. (Please note it is an impossibility to ignore anything at all which has no existence in actuality and how I do pay lip-service, just as I am now, to the apparent existence of any identity feeling itself to be real). What my second wife was really referring to is the total absence of any supportive identity rapport/ affective connection. (…) (Richard, List D, No. 15, 12 Nov 2009).
Chrono: So I ask what would be actually caring?
The simplest way of putting it is this way –
Richard: I like my fellow human being and prefer that their self-imposed suffering come to an end, forever, sooner rather than later”. (Richard, AF List, No. 74f, 2 Feb 2006).
For a feeling being there will always be an affective aspect in their caring. The closest you can get to actual caring is having the intent to be benevolent and benign, i.e. wishing the best for your fellow human being (as well as yourself) and doing whatever is necessary in the situation to help bringing this about.
Here is what Vineeto had meant by “a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” –
Vineeto to James: Peter and I compared notes about our respective processes of becoming free and, making sense about it in hindsight, have determined what makes the process replicable for everyone.
The key component for both of us had been caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. (…)
The final clue was again about caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. Only when I cared enough to give all of ‘me’ to another person, to give them what they want most, was I then ready to give it to the one I cared for most, the one I was closest to, and then I was able to leave all remnant concerns and inhibitions of my identity behind.
And that’s what happened. (Direct Route, James, 17 Jan 2010)
And here is a detailed correspondence Richard had with Srinath explaining “close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” as compared to the non-empathy in the helping profession. It’s well worth a read – (Richard, List D, Srinath2).
In the meantime enjoy and appreciate as much as possible and thus naively like yourself and others as fellow human beings – play together.
Vineeto: This sentence from Richard from many years ago may sound familiar to you –
Richard: Now that you indubitably know what apperception is – as per your ‘It was undoubtedly an experience of apperception’ sentence – and how to evoke it (as in your ‘Then as I stuck with that seeing that it was this moment of being alive I was pulled towards it. The pull itself was exhilarating and thrilling’ sentences) you may very well come to look back upon this day as being the turning-point of your life, eh? (Richard, List D, No. 44, 2 Jan 2014).
Chrono: Ah yes I do remember this. It’s pretty much why I keep coming back to it being this moment of being alive. I found it difficult to ‘go all the way’ or ‘stick with the seeing’ since then. There’s this ‘mountain of fear’ that didn’t seem to be there at that time.
Mmh, that “mountain of fear” possibly has to do with you fighting the feeling and thus adding affective energy to it. See if you can loosen the control a bit, allowing the fear to just be there and you will notice how it diminishes simply by not objecting to it. From there is only a hop and a jump to feeling ok/ feeling good, and then you can explore what it is made of. It’s the automatic habit of rejection which makes it appear like a mountain. Here is ‘Vineeto’s’ account of such an experience –
‘Vineeto’: It reminds me of a weird and fascinating experience I had just two nights ago. I had had a light smoke, when I suddenly started to feel nauseous and very dizzy in the head. The physical symptoms came along with an acute fear to throw up, to black out, in short, to lose control over my body and my life.
While Peter kept inquiring if there maybe was also some fear involved, not just a physical reaction, I was desperately trying to obtain control over my body. At the same time I was, of course, suspicious that it was all a play up of the ‘self’ trying to survive, but didn’t know how to deal with it.
When I finally laid down on the floor and ‘surrendered’ to the option of being unconscious and was actually getting interested and thrilled by the possibility of observing the experience, it very quickly disappeared like a ghost. It left me astounded about the power of ‘reality’, the vividness of the experience that fear created with all the ingredients of a ‘serious’ disease, becoming unconscious.
Only by accepting it as an adventure and at the same time doubting its actuality it lost its power over me, leaving me battered but proud like after a victorious, well-fought battle. The next night it happened again but was all much less dramatic, the temptation was there to delve into the fear, the physical symptoms were ready to emerge again, but this time I didn’t believe in the actual danger and it quickly went. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, Alan-a, 28.7.1998)
Chrono: With all that said, I am right now able to choose feeling good more easily. To go with the dare with my REALLY wanting to be happy and harmless. I’ll try this sticking with the seeing that it is this moment again. (link)
This is excellent.
As Richard says, “courage is sourced in the thrilling part of fear, the daring to proceed will intensify of its own accord” (link), it arises as the need arises. Also, the more you care the more willingly you dare.
Cheers Vineeto