Vineeto: Before you contemplate ‘being naiveté’ or going “deep”, or “planning of naiveté being ‘your’ “path”, it is not. It is the path of self-less inclination, hence ‘you’ won’t have much of a role to play apart from objecting.
Why not start being naïve, in little steps. First it feels a bit uncomfortable, foolish or insecure (like a teenager first talking to a girl for instance). Then you dare extending this modus operandi a bit longer, expand into other areas of life – and you find it feels good, light, different, felicitous. You do it at your own pace, of course, don’t even think of pushing yourself, perhaps remember how you were as a kid (but now with adult sensibilities) and … enjoy it. You might find other people respond, like it, even become more friendly (naiveté is infectious).
Allowing yourself to be naive is indeed different to what serious sophisticated people in the world do – but who cares. Being naïve, you like yourself and simultaneously like others. It feels good, it is harmless and it’s infectious. Appreciate your small steps, then bigger steps, in this new way of living. It gives you confidence. It is intimate and invites naïve intimacy with fellow human beings. Being naïve includes not knowing what you are going to do next, or say next, being spontaneously happy and harmless. The less you pay attention to any self-image or pride, the easier it becomes. Putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t matter’ basis allows you to be less ‘self’-oriented and more open to the adventure of what being here actually is.
It’s fun.
Chrono: I have been thinking on what you say here. And it struck me that the peace-on-earth of actual freedom is already always existing. Peace-on-earth exists already but only when ‘I’ in my entirety am no more. Thus the path is of a self-less inclination. Perhaps I’ve undiscerningly glossed over it. I also took note of what you wrote at the end that “It’s fun”. Well, am I having fun consistently? Am I enjoying and appreciating consistently? What’s in the way? What is it I really want?
Indeed, this is the very way the actualism method works in a nutshell. By following a self-less inclination you are having fun and vice versa, felicitous and innocuous feelings don’t provide fodder for ‘me’.
Chrono: Thus in an overall manner to having more fun consistently the thing that sticks out to me the most is what I can only describe as a persona that’s bent on being sophisticated. A sophisticate. Making things complicated. Setting up an “image” of myself. Being serious. Even the visceral manoeuvring in my thinking and feeling. I found immediate relief in this noticing because only in this way I finally don’t have to be a “someone”. Interestingly, it was one of my major qualms with work that I noticed a while back. It’s not that work itself is majorly difficult, it’s that I have to be a “someone” at work. But it’s actually enjoyable when I don’t. Being a “someone” is a serious business. And this extends to pretty much every aspect of my life.
It’s wonderful, isn’t it. To be ‘someone’ is the modus operandi for which you have been conditioned since childhood, backed up by the instinctual imperative of survival – but is this really still necessary? As you say “it’s actually enjoyable when I don’t”. It is also possible because you can be naïve with all your adult sensibility intact.
Vineeto: Don’t “try”, don’t ‘work’ on it – just allow the hidden-away-during-puberty childhood naïveté to bubble up.
Chrono: Yes I’ve set my benchmark that if there’s a feeling of effort or “work” involved then something may be amiss. I was thinking that maybe I’m just being lazy, but then the opposite of this is to be getting to “work” on it.
Yes, the real-world rules, morals and dogmas operate in opposites and have only two alternatives. There is a third alternative.
Vineeto: Well, it is still possible to be hurt because you might still have unexamined issues, but that is the challenge and opportunity to clean yourself up. The main fear, as you said, is that you don’t know what will be happening – being naïve you would more likely welcome the adventure rather than fear it.
Chrono: Yes it’s much more enjoyable to welcome the adventure rather than fear it.
One of the things that I noticed in the PCE described prior was that I did not “know” what would happen next or even what I would say or do. It happened of its own accord and I acted in a beneficial and friendly way. And I noticed after some time that ‘my’ main way of being is to be control itself. I am always projecting into a past, present, and future. This is a way to ensure that ‘I’ exist and remain in control. This aspect of there not being control is scary to me because it feels this is the way that I can protect this body.
Indeed, being in control is the sole function of this contingent ‘being’, ‘me’, the entity which does not exist in its own right and needs to control to prevent being exposed as such. ‘You’ need to keep working hard to justify ‘your’ existence, whereas “it’s actually enjoyable when I don’t”, when you can allow yourself to be what you are. You lessen control by progressively allowing the obstacles to enjoyment and appreciation to disappear via attentiveness and (if necessary) investigation – and thus by imitating the actual.
Vineeto: Are you making a spreadsheet for all the pros and cons before you start living it? And who is in charge of making the assessment? ‘Me’ and ‘my’ desires and fears or pure intent? Armchair planning gets you nowhere – dare, and care to dare, and just do it.
Chrono: Ha, weirdly a mental spreadsheet sounds like something that I am “supposed” to do. But if I keep it simple, I just enjoy feeling good. This unraveling of what I have been doing this whole time is helping push the envelope further.
It makes it so much simpler, doesn’t it?
Chrono: I have been wondering, is it possible for this awareness of being a flesh and blood body to also be there as a feeling being? Could it be a connection between ‘me’ and the actual? The reason I ask is because I do always have this inkling that I’m here this whole time all the time.
Vineeto: Yes, it is possible, mainly from lingering memories of your various PCEs and moments of apperceptiveness. The “awareness of being a flesh and blood body” can peek through, especially when no good or bad feelings interfere with your enjoyment and appreciation of being here. But this does not mean that there is a “connection between ‘me’ and the actual”.
Chrono: Is this because only being naiveté can make this connection? Or that there cannot actually be a connection between ‘me’ and the actual?
‘I’ can never enter the actual world, hence no connection whatsoever. When ‘I’ disappear, the actual world becomes apparent, when ‘I’ reappear, the actual world is no longer apparent.
But you, the flesh-and-blood body can have shorter or longer moments of apperception where you are aware that you are the flesh-and-blood body – this is the very definition of apperception, the mind’s experience of itself, unmediated by the identity. Of course, once ‘I’ re-enter the arena, ‘I’ claim the experience for myself, hence your impression that there is a connection.
Richard: To be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as a childlike persona with adult sensibilities), which is to be the closest one can to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not) … (A Quaint Clay-Pit Tale, Last Tooltip).
Naiveté facilitates ‘my’ diminishment and ‘my’ intermittent disappearance, yet the word ‘connection’ does not apply.
Vineeto: The word “respect” comes from the Latin respectus, meaning “a looking at” or “regard”, and the verb respicere, “to look back at”. (Respect - Etymology, Origin & Meaning). Development of meaning: From this original sense, the meaning evolved to include “regard”, “esteem”, and “consideration”. (Merriam Webster)
As you can see the word has a perfectly neutral origin, it’s time that the meaning again expands from having “a connotation of some authority” only. I like both words.
As for authority, that is a different issue for another conversation. For now, if you are interested, I recommend the selected correspondences found on the library page regarding authority and the section on authority in the Basic to Full Freedom article.
Chrono: I think the reason that the word respect has the connotations of some authority (as opposed to authoritative) is because my parents would always say that I need to respect them (and anyone else who holds a particular position). Thus I have been differentiating that word when used usually in a real world setting from regard. But perhaps this takes a further looking into as I noticed in one of my previous posts way back that I had a habit of being a ‘victim’. I’ve taken on board that I need to ‘respect’ people but this means in a sort of psychic submission type of way. And also backed (originally from my parents) that if I don’t then I do not “care” and I will be physically punished. This way of operating demonstrates a complete lack of equity. And equally would not be a way to bring it about. At the core of this is the belief that I need to psychically submit or else people will get angry (sounds very silly and feels embarrassing when I write it out).
I don’t know what holds authority, anyone’s authority, in place for you. For ‘Vineeto’ the very justification for any authority disappeared in one fell swoop with the startling apperceptive discovery –
‘Vineeto’: Usually, when I succeeded freeing myself of one authority figure, I soon found that I had only replaced them with a supposedly better one – but it never solved the problem. Slowly I started to understand that in order to be free from authority I had to eliminate the need for, and support of, those very beliefs and values underlying the authority.
Finally one evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realisation. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery.
This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’.
But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear.
When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master.
Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free. (A Bit of Vineeto, #oneevening)
It had been quite a startling and consequential PCE.
Chrono: I noticed in the From Basic Actual Freedom to Full Actual Freedom Part 1 correspondence that you wrote:
Vineeto: Remember that ‘you’, the guardian, have a general backward outlook who one regards automatically, as in habitually, as a (non-expertise-related) authority, when, in fact, they don’t have any more authority than one is willing to give them. And ‘your’ choice to give certain people an unearned aura of authority has a lot to do with expected social rewards and punishment. One can then decide in each situation if this is worth one’s voluntary submission. The more one simplify/ reduces one’s need/ attraction for the perceived social rewards and thus anticipated ‘punishment’ of withheld ‘reward’, the less one will[s] find [getting] oneself being drawn into power conflicts with supposed (guardian-created) authority figures.
Chrono: Would you say this course of action only applies if you are basically free?
It was written with the social identity in mind who remains in part or entirely in situ when one becomes basically free. When your aim is to become actually free then obviously the outlook of the feeling being identity is equally backward oriented. As such everything I wrote in that paragraph also applies to feeling beings. You can dismantle your psychic and conditioning ties to authority at any time.
Chrono: I also noticed in the same correspondence Richard writes:
Richard: … this ‘battle of the sexes’ need no longer hold sway if the need for power is seen at its source. (Richard, List B, No. 10d, 20 March 2000).
Chrono: I have been wondering if what I experience is an example of a “need for power” or if that need is something else. (link)
Are you asking if the habit of being a ‘victim’ is related to a “need for power”? It certainly is, it is the flip-side of the same power structure, which, being sourced in the instinctual passions of fear and aggression, is operating ubiquitously.
By choosing to be naïvely happy and harmless you voluntarily withdraw from the battlefield (not as a pacifist or virtue-hunter) but as someone who prefers (i.e. values more) getting along in a beneficial way with your fellow human beings.
You are playing a different game, so to speak. Or, as Richard called it – playing for fun, not for keeps.
Cheers Vineeto