Vineeto: I also found ‘Vineeto’s’ correspondence with Tarin on being harmless instead of merely feeling harmless useful. (link).
Ed: Hi Vineeto, I was wondering if you could help me understand this a bit better as I don’t see a difference between feeling harmless and being harmless.
I think it’s because I equate feeling harmless with both the absence of malice and sorrow, as well as the absence of their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion. Therefor I equate feeling harmless and being harmless as one in the same – the absence of any self-centred instinctual passion.
Hi Ed,
The trouble with taking one’s feelings as arbiter of what is going on is that feelings are not only entirely self-centric by nature, and as such biased, but also utterly unreliable as to the facts of the matter.
That’s why Richard keeps emphasising that one needs to be ruthlessly honest with oneself – ‘I’, the identity, is not only lost, lonely and frightened but also very, very cunning. ‘I’, the identity, do not want to change the status quo. ‘You’ may be feeling harmless (because that is what ‘you’ want to be) but overlooking all the instances where your feelings, words and action are not harmless. If you are honest and sincere (in accord with the fact), then you check your feeling of being harmless if you are in fact being harmless. ‘Vineeto’ explained some of it in the paragraph you quoted –
‘Vineeto’: The reason I said that there is a remarkable difference between feeling harmless and actually being harmless is because it is easy to assess one’s happiness by checking if I am feeling happy whereas many people may feel themselves to be harmless when they are not experiencing feelings of aggression or anger against somebody. Yet they are nevertheless causing harm via their thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions, something that all human beings are prone to do unless they become fully aware of their instinctual passions before these translate into vibes and/or actions. (link).
This recorded incident demonstrates how ‘Vineeto’ discovered the difference in practice –
‘Vineeto’: I remember the last time when I tried to influence others by ‘sharing’ what I felt. I did some work for an old acquaintance who lived in a town about 25 km away. As a favour she asked me if someone could drop off a parcel at my house so that I could then deliver it to her.
However, when this person rang very early in the morning to ask when it would be convenient to drop off the parcel, I became a little upset. I thought how dare he be so inconsiderate as to wake me up so early for something that wasn’t even urgent. When I later delivered the parcel to my colleague, I mentioned that her friend had rung me up very early in the morning. She profusely apologized to me and then became really upset herself. She said she had instructed him not to ring before 9am and that she would immediately ring her friend to tell him off. At this point I realized that my seemingly calm mentioning of my emotional reaction to receiving an early morning phone call had created palpable ripples in two other people’s lives and that it was now out of my control and irreversible in its consequences.
This incident demonstrated very clearly that sharing my emotions, even in a calm way, inevitably caused ripples in other people’s lives and that I could never be harmless as long as I involved other people in my problems by sharing my emotional reactions. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 37b, 15.2.2002)
Here is more from ‘her’ exploration into being harmless –
‘Vineeto’: It was about a year into my process of actualism when I became aware of how much my outlook on the world and on people had changed in that my cloak of myopic ‘self’-centredness began to lift and I no longer saw the world only ‘my’ way and my judgments and actions no longer revolved around ‘my’ interests, ‘my’ beliefs, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ ideals, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ desires and ‘my’ aversions.
Consequently I have learnt to judge harmlessness by the amount of parity and consideration I apply to others whom I come in contact with, both at work and at play, and not by merely feeling myself to be harmless. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 71b, 9.8.2006)
‘Vineeto’: When I made it my goal to become harmless, in the early days I sometimes felt toothless, castrated and helpless, particularly in situations where I felt I was being ‘wronged’ or I was being treated ‘unjustly’. But once these feeling subsided and I looked at the situation as it really was, I could see how silly it would have been to waste my time passionately fighting other people or riling against the beliefs, morals or ethics of other people in order for ‘me’ to be right or for ‘me’ to feel justly treated. The simple act of becoming aware of having antagonistic and/or indignant feelings inevitably caused me to look at my own ideas and ideals of what I thought and felt was ‘right’ and ‘just’ and ‘fair’– after all the only person I need to change, and can change, is me.
And this process of discovery is still in action as I am still finding sly remnants of the ‘good’ variety of humanistic ethics extant which sometimes cause distress or indignation – clear indications of how ‘I’ tick. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 75, 23.4.2005)
Here is what Richard had to say about being harmless –
Martin: ‘I’ am fundamentally selfish and unless I temper this to some extent there’s no chance of being close to someone or liked as ‘my’ resentful urges are unrestrained (and affect my mood / disposition even if I don’t act out on them). Is becoming actually free a combination of becoming unselfish in a normal sense, and being harmless in an unconditional sense?
Richard: First of all, each and every identity is “fundamentally selfish” by nature – which is why it takes a powerful instinctive impulse (altruism) to overcome a powerful instinctive impulse (selfism) – insofar as blind nature endows each and every human being with the selfish instinct for individual survival and the clannish instinct for group survival (be it the familial group, the tribal group, or the national group).
(Hence the religio-spiritual practice of countering selfishness – as per the unliveable ideal of each and every ‘self’ being an unselfish ‘self’ via the nonsensical edict of each and every ‘self’ putting each and every ‘self’ before one’s own ‘self’ – is basically an institutionalised elaboration of the most primal of blind nature’s instinctual drives, urges, and impulses and, as such, is not at all intelligent).
Second, as “being harmless in an unconditional sense” is to be actually free it makes no sense to ask if becoming actually free is a combination of being that and becoming an unselfish ‘self’.
Third, rather than having to restrain your “resentful urges” forever and a day – so as to have a chance of “being close to someone or liked” as exemplified by intimacy experiences (IE’s) – why not find out why there is resentment in the first place?
Speaking personally, the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago first located the root source of all ‘his’ anger – the basic resentment at being alive (as expressed in the “I didn’t ask to be born” type of plaint) – and was thus able to rid ‘himself’ of (full-blown) anger within three weeks. (Richard, List D, Martin, 2 Aug 2016).
There is more in that same correspondence further down if you are interested.
Richard: … the word ‘harmless’ means ‘lacking intent to injure, devoid of hurtful qualities, marked by freedom from strife or disorder, innocuous free from guilt; innocent, blameless, faultless, irreproachable, lily-white; safe, non-dangerous, gentle, mild, peaceful, peaceable’
Are you really saying that all the above qualities are covered by the term “feeling harmless”?
Ed: Feeling-being Vineeto is pointing out that some people consider the absence of aggression and anger to be adequate enough to classify themselves as feeling harmless – while overlooking other thoughtless ‘self’-oriented instinctual feelings and actions.
Yes, here is what else ‘she’ said about how she approached ‘her’ aim of being more and more harmless –
‘Vineeto’: The way I approached the task of becoming harmless was that I first sought to stop any of my harmless actions or verbal expressions of harm towards other people. When I got to the stage when I could rely on my attentiveness such that I could detect my aggressive mood before I verbally expressed it to those around me, I then raised the bar to detecting any aggressive moods or vibes as soon as they arose. It became readily apparent that a bottled up aggression or resentment towards others only served to make me unhappy and did not count as being really harmless because any such feelings are detectible by others and have an influence on others.
This meant that I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 49, 16.5.2003)
Ed: Whereas being harmless would mean the absence of not only the anger and aggression, but also any other instinctually-driven feelings that often fly under the radar or even appear as “good” such as love.
‘Vineeto’: The process of actualism is not one big heroic jump into oblivion, not at the start anyway, but about practically doing something about all the little things in daily life that prevent me from being harmless and considerate. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 60g, 6.8.2006)
In other words, putting the bar so high that you won’t be harmless until you are actually free, you (inadvertently?) stymie yourself from the start – or perhaps have a valid-to-you justification to be content with merely feeling harmless.
Ed: Am I following correctly? (link)
Being harmless also means to look at the practical consequences of your feelings, vibes, words and actions. I am not writing about theoretical philosophy but about changing oneself radically, experientially to become virtually harmless.
Cheers Vineeto