Chrono's Journal

Journals
221

Chrono: Hi Vineeto,
I’ve given another read to (Richard, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness) and it’s incredible that despite the amount of times that I’ve read it that each time I gain a new understanding from it and appreciate it much more. Perhaps it will be the case due to how circumscribed thinking itself is due to ‘me’. Something that sticks out for me is how:

Richard: Sensuousness is the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space. (link)

I’ve noticed that this occurs to a greater degree when I am able to see that this moment is the only moment of being alive. It is ‘me’ which seems to give the feeling of existing over time. Good and bad feelings block this awareness while felicitous feelings allow it to a greater degree.

Hi Chrono

Indeed, even though it is natural and often unavoidable that feelings are blocking this kind of awareness most of the time, it is very perspicacious to notice it – one needs to experience it enough when it’s not happening in order to see the pattern.

Chrono: Another thing that I had been doing unwittingly at times is confusing attentiveness with intuition. That is, there will be a feeling that wants to be expressed and I experience it as a visceral squirming and end up giving in. But:

Richard: Attentiveness gets not infatuated with the good feelings nor sidesteps the bad as attentiveness is a non-feeling awareness; a sensuous attention. Attentiveness is not sentimental susceptibility for it does not get involved with affection or empathy or get hung up on mercurial imaginations and capricious intuitions or ephemeral auguries. (…) (link)

An excellent observation – intuition is a feeling commentary, whereas attentiveness is much more observant, even when observing one’s feelings in action. The above quote from Richard is one of my favourite passages but I’ll cut it short – this post is getting far too long already.

Chrono: I notice that there’s actually a belief with this way of being in that, to be sincere in the real world is to be “true to one’s feelings” or “being honest” as mentioned already. Which in turn means to be expressing that feeling and so one is said to be being honest with oneself. Which then goes hand in hand with accepting that is “who you are”. And again in turn that acceptance is due to the belief that “you can’t change human nature”. Thus insincerity is being consistently fortified by everyone. I have in the past beat myself up for getting angry in some way because that is “bad”. But now I see more that this being angry and the subsequent judgement (along with many other feelings) is actually what it means to be sane and normal.

Ha, you said it well. I had several conversations with Syd about this. “Being true to one’s feelings” mostly implies to value and express those feelings, whilst “being honest” often involves, and justifies, expressing malice. Don’t you find it more and more fortuitous that you are not as “sane and normal” anymore as when you started out on the actualist adventure?

-

Vineeto: It takes a while to become aware that both ‘good’ and bad feelings are two sides of the same coin. With practice, your attentiveness gets finer and more precise, and one becomes aware of one belief after another. It’s fun, isn’t it.

Chrono: It is indeed fun when I forgo all real world methods!

Indeed – they would only corrupt and confuse the process of thinning out the identity while having fun and appreciating.

Vineeto: I remember ‘Vineeto’ at first being surprised to learn that Richard said he was not a fan of logic or being logical. ‘Vineeto’ had considered logic to be ‘her’ thinking process (when ‘she’ wasn’t being emotional) – if this, then that. However, the more ‘she’ paid attention when applying common sense, ‘she’ came to see that common sense is much more than following the fixed rules of logic but rather choosing what is sensible. ‘I’, the identity, can easily play tricks with logic, it being a rigid system, but with attentiveness one becomes aware of the underlying feelings and thus comes to one’s senses (common sense – down-to-earth facts and actuality – included).

Chono: Yes I notice that much of logic is ultimately based on beliefs. It “makes sense” in the world of imagination.

Well, I wouldn’t call it “based on beliefs” as such, even though some of it is. Logic has various meanings, and the definitions are rather confusing or even contradicting –

1. reasoning [the action of thinking about something in a logical, sensible way], conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity. (whereby: “experience is a better guide to this than deductive logic”)
2. a system or set of principles underlying the arrangements of elements in a computer or electronic device so as to perform a specified task.
Synonym: Rationale: The underlying reason or logical basis for a belief or action. (Oxford Languages).

Hence I prefer to stay on side of common sense because the principles of logic can easily be misappropriated or deliberately perverted for ‘my’ purpose. They work for computers though (2nd meaning).

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Vineeto: Have you noticed that whenever you consider some attitude or ‘truth’ or belief no longer worthwhile holding onto, you instantly present yourself with the opposite as negative as possible to prevent ‘you’ from straying off the ‘straight and narrow’ traditional path.
There is of course nothing bland at all about having less and less ‘good’ and bad feelings – being happy and harmless are feelings of the, at times exuberant and vibrant, felicitous variety.

Chrono: I’ve noticed it on many occasions now and I can see how it is due to my drive to survive.
‘Good’ feelings and felicitous feelings both have pleasant hedonic tone. But one of the qualities of ‘good’ feelings that I recently noticed is that they feel more “heavy” and take over the mind unlike the felicitous feelings which are more light and carefree. Good feelings convey some imaginary ideal that may one day happen but felicitous feelings create a sparkling atmosphere of being here.
Writing all of this out definitely brings more clarity and seems to help feeling good.

Again, isn’t it amazing that pointing your attention (attentiveness) to one specific aspect of the human condition, with pure intent operating) reveals the very nature of the underlying feeling and structure and you gradually cease believing in the repeated expressions of ‘your’ “drive to survive”.

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Vineeto: Ha, Kuba arrived at a similar indignation, describing it in his last post (link). I understand it well from ‘Vineeto’s experience about the injustice and unfairness happening in the world. However, ‘she’ never found it unjust that ‘she’ had unilaterally decided to rectify this in ‘herself’, after all ‘she’ was one of the fortunate few who knew about the solution which demonstrably worked.
This attitude is indeed born of ‘self’-centredness and ‘me’ defending ‘my’ very existence, as you might feel yourself to be the only one doing something about the mess ‘you’ are and yet know yourself to operate outside the norm of the human condition in many areas. That’s the pioneer’s role and you can rather be appreciative to have the opportunity and the courage to do so.
I also recommend reading Richard’s Selected Correspondence on Peasant Mentality (2) as you might find a few clues about how you feel and why. And when you think you are “more crazy than the norm” remember that the human condition itself is weird, and getting out of it does at times feel weird and crazy.

Chrono: That feeling features a lot more nowadays. I can relate to the post and to the feeling of:

Kuba: “meh, everything is stupid” (link)

I’ve mentioned before how at times I imagine some scenario where those who are in power get punished severely due to the “rigged system” that they create and perpetuate. I gave the Peasant Mentality (2) correspondence another read (and even read ‘Barbara Villiers or A History of Monetary Crimes’", and I am able to get a little closer to the heart of the matter:

Richard: Unless this rudimentary feeling of disfranchisement – of feeling somehow deprived of a fundamental franchise (franchise = the territory or limits within which immunity, privileges, rights, powers, etcetera may be exercised) – is primarily understood (to the point of being viscerally felt, even) any explanation of ‘peasant-mentality’ will be of superficial use only. (link)

You are aware that there are two sides to a power structure – those who take power and those who give it willingly in order to benefit from their obedience and loyalty. While I understand your imagination of punishing those in power, it is important to acknowledge that you are as much part creating and perpetuating “the rigged system”, as long as the peasant mentality operates in you. Not that the ‘system’ will disappear when you step out of it but you will no longer be plagued by the lack of justice and fairness.

Especially loyalty, the hallmark of ‘peasant mentality’, is worth looking at (See Basic to Full Freedom 2)

Chrono: But I have been becoming more aware of where I feel a resentment of having to work at all. Then as I am reflecting on it now, I feel that the resentment is due to the feeling of “being prisoned”. Maybe this impression of a place where I do not feel prisoned (and thus free from the horrors of what I feel the world as) is the fundamental franchise. But I’m not entirely sure. The furthest back this feeling goes is from living with my family as a child. At that time I felt the feeling of being prisoned most acutely as physical and emotional abuse featured a lot both from parental figures, teachers, and other children. It was then that I started imagining that maybe I could be somewhere else. It was the whole reason for my incursion into spirituality. The idea that I could actually be somewhere else appealed to me a lot because that meant the end of those horrors. It was by serendipity that I encountered actualism. I am giving more thought to what it means to enable the ‘already always existing peace on earth’. Anyways as I read further on that correspondence:

Richard: ‘Tis truly a rigged system … rigged to ever-enrich an already obscenely rich elite. (link)

As this is something that many have seen and noted already, there must be something further. I feel an anger towards those people and almost feel that they are the ones perpetuating the wars, murders, etc. It is at this point where I feel that indignation more deeply. I feel myself to be not in support of the system due to this and can see my indignant reaction is a form of rebelling (a case of reaching for the opposite). What I’m coming closer towards though is perhaps seeing that there is no solution (as in even rebelling is pointless in regards to solving the system ultimately).

For a start, to expect to be fed and housed without working is setting yourself up for certain disappointment. It would mean someone else would have to provide for you. So, the “resentment of having to work at all” is possibly a leftover from when you were a child, as well as “the feeling of being prisoned”. I am reminded of this snippet from Richard’s personal web-page regarding childhood hurts, which you might find informative –

Richard: Speaking personally, the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago instantaneously rid ‘himself’ of the bulk of those school-age hurts and slights – whilst sitting out in the sunshine one fine morning, putting pencil to paper in order to finally record those dastardly events for posterity, as per a long-held and cherished ambition to do so at length – via seeing-in-a-flash that, as it was simply not possible to ever physically be a child again (and thus juvenilely susceptible to not only those bully-boys and feisty-femmes but any enabling teachers and principals as well), there was absolutely no need whatsoever to continue nursing them as a carryover grudge. It soon became increasingly apparent, thereafter, how those childhood hurts had been vital to the maintenance of the righteous indignation which fuelled ‘his’ plaints of injustice (a.k.a. ‘unfairness’) and, thus, ‘his’ mission to bring justice (a.k.a. ‘fairness’) to the world. (Richard’s Personal Web-page, Tit-for-Tat Tool-tip).

You see, all the childhood hurts can disappear within the blink of an eye, allowing the penetrating insight that you can never ever be a child again to let all the resent go at once. Then adult sensibility can work out the best solution.

Regarding the “rigged system”, when you comprehensively understand how the peasant mentality is operating in you, then you’ll find it impossible to apportion blame because you can see that everybody is trapped by either loyalty and obedience, fuelled by their wanting to get ahead, or by excessive avarice, driven to accumulate regardless of the consequences. Yes, the system is rigged, but within the human condition every system would be equally rigged by whoever gets to the top because everyone is endowed with the same instinctual passions. There is truly no solution within the human condition.

The key is to unilaterally become happy and harmless, enjoying and appreciating, and as Richard says –

Richard: Astonishingly, I find that *social change is unnecessary*; I can live freely in the community as-it-is. (Richard’s Journal, Article 20).

Chrono: Still reading this and will have to reflect on it:

Vineeto: The other correspondence I can recommend is one about not taking offence, explained in detail (Richard, List D, Rick, 21 Jan 2016). Mastering this technique will hold you in good stead in any situation in life you described above.

(link)

Let me know if/when it works for you.

Cheers Vineeto

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Something which seems to take me out of the way I usually operate and indulge in is seeing that I am feeling some particular feeling and it seems all the while this moment is happening. It’s like, why would I want to feel bad (or antidotally good) when this moment is happening irregardless? At one point the thought occurred to me “how could any of this be happening without ‘me’?”. It seemed almost disconcerting like there’s a deep feeling of ‘I’ am needed. My mind boggles at the ramifications of the universe happening on its own.

Yes as I was on the road to being insane and abnormal otherwise haha.

Ah yes I can I see I was being sloppy with my writing and will try to refer to the dictionary definitions. The word logic seems to me to be co-opted. The reason I had phrased it as such was because I have heard the word ‘logical’ being used a few times by people (including me) to describe themselves and show how their way of thinking is “superior” to others who are being “illogical” via following their feelings or utilizing intuition. But nonetheless both are circumscribed by ‘me’.

Yes and I find that the genuine intent to be happy and harmless is very key. Actually I’m feeling very good right now as I write this and I chose to feel good.

I am having difficulty in seeing in what way I am creating and perpetuating “the rigged system” if I was born into it and it had already existed. With that said though, I remember I was having this discussion with my partner on how the few rule over the many. It ended with me sort of defending the idea of not rebelling because rebelling would ultimately mean widespread bloodshed and mayhem. I notice that I take a side (affectively) when I am speaking with my partner. Perhaps my obedience and loyalty is under the guise of ‘I have no choice because otherwise I would essentially be executed’? This is funny because I have wrote so far about the indignation which would fuel rebellion.

In regards the feeling of ‘being prisoned’, I notice that it activates more so when it feels like others are mad or not in a good mood around me. Perhaps that does more relate to childhood hurts or to being a victim :thinking:. Actually I notice a common thread underneath all this is that there’s a feeling as if someone is making me feel bad or forcing me to. And maybe that was the case when I was a child that I took all of those hurts into myself uncritically but now I can just choose to feel good irregardless of what others feel.

For the feeling of resentment at having to work at all, I do have the belief in an ideal operating where with more and more work being automated then that should be freeing up people to have more free time instead. Again seems to go back to it being ‘unfair’ that the ‘few’ reap the rewards of that automation and the ‘many’ suffer. But now as I think on it, that feeling is not factually true. Here I can see that I am identifying again with the ‘many’ and all that that entails (resentment, indignation, obedience, etc). I can also see how there seems to be the feeling that one would “escape” that rigged system by trying to become one of the ‘few’. So the belief operating is that only the ‘few’ have what the many are disfranchised from. And even further to that, the feeling is that by being at the top, I would be able to somehow evince an equitable society (which quest for equity in regards everyone and myself has become more clear for me as one of the main driving factors for an actual freedom). But this comes to mind:

[Richard]: Fortunately, for yours truly and any body whose resident identity is taking notice of these words, ‘he’ had absorbed the hard-won revelations of one of the peasants who, having sought fame and fortune to escape a working-class childhood, had achieved a considerable degree of success in that enterprise (becoming a member of the world’s pecuniary super-elite, those 200,000-odd persons known to be of $30 million net-worth and above, who constitute something like 0.003% of the population by some accounts).
Viz.:
• [Richard]: ‘As for your query about the identity who used to inhabit this flesh and blood body all those years ago: the ego-self (aka ‘the thinker’) had a brief flirtation with ‘illusions of grandeur’ whilst a practising artist in the late 70’s until ‘he’ read an interview with Mr. John Lennon who, to put it as briefly as possible, reported that there was nothing ‘at the top’ and that fame [and fortune] had no intrinsic worth (…)’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, The Actual Freedom List, No. 53c, 30 March 2004).

As I reflect on this it seems that it’s peasants[mentality] all the way to the top. I can see how what I feel and believe is nothing new. I am no special than the rest in this regard. This was very eye-opening now as I read it in regards the origins of that deeply held feeling of disfranchisement:

SRINATH: Hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon had to be quite careful about the territory they were permitted to forage in and were subject to brutal raids by other tribes.

RICHARD: The fact that hunter-gatherers, being driven by the same instinctual passion of territoriality[](javascript:void(0)) as modern day feeling-beings are, were thereby subject to territorial warfare is beside the point insofar as to ‘forage’ – as in, ‘to wander in search of food or provisions’ (American Heritage Dictionary), for instance – in that manner (i.e., within any such tribal territory as was thus forcefully demarcated) was not a matter of theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera, but rather a case of, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available therein.

So there be no misunderstanding: nowhere have I suggested the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of peace and harmony (either personal peace or communal harmony) or that it be preferable over capitalistic enterprise (be it privately-owned or publicly-owned capitalistic enterprise).

Indeed, the ability to generate capital – so essential for the elimination of poverty, for the maximisation of health and safety, for release from debilitating manual labour (from having to ‘earn the daily bread by the sweat of the brow’), for the proliferation of the arts and sciences, and so on – is of inestimable benefit.

SRINATH: I too would ask a similar question re: the fundamental nature of the disenfranchisement.

RICHARD: Okay … the most ‘fundamental’ aspect of all, then, is illustrated by the distinction between my deliberate usage of the word ‘disfranchisement’ and the word ‘disenfranchisement’ (which both you and Jon used) as the word franchise – derived via the now obsolete usage of the word frank, from the Late Latin francus, meaning ‘free’ – refers to the ‘condition of being free’ (the noun suffix ‘-ise’, occurring in loanwords from the French language, indicates a quality, condition, or function).

Viz.:

• frank (adj.): an obsolete word for free, generous; C13: from Old French franc, from Medieval Latin francus, ‘free’; identical with Frank (in Frankish Gaul only members of this people enjoyed full freedom). ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

Thus the word disfranchise refers to being deprived, lacking or having lost that original ‘condition of being free’ (‘original’ as in having been free in the first place) inasmuch the prefix ‘dis-’, being privative, indicates a negation or absence.

Viz.:

• dis- (pref.): a prefix occurring orig. in loanwords from Latin with the meanings ‘apart, asunder’ (disperse; dissociate; dissolve); now frequent in French loanwords and English coinages having a privative, negative, or reversing force relative to the base noun, verb, or adjective: disability; disarm; disconnect; dishearten; dishonest; dislike; disobey. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Whereas the word disenfranchise refers to being deprived of an enabled or caused ‘condition of being free’ (as in, having a previously granted freedom withdrawn, for instance) as the prefix ‘en-’ forms verbs with the general sense of enabling or causing someone/ something to be in the condition, state or place referred to by the word it prefixes.

Viz.:

• en- (pref.): cause to be in a certain condition: enable; [e.g.]: encourage, enrich, enslave; a prefix forming verbs that have the general sense ‘to cause (a person or thing) to be in’ the place, condition, or state named by the stem. ~ (Webster’s College Dictionary).

Now, while this distinction may initially appear to be pedantry on my part it serves, nevertheless, as a useful illustration of how relatively little time it has taken – despite the vast majority of the millions of years of human development, prior to the ‘free-range’ life-style being hijacked by the ‘property-rights’ way of life, over which our human/ hominid ancestors lived an original condition of being free to, basically, just help themselves to whatever was available (and I have seen plausible estimates of it being 99.8% of those millennia) – for modern-day thralls[](javascript:void(0)) to atavistically feel and thus intuitively think of their ancestral disfranchisement as being a prehistoric disenfranchisement.

In other words, the domination of the enthrallers[](javascript:void(0)) has been of such an all-encompassing/ far-reaching magnitude as to be interiorised and personalised so completely it is ‘second-nature’ for the enthralled to automatically think of their ancestral ‘free-range’ franchise – that heritable condition of being free to, basically, just help themselves to whatever was available – as having been an antediluvian enfranchisement (i.e., an endowed ‘free-range’ right granted in primeval times) which, being a bestowment, is subject to rescindment.

One of the reasons I provided ‘The Garden of Eden’ as an example of some ancient ‘golden age’ wherein life was in some ill-defined way ‘free’, in my initial post at the top of this page, is because of it being such an archetypal case of ‘that which can be given is that which can be taken away’ (and taken, what is more, with creatorship impunity). Howsoever, the edenic mythology has an extra twist to its knife insofar its disenfranchisement is the fault of the disenfranchised – not of the disenfranchiser as is the everyday reality – and, as such, redemption requires total obedience (a.k.a. complete surrender) to the enfranchiser.

The many and devious ways and means whereby upwards of at least 98% or more of the peoples alive today are, in effect, in thrall to so few (yet obscenely rich) enthrallers are quite fascinating to contemplate as the continuance of such thralldom depends solely upon the ongoing complicity of the enthralled.

Hence the term ‘peasant-mentality’.

SRINATH: Still it must be said that the sheer magnitude of disparity in resource distribution we have today cannot really compare to that of a hunter-gatherer life, where the elders/ chieftains aren’t that much better off resource wise.

RICHARD: Indeed so … and, furthermore, due to the inexorable law of mathematics all usurious ‘resource distribution’ (a.k.a. wealth) eventually, and quite predictably, shifts into the hands of an elite few.

And further in the “tropical seashore tale”:

Rchard: So, given that everybody alive today has a stone-age ancestry – there is simply no other way of arriving here on this planet as human beings other than as descendents of ‘hunter-gatherer’ lifestyle ancestors (be they of the far-past or near-past) – the transition to the prevailing ‘property-rights’ way of life is an ancestral legacy to be atavistically addressed as the beneficence accruing via the ability to generate capital (so essential for the elimination of poverty, for the maximisation of health and safety, for release from debilitating manual labour, for the proliferation of the arts and sciences, and so on) is inestimably superior to the beneficence accrued in any pre-pecuniary lifestyle.

For now my mind is quiet, but will see what comes up. This would be life-changing if I could come up on it experientially:

Viz.:

• [Richard]: Astonishingly, I find that social change is unnecessary; I can live freely in the community as-it-is. [endquote].

I am reminded of this Spongebob episode when I think of conceiving myself akin to a sponge :joy:. But with that said my initial hurdle is this feeling that I am responsible for others giving offense in the first place. Like I am putting something out there for others to react to. I feel guilty for not being “squeaky clean”. But actually as I am writing this while feeling good, I think that if I was feeling good in the first place, I wouldn’t be putting something out there that would elicit such a reaction. The word harmless is at the forefront of my mind. But nonetheless others may still give offense or take offense so there’s no need to feel guilty or take and give offense in turn when I can be happy and harmless.

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Vineeto: Indeed, even though it is natural and often unavoidable that feelings are blocking this kind of awareness most of the time, it is very perspicacious to notice it – one needs to experience it enough when it’s not happening in order to see the pattern.

Vineeto: An excellent observation – intuition is a feeling commentary, whereas attentiveness is much more observant, even when observing one’s feelings in action. The above quote from Richard is one of my favourite passages but I’ll cut it short – this post is getting far too long already.

Chrono: Something which seems to take me out of the way I usually operate and indulge in is seeing that I am feeling some particular feeling and it seems all the while this moment is happening. It’s like, why would I want to feel bad (or antidotally good) when this moment is happening irregardless? At one point the thought occurred to me “how could any of this be happening without ‘me’?”. It seemed almost disconcerting like there’s a deep feeling of ‘I’ am needed. My mind boggles at the ramifications of the universe happening on its own.

Vineeto: Ha, you said it well. I had several conversations with Syd about this. “Being true to one’s feelings” mostly implies to value and express those feelings, whilst “being honest” often involves, and justifies, expressing malice. Don’t you find it more and more fortuitous that you are not as “sane and normal” anymore as when you started out on the actualist adventure?

Chrono: Yes as I was on the road to being insane and abnormal otherwise haha.

Hi Chrono,

I took the liberty to split your post in half as all the topics raised merit responding to.

Given you raised the topic of “on the road to being insane and abnormal” – I highly recommend Richard’s two Selected Correspondences on Sanity, Insanity and the Third Alternative (whichever excerpts tickle your fancy). This correspondence of what sanity really is was a genuine eye-opener for ‘Vineeto’, and it took ‘her’ a while to digest how much “sanity is the problem and insanity is not the solution” –

Richard: Moreover, as I clearly state that it is sanity which is the problem (and that insanity is not the solution), the entire email exchange starting at … (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 12 Apr 2003) … and going on for 9-10 emails is well worth a read.
Here are a few excerpts. Viz.:
• [Respondent]: ‘Are you telling me that when I see bombs dropping and people with their limbs blown off that what I am seeing is sane …
• [Richard]: ‘Yes … the bombs dropping, and people with their limbs blown off, is nothing other than sanity in action. And sanity prevails all over the world: for instance an estimated 2.5 million [currently 5.0 million] sane peoples have been killed in the civil war in the Congo (aka Zaire) by their sane fellow human beings … perhaps it is because it is not being displayed 24/7 on television screens there seems to be very little outrage. Or maybe it is because without the good ol’ US of A to yet again mercilessly whip around the block there is no outlet for the outrage?
It is sanity which is the problem world-wide … it is what you are seeing when observing the world (peoples in general) and yourself’.[Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 13 Apr 2003b) (…)
• [Richard]: (…). Here in this actual world all is salubrious and irreprehensible … just consider, for a moment if you will, that it is only a sanity-based analysis which would determine that permanent happiness and harmlessness be insanity (it speaks volumes about the nature of sanity that it does so). I know I have said it many times before but I will say it again for emphasis: I do find it cute that peace-on-earth, in this lifetime as this flesh and blood body, be considered a chronic and incurable psychotic mental disorder’. (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 18 Apr 2003).
(Richard, AF List, No. 29, 10 Jan 2013)

*

Vineeto: I remember ‘Vineeto’ at first being surprised to learn that Richard said he was not a fan of logic or being logical. ‘Vineeto’ had considered logic to be ‘her’ thinking process (when ‘she’ wasn’t being emotional) – if this, then that. However, the more ‘she’ paid attention when applying common sense, ‘she’ came to see that common sense is much more than following the fixed rules of logic but rather choosing what is sensible. ‘I’, the identity, can easily play tricks with logic, it being a rigid system, but with attentiveness one becomes aware of the underlying feelings and thus comes to one’s senses (common sense – down-to-earth facts and actuality – included).
Chono: Yes I notice that much of logic is ultimately based on beliefs. It “makes sense” in the world of imagination.
Vineeto: Well, I wouldn’t call it “based on beliefs” as such, even though some of it is. Logic has various meanings, and the definitions are rather confusing or even contradicting –

  1. reasoning [the action of thinking about something in a logical, sensible way], conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity. (whereby: “experience is a better guide to this than deductive logic”)
  2. a system or set of principles underlying the arrangements of elements in a computer or electronic device so as to perform a specified task.
    Synonym: Rationale: The underlying reason or logical basis for a belief or action. (Oxford Languages).
    Hence I prefer to stay on side of common sense because the principles of logic can easily be misappropriated or deliberately perverted for ‘my’ purpose. They work for computers though (2nd meaning).

Chrono: Ah yes I can I see I was being sloppy with my writing and will try to refer to the dictionary definitions. The word logic seems to me to be co-opted. The reason I had phrased it as such was because I have heard the word ‘logical’ being used a few times by people (including me) to describe themselves and show how their way of thinking is “superior” to others who are being “illogical” via following their feelings or utilizing intuition. But nonetheless both are circumscribed by ‘me’.

You weren’t necessarily sloppy because this is the way you “have heard the word ‘logical’ being used” being the common understanding, and this kind of ‘logic’ has a high currency as being “superior”. It is nevertheless not all it’s made out to be because logic is very often used to just win an argument, or ‘prove’ something nonsensical or non-beneficial, and it is, as you say, “circumscribed by ‘me’”.

As such I prefer the word sensible, which is more comprehensive to describe a way of thinking governed by common sense and rationality, not depending on one’s feelings, when seeking to find a beneficial conclusion for all concerned according to the facts.

*

Vineeto: Again, isn’t it amazing that pointing your attention (attentiveness) to one specific aspect of the human condition, with pure intent operating) reveals the very nature of the underlying feeling and structure, and you gradually cease believing in the repeated expressions of ‘your’ “drive to survive”.

Chrono: Yes and I find that the genuine intent to be happy and harmless is very key. Actually I’m feeling very good right now as I write this and I chose to feel good. (link)

It is a delight to hear you say that “the genuine intent to be happy and harmless is very key”. It is indeed the key, and remembering to add appreciation will open the world of naiveté to you, where you can marvel and be amazed by, to the point of it taking your breath away.

Cheers Vineeto

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Vineeto: (…) Regarding the “rigged system”, when you comprehensively understand how the peasant mentality is operating in you, then you’ll find it impossible to apportion blame because you can see that everybody is trapped by either loyalty and obedience, fuelled by their wanting to get ahead, or by excessive avarice, driven to accumulate regardless of the consequences. Yes, the system is rigged, but within the human condition every system would be equally rigged by whoever gets to the top because everyone is endowed with the same instinctual passions. There is truly no solution within the human condition.

Chrono: In regards the feeling of ‘being prisoned’, I notice that it activates more so when it feels like others are mad or not in a good mood around me. Perhaps that does more relate to childhood hurts or to being a victim. Actually I notice a common thread underneath all this is that there’s a feeling as if someone is making me feel bad or forcing me to. And maybe that was the case when I was a child that I took all of those hurts into myself uncritically but now I can just choose to feel good irregardless of what others feel.

Hi Chrono,

I deleted a lot of the previous post so this one doesn’t get too long. As a child you have had no other choice as to take “all of those hurts into myself uncritically” or unsuccessfully rebel. It is excellent that you now “I can just choose to feel good irregardless of what others feel”. You are probably aware that you as a feeling being live within a psychic web, those vibes and psychic currents, which are automatically emanated by everyone, including yourself, when experiencing any affective feeling. As such it is beneficial for everyone when you succeed in unilaterally minimizing your own ‘good’ and bad feelings and be (contagiously) felicitous “irregardless of what others feel”.

Chrono: For the feeling of resentment at having to work at all, I do have the belief in an ideal operating [society] where with more and more work being automated then that should be freeing up people to have more free time instead. Again seems to go back to it being ‘unfair’ that the ‘few’ reap the rewards of that automation and the ‘many’ suffer. But now as I think on it, that feeling is not factually true. Here I can see that I am identifying again with the ‘many’ and all that that entails (resentment, indignation, obedience, etc).

Well, you not only identify with the ‘many’ who suffer but you also describe/ imagine a compassionate ideal how society should be organized instead, for yourself and others. As each and everyone can only change one person, themselves, the only way you can actually do something beneficial is to change yourself and become free from the human condition for everyone’s benefit.

As a suggestion – instead of only looking at the negative feelings of “resentment, indignation, obedience, etc” only, check out which ‘good’ feelings keep this resentment in place. There could be compassion, which you alleviate with virtuous high morals/ethics, and/or the feeling of belonging to the ‘many’ who suffer. Perhaps you find some other ‘brownie points’ which presently keep you trapped.

I am reminded of the brilliant way Richard parsed compassion in two of the Audio-taped Dialogues –

R: Years ago I had some religious people bail me up and attempt to convert me to their belief – it would often happen in those days – and they were saying that I should always help people; that that is what we are all here for is to help other people; to put the other person before oneself. I said to them: ‘Who are these people to be helped? Who are these ‘others’? What is going to happen to them?’ I would ask this because if one does do all this – only help others and never oneself – then one goes into an After-Life of some description. I said: ‘What about those people who are being helped? Where are they going to go to?’
Q: (Laughing) Oh! I like that question!
Q(1): Good question!
R: Well, if one wants to be a helper – a ‘good’ person – one needs a ready supply of victims, of helpless people. And where are those helpless people going to go to after they die? They are not going to go into some glorious After-Life because they have not been helping people … in fact, they have been sucking upon the helpers. So ‘do-gooders’ need a steady supply of victims in order to reach their After-Life of Rapturous Bliss.
And then I would say to them … because they would tell me I was being selfish … I would say to them: ‘But you want to go to your heaven when you die?’ And they would say: ‘Yes’. And I would say: ‘You are only helping other people in order for yourself to attain your After-Life of Heavenly Bliss. And is this not selfish?’ They would not like that one. The whole structure of morality hangs upon stuff like this … that is why there is something really going wrong within society. The whole morality is back-to-front.
But, please, do not take me wrong. I do not mean by this to be self-centred. The whole thrust of examining these morals is to eliminate the self. Do you see that all of the wars and the rapes and the murders and the tortures and the corruptions and domestic violence that is going on in the human world is caused by the sense of identity and the self? From being self-centred? And do you see that the ways that people have devised – which is well-meant but fatally flawed – are not able to work?
Q(2): It supports the status-quo. It creates victims … the other half of humanity.
R: It has been around for thousands of years. This morality has had plenty of time to prove itself successful – and it has not. There is just as many wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence and corruption now as there was then … if not more so. That was three thousand or more years ago! So … it just has not worked and it never will. Why not try something entirely new?
That was my whole approach back when I was a normal human being with a sense of identity and self. (Richard, Audio-taped Dialogues, Putting The Other Before Oneself)

This is certainly thinking outside of the box! The other sequence on compassion starts here –

Q(1): That was the whole thing about being the ‘Compassionate One’. He wouldn’t go through the gates until the very last person had come through.
R: That is it. They fully acknowledge that he had not gone all the way … they have made a virtue out of it. That is where I had to dig into what I then called ‘The trap of Compassion’. Compassion was keeping me trapped in the world of enlightenment. From that position it seemed utterly selfish to go all the way. That is what I had to wrestle with over the years … that if I went that way, I would be doing it only for me. Finally, having the courage of my convictions, having taken that last step, I can sit here right now and experience myself as being with other people one hundred per cent. It is the very best thing one can do for others … not to mention oneself.
Mr. Gotama the Sakyan should not have dawdled, tarried … because there has been untold suffering since then that has been all unnecessary. Wars, rapes, murders, tortures, corruption … the list is endless. If he had gone all the way there would probably be peace on earth by now. That was two and a half thousand years ago, remember. Plenty of time for everyone to become free.
Q(1): So by his act of Compassion, it proved to be, in the end, to …
R: To perpetuate all the suffering and sorrow … and all the bloodshed. (Richard, Audio-taped Dialogues, Compassion Perpetuates Sorrow)

Chrono: I can also see how there seems to be the feeling that one would “escape” that rigged system by trying to become one of the ‘few’. So the belief operating is that only the ‘few’ have what the many are disfranchised from. And even further to that, the feeling is that by being at the top, I would be able to somehow evince an equitable society (which quest for equity in regards everyone and myself has become more clear for me as one of the main driving factors for an actual freedom). But this comes to mind:

Richard: Fortunately, for yours truly and any body whose resident identity is taking notice of these words, ‘he’ had absorbed the hard-won revelations of one of the peasants who, having sought fame and fortune to escape a working-class childhood, had achieved a considerable degree of success in that enterprise (becoming a member of the world’s pecuniary super-elite, those 200,000-odd persons known to be of $30 million net-worth and above, who constitute something like 0.003% of the population by some accounts).
Viz.:
• [Richard]: ‘As for your query about the identity who used to inhabit this flesh and blood body all those years ago: the ego-self (aka ‘the thinker’) had a brief flirtation with ‘illusions of grandeur’ whilst a practising artist in the late 70’s until ‘he’ read an interview with Mr. John Lennon who, to put it as briefly as possible, reported that there was nothing ‘at the top’ and that fame [and fortune] had no intrinsic worth (…)’. [emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 53c, 30 Mar 2004).

Yes, this is an excellent quote to demonstrate that there is no intrinsic value in climbing to the top of the social ladder other than doing something to have enough to provide for life’s necessities. And once you eliminate/ abandon the resentment of having to work, perhaps you start enjoying what you do for earning a living, so that enjoying and appreciating being alive is not interrupted every time you go to work.

Here is a story I found in a tool-tip on Richard’s Personal web-page –

Richard: It is a Saturday morning in the early summer of my sixth year on this planet and my siblings are outside the kitchen window, while I am stuck here washing an enormous stack of greasy breakfast dishes, all running excitedly about and laughing merrily in the brilliant morning sunshine. My mood is despondent as the morning will have lost its sunlit sparkle before that endless pile is washed.
My maternal grandmother (my paternal grandmother died five years before I was born), who is here on her annual two-week visit from the big city I have never been to, has just come into the kitchen. Seeing me drooping listlessly over the sink with a woebegone expression on my face, distractedly swishing the by-now lukewarm dishwater around in a lack-lustre manner, she enquired as to just what it was I thought I was achieving. Manfully fighting back tears of utter despondency—and failing miserably in the process—I sobbed-out my desolation.
“Well, there’s two ways of getting yourself outside where all the fun is”, she remarked. “you can drag it out until lunchtime and beyond the way you’ve been going about it, all while feeling really miserable, or you can get stuck into it, have it finished in five minutes flat, and be outside in a trice!”
Bustling about the kitchen she moved the kettle to the hottest part of the hob, opened the fire door and stirred the slumbering fire into life, adding some kindling to encourage it to flame soonest, whilst I stood there dumbfounded, labouring to digest what she had just said. “Come along”, she added, briskly. “Pull the plug on that cold water and start afresh; look lively, young laddie, and you’ll be finished before you know it”.
And with that she left the kitchen.
I dutifully pulled the plug out and mechanically lifted the small, circular hot-plate out from beneath the kettle with its special lifting-tool so as to have the flame impinge directly onto its cast-iron base. And as I hung the tool back on its hook above the stove, all-of-a-sudden the full import of her homespun truth dawned upon me. Almost needless is it to add how I set to with a will, and, within a remarkably short while (which may well have been more than her five-minute guesstimate but who was counting by then), the dishes were done, finished, and I was heading for the back door of the old farmhouse. (Richard’s Personal web-page, 2nd tool-tip after “and always would be, perfect”).

Chrono: As I reflect on this it seems that it’s peasants[mentality] all the way to the top. I can see how what I feel and believe is nothing new. I am no special than the rest in this regard. This was very eye-opening now as I read it in regards the origins of that deeply held feeling of disfranchisement:

SRINATH: Hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon had to be quite careful about the territory they were permitted to forage in and were subject to brutal raids by other tribes.
RICHARD: The fact that hunter-gatherers, being driven by the same instinctual passion of territoriality modern day feeling-beings are, were thereby subject to territorial warfare is beside the point insofar as to ‘forage’ – as in, ‘to wander in search of food or provisions’ (American Heritage Dictionary), for instance – in that manner (i.e., within any such tribal territory as was thus forcefully demarcated) was not a matter of theft, larceny, stealing, despoliation, direption, and etcetera, but rather a case of, basically, just helping themselves to whatever was available therein.
So there be no misunderstanding: nowhere have I suggested the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is one of peace and harmony (either personal peace or communal harmony) or that it be preferable over capitalistic enterprise (be it privately-owned or publicly-owned capitalistic enterprise).
Indeed, the ability to generate capital – so essential for the elimination of poverty, for the maximisation of health and safety, for release from debilitating manual labour (from having to ‘earn the daily bread by the sweat of the brow’), for the proliferation of the arts and sciences, and so on – is of inestimable benefit.
(…) (Richard, List D, Srinath, 9 Jun 2015)

Chrono: And further in the “tropical seashore tale”:

Richard: So, given that everybody alive today has a stone-age ancestry – there is simply no other way of arriving here on this planet as human beings other than as descendents of ‘hunter-gatherer’ lifestyle ancestors (be they of the far-past or near-past) – the transition to the prevailing ‘property-rights’ way of life is an ancestral legacy to be atavistically addressed as the beneficence accruing via the ability to generate capital (so essential for the elimination of poverty, for the maximisation of health and safety, for release from debilitating manual labour, for the proliferation of the arts and sciences, and so on) is inestimably superior to the beneficence accrued in any pre-pecuniary lifestyle. (Richard, List D, 32a, 19 June 2015)

Chrono: For now my mind is quiet, but will see what comes up. This would be life-changing if I could come up on it experientially:

Viz.:
• [Richard]: Astonishingly, I find that social change is unnecessary; I can live freely in the community as-it-is. [endquote].

Having the mind quiet the perfect start to eventually actualise the insights you gained. Give it some time to gestate and germinate – it is a big shift compared to your previous thinking. This theme has been bugging you for a long time.

*

Chrono: Still reading this and will have to reflect on it:

Vineeto: The other correspondence I can recommend is one about not taking offence, explained in detail (Richard, List D, Rick, 21 Jan 2016). Mastering this technique will hold you in good stead in any situation in life you described above.

Vineeto: Let me know if/when it works for you.

Chrono: I am reminded of this Spongebob episode (link) when I think of conceiving myself akin to a sponge. But with that said my initial hurdle is this feeling that I am responsible for others giving offense in the first place. Like I am putting something out there for others to react to. I feel guilty for not being “squeaky clean”. But actually as I am writing this while feeling good, I think that if I was feeling good in the first place, I wouldn’t be putting something out there that would elicit such a reaction. The word harmless is at the forefront of my mind. But nonetheless others may still give offense or take offense so there’s no need to feel guilty or take and give offense in turn when I can be happy and harmless. (link)

Ah well, this comic-strip video is a very crude, and inaccurate, representation of what Richard is talking about. Richard is not talking about physical violence as presented in that video. He is referring to verbal affective (and psychic) insults, which are quite consequential in the real world to start a heavy brawl or a never-ending feud or the massive sexual molestation/ harassment of women in public in Cologne, Germany, in December 2010, originating from that giving offence/ taking offence phenomenon by a 26-year-old male street vendor of fruit and vegetables in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia and his ‘mates’, given him by a 45-year-old female municipal official who (allegedly) made a slur against his deceased father, and more. (Further information if needed: here and here and here). Talk about the gender war stretched over two continents!

Here is some additional information on the meaning of “absorbing” insults. For instance, from the first tool-tip in that above quote –

• [Respondent № 32]: ‘Hi Claudiu, aah go it, thanks… Indeed I missed that *never necessary* part. It makes perfect sense now – if one is applying the third alternative correctly (as [№ 40] pointed out), then there won’t be any need, because there won’t be any accumulation… just that one won’t exactly be a sponge in such a case but rather like the other one that Richard spoke about – a ‘proverbial water off a duck’s back’. I’m gonna actualize the proverbial duck way all the way now :)’. [emphasis added]. [Message № 215xx].

And:

• [Rick]: ‘Hi Richard, Do you by chance recall the specific way in which ‘he’ conceived to ‘wring out’ all that offense being absorbed?’ [Message № 21618].
• [Claudiu]: ‘Hi Rick, You must have missed it, but the quote you provided already answers your question, to wit, the parenthetical (bolded above in blue): ‘which latter ploy [duly ‘wringing it out’, if necessary, form time-to-time were ‘he’ ever to become too full to absorb anymore] was, curiously enough, *never necessary*’. [emphasis added]. [Message № 21659].

Cheers Vineeto

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Hi Vineeto,

Reading this was such a great reminder of the contagious nature of naivete. I paid particular notice to this when I was running errands whilst feeling excellent the other day. It was clear that those delightful and naive ripples, spontaneously emanating from me were having an effect on others. And the other thing - I was no longer trying to hide anything, those naive vibes and currents were gladly “let loose” on the world haha, this could be done because of the sure knowledge that they were wholesome by all means. Normally when ‘I’ look from ‘my’ ivory tower, ‘I’ can deceive ‘myself’ that ‘my’ sorrowful and malicious vibes and currents are contained/hidden, but that is not so at all, and this is only fully grasped it seems when no longer in the thick of it all.

You wrote something to me a while ago, that the changes which happen naively, on the level of the ‘be-er’ go unnoticed to the ‘do-er’/’controller’ - this is how I experienced those naive ripples to operate. In that I could interact with someone and they might not be aware of what happened and yet they had a good time. As Richard wrote (paraphrasing) it is on the level of vibes and currents where the real power-play happens. Which comprehending all this it is so clear that as long as ‘I’ am still in existence, the absolute best thing that ‘I’ can do (‘be’) is naivete. That by ‘being’ naivete ‘I’ am already accomplishing more for peace on earth than any moralistic endeavour that ‘I’ could engage in as the ‘do-er’/’controller’. And I have observed this myself, how an unselfconsciously artless person can wipe away in an instant the seriousness and severity that is plaguing another, simply because of what they are ‘being’.

It does actually make sense to me, that the way to peace on earth is to be having fun being alive.

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So I ended up reading this correspondence first but it has been very revealing to me as I was able to connect just how I am being and affecting others and how others affect me in real time. One of the things that this highlighted for me is the nature of this feeling of doubt inside me that other people know something that I don’t. But what’s actually happening is there’s a “battle” or undercurrent in what they are saying versus what they are being. This is most apparent in my relationship as I find that there are times that my partner and I “butt heads”. I feel like I am saying something reasonable or sensible but underneath I am battling in force feeding my point to her. I am more acutely aware now of ‘me’ in everything I say or do that gets in the way of peace and harmony.

At work I was speaking with someone casually (while I was feeling good) and noticed intuitively how I had an automatic “tuning in” to the other person. How I was being pulled to them in a way and I instinctually pulled back. Which instinctive tug-of-war is apparent now in every interaction. Just yesterday I also saw actively while speaking with my partner how it was ‘me’ that was in the way when I was offering my thoughts to her. The moment I dropped below feeling good while speaking with her, I noted what it was. And in every instance it was my expectation or desire of how I wanted her to receive my thoughts. And that seeing was enough for me to get back to feeling good. It didn’t matter how she received it as long as I was really feeling happy and harmless. And it’s strange as I write that as it seems like I’m being accused of being uncaring. But I also note how completely different this is from the application of morality as even an action imbued with love is also an exertion of power. So much interaction is actually a subliminal power battle and it makes me wonder what exactly is the need for it.

I’ve never looked at it in the way of seeing it as compassion before but it does make sense. There are times I do imagine being a “Saviour” and how if I could just end the suffering of others I would. All the while in the back of my head, I know it to be very insincere as I would at root be the same as everyone else. Reading that audio-taped dialogue, what I realized is how any action taken by being the love or compassion is ultimately bound to fail (in effecting peace and harmony). I can see how this fits in with the psychic web as well. I am reminded of an instance where one of my friends had been sharing her emotional turmoil in regards her relationship. The entire time she was talking I was tuned into how she was feeling and as I was suggesting my advice to her, I was simultaneously and subliminally turning her ‘bad’ feeling into a ‘good’ feeling in myself and reflecting it back at her. But I found doing this kind of thing as rather exhausting. And I can’t seem to find the correspondence so I may be off in my recall but I remember reading something Richard wrote where how the help or caring being provided when one is compassionate or empathetic is the very compassion or empathy itself and not any actual help. That has stuck with me for some reason.

But back to identifying with the ‘many’ who suffer. I tune into the suffering because I feel that by tuning in I could do something about it. But now I find that the only action I can take is compassion and/or becoming a “Saviour” of some sort. Then also I must tune in (which I note that the tuning in is also being the suffering) or otherwise I am accused of being selfish. I’ve noted this before so I’m going in circles maybe. But seeing as how even the biggest action of Compassion (such as that with Buddha) has not alleviated the suffering, what other action could there be aside from compassion? What is it to be of an actual help?

I must say I had to read this three times because I did not quite “get it” but I was able to apprehend something intuitively with the following two parts that stuck out to me:

I will also comment that one of the reasons that I resent having to work is the unpleasantness of vibes. But previously I was “helpless” so now I do not have to be.

I was more likening Spongebob in that video to the figurative sponge that absorbs insults and the attacker as delivering the rudeness, insults, and slights with his punches. And further in the video, Spongebob goes about his day happily while the “punches” have no effect as he is a sponge and neither does he have to wringe it out. And in the final part, it was shown that his attacks fell flat (also found funny that this aggressor’s name was Flats). Although I am aware that it’s not saying the same thing as Richard. Or I could be off the mark even with that understanding. Either way it may be too much of a digression.

But to come back to the topic, I do find it interesting that giving and taking offense relates directly to vibes and psychic currents. Now that I am casting more attention on this phenomenon, I am rather astonished at how much of a role it plays in the real world. Maybe respect and disrespect as it is talked about in the real world also relates to giving and taking offense. I liken this part to “keeping your hands in your pockets”:

..absorbing all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights (no knee-jerk reactionary rudeness; no retaliatory retorts; no keeping score, even, of past incidences)..

My question now is, if as a ‘being’, I am always involuntarily transmitting and receiving vibes and psychic currents, how can I as a ‘being’ have this affective and psychic attacking/defending fall flat? My current understanding is that the conceiving of being a sponge is maintaining the intent to be happy and harmless in every situation or circumstance. I would still experience those vibes and have a reaction accordingly, but I would neither repress or express them if they came up. To bring it back to more of an experiential understanding, I wrote earlier that how I was able to choose feeling good. This understanding came when I realized that there are no rules or anyone standing in my way in being happy and harmless and that it is my choice alone. I can feel good come what may and it is ‘me’ that is standing in the way.
This section was very elucidating:

Richard: Thus the identity in situ at the beginning of 1981 went right to the heart of the matter from the get-go. The crux of the issue is that, as each and every identity is a feeling-being at root (i.e., ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’), all identities are hereditarily programmed by blind nature to emotionally-passionally react, instantaneously, to affectively-felt and/or psychically-intuited threats to their existence because, at their very core, it is ‘being’ itself at dire risk (i.e., ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself).

(It is a genetic hangover from long-ago ancestral eras already many millions of years old when sapience emerged around 100+ millennia ago – as a boy, a youth, a young man, hunting game in the wild plus interacting daily with domesticated animals, revealed to me how they relied as much, if not more, on what was known generically as a ‘sixth sense’ as upon an acute sense of smell, alert hearing and keen eyesight in order to evade predation – which has become a liability, for modern-day humankind, rather than the asset it once was).

Now, because the pure consciousness experience (PCE) – where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is in abeyance (unlike an altered state of consciousness (ASC) where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being reigns supreme as ‘Being’ itself) for the duration – experientially demonstrates how each and every identity has no existence whatsoever in actuality then any such offensiveness (previously experienced as affective/ psychic threats to ‘my’ existence/ to ‘my’ very ‘being’) loses its existential sting/ no longer has its dire effect.

Indeed, ‘all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights’, and etcetera, soon become rather exquisite aids in ferreting-out any aspects of ‘me’ which have eluded exposure through hands-on inspection up till then (hence my parenthetical remark about the metaphorical ‘wringing it out’ ploy not being necessary, in practice, and my further above observation regarding the absorbability of offensive language/ offensive gestures being nigh-on infinite in regards quantity).

The part that I bolded sticks out to me the most and has been happening more and more.

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Chrono: So I ended up reading this correspondence [re psychic web] first but it has been very revealing to me as I was able to connect just how I am being and affecting others and how others affect me in real time. One of the things that this highlighted for me is the nature of this feeling of doubt inside me that other people know something that I don’t. But what’s actually happening is there’s a “battle” or undercurrent in what they are saying versus what they are being. This is most apparent in my relationship as I find that there are times that my partner and I “butt heads”. I feel like I am saying something reasonable or sensible but underneath I am battling in force-feeding my point to her. I am more acutely aware now of ‘me’ in everything I say or do that gets in the way of peace and harmony.

Hi Chrono,

I am pleased to hear you were able to not only become aware of physic vibes but also to notice how most of the vibes are about “a “battle” or undercurrent in what they are saying versus what they are being”. And, as you say, the same battle is happing inside yourself. Particularly in a partnership it is easy to fall into a pattern of having to be ‘right’ rather than being sensible and interested in harmony and intimacy.

Chrono: At work I was speaking with someone casually (while I was feeling good) and noticed intuitively how I had an automatic “tuning in” to the other person. How I was being pulled to them in a way and I instinctually pulled back. Which instinctive tug-of-war is apparent now in every interaction. Just yesterday I also saw actively while speaking with my partner how it was ‘me’ that was in the way when I was offering my thoughts to her. The moment I dropped below feeling good while speaking with her, I noted what it was. And in every instance it was my expectation or desire of how I wanted her to receive my thoughts. And that seeing was enough for me to get back to feeling good. It didn’t matter how she received it as long as I was really feeling happy and harmless. And it’s strange as I write that as it seems like I’m being accused of being uncaring. But I also note how completely different this is from the application of morality as even an action imbued with love is also an exertion of power. So much interaction is actually a subliminal power battle and it makes me wonder what exactly is the need for it.

Well observed. When you say “how I wanted her to receive my thoughts” you would understand that she instinctually wants the same thing – so when you, for instance, stand back a while and allow her to express her thoughts and her feelings, there is a good chance she will want to understand yours. Your fear of “being uncaring” is responsible for needing to convince her that you are not uncaring (via having your thoughts received, rather than acting in a caring way such as listening attentively, for instance).

-

Vineeto: Well, you not only identify with the ‘many’ who suffer but you also describe/ imagine a compassionate ideal how society should be organized instead, for yourself and others. As each and everyone can only change one person, themselves, the only way you can actually do something beneficial is to change yourself and become free from the human condition for everyone’s benefit.
As a suggestion – instead of only looking at the negative feelings of “resentment, indignation, obedience, etc” only, check out which ‘good’ feelings keep this resentment in place. There could be compassion, which you alleviate with virtuous high morals/ ethics, and/or the feeling of belonging to the ‘many’ who suffer. Perhaps you find some other ‘brownie points’ which presently keep you trapped.
I am reminded of the brilliant way Richard parsed compassion in two of the Audio-taped Dialogues –

Chrono: I’ve never looked at it in the way of seeing it as compassion before but it does make sense.

Before you hone into compassion as one option, did you notice that looking at the ‘good’ feelings, you might be invested in, gives a whole new perspective to your negative feelings of “resentment, indignation, obedience”? There are always two sides to one’s persistent negative feelings and mostly one’s personal investment into the hedonically pleasant side of them is overlooked.

Chrono: There are times I do imagine being a “Saviour” and how if I could just end the suffering of others I would. All the while in the back of my head, I know it to be very insincere as I would at root be the same as everyone else. Reading that audio-taped dialogue, what I realized is how any action taken by being the love or compassion is ultimately bound to fail (in effecting peace and harmony). I can see how this fits in with the psychic web as well. I am reminded of an instance where one of my friends had been sharing her emotional turmoil in regards her relationship. The entire time she was talking I was tuned into how she was feeling and as I was suggesting my advice to her, I was simultaneously and subliminally turning her ‘bad’ feeling into a ‘good’ feeling in myself and reflecting it back at her. But I found doing this kind of thing as rather exhausting.

Yes, it sounds very exhausting what you were practicing, and in the long run it is ineffective because both sympathy and compassion literally means ‘suffering together’. Did you notice that both “being a ‘Saviour’” and releasing of the (imagined or real) charge of being uncaring are part of your actions? Empathetic caring is a different matter (empathy meaning ‘in-feeling’) –

Richard: Now, as the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was in an out-from-control virtual freedom for something like five months – although not named as such back then, of course, nor thought of in those terms – I can readily report how ‘he’ was more empathetic during that period than ‘he’ ever had been in all ‘his’ 34 years of existence. So much so, in fact, that I would be inclined to characterise a near-actual caring as an acutely-empathic caring. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #near-actual-intimacy)

By the way, Richard was accused many times of not caring (FFM, Actualists Don’t Care).

Chrono: And I can’t seem to find the correspondence so I may be off in my recall but I remember reading something Richard wrote where how the help or caring being provided when one is compassionate or empathetic is the very compassion or empathy itself and not any actual help. That has stuck with me for some reason.

There is a long correspondence with Srinath about compassion, empathy burn-out and near-actual caring. (Richard, List D, Srinath2)

You might also find this excerpt informative –

RICHARD: ‘I’ cannot experience the actuality of being caring … ‘I’ can only experience the feeling of being caring. For example, the last time I visited my biological parents (1984) I was told ‘we worry about you’ … which fretful feeling of apprehension/ anxiety is, to them, being caring. They mean well, of course, as do most people.
RESPONDENT: So, all affective caring stems from separation – the need to ‘solve’ isolation and loneliness.
RICHARD: Yes, it does stem from separation – from being a separative identity – and it does have the effect of ‘solving’ (not dissolving) isolation and loneliness, albeit temporarily, but further to the point affective caring verifies, endorses, and consolidates ‘me’.
Not only am ‘I’ thus authenticated, sanctioned, and substantiated … ‘my’ presence has meaning.
*
RESPONDENT: Are you saying this [taking care of other people and things] only happens in a selfish sort of way? That all feeling caring is selfish – therefore not really caring at all?
RICHARD: I would rather say ‘self’-centred than ‘selfish’ … when someone is touched by another’s suffering, as in being moved sufficiently to stimulate caring action, it is their own suffering which is being kindled and quickened. Thus feelings are being aroused, which motivate the activity of caring, and taking care of the other works to assuage the aroused feelings (as well as working to help the other of course). Shall I put it this way? They are missing-out on experiencing the actuality of the caring action, the helpful activity itself, which is taking place.
RESPONDENT: OK, so ‘self’-centred caring (feeling caring) actually works to eliminate one’s own suffering?
RICHARD: Not ‘eliminate’ … mitigate, alleviate, lessen, diminish.
RESPONDENT: Even so, the other person suffering is getting cared for.
RICHARD: Aye … the other person does get physically taken care of but both persons miss out on the direct experience of the caring action, the helpful activity itself, which is taking place.
RESPONDENT: So properly caring for the other person is a prerequisite for ‘assuaging’ one’s own aroused feelings.
RICHARD: Yes … else there be feelings of guilt, compunction, shame, ignominy and so on.
RESPONDENT: Isn’t this actually caring about the other person?
RICHARD: The physical act of caring – the helpful activity itself – is certainly happening but actually caring (an inseparate regard) is not … there is only feeling caring (a unifying solicitude) occurring.
RESPONDENT: Admittedly, it is caring via one’s own feeling, but one actually does care about the other, since it is only through proper care of the other that one’s own feelings are ‘assuaged’.
RICHARD: No, one does not actually care about the other – one feels that one cares about the other – which is not to deny that ‘proper care’ does occur … it is remarkable what physical assistance is achieved despite all the hindrances.
RESPONDENT: I’m never quite sure how to take the word, ‘actually’ when you use it – whether it’s sometimes the normal usage – or whether it’s always the ‘actualism’ usage. For example, I am tempted to say that even when one is empathetic and works to resolve another’s suffering – then one actually cared about their suffering – about the other person – again admittedly, via one’s own suffering, yet there is caring taking place – but it’s not actual caring (in the ‘actualism’ usage).
RICHARD: When empathy works to resolve another’s suffering an empathetic caring occurs – this is not under dispute – but it is occurring as a feeling activity … in the form of affective vibes and/or psychic currents. However, it is only occurring in the real world – there is no empathetic caring here in this actual world – which is a salutary point few comprehend. (Richard, AF List, No. 27d, 6 Dec 2002).

Chrono: But back to identifying with the ‘many’ who suffer. I tune into the suffering because I feel that by tuning in I could do something about it. But now I find that the only action I can take is compassion and/or becoming a “Saviour” of some sort. Then also I must tune in (which I note that the tuning in is also being the suffering) or otherwise I am accused of being selfish. I’ve noted this before so I’m going in circles maybe. But seeing as how even the biggest action of Compassion (such as that with Buddha) has not alleviated the suffering, what other action could there be aside from compassion? What is it to be of an actual help? (link)

Now that you mentioned the “Saviour” twice, and having to avoid being accused of being selfish, uncaring, callous several times – isn’t it time to investigate the root of the problem – the worry about being selfish and uncaring – rather than activate compassion which you already know does nothing to alleviate the suffering?

The traditional cure to being selfish is to put the other before oneself – in other words, only seeing the dichotomy of being ‘selfish’ and being compassionate/unselfish as a choice. Actualism is about becoming less ‘self’-centric (less ego-centric or soul-centric), with the implicit understanding that it is the ‘self’ which is the problem, both in its selfish or its unselfish expression. For instance –

MARTIN: ‘I’ can only think in terms of ‘self’ and ‘other’, where ‘I’ am either selfish or virtuously selfless (which I experience as simply being a re-direction of that narcissistic energy). I don’t think I’ve really understood what harmless means, as I can’t help but either put ‘myself’ or ‘others’ first (as a kind of denial of ‘self’) when I think of being harmless. When I think of “for that body and every body” I can’t help thinking of and instinctually feeling “for that ‘self’ and every ‘self’”! ‘Harmlessness’ feels like something you *do* to another human being – or an effect you have on them – but do you simply mean it as an absence of malice and sorrow?
RICHARD: The word harmless, in actualism lingo, refers to the innocuity which ensues in the absence of malice (just as the word happiness refers to the felicity which ensues in the absence of sorrow).
And it is only in either a PCE (where the feeling-being is abeyant) or upon an actual freedom (where the feeling-being is extinct) that there is a total absence of malice and sorrow.
In the meanwhile, of course, both malice and sorrow (the ‘bad’ feelings) can be deliberately minimised – along with their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion (the ‘good’ feelings) – so as to consciously maximise those happy and harmless feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings) and with all of that affective energy, which was otherwise frittered away on those wasteful ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings, now freed-up and channelled into felicity and innocuity a potent combination is forged when such untrammelled conviviality operates in conjunction with a naïve sensuosity.
*
Do you see how almost all of that paragraph you wrote as a lead-up to your query about being harmless – as in “but do you simply mean it as an absence of malice and sorrow?” that is – stems from or revolves around that hoary religio-spiritual practice of putting each and every other ‘self’ before one’s own ‘self’ (a.k.a. being an unselfish ‘self’) so as to counter selfishness?
Yet the topic on the web page which Claudiu linked to (Richard, Audiotaped Dialogues, Putting the Other before Oneself). is essentially about being self-centred – with especial attention upon that term referring to each and every ‘self’ being both ego-centric and soul-centric – and not about being selfish.
As being harmless does not feature in religio-spiritual practice – peace-on-earth is not on the religio-spiritual agenda – then the sooner that nonsense about being an unselfish ‘self’ is abandoned the better.
Here is another reason why:
• [Richard]: “(…). Further to the point: what is intelligent about advocating pacifism, for example, which would not only enable the bully boys and feisty femmes to rule the world, with all which inheres in that, but would also propagate/ perpetuate their kind unto future generations per favour the dutiful martyrdom (and thus a willing removal from the human gene-pool) of those seeking instant release into the hereafter of their choice through gullible practise of same?
And just in case the latter is not clear enough: if every otherwise intelligent non-dictatorial/ non-bandit/ non-criminal/ non-rapacious/ non-pillaging type of person were to actually put into practice, as a world-wide reality, those unliveable doctrines which bodiless deities prescribe then in a remarkably short period of time all babies will be being born with bully boys and feisty femmes as parents … and with no alternate care-giver/ role-model anywhere to be found.
So much for ‘suffer the little children to come unto me’, eh?” (Richard, AF List, No. 25h, 13 May 2005).
MARTIN: What is harmlessness in an unconditional sense? Obviously it can’t be dependent on others at all.
RICHARD: As to be actually harmless – which is surely what “harmlessness in an unconditional sense” means – is to be actually free of malice (as distinct from being virtually malice-free) then any listing of what it “can’t be dependent on” is irrelevant, as all what being actually harmless is dependent upon is being actually free of malice.
Incidentally, as malice can be (and often is) self-directed – feeling-beings are notorious for self-harm – then to focus solely on others for your “Obviously…” conclusion is to be ignoring half the picture. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Martin, 2 Aug 2016).

And because this concern of yours is so persistent, there might be an additional sticking point – the issue of belonging, perhaps?

I’ll stop here and answer the rest in a separate post.

Cheers Vineeto

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Vineeto: … once you eliminate/ abandon the resentment of having to work, perhaps you start enjoying what you do for earning a living, so that enjoying and appreciating being alive is not interrupted every time you go to work.
Here is a story I found in a tool-tip on Richard’s Personal web-page – (snipped Richard’s Personal web-page, 2nd tool-tip after “and always would be, perfect”).

Chrono: I must say I had to read this three times because I did not quite “get it” but I was able to apprehend something intuitively with the following two parts that stuck out to me:

Richard: “Well, there’s two ways of getting yourself outside where all the fun is”, she remarked. “you can drag it out until lunchtime and beyond the way you’ve been going about it, all while feeling really miserable, or you can get stuck into it, have it finished in five minutes flat, and be outside in a trice!”

Richard: “Come along”, she added, briskly. “Pull the plug on that cold water and start afresh; look lively, young laddie, and you’ll be finished before you know it”.

This story is about an older feeling being giving practical advice to child how to deal with an unwanted workload, there is nothing more mysterious about it. However, a lot of adults keep dragging out unpleasant tasks instead of ‘getting to it’.

Chrono: I will also comment that one of the reasons that I resent having to work is the unpleasantness of vibes. But previously I was “helpless” so now I do not have to be.

This is an excellent discovery. Being aware of unpleasant vibes helps a lot not to be drawn in to the psychic battle and you keep on feeling good without having to respond in kind. When you inadvertently get drawn in, there is most like a ‘hook’ on your side and you can ferret out your own reason for any affective involvement.

-

Vineeto: Ah well, this comic-strip video is a very crude, and inaccurate, representation of what Richard is talking about. Richard is not talking about physical violence as presented in that video. He is referring to verbal affective (and psychic) insults, which are quite consequential in the real world to start a heavy brawl or a never-ending feud or the massive sexual molestation/ harassment (…)

Chrono: I was more likening Spongebob in that video to the figurative sponge that absorbs insults and the attacker as delivering the rudeness, insults, and slights with his punches. And further in the video, Spongebob goes about his day happily while the “punches” have no effect as he is a sponge and neither does he have to wringe it out. And in the final part, it was shown that his attacks fell flat (also found funny that this aggressor’s name was Flats). Although I am aware that it’s not saying the same thing as Richard. Or I could be off the mark even with that understanding. Either way it may be too much of a digression.

It is unfortunate that it being a moving image and not just text, it had far more impact on you than such an improbably fantasy deserves. You better cast this image of how insults are absorbed out of your mind. Fact is that once you have the intent of not responding automatically to insults and slights, you actually root out the cause for feeling insulted from your own psyche, such as a certain self-image, pride, ideas what a man should do and similar concepts.

Chrono: But to come back to the topic, I do find it interesting that giving and taking offense relates directly to vibes and psychic currents. Now that I am casting more attention on this phenomenon, I am rather astonished at how much of a role it plays in the real world. Maybe respect and disrespect as it is talked about in the real world also relates to giving and taking offense. I liken this part to “keeping your hands in your pockets”:

Richard: …absorbing all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights (no knee-jerk reactionary rudeness; no retaliatory retorts; no keeping score, even, of past incidences) … (Richard, List D, Rick, 21 Jan 2016)

Yes, it does relate. Both respect and disrespect, fear and authority is overwhelmingly established on the psychic level. As Richard says, that’s where the real powerplay takes place, especially via the stronger psychic currents which are instantaneously transmitted over long distances.

But you can step out of this tug-of-war game altogether and keep your hands in your pocket, while eliminating the reason in you which may cause you to feel insulted. Then you will no longer be a target (most of the time). That is what I mean when I say one becomes more and more anonymous.

Chrono: My question now is, if as a ‘being’, I am always involuntarily transmitting and receiving vibes and psychic currents, how can I as a ‘being’ have this affective and psychic attacking/ defending fall flat?

Simply by your intent to be happy and harmless and to keep feeling good. It’s a different value to the ‘battle’ of right and wrong, superior/ inferior others want to draw you into. In other words, you play a different game altogether.

Chrono: My current understanding is that the conceiving of being a sponge is maintaining the intent to be happy and harmless in every situation or circumstance. I would still experience those vibes and have a reaction accordingly, but I would neither repress or express them if they came up. To bring it back to more of an experiential understanding, I wrote earlier that how I was able to choose feeling good. This understanding came when I realized that there are no rules or anyone standing in my way in being happy and harmless and that it is my choice alone. I can feel good come what may and it is ‘me’ that is standing in the way.
This section was very elucidating:

Richard: Thus the identity in situ at the beginning of 1981 went right to the heart of the matter from the get-go. The crux of the issue is that, as each and every identity is a feeling-being at root (i.e., ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’), all identities are hereditarily programmed by blind nature to emotionally-passionally react, instantaneously, to affectively-felt and/or psychically-intuited threats to their existence because, at their very core, it is ‘being’ itself at dire risk (i.e., ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself).
(It is a genetic hangover from long-ago ancestral eras already many millions of years old when sapience emerged around 100+ millennia ago – as a boy, a youth, a young man, hunting game in the wild plus interacting daily with domesticated animals, revealed to me how they relied as much, if not more, on what was known generically as a ‘sixth sense’ as upon an acute sense of smell, alert hearing and keen eyesight in order to evade predation – which has become a liability, for modern-day humankind, rather than the asset it once was).
Now, because the pure consciousness experience (PCE) – where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is in abeyance (unlike an altered state of consciousness (ASC) where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being reigns supreme as ‘Being’ itself) for the duration – experientially demonstrates how each and every identity has no existence whatsoever in actuality then any such offensiveness (previously experienced as affective/ psychic threats to ‘my’ existence/ to ‘my’ very ‘being’) loses its existential sting/ no longer has its dire effect.
Indeed, ‘all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights’, and etcetera, soon become rather exquisite aids in ferreting-out any aspects of ‘me’ which have eluded exposure through hands-on inspection up till then (hence my parenthetical remark about the metaphorical ‘wringing it out’ ploy not being necessary, in practice, and my further above observation regarding the absorbability of offensive language/ offensive gestures being nigh-on infinite in regards quantity). (Richard, List D, Rick, 21 Jan 2016)

Chrono: The part that I bolded sticks out to me the most and has been happening more and more. (link)

You got it in one. It’s your experiential understanding you can “can feel good come what may and it is ‘me’ that is standing in the way”.

Brilliant.

Cheers Vineeto

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Although it was last week, I wanted to write this wonderful experience I had before I forget. I had just gone for a walk in the park and was driving back home when I noticed the sky spontaneously. The sky showed up almost as if I had never seen it before and I became aware of being alive on this planet. And I mean this planet that is happening right now that everyone is alive in. I became aware of how everything was being provided for already. This planet had set itself up in such a way that we are here alive and aware of it. There was a complete friendliness to being alive. It was all happening right now all at once. I became aware of the cars around me and it was a marvel in that it had all arranged itself in a way that people could get to where they need to go easily. The most stand out feature again of all this was that it was all happening on its own without ‘me’. It has always been like this. Then it occurred to me that I too am happening on my own. I am a part of this planet, this universe. Just as it’s all happening on its own. It is not coming from or going somewhere. And I became perplexed afterwards. ‘I’ am such a strange occurrence. Almost like someone that shouldn’t be there but am there. An entire reality ..somewhere else. What exactly sustains ‘me’?

Then after two more days, I started thinking on this experience at work again. Everything is already here so there was no need to “rush” anywhere. I sometimes have a feeling of finishing things fast or trying to “speed up” time to do the things I didn’t want to do quickly. I started experiencing it again and it led to an effortless feeling good. I am almost inclined to say that it is the source and reason for all feeling felicitous and innocuous. It led to feeling this way for almost the entire day. Then yesterday as I was looking at a wallpaper of the “Hubble Deep Field” and was reflecting again on how all of this was also happening on its own. So many myriad galaxies forming and rearranging all on their own, I noticed another stand out feature of this experiencing being not of ‘me’. This infinitude was not for any one person but for every person that is alive. Everyone is swimming in this bounty already. My partner actually saw me during this experiencing and commented at how my expression was “most contented”.

I am becoming more aware of underlying feelings that I am being that are not in alignment with what this experience shows. A common feeling that I notice now in many of the issues that I wrote about is the deep feeling of being trapped. So I instinctually and unwittingly have been chasing the ‘feeling of being free’. Which feeling of being free is always somewhere else and is being sustained by the feeling of being trapped. That is, there is a belief that freedom is somewhere and somewhen else. I’ve noticed this before when some form of feeling very good and some closeness starts to happen. I’ll start getting feelings of nostalgia and the closeness then is to be gotten somewhere else.

Hi Vineeto,

I have been reading this correspondence and reflecting. It’s clear from the real-world perspective that anything other than sanity is insanity. But to remain sane is to leave things as they are. This being the case as nowhere and nowhen has there been genuine peace. The sane thing to do also seems to be to simply pay lip service to peace and harmony and leave it as an ideal to attain but never achieve. The insidious part of sanity is the denial of what being sane entails. What is dawning on me at the moment is that to evince peace and harmony would be to leave the felt “safety” of being sane (which is felt to be insanity) behind. But I am not entirely familiar with insanity as a way of being as in (bold emphasis added):

RICHARD: No, what I mean by ‘sanity’ is the ordinary, normal, common, or everyday state of being sane, being of sound mind or in one’s right mind, or being in possession of one’s faculties, and not being in a state of mind that precludes normal perception and behaviour and which prevents ordinary social interaction (to be insane is to be suffering from psychosis, a severe mental illness, a derangement, a disorder, that involves a loss of contact with reality and is often marked by delusions, hallucinations, and altered thought processes).

I think the closest I would say is being in love or when I took a psychedelic substance once. But I can see that insanity seems to be a difference in degree to sanity rather than kind. So perhaps just as “being in love” is sane so it is when it’s taken all the way to the extreme to enlightenment. But I do see how much sanity is the problem.

Ah actually your pointing this out helped me to notice it. My fear of being uncaring is what causes a lot of the suffering for me. What I realize now as I am typing this is that underlying the thought of abandoning compassion is the feeling that I will go insane. As in become a sociopath. But I am now swinging to the opposite. So what would it mean to abandon both? I cannot imagine it.

Yes I am getting the hang of looking for the positive feelings that I am invested in any time I am persistently feeling negative.

I did connect the dots after you pointed it out. The good feelings of “being a Saviour” are created to counter the bad feelings of “the charge of being uncaring”.

To some extent, I had been lumping all feeling caring such as sympathetic caring, compassionate caring, empathetic caring, etc as the same thing, but it makes sense to note the differences and seeing how empathetic caring plays a part til the end. Also interesting seeing that correspondence of people accusing Richard of not being caring when everything he’s done has been an actual caring in action. What it highlights for me is how actual caring is not guided by what others feel. In contrast to feeling caring, which seems to be all about affirming and endorsing ‘me’ (self-centred). Which further highlights that there’s really only one action that ‘I’ can do which would be the closest to actual caring.

I can see that if I look at the root of the problem - worry about being selfish and uncaring - then the underlying feelings are I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity. And the thought goes something like, “if I lose the connection to Humanity, then how can I care for them (while also receiving the reward of good feelings for that caring)?”. I am reminded of something my dad often said to me if I were to talk of these types of matters with him. It goes something like, ‘oh you think you know better than the billions of people that are alive right now?’. Which lesson I presume he wanted to impress on me was to humble myself. And which lesson seems to have worked because in being humbled, I am staying in line and being obedient. As opposed to going out of line and lashing out in some way.

Then it is quite apt as I’ve been putting off working on my taxes for a bit too long haha. Procrastination only keeps the negative feelings at bay for a bit. And things have to get done irregardless how I feel about it. But better to feel good while doing it.

Sometimes there is a compelling nature in the drawing of these battles. There is a whole power or pull of Humanity underlying psychic battles. Framed as either right or wrong, good or bad. ‘How dare I not participate in the battle?’. Yes, the sane thing to do is to participate and take a side.

Your comment made me think about how much imagination plays a part in sustaining ‘me’. Imagining and ‘me’ seem to go hand in hand. It seems to be the very substance of ‘me’.

Yes I am noticing that it is an entirely different value. Completely different from ‘me’. I cannot keep one part of ‘me’ while trying to eliminate the other part. It’s the entirety of ‘me’. All of ‘reality’.

There was something else that I was wanting to write but I will have to get to it next time.

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Chrono: Although it was last week, I wanted to write this wonderful experience I had before I forget. I had just gone for a walk in the park and was driving back home when I noticed the sky spontaneously. The sky showed up almost as if I had never seen it before and I became aware of being alive on this planet. And I mean this planet that is happening right now that everyone is alive in. I became aware of how everything was being provided for already. This planet had set itself up in such a way that we are here alive and aware of it. There was a complete friendliness to being alive. It was all happening right now all at once. I became aware of the cars around me and it was a marvel in that it had all arranged itself in a way that people could get to where they need to go easily. The most stand out feature again of all this was that it was all happening on its own without ‘me’. It has always been like this. Then it occurred to me that I too am happening on my own. I am a part of this planet, this universe. Just as it’s all happening on its own. It is not coming from or going somewhere. And I became perplexed afterwards. ‘I’ am such a strange occurrence. Almost like someone that shouldn’t be there but am there. An entire reality … somewhere else. What exactly sustains ‘me’?
Then after two more days, I started thinking on this experience at work again. Everything is already here so there was no need to “rush” anywhere. I sometimes have a feeling of finishing things fast or trying to “speed up” time to do the things I didn’t want to do quickly. I started experiencing it again and it led to an effortless feeling good. I am almost inclined to say that it is the source and reason for all feeling felicitous and innocuous. It led to feeling this way for almost the entire day. Then yesterday as I was looking at a wallpaper of the “Hubble Deep Field” and was reflecting again on how all of this was also happening on its own. So many myriad galaxies forming and rearranging all on their own, I noticed another stand out feature of this experiencing being not of ‘me’. This infinitude was not for any one person but for every person that is alive. Everyone is swimming in this bounty already. My partner actually saw me during this experiencing and commented at how my expression was “most contented”.

I am becoming more aware of underlying feelings that I am being that are not in alignment with what this experience shows. A common feeling that I notice now in many of the issues that I wrote about is the deep feeling of being trapped. So I instinctually and unwittingly have been chasing the ‘feeling of being free’. Which feeling of being free is always somewhere else and is being sustained by the feeling of being trapped. That is, there is a belief that freedom is somewhere and somewhen else. I’ve noticed this before when some form of feeling very good and some closeness starts to happen. I’ll start getting feelings of nostalgia and the closeness then is to be gotten somewhere else.

Hi Chrono,

What splendid descriptions of “experiencing being not of ‘me’”. You had plenty of leisure to look around, so to speak, and draw some valuable conclusions, especially the observation that you have been looking for the source of feeling good – “experiencing being not of ‘me’” – somewhere other than here on earth and now, in this very moment.

And you also reported that when “some closeness starts to happen”, often a ‘good’ feeling, in this case “nostalgia” swoops in and diverts you from further exploring this “closeness”. It is exactly this fine-tuned attentiveness which allows you to detect such diversions sooner rather than later, before they gather solidity, and then get back to your original exploration.

Lastly, when you say “sustained by the feeling of being trapped” you are probably aware that you are trapping yourself and ‘I’ am playing a trick on ‘me’ pretending the trapping is happening by someone else.

Vineeto: Given you raised the topic of “on the road to being insane and abnormal” – I highly recommend Richard’s two Selected Correspondences on Sanity, Insanity and the Third Alternative (whichever excerpts tickle your fancy). This correspondence of what sanity really is was a genuine eye-opener for ‘Vineeto’, and it took ‘her’ a while to digest how much “sanity is the problem and insanity is not the solution” –

Chrono: Hi Vineeto,

I have been reading this correspondence and reflecting. It’s clear from the real-world perspective that anything other than sanity is insanity. But to remain sane is to leave things as they are. This being the case as nowhere and nowhen has there been genuine peace. The sane thing to do also seems to be to simply pay lip service to peace and harmony and leave it as an ideal to attain but never achieve. The insidious part of sanity is the denial of what being sane entails. What is dawning on me at the moment is that to evince peace and harmony would be to leave the felt “safety” of being sane (which is felt to be insanity) behind. But I am not entirely familiar with insanity as a way of being as in (bold emphasis added):

RICHARD: No, what I mean by ‘sanity’ is the ordinary, normal, common, or everyday state of being sane, being of sound mind or in one’s right mind, or being in possession of one’s faculties, and not being in a state of mind that precludes normal perception and behaviour and which prevents ordinary social interaction (to be insane is to be suffering from psychosis, a severe mental illness, a derangement, a disorder, that involves a loss of contact with reality and is often marked by delusions, hallucinations, and altered thought processes). (Richard, List B, No. 19 l, 15 Apr 2003)

I think the closest I would say is being in love or when I took a psychedelic substance once. But I can see that insanity seems to be a difference in degree to sanity rather than kind. So perhaps just as “being in love” is sane so it is when it’s taken all the way to the extreme to enlightenment. But I do see how much sanity is the problem.

It was similar for ‘Vineeto’ – to realise that being sane meant for ‘her’ accepting all the wars, murder, child abuse and general violence as being ‘normal’, i.e. sane, and therefore not safe at all. ‘She’ also had little experience of what insanity means – once a close friend had a longer lasting psychotic experience and it was quite terrifying for ‘her’. Throughout the whole time of actualism the fear of going inadvertently insane remained a prevalent threat, and ‘her’ out-from-control episode was testimony to that –

Richard: The reason why the word inadvertently is apt is because that feeling ‘being’ – just as was the case with my second wife (de jure) many years previously – was not of sufficient qualification to be the direct-route pioneer essential for global peace and harmony; indeed, this inadvertent access was of an ‘innocent abroad’ nature, to use a popular expression, and the dilettante quality of such a privileged access – despite being complete, as it was, with the most perfect bodily touching (a physical caressing of absolute perfection) – led to their worldview-shattering discovery of my actual age (worldview-shattering only for ill-informed/ ill-prepared dabblers); this worldview-shattering shock of theirs, accompanied by much wide-eyed staring and the plaintive crying-out of the words ‘Two worlds!?! Two worlds!?!’ instigated the panic-stricken dash for (presumed) safety from an (assumed to be) insane man – as concluded from an amateurish ‘split-personality mental disorder’ diagnosis (based solely upon an automorphically ascribed adult personality who was, supposedly, co-existing with a ‘left behind’ teenager) – and the consequent mutiny as others were affectively-psychically sucked, willy-nilly, into a collective panic. (Actualism, Articles, Sweetness, #magic, [R]-tooltip)

So both your assessments that “insanity seems to be a difference in degree to sanity rather than kind” and that “how much sanity is the problem” are to the point and will stand you in good stead when encountering any altered states of consciousness or atavistic fears regarding sanity and insanity such as you detailed below.

-

Vineeto: Well observed. When you say “how I wanted her to receive my thoughts” you would understand that she instinctually wants the same thing – so when you, for instance, stand back a while and allow her to express her thoughts and her feelings, there is a good chance she will want to understand yours. Your fear of “being uncaring” is responsible for needing to convince her that you are not uncaring (via having your thoughts received, rather than acting in a caring way such as listening attentively, for instance).

Chrono: Ah actually your pointing this out helped me to notice it. My fear of being uncaring is what causes a lot of the suffering for me. What I realize now as I am typing this is that underlying the thought of abandoning compassion is the feeling that I will go insane. As in become a sociopath. But I am now swinging to the opposite. So what would it mean to abandon both? I cannot imagine it.

You have no need to “imagine it” – from the experience you described when “not being ‘me’” there were no concerns of being a “sociopath”, were there? As such you know as an experiential fact that minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings, i.e. minimising ‘me’, is outside the range of sane and insane, it is being salubrious. This fact answers your question directly – “to abandon both” you become more and more salubrious.

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Chrono: I did connect the dots after you pointed it out. The good feelings of “being a Saviour” are created to counter the bad feelings of “the charge of being uncaring”.

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Vineeto: Empathetic caring is a different matter (empathy meaning ‘in-feeling’) –

Richard: Now, as the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was in an out-from-control virtual freedom for something like five months – although not named as such back then, of course, nor thought of in those terms – I can readily report how ‘he’ was more empathetic during that period than ‘he’ ever had been in all ‘his’ 34 years of existence. So much so, in fact, that I would be inclined to characterise a near-actual caring as an acutely-empathic caring. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #near-actual-intimacy)

By the way, Richard was accused many times of not caring (FFM, Actualists Don’t Care).

Chrono: To some extent, I had been lumping all feeling caring such as sympathetic caring, compassionate caring, empathetic caring, etc as the same thing, but it makes sense to note the differences and seeing how empathetic caring plays a part until the end.

For a feeling being all caring is accompanied by feelings, so a useful discernment would be to be less guided by what others expect you to do, or you yourself feel obligated to do, according to traditional beliefs and concepts, but instead be harmless, considerate and benevolent.

Chrono: Also interesting seeing that correspondence of people accusing Richard of not being caring when everything he’s done has been an actual caring in action. What it highlights for me is how actual caring is not guided by what others feel. In contrast to feeling caring, which seems to be all about affirming and endorsing ‘me’ (self-centred). Which further highlights that there’s really only one action that ‘I’ can do which would be the closest to actual caring.

Well said.

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Vineeto: Now that you mentioned the “Saviour” twice, and having to avoid being accused of being selfish, uncaring, callous several times – isn’t it time to investigate the root of the problem – the worry about being selfish and uncaring – rather than activate compassion which you already know does nothing to alleviate the suffering?
The traditional cure to being selfish is to put the other before oneself – in other words, only seeing the dichotomy of being ‘selfish’ and being compassionate/unselfish as a choice. Actualism is about becoming less ‘self’-centric (less ego-centric or soul-centric), with the implicit understanding that it is the ‘self’ which is the problem, both in its selfish or its unselfish expression. For instance – (snip quote Richard, List D, Martin, 2 Aug 2016).
And because this concern of yours is so persistent, there might be an additional sticking point – the issue of belonging, perhaps?

Chrono: I can see that if I look at the root of the problem – worry about being selfish and uncaring – then the underlying feelings are I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity. And the thought goes something like, “if I lose the connection to Humanity, then how can I care for them (while also receiving the reward of good feelings for that caring)?”. I am reminded of something my dad often said to me if I were to talk of these types of matters with him. It goes something like, ‘oh you think you know better than the billions of people that are alive right now?’. Which lesson I presume he wanted to impress on me was to humble myself. And which lesson seems to have worked because in being humbled, I am staying in line and being obedient. As opposed to going out of line and lashing out in some way.

This underlying atavistic fear of “I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity” is universal, only varying in strength and expression. Those cast out from the tribe could not survive on their own. I remember ‘Vineeto’ once had strong fears of being condemned/ burnt as a witch if anyone found out what a traitor to the human condition ‘she’ was.

‘Vineeto’: The psychic world of divine and evil, with its atavistic feelings and psychic power structures, is not to be dismissed lightly. It is not a small thing we are doing, stepping out of ancient psychic history and leaving behind at least 3,500 years of recorded superstition and belief, hope for heaven and fear of hell. I encountered fears of being burnt as a witch, expelled from the tribe or starved to death – which in not so recent history were not just psychic imagined fears. These fears all seem to be woven as an ancient memory in our brain cells and are automatically triggered the moment one dares to steps out of the tribal, religious or social group one has belonged to.
Two things always helped me to overcome those fear-attacks – one was the obvious fact that feelings are not actual. Nobody is actually persecuting me or physically threatening me. The other thing is the understanding that I am deliberately and actively dismantling my very ‘self’, all of ‘who I think and feel I am’ and of course that will rock the boat, it wouldn’t be an actual change if it didn’t! Then, the journey becomes really thrilling … (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, Gary, 3.8.2000).

Such feelings are all part and parcel of being a pioneer. However, for actualism to work you don’t have to openly rebel, or act inappropriately – you progressively cease believing in the various rules and concepts whilst paying lip service, when necessary, with the sincere intent to be more felicitous and innocuous. It’s only when there is still a belief, or doubt, on a particular subject, that the person feels compelled to publicly act out either the belief or demonstratively act out the opposite.

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Vineeto: It is unfortunate that it [Sponge-Bob] being a moving image and not just text, it had far more impact on you than such an improbably fantasy deserves. You better cast this image of how insults are absorbed out of your mind. Fact is that once you have the intent of not responding automatically to insults and slights, you actually root out the cause for feeling insulted from your own psyche, such as a certain self-image, pride, ideas what a man should do and similar concepts.

Chrono: Your comment made me think about how much imagination plays a part in sustaining ‘me’. Imagining and ‘me’ seem to go hand in hand. It seems to be the very substance of ‘me’.

Yes, when you observe your feelings closely you will see that a lot of the feeling-created scenario in your mind is interwoven with imagined thoughts or action, and the more emotional you feel, the wilder the imagination progresses. They belong together –

Richard: All imagery is a product of the imaginative/ intuitive facility contained within the psyche – the affective faculty – born of the instinctual passions. When the instinctual passions are deleted, the entire psyche itself ceases to exist … thus the imaginative apparatus also disappears in toto. (Richard, AF List No. 10, 25 May 2000).

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Chrono: My question now is, if as a ‘being’, I am always involuntarily transmitting and receiving vibes and psychic currents, how can I as a ‘being’ have this affective and psychic attacking/ defending fall flat?

Vineeto: Simply by your intent to be happy and harmless and to keep feeling good. It’s a different value to the ‘battle’ of right and wrong, superior/ inferior others want to draw you into. In other words, you play a different game altogether.

Chrono: Yes I am noticing that it is an entirely different value. Completely different from ‘me’. I cannot keep one part of ‘me’ while trying to eliminate the other part. It’s the entirety of ‘me’. All of ‘reality’. (link)

Specifically, you cannot keep the ‘good’ feelings, or what you value highly, such as pride, honour, virtue, belonging, whilst discarding the bad feelings. This does not work without suppression or hypocrisy.

And isn’t it a wonderful relief and joy when one portion of the inner push-and-pull battle has disappeared completely?

Cheers Vineeto

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Hi Vineeto,

Yes I had suspected it and this experiencing showed clearly that there is a benevolence already occurring right here. It also subsequently highlighted many things. That in ‘my’ most fundamental drive to survive, ‘I’ can only imagine that this source of feeling good be somewhere else (among other things). I can see the significance and the wonderful occurrence of being alive right now. It makes me wonder what exactly is at stake here. And I had been letting that question simmer. But because of this it makes perfect sense to commit to feeling good come what may. I have been able to do it in a very easy way now. And every time I do not feel good, it slowly highlights what is at stake. And every time I do not feel good, it’s a simple asking of “would I really rather feel this than feel good?”. The quality of it is much better than ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings.

I’ve noticed it more and more in action and have been easily able to get back on track. In committing to feeling good right now, I am also willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams. And any occurrence of nostalgia or some such bittersweet feelings is a hope for that feeling good somewhere and somewhen else. I can see the seductive nature of this chimera.

The feeling of being trapped seems to be from not actively endorsing to being alive right now. It’s a sort of “holding back”. And the moment I actively endorse to being alive, the feeling good becomes more dynamic and more sensuous. It also showed why I do feel trapped. I secretly believe that I can escape death. It sounds odd to say but from ‘my’ perspective it feels like that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now is also to embrace death. This way I am enjoying AND appreciating being alive.

Yes this experience is my current benchmark that I’ve been utilizing. Where there is nothing to “keep in check”. So there’s no need for control and that perhaps is hard to digest. That ‘I’ am not needed.

I was reading these questions and answers from Dona and Alan and there Geoffrey asks:

Geoffrey: Is this the ‘indirect’ connection between the commitment to feeling good and actual freedom: that this commitment to be honoured requires the examination of beliefs, that this examination constitutes a ‘whittling away’ at the identity, and that this ‘whittling away’, making the identity ‘insubstantial’, opens the possibility of self-immolation?

Dona: Richard got what you’re saying, but still says that you feel good because it feels good. There is no connection (direct or indirect) with feeling good and becoming actually Free.

Whittling away at beliefs does make the social identity “smaller”, but does NOT get rid of (or lessen) feelings. It might eliminate some of the “triggers”, but not the feelings themselves. Only becoming Actually Free does that.

I am following the same train of thought that he is asking but it doesn’t seem like it was quite answered. I get the impression based on those answers that even a person feeling bad could just become actually free. Are those answers correct? Or perhaps a person that is feeling good is more likely to make the decision to become free? With that said, it does certainly make sense to feel good irregardless.

Also very funny as I am asking in that correspondence that many years ago and expressing the same fears of going insane. Looks like I am exactly the same step away as I was then. Well, aside from feeling way better than I was then. But I am stunned at how long it has been.

There were no concerns then. I realize that it seems like a long leap from here to there because of my loyalty to Humanity.

In keeping with seeing what is at stake, I see the nature of ‘my’ connection to Humanity is composed of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. I was speaking with my dad again yesterday and the conversation veered toward human nature. He was of the opinion that you cannot change human nature and that to do so would ensure that you could not function in society (citing the corporate politics that he has to play in his job). But he also agreed that “the bombs dropping” was sanity in action and that there can never be any solution. He seemed to intuitively understand what the nature of what I was saying was as he said if I were to become free from human nature then I would be found out and be tortured. It really felt like I was talking to the embodiment of Humanity. Subsequently, I was very appalled. I realized that there was no saving Humanity. Humanity wants to remain as it is and maintain the status quo. And by remaining a denizen, I am also one of its embodiments.

Yes, becoming aware of what is actually happening underneath has been an enormous help in declining these battles. Before I didn’t understand exactly what was happening so it would amount to suppressing or pretending.

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Hi Chrono,

Even though it looks as if you are inching your way forward in answering your question “what is at stake” you gather the experiential answer each time you pose this question. And because you have followed your common sense that committing “to feeling good come what may” makes perfect sense, to abandon everything that stands in the way of feeling good also makes perfect sense.

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Vineeto: And you also reported that when “some closeness starts to happen”, often a ‘good’ feeling, in this case “nostalgia” swoops in and diverts you from further exploring this “closeness”. It is exactly this fine-tuned attentiveness which allows you to detect such diversions sooner rather than later, before they gather solidity, and then get back to your original exploration.

Chrono: I’ve noticed it more and more in action and have been easily able to get back on track. In committing to feeling good right now, I am also willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams. And any occurrence of nostalgia or some such bittersweet feelings is a hope for that feeling good somewhere and somewhen else. I can see the seductive nature of this chimera.

It’s a pleasure to read of your success – and all because your promise to yourself borne of common sense “to feeling good come what may”. Then everything else is of less importance and willingly given up.

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Vineeto: Lastly, when you say “sustained by the feeling of being trapped” you are probably aware that you are trapping yourself and ‘I’ am playing a trick on ‘me’ pretending the trapping is happening by someone else.

Chrono: The feeling of being trapped seems to be from not actively endorsing to being alive right now. It’s a sort of “holding back”. And the moment I actively endorse to being alive, the feeling good becomes more dynamic and more sensuous.

Exactly. Feeling being trapped is the passive approach, stemming from convinced that things in life happen to you as the hapless non-involved victim, mostly borne of the resentment of being here, as in “life is the pits and then you die”. Once you “actively endorse” being alive you are deliberately and joyously participate being alive and able to evoke your destiny. As it turns out you contemplated that very subject in your next paragraph.

Chrono: It also showed why I do feel trapped. I secretly believe that I can escape death. It sounds odd to say but from ‘my’ perspective it feels like that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now is also to embrace death. This way I am enjoying AND appreciating being alive.

Do I understand you correctly – that you feel trapped because, even though you “secretly believe” you can escape death, you also know “that to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now” you need to abandon this secret belief and instead embrace the fact that you are mortal?

Above you wrote “I am willing to give up all of ‘my’ dreams” – is one of the dreams being able to “escape death”? The spiritual dream of immortality via an Altered State of Consciousness?

If that is what you are saying you have certainly hit the nail of the head – coming down to earth from lofty heights, embracing the very physicality of being alive, and as such also your mortality, is how you are able “to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now”.

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Vineeto: You have no need to “imagine it” – from the experience you described when “not being ‘me’” there were no concerns of being a “sociopath”, were there? As such you know as an experiential fact that minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings, i.e. minimising ‘me’, is outside the range of sane and insane, it is being salubrious. This fact answers your question directly – “to abandon both” you become more and more salubrious.

Chrono: Yes this experience is my current benchmark that I’ve been utilizing. Where there is nothing to “keep in check”. So there’s no need for control and that perhaps is hard to digest. That ‘I’ am not needed.

Indeed. It may take some time to accept and get used to this fact ‘I’ am redundant.

Chrono: I was reading these questions and answers from Dona and Alan and there Geoffrey asks:

Geoffrey: Is this the ‘indirect’ connection between the commitment to feeling good and actual freedom: that this commitment to be honoured requires the examination of beliefs, that this examination constitutes a ‘whittling away’ at the identity, and that this ‘whittling away’, making the identity ‘insubstantial’, opens the possibility of self-immolation?
Dona: Richard got what you’re saying, but still says that you feel good because it feels good. There is no connection (direct or indirect) with feeling good and becoming actually Free.
Whittling away at beliefs does make the social identity “smaller”, but does NOT get rid of (or lessen) feelings. It might eliminate some of the “triggers”, but not the feelings themselves. Only becoming Actually Free does that. (link)

I am following the same train of thought that he is asking but it doesn’t seem like it was quite answered. I get the impression based on those answers that even a person feeling bad could just become actually free. Are those answers correct? Or perhaps a person that is feeling good is more likely to make the decision to become free? With that said, it does certainly make sense to feel good irregardless.

The next paragraph from Alan might be illuminating –

Alan: LOL. They both thought you are still trying to over complicate things. Instead of a direct connection you are now trying to find an indirect connection. There is no connection – direct or indirect. As has been reported above it is the ‘social identity’ which can be rendered less substantial, by the investigation and elimination of (mainly) beliefs and especially any ‘Truths’. (link)

And here is why there cannot ever be a connection, direct or indirect or implied –

Richard: Okay … this is important, vital, pivotal: ‘I’, the thinker, know that ‘I’ cannot do it … ‘I’ cannot disappear ‘myself’. Only the ‘utter fullness’ can, and the ‘utter fullness’ is ‘calling one’, each moment again, and it is only when ‘I’ fully comprehend – totally, completely, fundamentally – that to be living this ‘utter fullness’ is to be living ‘my’ destiny will one be able ‘to answer that call’. (> > Richard, List B, No 25f, 18 June 2000).

If there were a connection, then ‘I’ would not have to die. To put it differently – ‘my’ logical thinking to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ (or rather from ‘there’ to here) cannot conceive “that ‘I’ cannot do it” and that ‘I’ have to disappear for the actual world to become apparent. In fact it is impossible for ‘me’, by ‘my’ very nature, to conceive that ‘I’ will ever disappear. It can only be understood experientially in a PCE or moments of apperception – and then it is perfectly obvious.

Chrono: Also very funny as I am asking in that correspondence that many years ago and expressing the same fears of going insane. Looks like I am exactly the same step away as I was then. Well, aside from feeling way better than I was then. But I am stunned at how long it has been.

Ha, can you see how you are depreciating the fact that you are “feeling way better than I was then” as in putting it to one side (“aside from”) while berating yourself “how long it has been”?

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Vineeto: You have no need to “imagine it” – from the experience you described when “not being ‘me’” there were no concerns of being a “sociopath”, were there? As such you know as an experiential fact that minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings, i.e. minimising ‘me’, is outside the range of sane and insane, it is being salubrious. This fact answers your question directly – “to abandon both” you become more and more salubrious.

Chrono: There were no concerns then. I realize that it seems like a long leap from here to there because of my loyalty to Humanity.

You may find this informative –

Richard: […] The peculiar aspect of this ‘disguised slavery’ system is, then, the vacuity of the peasant-mentality which dumbly perpetuates it.
In a nutshell: what the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body circa 1978-79 began calling a ‘peasant mentality’ was exemplified by that vast majority of peoples not only just dumbly accepting and perpetuating this undeniably-rigged socio-economic system (known to hipsters as ‘The Establishment’) as being ‘just the way it is’ but being fiercely loyal to it, into the bargain, and defensive of it amongst themselves (to the point of defending it unto death, even, in shooting wars against other peasants similarly defending their elite few).
I kid you not; on many an occasion back then, when that identity would share ‘his’ insights with ‘his’ fellow-peasants, they would object most strenuously – especially the salaried peasants (those ‘white-collar workers’ who fondly imagined themselves to be a cut above peasant-hood) – and would vigorously defend the status-quo in a manner not all that dissimilar to what is known in psychological/ psychiatric terms as ‘capture-bonding’ (popularly known as ‘The Stockholm Syndrome’, when localised, and ‘The Oslo Syndrome’, when communalised).
Interestingly enough, some symptoms of ‘capture-bonding’ have been identified, in regards to criminal hostage situations, prisoners of war/ concentration camp internees, controlling/ intimidating relationships (battered wives/ hen-pecked husbands/ abused children), cult members, incest victims, and the like, […]
The hallmark of ‘peasant-mentality’ is, in a word, loyalty. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu3, 28 May 2015).

Hence your “loyalty to Humanity” has various aspects of the social identity/ peasant mentality, which you can each recognize, understand and abandon whenever they stand in the way of enjoying and appreciating being here.

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Vineeto: For a feeling being all caring is accompanied by feelings, so a useful discernment would be to be less guided by what others expect you to do, or you yourself feel obligated to do, according to traditional beliefs and concepts, but instead be harmless, considerate and benevolent (…)
This underlying atavistic fear of “I will go insane and simultaneously lose all connection to Humanity” is universal, only varying in strength and expression. Those cast out from the tribe could not survive on their own. I remember ‘Vineeto’ once had strong fears of being condemned/ burnt as a witch if anyone found out what a traitor to the human condition ‘she’ was.

Chrono: In keeping with seeing what is at stake, I see the nature of ‘my’ connection to Humanity is composed of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. I was speaking with my dad again yesterday and the conversation veered toward human nature. He was of the opinion that you cannot change human nature and that to do so would ensure that you could not function in society (citing the corporate politics that he has to play in his job). But he also agreed that “the bombs dropping” was sanity in action and that there can never be any solution. He seemed to intuitively understand what the nature of what I was saying was as he said if I were to become free from human nature then I would be found out and be tortured. It really felt like I was talking to the embodiment of Humanity. Subsequently, I was very appalled. I realized that there was no saving Humanity. Humanity wants to remain as it is and maintain the status quo. And by remaining a denizen, I am also one of its embodiments.

I understand you were appalled by realizing how remaining a “denizen” you are actively supporting ‘Humanity’, and it is no wonder ‘I’ come up with the most potent and threatening counter-argument to leaving humanity – that you will go insane. But as you more and more realise, the alternative to sanity is not insanity but the salubriousness of being less and less of ‘me’, in other words, being felicitous and innocuous and appreciative of being alive. When you understand this, then chipping away at your loyalty to humanity is no longer such a scary big deal.

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Vineeto: And isn’t it a wonderful relief and joy when one portion of the inner push-and-pull battle has disappeared completely?

Chrono: Yes, becoming aware of what is actually happening underneath has been an enormous help in declining these battles. Before I didn’t understand exactly what was happening so it would amount to suppressing or pretending. (link)

Above you said “I am stunned at how long it has been” – to thoroughly and experientially understand how the human psyche works is a gradual process, and you are daily reaping the rewards.

Cheers Vineeto

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I am not savvy enough with my iPad to put this in my journal, but this is such a significant thing for me to embrace. It’s been in the forefront of this whole endeavour, with a powerful first hand, everyday experience of why the spiritual path is so addictive to the majority of the world.

Accepting death as final, the end, oblivion, IS accepting this is the only moment of being alive.

Scientifically, we have between 2 and 20 seconds from the last time our heart beats before our brain runs out of oxygen, we have a few minutes at most before there is no chance of reviving us.

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Vineeto to Chrono: If that is what you are saying you have certainly hit the nail of the head – coming down to earth from lofty heights, embracing the very physicality of being alive, and as such also your mortality, is how you are able “to unreservedly say yes to being alive right now”.

Andrew: I am not savvy enough with my iPad to put this in my journal, but this is such a significant thing for me to embrace. It’s been in the forefront of this whole endeavour, with a powerful first hand, everyday experience of why the spiritual path is so addictive to the majority of the world.
Accepting death as final, the end, oblivion, IS accepting this is the only moment of being alive.
Scientifically, we have between 2 and 20 seconds from the last time our heart beats before our brain runs out of oxygen, we have a few minutes at most before there is no chance of reviving us. (link)

Hi Andrew,

I am pleased to read you say that. It is indeed vital to fully accept that I am mortal and that nothing will survive physical death.

Richard: It is a fact that I, as this body, am mortal. As such, I will die in due course … this heart will stop beating, these lungs will cease breathing, this brain will quit thinking. The flesh will decompose, if buried, or will be dispersed, if burnt, as smoke and ash. There could be nothing more final, more conclusive, more complete, of an ending to me than this. (…)
Human beings have various attitudes towards death. As far as it has been able to be ascertained, humans are the only creatures that are aware of their own demise. The ability to reflect upon one’s own death has been a source of inspiration to philosophers, theologians and their ilk down through the ages. To other people, death is a subject to be avoided, to be not thought about; it is a taboo topic for dinner-table conversation. It is not until a close friend or relative dies that they are brought face-to-face with their own mortality … and they usually endeavour to ‘get over it’ as soon as possible. A sure way to be told that one is morbid is to talk about death: to invoke an uneasy reaction, one needs only to ask if they have ever considered the ramifications of death; of no longer being alive; of not being a ‘human’; of not ‘being’ at all. Nevertheless, why avoid the subject? Surely it is of the utmost importance to explore all the unknown aspects of being a ‘human’ – especially those that bring trepidation – for therein lie the causes for not only one’s uneasiness about life, but all the problems that beset ‘humanity’. Anything that remains hidden will continue to influence one’s life in an unconscious way, continuously plaguing one’s every moment of being alive and affecting one’s state of well-being.
Death is viewed by most as a calamity, a tragedy. ‘I’, being non-material, cannot accept, let alone embrace, that which is physical, that which is actual. Mortality is a physical phenomenon; it is a fact to be met and understood. To act otherwise is a denial of the actual. This universe was amazingly able to give birth to me, it is marvellously capable of bearing me and will, eventually, wondrously manage to end me. This is the physical ‘scheme of things’ in this, the only universe there is … and this universe is so enormous in its scope, so grand in its order, so exquisite in its form, that it is sheer vanity and utter insolence to presume that birth and death is somehow ‘wrong’. With an attitude like that, no wonder people hate having to be here on earth. It is no wonder that they feel that they have to ‘get on with life’ and ‘make the best of things’ whilst waiting for death to release them. It is such a shame that billions of human beings are missing out on the unadulterated perfection of being fully alive; missing out on rejoicing in being here now; missing out on deriving immense pleasure at living this moment, here on earth.
There seems to be a general consensus among human beings that death is a mystery that one cannot penetrate, and that the ‘Mystery of Life’ will be revealed only after death. There, most say, lies ‘Peace and Ultimate Fulfilment’ … yet there is nowhere else but here and there is no time but now. Anything else than here at this place in infinite space – now at this moment in eternal time – exists only in an enthusiastic imagination … enthused by ‘me’, by ‘being’ itself. Any fear of the death of ‘me’ is an irrational reaction to the demise of an apparently enduring psychological and/or psychic entity. The ending of ‘me’ (the ‘death’ of ‘me’) is an autological non-event; ‘I’ do not actually exist in the first place. There is no actual ‘me’ to either ‘die’ or to have ‘Eternal Life’.
It all appears to be an exercise in futility to think about and feel into what is entailed in physical death (which is the guaranteed end of ‘being’) because the end of ‘being’, at physical death, can only ever be a speculation; it has to be experienced to know it. Just like one cannot know the taste of something until one eats it … so too is it with death as the end of ‘being’. Yet to wait for death will be leaving it too late to find out what it is to not ‘be’ … as death is oblivion of consciousness there will be no awareness of not ‘being’. The question is: can one experience the end of ‘being’ before this body dies and therefore penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’, in full awareness, and find that Ultimate Fulfilment … here on earth? [Emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 7, 25 Aug 1999)

Here is another way of Richard explaining why all metaphysical dreams of living forever have no basis in fact –

Respondent: Richard, you say [quote] ‘If it were not for physical death one could not be happy … let alone harmless’ [endquote]. How is that possible?
Richard: I have sometimes asked peoples of a ‘Jehovah’s Witness’ persuasion, when they come knocking on my door and showing me paintings of their imaginary paradise on earth after their god has annihilated 5,993,000,000 of the 6,000,000,000 human beings currently alive by treading them in a winepress, whether they have ever considered what it would be like in fact, rather than fancy, to be the flesh and blood body they are for ever and a day (locked into being a specific body-type, a female, for instance, endlessly giving birth to baby after baby for all eternity).
Which means for billions upon billions of years … and still more billions to come.
Respondent: I can understand that being locked as ‘identity’ (with all the sorrow and malice implied) for eternity as not desirable … but I don’t quite understand that the scenario to be the same for a person who is actually free from the human condition.
Richard: Only an identity, being forever locked-out of actuality, desires immortality … the very stuff of a flesh and blood body, being the same-same stuff as the stuff of the universe, is as old as the universe (which is eternal).
*
Respondent: How does it have anything to do with being happy and harmless?
Richard: It basically has to do with endurance and, therefore, seriousness.
Respondent: Can you please elaborate on this point?
Richard: Sure … this planet, indeed the entire solar system, is going to cease to exist in its current form about 4.5 billion years from now (or some-such figure). All these words – yours, mine, and others (all the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, scholarly tomes and so on) – will perish and all the monuments, all the statues, all the tombstones, all the sacred sites, all the carefully conserved/ carefully restored memorabilia, will vanish as if they had never existed … nothing will remain of any human endeavour (including yours truly).
Nothing at all … nil, zero, zilch.
Which means that nothing really matters in the long-term and, as nothing actually is of enduring importance (in this ultimate sense), it means that life can in no way be a serious business. [Emphases added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 66, 26 May 2005a)

Now when you combine this awareness of death being the end and that “nothing actually is of enduring importance” with the fact that “this is the only moment of being alive”, the only moment you can ever actively experience, then something profound can happen. You can allow yourself to slip out of your normal way of thinking and feeling, and experience the actual world as it is, for the first time.

P.S.: Don’t cut it short or dismiss this due to your conditioning to fail (link) – this is your journey to your destiny (peace on earth).

Cheers Vineeto

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Thanks Vineeto!

I have been contemplating something along these lines in my thoughts about alcohol and see that the seriousness talked about in Richard’s conversation with “Respondent”, is just about as good a description of my MO as ever.

That is that my body is “all for” living. It doesn’t need me at all. Like any animal without a ‘me’ . Like a jellyfish for example that are washed up on the river’s edge. Those cells are not serious about anything at all! They are spawned, do what jellyfish cells do, and at some point end.

Just like every cell in my body. Whether it’s a human cell, or the other 50% of non-human cells, they are all just doing “cell things”.

I really enjoy this thought. I started doing some more exercise during the day, and “leaning into” the feeling. It’s not pleasant, but it’s what cells like! I can sense it that my body isn’t as attached to pleasure as I am. Muscle cells reward me with endorphins when they get to lift heavy things!

My focus has been to understand how to work with what I have right now. In all aspects. Rather than allowing the “seriousness “. That’s good to be reminded of, as it was what I was seeing in myself. Good to have a name for it.

Thanks for the links.

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Hi Andrew,

Here is what Richard is saying in the above quote and how you described your own MO regarding alcohol –

Richard: Which means that nothing really matters in the long-term and, as nothing actually is of enduring importance (in this ultimate sense), it means that life can in no way be a serious business. (Richard, AF List, No. 66, 26 May 2005a).

Andrew: Alcohol; Softer me. Free association thoughts. Less social anxiety. Less internal critic. Something other than “Me” in control. Physical effects feel comforting. (…) There may be a natural hedonism available in leaning into that. (link)

What alcohol does, according to your description, it softens the impact of the social identity – the critic, the one who believes he has to fail, the one who is anxious … and while those instinctual passions are normally curbed by the social identity they get more of a free reign under the influence of alcohol. This is not “something other than “Me” in control” – what you experience are the less socially-controlled instinctual passions, which are nevertheless “Me” in control.

Your description of using alcohol to lessen the impact of your social control is the very reason why Richard gave this warning, repeatedly –

Richard: Warning: It is an utterly fundamental proviso that pure intent [derived from the purity of the PCE] be dedicatorily in place – as an overriding/ overarching life-devotional goal which takes absolute precedence over all else – before any such whittling away of the otherwise essential societal/ cultural conditioning be undertaken. (Library, Topics, Social Identity, #Warning)

And:

Richard: “(…) the social identity cannot safely be whittled away unless there be the pure intent to be happy and harmless, each moment again, born of the PCE, because this socialised conscience, the moral/ethical and principled entity with its inculcated societal knowledge of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (cultural values), has been implanted for a very good reason.
It is there to control the wayward self which lurks within the human breast … which is why dedication to peace-on-earth is paramount.” [Emphases added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 25b, 24 Jun 2003)

What you call “natural hedonism” is one of the ‘good’, hedonically pleasant, feelings, which you confuse with being happy and harmless – it is not. Your shortcut of using a mind-altering drug (alcohol) to temporarily escape the socially conditioned critic is understandable but regarding actualism is leading you into a blind alley. For clarification and further information, I recommend Richard, Abditorium, Hedonic Tone.

We corresponded about the difference of feeling good and ‘good’ feelings before (12 Feb 2026) –

Richard: The words ‘good feelings’ – which refer to the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) – and the words ‘bad feelings’ – which refer to the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – are but a way of describing the effect of those feelings both on oneself and others.
Sometimes they are called the positive and negative feelings. (Richard, AF List, No. 44e, 1 Oct 2003a).

And to make the difference clear between feeling good and ‘good’ feelings –

Jonathan: [Richard]: What actualism – the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom – is on about is a ‘virtual freedom’ (which is not to be confused with cyber-space’s ‘virtual reality’) wherein the ‘good’ feelings – the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) are minimised along with the ‘bad’ feelings – the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) – so that one is free to feel good, feel happy and feel perfect for 99% of the time. I make this very clear in my writing: [snip]. What I am reading here is, ‘good feelings along with bad feelings are minimized so that one is free to feel good feelings and thereby make a PCE more likely. Could you clarify?
Richard: Sure … the [quote] ‘good’ [endquote] feelings mentioned are the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) and the [quote] ‘bad’ [endquote] feelings mentioned are the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) whereas feeling good/ feeling happy/ feeling perfect are the felicitous and innocuous feelings (those that are delightful and harmonious).
Thus what you are reading – ‘good feelings along with bad feelings are minimised so that one is free to feel good feelings and thereby make a PCE more likely’ – would look something like this when spelled-out in full:
• [example only]: ‘the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting), along with the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful), are minimised so that one is free to feel the felicitous and innocuous feelings (those that are delightful and harmonious) and thereby make a pure consciousness experience (PCE) more likely’. [end example].*
(Richard, AF List, Jonathan, 4 Jan 2006).*

Andrew: That is that my body is “all for” living. It doesn’t need me at all. Like any animal without a ‘me’. Like a jellyfish for example that are washed up on the river’s edge. Those cells are not serious about anything at all! They are spawned, do what jellyfish cells do, and at some point end.
Just like every cell in my body. Whether it’s a human cell, or the other 50% of non-human cells, they are all just doing “cell things”.
I really enjoy this thought. I started doing some more exercise during the day, and “leaning into” the feeling. It’s not pleasant, but it’s what cells like! I can sense it that my body isn’t as attached to pleasure as I am. Muscle cells reward me with endorphins when they get to lift heavy things!
My focus has been to understand how to work with what I have right now. In all aspects. Rather than allowing the “seriousness”. That’s good to be reminded of, as it was what I was seeing in myself. Good to have a name for it.

The instinctual passions are also called animal instinctual passions – because all animals are endowed with instinctual programming/ passions to ensure their survival and species proliferation – even jellyfish operate by the principle of attraction/ repulsion, the most primitive instinctual behaviour. Jellyfish are not free from the instinctive/ instinctual programming or behaviour, they are not felicitous either, let alone harmless. They operate under the same principle as all instinctive/ instinctual programmed creatures – what can I eat, what can eat me?

If you choose to find relief in regressing to thoughtless, purely instinctive/ instinctual animal status that is your prerogative but please don’t claim you were thus inspired by actualist writings.

I can only recommend finding your initial sincere intent to feel good via the actualism method as you summarized it only recently –

Andrew: “Minimising the malice and sorrow, while maximising the felicity and innocuous, IS minimising the entire ‘self’ automatically” (19 Mar 2026)

… whereby minimising malice and sorrow means minimising both ‘good’ and bad feelings via attentiveness to how you feel and then, by recognizing that you are your feelings, choosing to feel good. It might require some firm common-sense to root out long-term acquired bad habits or longstanding training in feeling bad.

Andrew: Thanks for the links. (link)

Perhaps on sober re-reading you gain some better understanding and benefit.

Cheers Vineeto

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Andrew
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Hi Vineeto,

Do you realise that you are alive because over half the cells in your body are not human but are rather bacteria in your gut that run on the same “animal instinctual programming”?

Also, your last sentence is strange.. “What can I eat, what can eat me” is very sensible to have the answer to.

Who is deciding “what you can eat” if not you?

This all sounds like you have some research into the psychic world of organisms like jellyfish, (and their kind, such as other kinds of simple organisms). Maybe you have?

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Oh, it’s ok. Turns out some dead guy said that they are animals, but they (bacteria) are no longer considered animals. So my point doesn’t stand.

In 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into the multicellular Metazoa (now synonymous with Animalia) and the Protozoa, single-celled organisms no longer considered animals.

Seriously though, I have swam with these jellyfish as a kid, threw a couple back in from the shallow water the other day, and I have never heard them say anything malicious or sorrowful.

I would contend that all the cells that evolved to eventually create “multicellular” animals like us, do not have a malicious or sorrowful “instinctual passion “ , or anything close to it.

Reacting and otherwise knowing what you can and can’t eat, and what may want to eat you is the basis of being alive.

Have you eaten chicken lately? Did you kill it yourself? Do you eat food at all?

These scientific type statements on the AFT do my head in; a jellyfish is closer to a tree or mushroom that to me.

My point was that the cells in my body live without ‘my’ input. Indeed, I am alive often despite ‘my’ input. That was the point. ‘I’ am redundant to the survival of my cells. Just as that already selfless jellyfish, and that tree, and most creatures, apart from a few higher mammals, which display malice and sorrow.

Animal - Wikipedia.

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Regarding “hedonism “ I was using it in the way Peter and Richard used it, as in straight colloquial usage of pleasure. I would say that the contradiction of the definition you linked and the many colloquial uses on the AFT leave a large confusion on exactly what was being encouraged when sex is endorsed as something to be explored. In everyday speech, hedonism refers to chasing pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Simple as that.

How was that was read as me seeking emotional “pleasure “ in physical pleasure or pain, I can sorta see now that I am writing it, because I did say it. That I was leaning into uncomfortable things, including exercise.

For context, the thought was in the middle of considering Kuba’s recent reference to sex, and the thoughts were “well, that ain’t happening any day soon, but I wonder if lifting these weights could feel good?”

.

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Agreed, and understood. I should say what I earlier described as an experiencing a version of me that I wish I was all the time. Less inhibition, more honesty.

I don’t suddenly become a monster running around raping and pillaging. That was my ancestors. Easy mistake to make, I do have blue eyes and dupuytrens contracture. (Vikings disease).

Being soft and honest is just so much nicer than the internal tyranny than is my usual ‘me’.