Ed: When you told me that I’m more than just a feeler, I’m also a thinker and senser, it caused me to take note of thought and how it had been crippled by self-imposed boundaries. I gave myself full permission to use it. (Again, with an actualist’s intent.)
Vineeto: When I looked through our previous correspondences, I am not clear what you are referring to? I found this quote containing the words “feeler” and “thinker” from 7 April 2025 (link) while the word “senser” was nowhere to be found –
Ed: Apologies to cause the needless looking: You said this to me on the last day I visited as I was leaving. Perhaps not best to recount an exchange that cannot be referenced so please let me know if this is a misrepresentation and I can amend my post.
Hi Ed,
Thank you for a bit more context. What I might have said is that when there are no feelings or emotions occurring then thoughts are clearer and sensuousness can come to the fore – and I could have phrased it badly in trying to compact it into one sentence. In any case, I recommend taking your information regarding actualism from the written word rather than obscure or even distorted memories from what was said several years ago.
Here I came across a short and brilliantly explanatory quote from Richard which gives you a guide when and why you would want to minimise both the ‘bad’ feelings as well as the ‘good’ feelings without turning the very method into an identity of its own –
Richard: Look, the whole point of minimising both the malicious/ sorrowful feelings (the ‘bad’ feelings) and their antidotal loving/ compassionate feelings (the ‘good’ feelings) whilst maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings) is to make for a potent combination when this untrammelled conviviality operates in conjunction with a naïve sensuosity – whereby one is both likeable and liking – such that the benevolence and benignity of pure intent may increasingly become dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone … to wit: for the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent, in this lifetime, as this flesh-and-blood body. [Emphases added]. (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 Mar 2016)
You can stick it on your fridge, if you like, to remind you that purposelessly ruminating about this or that feeling for the sake of it is a waste of time when you could be maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings instead.
-
Vineeto: Remember, that one’s thinking is both polluted and crippled by one’s feelings, and as such it is far more productive to first get back to feeling good so that thinking does not merely revolve around those feelings, “fantasies or fears”. You might find that when you are feeling good, and more so when you enjoy and appreciate being alive, there are no fantasies at all to distract you from being here.
Ed: Yes, when feeling good fantasies or fears (fearful fantasies) do not arise. As far as I can tell such imaginations are triggered by a good feeling or a bad feeling. Once I become aware that I’ve wandered off into imagination, I’ve noticed I can interrupt it with some thinking about what it is that I am presently involved in doing – i.e. imagining being somewhere/ somewhen else. “Ah, I’m thinking about such-and-such fantasy again…” “Where did this train of thought begin / what feeling is involved/ what triggered off that feeling?” “This is similar to this other fantasy/fear I recall, I notice a pattern.” “Is this how I want to spend my time when I could be feeling good or perhaps even having a PCE instead?”
Usually these events occur when I’m alone with nothing in particular to do. So if I’m going to think about anything, why not think about what’s behind it all and where/when it all started? I’ll do this for a bit and then move onto whatever it is that I am already doing anyway. Then later in the day I think about the event again in a similar fashion.
There was one that occurred today and it started due to a good feeling triggered upon receiving some news. I was swept away for approximately 3-5 minutes until I noticed what I was doing and that feeling good had be usurped by good feelings of mild euphoria. I suppose when you notice such a thing, how could you not think about it?
The question is how you think about it. Is it in a ruminating way (see Kuba’s post) or is it with the specific purpose to find out how you tick so that you can see/understand the concept/ belief/ desire which caused the euphoria, and recognize the silliness of it for the purpose of declining it next time it happens in a similar situation. Otherwise your ‘thinking about it’ is another form of ‘self’-centric absorption.
-
Vineeto: and more so when you enjoy and appreciate being alive…
Ed: I think I am having a fine time at feeling good/ getting back to feeling good, but I could be doing better in regards to up leveling it to enjoying and appreciating being alive. I haven’t quite cracked the code to be able to access that reliably. Currently, enjoying and appreciating being alive is an exception as opposed to the norm.
When I think back on today, there were a handful of interruptions to feeling good, with one major 5-20 minute period into feeling bad. So there is obviously room to raise the bar and extend the periods that I am capable of feeling good. I’ll investigate these interruptions and what caused them, where I was, etc. Many were small things but the 5-20 minute period has to do with a persistent pattern of worrying / feeling overwhelmed by future tasks. (link)
Unless you remove the cause of what interrupted your feeling good period by dissolving the accompanying concept/ pattern of the diminishment of it, it will happen again and again. To give you a simile: a fuse blows in your electric system and stops those appliances to work which are on the same circuit. You replace the fuse and they work again. But unless you find out which particular appliance has the electric fault which caused the fuse to blow in the first place, and then properly fix that (or remove it whatever the case may be), the fuse will blow again the next time you use the faulty appliance.
Actualism is down-to-earth, very practical, in the same way.
Cheers Vineeto