Felix's Diary

[Felix]

Hello to you both, lovely to hear from you. @Kub933 your writing has been excellent lately - I’m not sure if it is different from before or whether my capacity to appreciate it has increased (or maybe both! ). I don’t feel competitive anymore.

It’s funny hey, how much fear really pushes one around internally. It fuels certain lines of thought propels particular strategies, closes certain doors of enquiry, and prevents clear thinking or seeing. It’s powerful and it acts from a place of trying to keep one safe, even though it’s actually doing the bloody opposite usually!

@Vineeto thanks for your encouragement and apt references and anecdotes. I’m relishing your writing and very appreciative of your contribution. My diminished fear has removed the bee out of my bonnet (and the chip off my shoulder) regarding actualism and suddenly its a real thrill and pleasure to be involved with others and benefit from your particular expertise and insight as well.

To what you wrote, indeed it’s amazing the degree to which this fear operated, unseen. To me it seems the strong feelings of fear protected and bolstered a very strong sense of ego - and that this ego (operating primarily as a very powerful sense of control/doership) would not allow itself to be “captured” or discovered, so to speak.

As much of the actualism website is dedicated to the necessity to look at feelings/soul rather than though/ego, I’lll clarify that I’m not saying that feelings weren’t the culprit…just that it was my own evasive sense of ‘I’ that seemed to want to perpetuate itself. And this very pointed and inflamed sense of “I” was primarily fuelled by intense fear…mostly around things like criticism, status, perception, self in relation to others (as opposed to lions or tigers which would be more worthy of such fear!).

In that context it makes sense now why I have been so intensely analytical - an “overthinker” who was trying to attempt a topdown, intellectual coup on my entire system (with fairly disastrous results I might add). Luckily the fact I have been aware over the years, at least as a “witness”, has also given me insight into the kinds of routes to not bother going down again….such as intense self improvement, comparison to others, self-castigation, stress/neuroticism, misanthropy, to name a few.

In my intense insecurity I was always attempting to gain some kind of imagined psychological dominion over others to find “safety”, often through ambition and self-judgement. Being perceived to be less than others or an object of criticism from the herd was extremely threatening stuff, like an annihilation. It wasn’t always just intense fear, often it came as a constant gnawing anxiety. And my desires were just as fueled by fear as well - the desire to be good enough, to evade criticism, to be infallible, to achieve, to be a free spirit etc etc. Desire seems to be the flip side of fear.

It’s weird how certain feelings, belief structures and behaviours can disappear. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced such a big “chunk” of my issues going at once. There is some clean up still, certain habits and automatic reactions and such, but the main engine seems to be really disengaged.

With that gone, I’m finding there is an “underneath” to all of this that I can sense. I’m closer (at times) if I can put it that way. There’s a sense of softness, of sensuousness, that makes this moment liveable in a different way to what I’m accustomed to. It feels so safe as well, and with that safety I feel emotionally open and there is a sincerity that is a pleasure to feel. A sweetness! And with that sweetness the sense of intensity around the need to become free has become more, not less - even though my feeling-led intensity has rapidly diminished.

At times when I lean into the appreciation of this potentiality the tears come to my eyes. I don’t want humans to suffer any longer, and I see that suffering all around… in news articles, in overheard conversations, in personal interactions, in the comment sections of social media platforms, in documentaries, in fictional series. I can “feel” it - I know what I am seeing in others when they complain, when they grieve, when they fight, when they are in shock, when they are bored. I know it all, I know it from where it is often hardest to see of all, in me.

And while this is good back pressure, I’m listening when you say that “the actualism method is enjoying and appreciating, not diving into deep emotions for the sake of it.” There’s a fun and smooooth enjoyment in making contact with This Moment of Being Alive. I’m tasting it here and there, sinking in slowly to a sense of delight. I want the full shebang but I know not to force either…I enjoy as is available to me at the time, based on the (physical/sensorial) circumstances as they are. I’m enjoying as I write this.

Indeed there is a sense of being a moth drawn to a flame. Honestly, it makes me want total death… haha - which would be alarming to most if said on the street or to “loved ones” but I say it without any depression or morbidity whatsoever. To suffer unconscious feeling cycles and to be danced around like a marionette by “life circumstances” is much closer to something morbid, surely. Whereas to be right where one is, without any fears or fantasies, and enjoying and appreciating what reveals itself to have been under one’s nose - is to be much more alive already. It makes me want to experience more and invites rememoration of the fact I have already experienced (psychological) death before, and it was not only safe but totally wondrous and perfect.

I keep thinking of the Shakespeare quote “Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d” from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.

I can’t help think what a pleasure awaits, To Not Be

[Vineeto]

Felix: Hello to you both, lovely to hear from you. Kub933, your writing has been excellent lately – I’m not sure if it is different from before or whether my capacity to appreciate it has increased (or maybe both!). I don’t feel competitive anymore.
It’s funny hey, how much fear really pushes one around internally. It fuels certain lines of thought propels particular strategies, closes certain doors of enquiry, and prevents clear thinking or seeing. It’s powerful and it acts from a place of trying to keep one safe, even though it’s actually doing the bloody opposite usually!

Hi Felix,

A splendid analysis, if I may say so.

Felix: Vineeto, thanks for your encouragement and apt references and anecdotes. I’m relishing your writing and very appreciative of your contribution. My diminished fear has removed the bee out of my bonnet (and the chip off my shoulder) regarding actualism and suddenly it’s a real thrill and pleasure to be involved with others and benefit from your particular expertise and insight as well.
To what you wrote, indeed it’s amazing the degree to which this fear operated, unseen. To me it seems the strong feelings of fear protected and bolstered a very strong sense of ego – and that this ego (operating primarily as a very powerful sense of control/ doership) would not allow itself to be “captured” or discovered, so to speak.

Your different way of writing certainly indicates that a noisy “bee” and a large “chip” have disappeared, and now a naiveté prevails which can consider the benefit of others as well as your own. It’s a precious time when your brain is rearranging itself to the new circumstances, and the thing right now to pay special attentiveness to any subtle machinations in the background trying to create a new persona to fill this beneficial gap created by the diminished chunk of fear, which has disappeared only a few days ago. It’s a common strategy of ‘me’ to replace the old persona with a new one, hence my cautionary note. What you can do instead is to delightedly settle in and feel at home with this budding naiveté where you are not quite sure what is happening but are nevertheless thrilled and fascinated to be alive and let more and more life live you.

Felix: As much of the actualism website is dedicated to the necessity to look at feelings/ soul rather than thought/ego, I’ll clarify that I’m not saying that feelings weren’t the culprit … just that it was my own evasive sense of ‘I’ that seemed to want to perpetuate itself. And this very pointed and inflamed sense of “I” was primarily fuelled by intense fear … mostly around things like criticism, status, perception, self in relation to others (as opposed to lions or tigers which would be more worthy of such fear!).

The reason for mainly using “feelings/ soul rather than thought/ego” in the writings on the website is because the equivalence of thought and ego, and therefore vilification of thought, is the way of the old, spiritual paradigm intending to lure you into the pursuit of ego-death aka enlightenment, whilst ignoring the vital part that the instinctual feelings, particularly the so-called ‘good’ feelings play in the creation of misery and mayhem. Have you ever considered that this “very strong sense of ego” is/was also responsible for your self-castigation and the self-inflicted stress you experienced? In other words, you were caught in the dichotomy of pride and humility, ego and self-castigation with no tangible resolution.

Or in Richard’s words –

Richard: In actual freedom both sorrow and malice are eliminated, along with the ego and the soul. Evil does not exist in the world, it exists only in the human psyche … eliminate the psyche in its entirety and you have eliminated both Good and Evil. (‘Good’ is a psychic phenomenon created to combat ‘Evil’). As the Enlightened Beings have only transcended duality, they have to cling to ‘The Good’ in order to resist ‘The Bad’. Hence also their pacifism. (Richard, List A, No. 7, No. 01)

Richard: By the time I had worked my way through this philosophical dilemma [of pacifism] I had to turn my sights upon the last thing that stood between me and an actual freedom. I would have to let go of the deeply ingrained concept of ‘The Good’. For this to happen I would have to eliminate ‘The Bad’ in me, or else I would be likely to go off the rails and run amok. Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out. (Richard, List B, No. 31, 7 Mar 2000)

In other words, all of it, both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ and the battle between the two are part of the old paradigm, while being naïve and enjoying and appreciating being alive is the new paradigm.

Felix: In that context it makes sense now why I have been so intensely analytical – an “overthinker” who was trying to attempt a top-down, intellectual coup on my entire system (with fairly disastrous results I might add). Luckily the fact I have been aware over the years, at least as a “witness”, has also given me insight into the kinds of routes to not bother going down again … such as intense self-improvement, comparison to others, self-castigation, stress/ neuroticism, misanthropy, to name a few.
In my intense insecurity I was always attempting to gain some kind of imagined psychological dominion over others to find “safety”, often through ambition and self-judgement. Being perceived to be less than others or an object of criticism from the herd was extremely threatening stuff, like an annihilation. It wasn’t always just intense fear, often it came as a constant gnawing anxiety. And my desires were just as fuelled by fear as well – the desire to be good enough, to evade criticism, to be infallible, to achieve, to be a free spirit etc etc. Desire seems to be the flip side of fear.

Now that you describe it in all its painful details – what a blessed disappearance of these “feelings, belief structures and behaviours”. They have conspired in concerted effort like a tight-woven web to keep you imprisoned … until … until you were so fed up with suffering and had gathered enough courage to look straight into the core (which is far more than ego) –

Felix: Now I see that everything I do, I do out of fear. And I think I am seeing there is something beyond it. (link)

Felix: It’s weird how certain feelings, belief structures and behaviours can disappear. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced such a big “chunk” of my issues going at once. There is some clean up still, certain habits and automatic reactions and such, but the main engine seems to be really disengaged.
With that gone, I’m finding there is an “underneath” to all of this that I can sense. I’m closer (at times) if I can put it that way. There’s a sense of softness, of sensuousness, that makes this moment liveable in a different way to what I’m accustomed to. It feels so safe as well, and with that safety I feel emotionally open and there is a sincerity that is a pleasure to feel. A sweetness! And with that sweetness the sense of intensity around the need to become free has become more, not less – even though my feeling-led intensity has rapidly diminished.
At times when I lean into the appreciation of this potentiality the tears come to my eyes. I don’t want humans to suffer any longer, and I see that suffering all around … in news articles, in overheard conversations, in personal interactions, in the comment sections of social media platforms, in documentaries, in fictional series. I can “feel” it – I know what I am seeing in others when they complain, when they grieve, when they fight, when they are in shock, when they are bored. I know it all, I know it from where it is often hardest to see of all, in me.
And while this is good back pressure, I’m listening when you say that “the actualism method is enjoying and appreciating, not diving into deep emotions for the sake of it.” There’s a fun and smooooth enjoyment in making contact with This Moment of Being Alive. I’m tasting it here and there, sinking in slowly to a sense of delight. I want the full shebang but I know not to force either … I enjoy as is available to me at the time, based on the (physical/ sensorial) circumstances as they are. I’m enjoying as I write this.
Indeed there is a sense of being a moth drawn to a flame. Honestly, it makes me want total death … haha – which would be alarming to most if said on the street or to “loved ones” but I say it without any depression or morbidity whatsoever. To suffer unconscious feeling cycles and to be danced around like a marionette by “life circumstances” is much closer to something morbid, surely. Whereas to be right where one is, without any fears or fantasies, and enjoying and appreciating what reveals itself to have been under one’s nose – is to be much more alive already. It makes me want to experience more and invites rememoration of the fact I have already experienced (psychological) death before, and it was not only safe but totally wondrous and perfect.

Indeed, when that sweetness of spontaneous appreciation pervades you (when pure intent is tangibly experienced like an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the vast and utter stillness that is the essential character of the universe itself) then all you want to do is keep allowing it and keep appreciating it.

Richard: “(…). One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a rudimentary self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity as is evidenced in a PCE. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. The virtual magnanimity endowed by pure intent obviates the necessity for a social identity, born out of society’s values, to be extant and controlling the wayward self with a societal conscience”. (Richard, List B, No. 31, 21 Jul 1998).

By the way, you have not yet “experienced (psychological) death before” – in a PCE the identity is merely in temporary abeyance, ready to spring into action at any time. But you know from your PCEs what the actual world after ‘your’ demise is like.

Gary: What is it about the PCE that holds the ‘me’ in abeyance?
Richard: It is a two-way street … it is both the perfection of the universe, as evidenced in the PCE, and the sincerity of ‘me’, as is evidenced by the PCE occurring, which does the trick. This universe has a built-in propensity for the best to emerge, so it is inevitable that the best will happen … given ‘my’ concurrence.
We do not live in an inert universe.
Gary: Is it correct to say that ‘I’ am in abeyance during the PCE?
Richard: That was the word that occurred to me to describe the experience … ‘suspended’, maybe (as in ‘the operation has been suspended until further notice’)?
Gary: Or is it more accurate to say that ‘I’ have vacated the scene completely and totally?
Richard: Oh, yes, there is a marked absence of ‘me’ during the experience … perhaps it is more correct to say that it is after the experience, when ‘I’ reappear, that in hindsight it becomes obvious that ‘I’ was in abeyance?
Gary: What causes ‘me’ to return?
Richard: Because ‘I’ have a job to do: ‘I’ am going to make the most noble sacrifice that ‘I’ can make for this body and that body and every body … for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear. It is ‘my’ moment of glory. It is ‘my’ crowning achievement … it makes ‘my’ petty life all worth while. It is not an event to be missed … to physically die without having experienced what it is like to become dead is such a waste of a life. (Richard, AF List, Gary, 15 Aug 2000)

Felix: I keep thinking of the Shakespeare quote “Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d” from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.
I can’t help think what a pleasure awaits, To Not Be. (link)

Ha, Shakespeare – whoever wrote Hamlet under this nom-de-guerre – knew nothing of an actual freedom, he could only point to an imaginary fantasy of a life after death. You, on the other hand, can consciously give permission for the actualism process to commence –

Richard: Being out-from-control/in a different-way-of-being is quite daunting to contemplate as an on-going EE marks the end of the beginning of the end of ‘me’ and the commencement of the actualism process – as distinct from the actualism method – wherein a momentum not of ‘my’ doing takes over and an inevitability sets in; in an on-going EE the actual world has the effect of impelling one towards it – like a moth to a candle as the overarching benignity and benevolence of the actual increasingly operates such as to render ‘my’ felicity/ innocuity increasingly redundant; this is where being the nearest a ‘self’ can be to innocence – the naiveté located betwixt the core of being and the sexual centre (where one is both likeable and liking) – is attached as if with a golden thread or clew to the purity of actual innocence; an on-going EE is, thus, where one becomes acclimatised to benignity and benevolence and the resultant blitheness because the purity of the actual is so powerful that it would ‘blow the fuses’ if one was to venture into this territory ill-prepared. (Richard, List D, No. 12, 9 Dec 2009a).

Richard: In effect, the actualism process is what ensues when one gets out from being under control, via having given oneself prior permission to have one’s life live itself (i.e., sans the controlling doer), and a different way of being comes about (i.e., where the beer is the operant) – whereupon a thrilling out-from-control momentum takes over and an inevitability sets in – whereafter there is no pulling back (hence the reluctance in having it set in motion) as once begun it is nigh-on unstoppable.
Then one is in for the ride of a lifetime! (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 28 Jan 2016).

Cheers Vineeto

[Felix]

Im experiencing so many changes and so much progress lately. Being here is becoming so fun and wondrous.

Never thought I’d be saying that!

It’s like I barely want to move because I’m so content to be exactly where I am - which, at this current moment, is on a swing in a suburban park at dusk with my dog.

It’s so surprising haha, I’m so used to being stuck that it is such a delight to be sliding along on this toboggan experiencing the world like this.

It certainly wasn’t the result of simply choosing to feel good as a kind of mental decision only. I had to figure out at a deep level why I was seemingly “unable” to feel good, and also reckon with burnout/chronic stress/depression. What an absolute slog that was haha.

I’ll try to write helpful stuff later, but in a nutshell, I totally overestimated the utility of work I was doing when feeling bad.

I think shame was holding me back most of all. My low self esteem kept me striving (to be the world’s best actualist for example - lol) and drowning in despondency at all my failings. I had witnessed the terrible stuff inside me and was basically judging myself rather than realising this was bad feelings, and that I had it in me to feel felicitous if I could only stop panicking (my ego created a strong sense of threat about it all). Add in burnout symptoms and health anxiety and it was…quite the pickle.

I am totally surprised by how much joy and freedom (as well as physical and mental health) I’m able to experience. Not to make it sound like a heady feeling thing, if anything I am less focused on my feelings than ever, and more outwardly focused in wonder at the actual world right here on my doorstep.

It’s truly excellent to be here.