Hi Adam,
Thank you for your feedback. It is indeed much more fortuitous if/when you can evaluate what you are doing regarding actualism “without any shame, embarrassment, etc”. Hence getting back to feeling good is essential in order to be able to think more clearly.
Adam-Cl: There is definitely an underlying resentment to life that had become a core belief for me. Even as much to believe the universe was actively against me and wanted me to suffer, an absurd belief I know.
The resentment and passivity I notice seem to happen from time to time and more likely when encountering a more stronger emotional event, but their frequency and duration are definitely reducing over the years, in that I am getting better at getting back to a felicitous baseline and more quickly.
It seems so obvious when you write it so clearly, it kind of made me chuckle at myself. There is a habitual aspect to a lot of emotional triggers sometimes it seems.
That is excellent – you need a sense of humour to be successful when looking at how you tick, and investigate your own psyche.
Adam-Cl: I think I have sometimes found a certain trigger can be a bit more elusive or nebulous for me and it doesn’t always become clear and straight forward to understand why that keeps triggering and there can be a bit of repetitiveness until that insight is gained. I literally didn’t process the link between passivity and resentment but now it is clear to me after this exchange. Another blind spot identified lol.
Resentment is one of the most stubborn obstacles for many interested in actualism – to complain about life seems to be a habitual past-time of a lot of human beings. If you know that you harbour resentment to being alive I recommend this to be the starting point and focus of your investigations into the human condition – how else will you be able to genuinely enjoy being here and appreciate this marvellous universe we are all living in.
Richard: What is at the bottom of all this disapproving business is a basic resentment at having to be here in the first place (as in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ for example) and that fundamental grievance gets taken out on the universe at large.
And for as long as ‘I’ am out to prove that life sucks (by being miserable and malicious) and that being here is the pits there is no way ‘I’ am going to be happy and harmless as to do so would be to betray ‘my’ most basic feeling about it all.
I kid you not – it was one of the first things ‘I’ realised all those years ago – yet there is a simple way to be done with such nonsense forever. Viz.:
• [Richard]: ‘In 1980, ‘I’, the persona that I was, looked at the natural world and just knew that this enormous construct called the world – and the universe itself – was not ‘set up’ for us humans to be forever forlorn in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ realised there and then that it was not and could not ever be some ‘sick cosmic joke’ that humans all had to endure and ‘make the best of’. ‘I’ felt foolish that ‘I’ had believed for thirty two years that the ‘wisdom’ of the world ‘I’ had inherited – the real world that ‘I’ was born into – was set in stone. This foolish feeling allowed ‘me’ to get in touch with ‘my’ dormant naiveté, which is the closest thing one has that resembles actual innocence, and activate it with a naive enthusiasm to undo all the conditioning and brainwashing that ‘I’ had been subject to. Then when ‘I’ looked into myself and at all the people around and saw the sorrow of humankind ‘I’ could not stop. ‘I’ knew that ‘I’ had just devoted myself to the task of setting ‘myself’ and ‘humanity’ free … ‘I’ willingly dedicated my life to this most worthy cause. It is so exquisite to devote oneself to something whole-heartedly … the ‘boots and all’ approach ‘I’ called it then! (pages 240-41, ‘Richard’s Journal’; ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997).
You will see that this is a far cry from being ‘more neutral’ about it all. (Richard, AF List, No. 50, 30 Sep 2003)
Additionally I can recommend the other excerpts from Richard’s correspondence on resentment.
Adam-Cl: When explaining the aspect of cementing a mindset from negative emotional and physical experiences, I meant past tense of what derailed me for several years from actualism, not that it is my current experience or belief, just for clarity. I experientially know that not to be the case now. Additionally, I have been treated for depression and anxiety and I am now discharged and no longer on medication or under therapy.
As my mental illness occurred whilst already a practicing actualist after a traumatic event, I was very aware of the disclaimer, as I brought it up to my friend who introduced me to the actualism as he was diagnosed with depression before me and I believe it was a big reason why he never made progress. Eventually I conceded that I needed to get medical help and stopped involvement with AF for some time.
Since recovering I have found myself interested in actualism again and despite being more busy recently I am trying to participate on the forum more, rather than be a silent witness as I was during most of my time on the Topica and Yahoo forums.
I appreciate your feedback and clarification.
Adam-Cl: I am now following your recommendations. As regards starting where I am at, I realised there were beliefs around being exceptional too. Some imagined narrative that I would excel in the application of the method and achieve success quicker this time around.
Ah, that is fascinating. For someone with this narrative it is not easy to start where you are at or recognize and admit where you have gone wrong. Knowing this about yourself makes recognizing ‘wrong turns’ easier – in fact, whenever you are stuck in feeling bad, you can deduce that you need to get back on the right track including questioning this particular narrative.
This quote might also be helpful – victim mentality often comes in combination with “beliefs around being exceptional”.
Richard: Incidentally, the identity in residence in 1981 was not surprised that others could not but, rather, that others would not (having a victim mentality, it turned out, ran much deeper than the singular mentation such nomenclature indicates). (Richard, AF List, No. 68d, 29 Oct 2005).
Adam-Cl: Pure intent is that agency and will to get back to feeling happy and harmless from remembering the PCE, I can see how diametrically opposed it is to passivity and resentment and how it can help me to get back to being sincere and trying to be happy and harmless. It has clicked in a way that it hasn’t before. I have read those descriptions on pure intent so many times as well. My brain really dismissed the agency aspect, as though pure intent can only happen spontaneously too not from actively remembering/ rememoration of my own PCE’s and willingly trying to do the method.
A clarification – to “actively remembering/ rememoration of my own PCE’s” is done by ‘you’, the agency, pure intent is not an agency but exists outside of ‘you’ and an identity can never be pure intent.
Apart from that, to actively remember/ rememorate your PCE’s with the sincere intent to imitate the actual as much and as often as possible is important because nothing will change unless you want to change. Imitating the actual was how Richard first developed and applied the actualism method –
Richard: As to how simple, easy and thus effortless this way of living/ this course of action is, when sincerely put into practice, it may be handy to also anecdotally reference how the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago took the first step, on what has become known as the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition, as the new year dawned in 1981 and as the grandmother of ‘his’ four children was driving them all down the driveway of ‘his’ ex-farmhouse after having heroically elected to have all of her grandchildren stay with her in the city for a three week holiday (which had left ‘him’ and ‘his’ wife on their own together for the first time since the birth of the first child around fourteen years previously) so as to give her daughter and son-in-law a break from parentage and, hopefully in her mind, to be of assistance in the resurrection of their failing marriage.
It was an opportunity ‘he’ grasped with both hands to not only regain the honeymoon intimacy, of 1966, as ‘his’ wife was spontaneously proposing while they waved them goodbye as they drove away down the driveway – specifically, a twenty-hour mutual peak experience, which both of them remembered well, wherein naïveté featured prominently – but also by so doing to thereby enable the actual intimacy each had experienced, some months prior, during their respective perfection experiences which had indubitably evidenced to both of them that peace-on-earth was already always here (a much-discussed issue over those preceding months). What they both set about doing thereafter, consciously and with knowledge aforethought, was to deliberately imitate the actual each moment again – as magically manifested in their respective perfection experiences – simply because the imitative course of action had been demonstrably successful in the area of the fine arts (as per my oft-mentioned ‘enabling the painting to paint itself’ theme). (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016).
In fact, this whole post to Claudiu gives an extensive description of the actualism method.
Adam-Cl: I had a realisation today of how I had imagined these successes and gains would be “mine”. Imaginary future outcomes are my specialty it seems. At least I am becoming aware of the pattern.
Indeed, feeling being ‘Vineeto’ was surprised, once ‘she’ began paying fascinated attention to how ‘she’ experienced life each moment again, how much of what ‘she’ considered thinking was actually imagination and day-dreaming. This rapidly diminished the more ‘she’ discovered about ‘herself’.
Adam-Cl: I have been back to a very felicitous baseline today, thanks again. (link)
This is good to hear. Remember, the actualism method is to be enjoying and appreciating being alive.
Cheers Vineeto