Adam-H: I’ve been having an experience lately where, having seen the direct rewards of healing the ‘internal split’, I’m becoming so much more willing to disclose my feelings to myself no matter how petty or unpleasant. This is in turn leading to a positive feedback mechanism where success is leading to more success.
I’ve been thinking of actualism in terms of two ‘modes of failure’. One is “can’t get back to feeling good” the other is “won’t get back to feeling good”. When it feels more like a “can’t” that’s the sign I’m deceiving myself and I need to dial up the ‘being my own best friend’ energy and get to a place where I can clearly recognize what feeling I am ‘being’. I think the DhO pseudo-actualism practice history is what made it so difficult to figure this out, but I’ve made huge progress on this side lately.
Hi Adam,
An excellent example of common sense and sincerity in action. I am also reminded of what you realised a while ago –
Adam-H: *It’s also clear to me how being my own best friend was missing.
It’s interesting that being your own best friend sort of has two meanings:
- don’t be hard on yourself for your mistakes
- actually want what’s best for yourself, meaning you won’t let yourself ruin your own day (8 Jan 2026)*
As your best friend you it simply won’t do to allow ‘you’ to ruin your day with pretending that you “can’t get back to feeling good” when you actually can. ‘I can’t’ is merely a feeling, especially in regards feeling good, and a feeling is not a fact.
Adam-H: When it feels more like a “won’t” that’s when I need to focus more on things like rememorating feeling good and contemplating things like:
Richard: Put it this way: do you have the intent to spend the remainder of your life on this verdant planet having malice and sorrow as a backdrop to your every waking moment? Mailing List ‘B’ James
This is such a potent contemplation – widening one’s horizon. Richard used it once for ‘Vineeto’ when ‘she’ had asked him for help, being dejected that ‘she’ would never succeed in becoming actually free –
Vineeto: I remember a little story, which happened in early 2000 – ‘Vineeto’ had had three ‘washing-machine-days’ of unabating emotional upheaval and was at ‘her’ wits end. ‘She’ asked for an audience with Richard and sitting in his living room, again broke out in tears of desperation (and of course I don’t remember the cause at all). After some time had passed, Richard asked, “do you think you would like to be like this for the rest of your life?”
This question was like a magic bullet, it instantly brought ‘Vineeto’ to her senses, literally! No way would ‘she’ want to be like this for the rest of her life, not even for the next 5 minutes! The tears stopped and, although exhausted from so much emotion, ‘she’ felt excellent right away. (Actualvineeto, Claudiu2, 31 Oct 2024)
‘Her’ previous feeling conviction that ‘I can’t’ was suddenly seen for being utterly silly, replaced by an unshakeable determination to not get the buggers (in this case ‘her’ own feelings) get ‘her’ down.
Adam-H: It’s been helpful to consider both the immediate and the long term lately, in the sense that getting back to feeling good here and now is both an immediate benefit, but is also the only way forward so long as I wish to pursue the goals of peace on earth, perfect intimacy with others, etc.
Having come this far in your reflections, you might, just for fun (nothing serious), contemplate that now is the only moment one can actively experience being alive – and the ramifications of that seen in the widest most possible context –
Richard: Needless to say, the passage of time (past, present, future) is a localised phenomenon: only this moment in eternal time actually exists … just as only this configuration in perpetuity actually exists here at this place in infinite space. Time has no duration when the immediate is the ultimate and when the relative is the absolute. This moment takes no interval at all to be here: as this form this happening is already always occurring now. Thus it is as if nothing has occurred – nor will occur – for not only is the future not here, but the past does not exist either. If there is no beginning and no end there is no middle: there are things happening, but nothing may well have happened or will happen … in actuality. Only this moment and this place and this form actually exists right here just now. (Richard, General Correspondence, Page 9a, 23 May 2000).
Adam-H: I’ve been having memories of myself as a kid in summer lately – brought on by a spontaneous and very intimate conversation I had with my girlfriend about nostalgia and remembering how we once experienced life. Instead of pursuing the bittersweet sad tinge of nostalgia, I am making an earnest attempt to re-presentiate that way of being. (link)
A fortunate choice and again, the confirmation that sincerity is the key to naiveté.
Cheers Vineeto