Adam-H: I realized I’ve been going in circles a bit recently, treading over ground I’ve previously covered.
Hi Adam,
A good realisation. I remember you had a realisation that may be related in February this year –
Adam-H: 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. (18 Feb 2026)
When you keep these realisations in mind it enables you to actualise them. Once getting into the habit of acting on them “it operates spontaneously each moment again” –
Respondent: Is there any difference between a realisation and an actualisation?
Richard: Generally speaking a realisation is an understanding of something previously not cognised and an actualisation is the putting of that comprehension into action … as in acting upon that cognisance so that it is experiential and not only intellectual.
For instance: (…)• [Richard]: ‘… many years ago, during my five years of an itinerant lifestyle, I would jot down various things in pencil in a notebook: some time later (maybe six weeks or six months) when looking back through the jottings I would quite often be taken by some of them and would wonder why I was not living them … why they were not an actuality in my life.
In short: sometimes (or even quite often) it takes a while before a realisation becomes an actualisation[1]. (Richard, AF List, No. 27e, 3 Apr 2003).
Footnote [1]: unless a realisation is actualised, meaning that it operates spontaneously each moment again, it remains just that … a realisation.(Sundry, Frequent Questions, Difference between Realisation and Actualisation)
And another one from the same collection –
James: What about when I find out what happened to end feeling good and I see that it is silly to keep worrying about it yet that doesn’t stop the worrying and I am not back to feeling good?
Richard: Two things immediately leap to mind … (1) you value feeling worry (a feeling of anxious concern) over feeling good (a general sense of well-being) … and (2) you have not really seen it is silly to feel bad (a general sense of ill-being). What I would suggest, at this point, is to feel the silliness of feeling bad (in this case feeling anxiety) … then the seeing (as in a realisation) might very well have the desired effect (as in an actualisation) of once more feeling good. (Richard, AF List, James, 13 July 2004a).
Adam-H: I’ve had periods where it made sense to me that I could be happy and harmless, and that this would automatically lead in the direction of letting go of the controls, and that it was safe to do so because I had confidence in how I would handle the world and the people around me.
I started doubting this at some point, it started seeming again like I was choosing between safety and security (mostly in terms of job/ financial stability) vs. happiness and harmlessness. I’m trying to really drill into this since it is almost always some variation of this worry that pulls me out of being happy and harmless.
It may be well too early to contemplate letting go of the controls until feeling good becomes your default modus operandi. Then you can uplevel to being non-conditionally happy and harmless. Otherwise, as it happened you end up having another topic to be doubting and worry about (“in terms of job/ financial stability”). This is what Richard says in regards to unconditional enjoyment of being alive –
Richard: A caused, or conditional, enjoyment and appreciation has a beginning and an end – it is dependent upon situations and circumstances – whereas an uncaused, or unconditional, enjoyment and appreciation is perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless) and occurs solely by virtue of being vitally alive – being dynamically here at this particular place in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time as a sensuous, reflective flesh-and-blood body only – and thus dependent upon no one, no thing, and no event. (…). (Richard, List D, No. 44, 2 Jan 2014)
And, explaining this quote further –
Richard: (…) More to the point, I also definitively say ‘perpetual, aeonian (beginningless and endless)’ solely by virtue of being alive/ being here – as in, regardless of doing anything at all/ of anything at all happening – as an engaged response to my co-respondent reporting just that … to wit: ‘eventually the fascination *that it is this moment* sets in and I am once more enjoying life’ [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Srinath, 5 Jan 2014)
Regarding “job/ financial stability” I am reminded of a previous realisation where you wrote –
Adam-H: Where I still get off track is when I want to ‘be somebody’, somebody important. It’s clear how I still have a competing motivation to be recognized, especially in my career and work, and that keeps me from more wholeheartedly committing. I think that by fully acknowledging this and sensibly evaluating ‘will this motivation deliver the goods?’ it is losing some influence. (14 Nov 2025)
Could it be that the desire to be “somebody important” is mixed in with the worry for safety and financial stability? I am asking because when you are feeling good why would that interfere with “job/ financial stability”? However, if you want to be somebody important and climb the social ladder then you might have a reason to be in conflict with your superior or co-workers.
Even though this post might get too long, here is part of Richard’s correspondence with Srinath about peasant mentality which might be entertaining and/or instructive –
Srinath: I feel very much like a white-collar peasant. Engaged in the rat-race to get to the top and realise there is nothing there ala what John Lennon and your friend spoke about.
Richard: What is there at the top is, of course, money/ assets, fame/ prestige and, especially, power – albeit a puny power, being over people (to have them do as bid), and not a potent power, as over the physical world (to directly effect beneficial material modification) – but there is ‘nothing there’ of intrinsic value (as in, nothing of significance, in the ‘meaning of life’ significance, that is).
Srinath: I can relate to the Stockholm Syndrome aspect quite well too.
Richard: Good … capture-bonding (i.e., loyalty to ‘the system’ in this context), when unexamined, enables the continuance of complicity (as already mentioned further above) with its especially insidious loyalty.
Srinath: Professional training is one of gladiatorial combat, where one vies with others to become a member of a small officially sanctioned professional cabal that has a strong financial incentive to maintain the current hierarchy (Training, safety etc. are the other reasons cited – which are quite sensible. Somehow though I think these are secondary). Naturally this inculcates the symptoms you talked about. However I’ve had deep suspicions about ‘the system’ for a while. In some sense this that has lead to my being less focussed on accumulating wealth, assets, prestige, being career focussed etc. than many of my peers. But I wonder if I go far enough.
The question I have for you is: Can you elaborate some more on becoming aware of this peasant mentality – specifically as it relates to practising actualism?
Richard: Essentially, seeing-through the whole sick-and-sorry system and, thus, ceasing to believe in it, is all what is required.
The identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago found it incredibly liberating to no longer be able to believe in it/ be capable of loyalty to it … especially so as ‘he’ had been quite the rebel up until then (the ‘black-sheep’ of the family and all).
In a latter part of his response to your ‘Money as Debt’ post Andrew speaks of having tuned-in to this liberating aspect.
Viz.:• [Srinath]: ‘(…). From Richard’s posts and the ensuing discussion/ clarifications, I’m also beginning to get a clearer sense now of how the primordial *feelings* of resentment, the peasant mentality and the current monetary system are related’. (Message № 196xx).
• [Andrew]: ‘(…). I felt a liberating quality having this being discussed. Having it all tied together with actualism and being free of the human condition’. (Message № 196xx).Srinath: For instance would you recommend pragmatically minimising ones involvement in this system as a necessary (or helpful) condition to becoming actually free? Thanks.
Richard: Not necessarily, no … actualism practice works best in the market-place.
Both feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ and feeling-being ‘Peter’ minimised their respective income-streams, within a year or so, but that was more because they valued their time over money than any other reason.
Plus the more one enjoys and appreciates being alive simply by being here, each moment again for as much as is humanly possible, the lower the cost-of-living becomes as less and less discretionary spending is used-up in purchased entertainment, in socialising expenditure (e.g., fashion-house attire, designer-driven accoutrements, status-displaying automobiles, and etcetera), in mood-enhancement payments, in novelty-seeking travel costs, and so on and so forth.
Golly, come to think of it, actualism should accrue quite a few brownie points for being so … um … so environmentally-friendly! (Richard, List D, Srinath, 9 Jun 2015)
Adam-H: As so often I’ve gotten into a logical argument with myself where the two sides of me are trying to prove/ disprove that it’s safe to be happy and harmless. Tracing back through my correspondence in this journal it seems like what has worked before is ceasing the intellectual arguments and rememorating a naive moment, where I was able to be happy and harmless without knowing for sure that everything would ‘work out’. So at least for a bit, that’s what I’m going to try getting back to. (link)
That is a splendid idea. It always works out differently in practice and experientially, where the third alternative to your self-created dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as well as ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ can come into play. It can only be grasped when you are naïve enough to try out something new, and therefore seemingly ‘unsafe’.
Yes, when being happy and harmless is your default state, then you can rememorate “a naïve moment” and eventually recognize, and have it confirmed repeatedly, that everything is working fine without ‘your’, the controller’s input.
Richard: Maybe it is a case of first things first? My experience showed that by allowing the PCE to happen (on a daily basis, sometimes two-three times a day) a momentum built up of its own accord which could not be stopped … an inevitability came into action.
What ‘I’ did was to give ‘myself’ permission to let go of the controls and allow the moment to live me (rather than ‘me’ trying to live in the present). In short: if one ceases objecting to being here – without swinging to an opposite such as gratitude – then the rest is history.
This is because this moment is where it is all at. This moment is where it is all happening – all of the universe is happening all-at-once – and it is all happening all-at-once just here and it is all happening all-at-once right now.
And it is all already always happening anyway … irregardless of ‘me’ and ‘my’ objections. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B James2, 6 June 2001)
Cheers Vineeto