Hunterad's journal

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141

Thanks Vineeto!

I seem to be hijacking all journals these days!

After thinking these thoughts about “anxiety’ and fear not being in my chest, I started to contemplate that I was choosing the feeling.

I do respect your words and those of Richard. So, as to not contradict them, I do consider that these feelings have always been very fundamental. I have never not considered the feeling of my heart feeling “off” and the flood of chemical changes in me being anything other that actually happening.

My point was that I was somehow choosing this. That I as a feeling, as a being, was making whatever actual discomfort and distress my physical heart was experiencing, worse. I was making it worse by being afraid of it.

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I’ve been trying to up the ante with how consistently happy and harmless I can be, and it’s lead to some moments where I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself and can’t get out of feeling bad.

What if often seems like is when I’m trying to get back to feeling good (before more deeply investigating the issue) from whatever I’m feeling bad about, I have two main tactics:

  1. Focus on ‘priority’: because I want to be permanently happy and harmless and consider that my highest goal, it’s not worth feeling bad about anything.
  2. Focus on ‘control/pragmatism’: because I’ve seen that I can take effective action while feeling happy and harmless, it doesn’t help my situation to feel bad about it, I can both feel good and take action as needed.

Both of these have worked well at times, but I don’t feel like I can get either to work 100% of the time, I don’t have it down to a science. When it doesn’t work, it feels like the stress comes and goes in waves. I never fully getting back to feeling good, usually until more time passes and I’m distracted by other things in life or go to sleep. I find that for a few minutes I deeply contemplate one of these two perspectives and start feeling better and start seeing feeling bad as silly or at least unnecessary, then a new thought about the issue strikes me, and I start back down the feeling bad path.

I realize that the way I’m laying things out it seems like what I think I need is more discipline/focus to get ‘all the way’ back to feeling good, but this is probably an indicator I’m off track because I have heard many times that feeling good is not about willpower. There are times where I simply get back to feeling good by contemplating one of these perspectives, so I know it’s possible without some great effort, but I don’t really know why sometimes that doesn’t seem to do the trick.

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143

I was reading Vineeto’s “Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness” last night and an area in particular stands out to me because you say, “I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself.”

I thought I need to find out more about the feeling of impatience. Impatience has always been one of the driving forces in my life and kept me going, counteracting the innate inertia to get me back on the track of what I wanted to achieve. But the more I am actually here and enjoying life, the more the feeling of impatience becomes a nuisance and is, in fact, preventing me from enjoying what is happening here in this moment.

Of course, for most of the process on the path to an actual freedom I need a lot of impatience, a burning discontent and dissatisfaction with life as it is and with the second rate compromise of living that both real-world and spiritual-world solutions have on offer. But with the incremental dismantling of all the emotions that constitute my self I come to understand the role that impatience is playing now – preventing ‘me’ from disappearing.

The main fuel for this feeling of impatience comes from the notion that there is something better ‘out there’, in the future – that magic ingredient that will then make life as perfect as the ending of children’s fairytale – and then they lived happily ever after. And yet it is this very feeling of impatience, that particular bit of my ‘self’, that prevents me from the sensate-only experiencing the perfection of this moment.

Impatience is my ‘self’ telling my ‘self’ to go away in order for life to be perfect thereafter. What a furphy! Who am I trying to fool? This is what cunningness in action looks like. It is fascinating to see the self splitting itself into two yet again in order to pretend that there is change happening without really having to change anything. Seeing through the charade, I experience the thrill that accompanies the shift from a furphy to an actual experience, from ‘feeling impatient’ to actively dismantling the ‘self’, from stepping out of the ‘real’ world to arriving here. I understand that the only way to approach self-immolation is by welcoming the death of ‘me’ with free will, open arms and a full YES. It is a magic formula, that turning around 180 degrees again, a yes to immolation rather than a no to life as it is. When death is welcome with the same thrilling anticipation as a sexual playmate then I know I am on the right track.

So impatience is being replaced by an understanding of redundancy – the more I experientially understand about the human condition the more ‘I’ become redundant because life in the actual world is utterly safe and already perfect. ‘I’ am not needed to stay alive. The more I understand the chemical, psychological and psychic programming of the brain, the more I can see that this programming is outdated, faulty and redundant in every single aspect – ‘I’ am not needed at all. Virtual Freedom is the ongoing increasing experience of ‘my’ redundancy, kind of getting used to not interfering with perfection. The way I see it now is that death is simply an extension of this continuing discovery of ‘me’, the spoiler, being redundant, turning 98% redundancy to 99% and 99% to 100% … … pop.

The only way I can reach this 100% redundancy is by being here all the time, doing what is happening without emotionally interfering – and if there is an emotion, then investigating it, nutting it out, sitting it out, thinking it through, understanding its follies and furphies. In the end, every emotion is understood as nothing but an objection to and fear of being here – and an objection to being redundant as an entity.

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144

This has been a contemplation lately, and that is there is a lot of subconscious stress, we get so used to it that it’s just “how things are”, reading what you have written really brought it into focus. . What I mean is, I see these deeper issues reflecting in all aspects of life, but often don’t acknowledge them. So, they do “pop up” when I am in a better mood, and I know the experience of some simple intension (being determined to feel good), just not working like it did yesterday.

Reading what you wrote really brought this into focus just now. It reminds me that some issues are going to take time, we have to make space for ourselves, over time, to hear what it is we have buried under everyday issues.

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145

Adam-H: I’ve been trying to up the ante with how consistently happy and harmless I can be, and it’s lead to some moments where I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself and can’t get out of feeling bad.
What it often seems like is when I’m trying to get back to feeling good (before more deeply investigating the issue) from whatever I’m feeling bad about, I have two main tactics:

  1. Focus on ‘priority’: because I want to be permanently happy and harmless and consider that my highest goal, it’s not worth feeling bad about anything.
  2. Focus on ‘control/pragmatism’: because I’ve seen that I can take effective action while feeling happy and harmless, it doesn’t help my situation to feel bad about it, I can both feel good and take action as needed.

Hi Adam-H,

I get the impression, and I might be wrong, that you put a certain moral pressure on yourself when “trying to get back to feeling good” as if you renamed your normal moral code to actualism. Then upping the ante simply means that ‘you’ are at loggerheads with yourself that you must feel good … or else.

The result is that for this you have to push away the unwanted uncomfortable feelings, which only gives fuel to ‘me’ and those feelings. So, the first thing is to relax, and become interested in what is going on. Someone shared that going back to before the incident which caused the dip in the good mood did help to get back to feeling good, at least sufficient enough to look into the cause of it.

Adam-H: Both of these have worked well at times, but I don’t feel like I can get either to work 100% of the time, I don’t have it down to a science. When it doesn’t work, it feels like the stress comes and goes in waves. I never fully getting back to feeling good, usually until more time passes and I’m distracted by other things in life or go to sleep. I find that for a few minutes I deeply contemplate one of these two perspectives and start feeling better and start seeing feeling bad as silly or at least unnecessary, then a new thought about the issue strikes me, and I start back down the feeling bad path.

Richard’s suggestion is to first see, really see, the silliness of feeling bad – not with control like you do it – but as a genuine insight that it is a waste of time to feel bad when you could feel ok or neutral or good. For example –

Respondent: Richard, how long do you think will it take before it becomes automatic to have the question running?
Richard: About as long as it takes to realise that feeling anything other than happy and harmless sucks … and sucks big-time at that. …
Respondent: How soon will the rewards can be reaped by the method (in getting rid of the ‘me’) so that the momentum can be acquired by the success rather than the veracity/ power of your words?
Richard: About as soon as it takes to realise that feeling anything other than happy and harmless sucks … and sucks big-time at that. (Richard, AF List, No. 71, 9 Jun 2004).

Perhaps it is not about sudorifically upping the anti or “having a standoff” with yourself but really seeing that it is not worth your while feeling bad, ever. Then you can go back to look at what caused the dip in the mood and sincerely find out, possibly to never have it happen again. Or to put it differently, the commitment to being happy and harmless is not by trying to do but by cutting the fondness/ attachment to feeling bad, no matter what the reason. I know from experience, it wasn’t always easy but that it takes a readiness to ‘sacrifice’ one’s cherished feelings of bitter-sweetness, righteous anger, pining, or perhaps virtuous impatience – whatever it is that keeps you from feeling good.

You can see that in my last sentence I added the ‘good’ feeling aspect to possible reasons for feeling bad, just to help your investigation later on into the reasons for feeling bad. There is a reason why feeling in a certain way is soo attractive, if not addictive.

Adam-H: I realize that the way I’m laying things out it seems like what I think I need is more discipline/focus to get ‘all the way’ back to feeling good, but this is probably an indicator I’m off track because I have heard many times that feeling good is not about willpower. There are times where I simply get back to feeling good by contemplating one of these perspectives, so I know it’s possible without some great effort, but I don’t really know why sometimes that doesn’t seem to do the trick. (link)

That’s your indicator that whenever it becomes sudorific you are using control and thus strengthen ‘me’. Whereas when you remember either your PCE or how good it feels to feel good, it may become simple. Perhaps remembering your long-lost childhood naiveté might help. Above all, be a friend to yourself –

Richard: You have to live with yourself twenty four hours a day; if you are talking to yourself in such a way that you are not a good friend to yourself, then what are you doing? If I were to talk like that to you, be sharp with you, you would have nothing to do with me. Are you not sharp upon yourself? (Audio-Taped Dialogues, Silly or Sensible)

Cheers Vineeto

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Adam-H: then a new thought about the issue strikes me, and I start back down the feeling bad path. (link)

Andrew: This has been a contemplation lately, and that is there is a lot of subconscious stress, we get so used to it that it’s just “how things are”, reading what you have written really brought it into focus. What I mean is, I see these deeper issues reflecting in all aspects of life, but often don’t acknowledge them. So, they do “pop up” when I am in a better mood, and I know the experience of some simple intension (being determined to feel good), just not working like it did yesterday.
Reading what you wrote really brought this into focus just now. It reminds me that some issues are going to take time, we have to make space for ourselves, over time, to hear what it is we have buried under everyday issues. (link)

Hi Andrew,

The good news is that not feeling good when it happens has “brought this into focus” – and not only that but now you have more of an inkling that, and how, you can do something about it.

I suggest, start with being a friend to yourself – to notice the habitual put-down of yourself (inculcated and trained for decades) and stop doing it whenever you notice. There is no need for putting yourself down at all as you already want to change for the better. So you are way ahead of your habitual ‘self’ in that you are determined to actively become more happy and harmless and have some effective tools to do it. It’s just a habit when you put yourself, so no reason to continue a bad habit. If you need more tools or understanding, it is amply explained on the Actual Freedom website, whatever topic you choose to go deeper into.

You say “some issues are going to take time” – yes time, but more so courage. Courage to admit that those feelings are there despite one’s best intention and that they need to be acknowledged and sensibly looked at. Some, when discovered, you can discard right away, some are part of a larger pattern, perhaps intricately interwoven with some desire, or pride, or other cherished feelings. That takes courage to investigate. But then you will find that those cherished feelings (the ‘good’ feelings which spawn the bad ones) are not worth keeping either. Once you start it becomes either each time you have success.

Cheers Vineeto

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This post initially triggered some understanding but also some frustration that I saw later came out of my own cunningness. I think I want to leave in my initial reaction and then show the moment where I connected the dots for myself as a reminder for future me how that transition can occur :laughing::

---------- Initial reaction -----------

I think you’re right, and I can see how the moral pressure leads to pushing away those feelings rather than genuinely seeing that they are silly and moving into feeling good. Reflecting on this more, I think I move back and forth between the ‘genuine’ practice and the disingenuous practice fairly often. There’s something difficult for me though about how to make the genuine practice happen.

I guess there is a difference between a genuine insight and ‘trying to see’. I think where I struggle is that ‘having’ a genuine insight as a method feels difficult, it almost feels like you just have to wait until the genuine insight comes if the effort to have it is not going in the right direction.

I see again that the key is the genuine willingness/readiness, it makes total sense to me and fits with my past intermittent experiences. When that willingness/readiness is there, the practice is hardly even a practice, it’s effortless. But again it feels like this is just saying “here is what it is like when it works.” How does one make an identity…

---------- end of initial reaction -----------

While writing that phrase out I had this thought “wait, I am that identity, I don’t have to ‘make’ it do anything I can just do it.” I can see how I reacted to bad feelings - by becoming a virtuously impatient identity whose narrative is a story about being special for wanting to feel good. As soon as I saw that, there was a feeling of having my ‘split’ self fuse back together with my relatively more naive but stressed self. This consolidated ‘me’ was able to then instantly go back to feeling good because it saw that it was silly to feel bad when it was entirely up to me how to feel. I think this is the clearest I’ve ever been on the point that sincerity can unlock naivety. 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:

  1. don’t be hard on yourself for your mistakes
  2. actually want what’s best for yourself, meaning you won’t let yourself ruin your own day

It definitely seems like it takes time, but I have a feeling whenever we are on the other side of this we will look back like all the other people who became actually free seem to and say “oh I guess I could have done that all along” :joy:

This was great to read, thanks. Who am I trying to fool indeed. It’s funny to realize that the self splitting into two is not about it “trying too hard” to make something happen as I previously thought, it’s actually about try to make sure nothing happens :grin:

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148

Hi Vineeto,

To echo Adam’s theme of initial reaction to later appreciation , I took this as encouragement but didn’t specifically have anything to be courageous about. I was also surprised by the encouragement to be friendly with myself, it is always a great reminder for me.

My later appreciation came after a morning walk by the river, where I determined that it would be a good idea to start a YouTube channel. A somewhat “pie in the sky” idea, but something creative with at a glimmer of earning potential in the long run. Anyway, regardless of the soundness of the idea, a whole heap of fear arose and I was genuinely afraid.

The fear goes something like;
“Here I go again! Another failed scheme, another waste of time and money, another way you will fail. Another proof that you are useless and a fraud. A pretender, how many times will you dream this useless crap?”.

My eyes are full of tears now. I didn’t really want to write anything, but it was significant that the endorsement of courage came before I realised I needed it. I wrote because I have been progressively seeing how afraid I am, all the time. How I have pushed beyond it over my lifetime, but as age has tempered bravado, there is not the time to fail like I used to. The “hope” has less potential time to work with.

Having said all of that, there is a benefit to this particular idea. Something that may well benefit my sons, and give them some encouragement in like to push into the unknown.

For context, I am sitting in a corner surrounded by all my musical equipment. Last night I decided to just enjoy myself. To not care at all about recording anything. To forget about any end goal, or product. I had an enjoyable time studying the key of “D” and going through chord inversions without any goals except to explore them.

Cheers Andrew

PS, thinking a post will be quick, then realising I should have posted in my own journal.

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Adam-H: (…) I see again that the key is the genuine willingness/ readiness, it makes total sense to me and fits with my past intermittent experiences. When that willingness/ readiness is there, the practice is hardly even a practice, it’s effortless. But again it feels like this is just saying “here is what it is like when it works.” How does one make an identity… (end of initial reaction)

Hi Adam,

This is a very insightful post and well worth keeping for future references. When the readiness is there then there is no conflict, not one side trying and the other side resisting.

Adam-H: While writing that phrase out I had this thought “wait, I am that identity, I don’t have to ‘make’ it do anything I can just do it.” I can see how I reacted to bad feelings – by becoming a virtuously impatient identity whose narrative is a story about being special for wanting to feel good. As soon as I saw that, there was a feeling of having my ‘split’ self fuse back together with my relatively more naive but stressed self. This consolidated ‘me’ was able to then instantly go back to feeling good because it saw that it was silly to feel good when it was entirely up to me how to feel. I think this is the clearest I’ve ever been on the point that sincerity can unlock naivety.

Excellent – when you had the realisation that “wait, I am that identity” that is the same as realising that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ – no conflict, simply the choice to be whatever feeling you prefer to be. It’s great, isn’t it, when you discover some of the tricks ‘I’ get up to – and once you see it, the trick no longer works and you do feel good. And this is the key to sincerity.

So should you ever struggle to get out of feeling bad, look for this sincerity, the “willingness/ readiness” and see what happens.

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:

  1. don’t be hard on yourself for your mistakes
  2. actually want what’s best for yourself, meaning you won’t let yourself ruin your own day

I like that break-down, it makes it very clear. A friend doesn’t just say “there, there” and try to console you, a friend “won’t let yourself ruin your own day”.

Adam-H: This has been a contemplation lately, and that is there is a lot of subconscious stress, we get so used to it that it’s just “how things are”, reading what you have written really brought it into focus. What I mean is, I see these deeper issues reflecting in all aspects of life, but often don’t acknowledge them. So, they do “pop up” when I am in a better mood, and I know the experience of some simple intention (being determined to feel good), just not working like it did yesterday.

This is also part of being a friend, to not let the “deeper issues” ruin your day. When you feel good you allow yourself to acknowledge them, look at them more dispassionately, and then an understanding will emerge of what’s the source of the trouble, and action can follow. When the intention is sincere, as you described above, it will reveal the various aspects of those “deeper issues” including the connected ‘good’ feelings, and you can similarly decide to no longer let them ruin your day. Sincerity and courage.

Adam-H: Reading what you wrote really brought this into focus just now. It reminds me that some issues are going to take time, we have to make space for ourselves, over time, to hear what it is we have buried under everyday issues.
It definitely seems like it takes time, but I have a feeling whenever we are on the other side of this we will look back like all the other people who became actually free seem to and say “oh I guess I could have done that all along”.

This “it takes time” can be an excuse of not yet having the courage to look, and as you say in hindsight one “could have done that all along”. But I also know there are gestation periods, when certain insights need to percolate in the background until they are ripe for action – after all, actualism is the most radical change one undertakes, bit by bit, moving outside the parameters of thousands of years of human ‘wisdom’. It certainly is a grand adventure.

Adam-H: I was reading Vineeto’s “Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness” last night and an area in particular stands out to me because you say, “I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself.”
This was great to read, thanks. Who am I trying to fool indeed. It’s funny to realize that the self splitting into two is not about it “trying too hard” to make something happen as I previously thought, it’s actually about try to make sure nothing happens. (link)

Ha, it was actually you who first said “I feel like I’m having a standoff with myself and can’t get out of feeling bad” (link). I simply took the cue from your own insight. “The ‘self’ splitting into two” is a very common and often successful trick to keep yourself engaged in battling yourself and thus avoiding any change for the better. It is well worth keeping an eye out for it every time you are getting stuck in “trying too hard” now that you have so obviously seen that it’s all “about try to make sure nothing happens”. Excellent.

This quote might be helpful –

James: … I can see that I am addicted to being me because that’s who I am and I don’t want to let go of that. I can also see that the essential ‘me’ is suffering when it is stripped bare. However, since ‘me’ is essentially suffering ‘I’ try to escape through various highs. Once these highs evaporate I am back to being ‘me’ suffering. Makes sense?
Richard: Yes … and even though the highs inevitably evaporate ‘I’ still keep on trying to escape from being ‘me’ as ‘I’ really am via that path. Why do ‘I’ persist in re-treading a path, over and again, that just does not deliver the goods?
James: That is a good question. What comes to mind is I keep treading the same path over and over because that is what I know. That is what is familiar.
Richard: Indeed it is … so in order to successfully escape one needs to abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods, so that the energy one is frittering away fruitlessly is available for the unknown path, the unfamiliar path, the path that does deliver the goods. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)

Cheers Vineeto

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Heya - looking at your journal, it seems to me that somehow experientially locating or discovering a third alternative to these ‘good feelings’ would be most beneficial.

Your ‘dirty’ intent of “really trying to appear happy and harmless” was also what I was doing for most part in the name of actualism. I talked about it here:

In your “really trying to appear happy and harmless” I recognized my own “did it even with “happy and harmless””.

Speaking personally, both an affective awareness of current feelings (esp. good feelings) as well as the memory of a perfection experience seems to play a vital role in this.

You wrote the above about 4 years ago. Are you still going for PCEs (in addition to upping your baseline)?

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The intent to try to appear happy and harmless rather than actually be happy and harmless is a particular ‘trick’ I don’t think I’ve gotten up to in quite a while. But I do agree that experientially locating the third alternative is vital for directing ‘me’ in the right direction, and without that firmly in place there are many ways in which “I” will delay or misdirect things. I think the connection that is in place for me is to naivete which is probably less effective than a clear memory of a PCE, but is still a unique and hard to mistake aspect of the felicitous and innocuous feelings.

It is at least in the direction of the end of ‘cunningness’ and a blessed release from the perversity of the loneliness and resentfulness of being a ‘calculating’ self.

I spent some time around then really focusing on PCEs, but ultimately continued to have more success by focusing on upping my baseline. The progress has still been slow over the long term, but has sped up a bit recently. Lately I do make time to spend 30 minutes per day with my only focus being the actualism method, but it hasn’t lead to a PCE, usually just to various levels of feeling good, occasionally getting to the point of feeling myself to be the ‘beer’ and not the ‘doer’.

I still think of upping my baseline as being what actualism is fundamentally about moreso than the ‘PCE practice’, and that’s partly because I still find PCEs a bit mysterious and out of reach.

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Adam-H: The intent to try to appear happy and harmless rather than actually be happy and harmless is a particular ‘trick’ I don’t think I’ve gotten up to in quite a while. But I do agree that experientially locating the third alternative is vital for directing ‘me’ in the right direction, and without that firmly in place there are many ways in which “I” will delay or misdirect things. I think the connection that is in place for me is to naivete which is probably less effective than a clear memory of a PCE, but is still a unique and hard to mistake aspect of the felicitous and innocuous feelings.
It is at least in the direction of the end of ‘cunningness’ and a blessed release from the perversity of the loneliness and resentfulness of being a ‘calculating’ self.

Hi Adam,

That is good news – you discovered this particular trick and abandoned it for good as fooling yourself is obviously of no value. Finding the various ways how ‘you’ “will delay or misdirect” is something like a game once you are clear on your intent to be happy and harmless. ‘Vineeto’ enjoyed it after ‘she’ became a bit more acquainted with ‘her’ tricks and at some point called it “balloon-popping party” –

‘Vineeto’ to Irene: Having come that far in my contemplations I likened the whole path to freedom as a big balloon-popping party. Imagine a room full of balloons floating near the ceiling, in different colours, with different names of instincts, emotions, beliefs and conditioning written on them. The aim of the game is to pop every single balloon one by one by questioning, investigating and identifying the nature of the various beliefs, emotions and instincts. Once the last balloon is popped I am free. I imagine it to be light green, big, evasive, with fear written all over it. I need to keep it firmly in place, not getting distracted by doubt or other flight manoeuvres, and then – pop! That imagination changes the whole adventure from its heroic and dramatic frame into the thrilling and delightful journey it actually is. It also pulls the plug of making a big fuss about it. Mind you, I still consider it the best game to play (Vineeto to Irene, 4 Oct 1998).

It was an imagination on ‘her’ part but it captured the understanding that it’s all about feeling good and not being bogged down by finding out how ‘she’ felt and that one can discover and remove the obstacles to feeling good and bring them to the bright light of awareness.

Once you take yourself less serious and accept that you are as bad and as mad as everyone else, genetically endowed with instinctual passions, then there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by discovering how you ‘tick’.

Srid: You wrote the above about 4 years ago. Are you still going for PCEs (in addition to upping your baseline)?

Adam-H: I spent some time around then really focusing on PCEs, but ultimately continued to have more success by focusing on upping my baseline. The progress has still been slow over the long term, but has sped up a bit recently. Lately I do make time to spend 30 minutes per day with my only focus being the actualism method, but it hasn’t lead to a PCE, usually just to various levels of feeling good, occasionally getting to the point of feeling myself to be the ‘beer’ and not the ‘doer’.
I still think of upping my baseline as being what actualism is fundamentally about more so than the ‘PCE practice’, and that’s partly because I still find PCEs a bit mysterious and out of reach. (link)

A wise decision. In actualism there is no such thing as a “PCE practice” (it was the invention of some spiritualists from the DhO, together with so-called PCE-walks) – the very idea is an oxymoron because the PCE happens when you allow it to happen. You cannot control or structure yourself to have a PCE.

Also, your idea to “spend 30 min per day with my only focus being the actualism method” is not what Richard meant when introducing the actualism method. It is something to do all day, in all situations – to be affectively aware and attentive to how you experience yourself affectively (i.e. how you feel) so that you can get back to feeling good whenever your mood drops below feeling good. Once you notice that, you get back to feeling good by recognizing it is a waste of this precious moment of being alive, and then –

Richard: What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.
What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.
Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet. (Richard, AF List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005).

If you only “spend 30 min per day with my only focus being the actualism method” then you allow yourself to be inattentive for about 15.5 hours per day to be sad or angry or grumpy or feel neutral. Thus, by doing nothing about it you reinforce the habit of letting those negative moods continue governing your life with the excuse that later on you will spend 30 mins of doing something about it.

Richard: ‘The actualism method is an awareness-cum-attentiveness method – not a method of enquiry – inasmuch one is aware of/ attentive as to how one is experiencing this moment of being alive (the only moment one is ever alive) so that the slightest deviation from the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition can be attended to forthwith … thus enabling one to live as peacefully and harmoniously (as happily and harmlessly) as is humanly possible each moment again.
Any and all enquiry has far more chance of success when one is back on track again. (Richard, AF List, No. 68d, 10 Oct 2005).

There are many informative tool-tips in the article ‘This Moment of Being Alive’ which can give you clarifying information how to apply the actualism method easily and successfully. (Make sure Java-scripting is enabled).

Whereas the 30 min per day easily becomes a duty, a chore, a daily ‘work-out’ like a session at the gym, and that would certainly defeat the purpose of learning the art of how to have fun and feel good. I also recommend Richard’s email to Claudiu in February 2016; it is very detailed and packed to capacity with information both from Claudiu and Richard.

Cheers Vineeto