Thank you for this timely reminder @Vineeto. I probably mistranslated “appreciate” to a more anemic word in my mind and then proceeded to run with it for a good 15 years.
It took me until about a month ago to realize that it’s anything but anemic. It’s funny how this understanding has leaked through lately even though I’ve been bad at actively engaging it (down to getting comments about how positive I am, which is as close to a personality transplant as you’d get)
Hi @Emp,
Thank you for this timely reminder @Vineeto. I probably mistranslated “appreciate” to a more anaemic word in my mind and then proceeded to run with it for a good 15 years. link
You very likely did – something like ‘noticing in a positive way’. Never mind that you used the anaemic meaning for 15 years – it’s always great to start afresh with a new insight and enjoy that it works.
To emphasize how significant the word “appreciate”/ “appreciation” is, to everyone who had similar misconceptions about it, let me start by saying that it appears five times in the running banners of “This Moment of Being Alive” – the very article that has the succinct instructions how to become free from the human condition –
“Consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is the actualism method.”
“The means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end.”
“Enjoyment and appreciation are facilitated by feeling as happy and as harmless as possible.”
“A slightest diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation automatically activates attentiveness.”
“Attentiveness to the cause of diminished enjoyment and appreciation restores felicity/innocuity.”
“Consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is.”
Appreciation is the most potent aspect of the actualism method because as I said before – it “is the very key to exponentially increase the level of your enjoyment, expand it in scope and depth” […] to the point of excellence being the norm. It is the key to upgrade your “hedonic adaptation set-point" from feeling grumpy, to feeling neutral, to feeling good and to feeling excellent as the new set-point to fall back upon, so that even when ‘you’ come back from a PCE you no longer fall back to feeling bad/neutral, but you ‘fall back’ to feeling good/excellent. Consistently appreciating the world and people and events around you can and will enable you to reset your genetically/socially inherited hedonic set-point.
It took me until about a month ago to realize that it’s anything but anaemic. It’s funny how this understanding has leaked through lately even though I’ve been bad at actively engaging it (down to getting comments about how positive I am, which is as close to a personality transplant as you’d get).
It seems to have already worked marvellous for you, Emp – “a personality transplant” is no small thing to bring about. Now when you do it more actively and consciously, perhaps even as a deliberate decision and commitment to feel good/excellent for the rest of your life, it will be even more of a palpable “personality transplant” beyond recognition of the old Emp.
And it is such fun!
Cheers Vineeto
This is so great! I have also done the same thing, appreciation was seen as just a word that happened to follow enjoyment. This makes complete sense now though, and experientially I can confirm that with appreciation the level of enjoyment can increase exponentially, both in scope and depth.
It’s almost like I have a new toy to play with now, and as this appreciative enjoyment increases it then morphs into marvelling and wonderment and then things get so fun. It is also handy that I can consciously set my intent towards appreciating, and from there it seems there in no cap on how wonderful things can get.
The other interesting thing is that the difference between appreciation and gratitude is clear as day.
Thank you @Vineeto for this explanation and emphasis on appreciation 
I’ve always wondered why this phrase was cemented into the actulaism method, not only be happy and harmless or enjoy this moment - but also appreciate this moment of being alive in whatever form it takes. And today while experimenting with this “fresh” information it became clear to me how appreciation, i.e. being a person who appreciates whatever is happening to him, is tightly connected to being naive because I could not bring myself to be like this without feeling a bit foolish, a real simpleton!
Hi @Almog,
You hit the nail right on the head. Becoming naïve is indeed “tightly connected” to be able to “appreciate this moment of being alive whatever form it takes.”
It takes a bit of courage because we are so earnestly instructed and conditioned to be serious and weary but when you do allow yourself to be sincerely naïve, “a bit foolish”, as you say, you will experience that you are both likeable and liking, i.e. that you like yourself and also like your fellow human beings.
[Richard]: The way to be both likeable and liking – to be as near to innocence as is possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – is to retrieve and resurrect your long-lost naïveté (locked away in childhood, per favour the scorn, ridicule and derision poured forth upon it by the worldly-wise cynics and sophisticates, due to an infantile/ juvenile inability to separate out being naïve from being gullible), nowadays made readily possible by virtue of your adult sensibilities, and operate and function in the world at large by being naïveté itself (thus by-passing/ over-riding that instinctually/ viscerally felt core-of-being centre of ‘self’). (Mailing List 'D' Martin).
When you are both likeable and liking it is no longer important what other people might think of you (“a bit foolish, a real simpleton”) – you have unilaterally changed the parameters of how you like to feel and act in the world of people-as-they-are – naïvely. It is a delight to be sincerely naïve because from that vantage point you like your fellow human beings and you like yourself.
[Richard]: And as ‘he’ stood there, delightedly extolling the virtues of being naiveté itself, ‘he’ enthusiastically encouraged ‘his’ rapt audience to reach down inside of themselves intuitively (a.k.a. feeling it out) going past the rather superficial emotions and/or feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions and/or feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until they came to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where they intuitively feel they elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’, at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself), and, having located ‘being’ itself, gently and tenderly sense out the area immediately below that (just above and/or just before and almost touching on the sex centre) where they would find themselves both likeable and liking (for here lies sincerity and/or naiveté) and here is where they can, finally, like themself (very important) no matter what, for here is the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’, and, moreover, here lies tenderness and/or sweetness and togetherness and/or closeness because here is where it is possible to be the key which unlocks the potency of naiveté. (A Rather Quaint Claypit-Tale).
[Richard]: A rather quaint clay-pit tale which nonetheless depicts the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself⁽⁰¹⁾ to an actual innocence.
⁽⁰¹⁾To be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as a childlike persona with adult sensibilities), which is to be the closest one can to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not), one is both likeable and liking for herewith lies tenderness and/or sweetness and togetherness and/or closeness whereupon moment-to-moment experiencing is of traipsing through the world about in a state of wide-eyed wonder and amazement as if a child again (guileless, artless, ingenuous, innocuous)—yet with adult sensibilities whereby the distinction betwixt being naïve and being gullible is readily separable—simply marvelling at the sheer magnificence of this oh-so-material universe’s absoluteness and unabashedly delighting in its boundless beneficence, its limitless largesse, as being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian (due to the near-absence of agency which ensues when the controlling doer is abeyant and the naïve beer is ascendant), with a blitheness and a gaiety such that the likelihood of the magical fairy-tale-like nature of this paradisaical terraqueous globe, this bounteously verdant and azure planet, becoming ever-so-sweetly apparent, as an experiential actuality, is almost always imminent. (A Rather Quaint Claypit-Tale). [last tooltip at the bottom of the page]
And here, Almog and @Jonathan, is a wonderful opportunity of experiencing many, many ‘wow’-moments.
Cheers Vineeto
Hello, @Vineeto , it’s so nice to read you here.
I don’t remember having read such emphasis on appreciation in particular (in the sense that it can be THE element to cause an exponential boost, as you say). It’s one of those words that I’ve misunderstood a lot. At first I took it as the sensorial part (enjoyment = more affective, appreciation = more sensorial). The word has also been somewhat charged with hints of positive/love feelings (such as love and gratitude), at least in Spanish.
All this context to ask: can you tell us some specific examples that you remember from your own past experience in which appreciation was an important factor to get you unstuck or ramped up your actualist experience in given moments, or even created breakthroughs in your journey?
I think such anecdotes can help appreciation fully click for some of us. Thanks so much in advance 
Oo I can help here. You can immediately find out the potency and benefit of appreciation, right here and now, as you’re reading this.
First, if you are not already there, get to a point of feeling good, a very solid enjoyment at the bare minimum.
Are you there? Good!
Now, experientially consider the quality of this feeling good, of this enjoyment, that is happening for you right now. Does it feel good to feel good? Is it enjoyable to be enjoying being alive? Do you like feeling good? It may even be fruitful to contemplate – how exactly do you know that you like it? What about it do you like?
Now compare it to feeling bad – how does it compare? Is it better to feel good than to feel bad? Don’t look for a thought-out answer, just actually answer it for yourself experientially right now.
Appreciation amounts to “assessment of the true worth or value of persons or things” [link]. In other words, if you have followed the instructions, you have been assessing the quality of feeling good, as it is happening now in your experiencing of being alive.
The purpose of this, which you may have already noticed happening, is that now you much more fully… appreciate, as in, “recognize the quality, significance, or magnitude of” [link], just how much better feeling good is, than feeling bad. This drives home the point, experientially, of the sheer wondrousness of feeling good, of enjoying being alive. This directly enables you to be sincere about your purpose of feeling good more and more of the time, because now you see it for yourself, you intimately know just how good it is, so of course obviously it makes sense to nourish and increment it.
This appreciation serves to “lock in” one’s understanding and valuing of enjoying and feeling good, and once it is locked in it serves as a stable point for increasing it further.
Let me know if it helped!
Cheers,
Claudiu
Thanks for the input, Claudiu. I think you’ve already made this point to me in a past instance. Basically, it is that:
Enjoyment = this feels good
Appreciation = it feels good to feel good
It has a meta function. I do wonder though how to drive appreciation even deeper in a way that it doesn’t remain an intellectual effort and rather it’s a second layer of affect that reinforces and deepens the actualization of it all in the long run. All this in the context of that exponential nature that Vineeto wrote about, that’s an intriguing part that I may be missing. How exactly does the exponential nature come into play? I guess I need to experiment more with it to have an existential answer as well. Been trying to commit more to actualism lately, so this fits great.
Any further input from you or Vineeto will be appreciated 
EDIT: maybe we need to split this and take it to its own “Appreciation” thread?
Update: tapped into that for a bit and I can certainly feel the snowball effect of feeling good → feeling good about feeling good → feeling even better, etc.
I do wonder if this particular activity can help me break the habit of me trying to get distracted/entertainment when feeling good becomes normalized and triggers a “now what?” response. That usually leads me back to normal, so maybe feeling good about feeling good can calm and rechannel that dissatisfaction back to actualism mode?
Hmm so what I wrote wasn’t about a “second layer of affect” at all, but rather something for you to contemplate while reading it, contemplating the quality of the feeling good. It’s more about consciously becoming aware of this quality of feeling good and seeing experientially for yourself this quality.
Well I would first give a sincere attempt of the advice here to see if it works. What happened in your experience as a result of contemplating those questions I posed, and looking not for a worded thought-out answer but rather an experiential one?
That is wonderful to hear. Truly there is magic in the air 
Cheers,
Claudiu
Fair. It was more an attempt from me to make further sense and implement it in a more meaningful way, but maybe it’s not the most accurate way of framing it. This is what I tried to mean:
The mere awareness or even contemplation could be interpreted to be done merely intellectually, and from that interpretation one may fall in the trap of saying “well, duh, obviously: feeling good feels good, so tell me something I don’t know”.
But if we try to take it to the affective realm it can have a deeper effect, and since the action of enjoying is different than the action of appreciating, I was trying to capture that very affective distinction or flavor.
In a sense, if we were to approach this from this affective awareness (and not merely intellectual), the nature/distinction of this appreciative action may be closer to, say, marvelling than mere enjoyment of enjoying (which also may be present as enjoyment can be enjoyed, but I think there is more to just that). Does that make any sense?
@claudiu that’s interesting because I have been approaching this from a different angle altogether, it seems so at least.
To summarise, the target of appreciation has been the world of people, things and events, not feeling good specifically.
The focus on appreciation started when Vineeto urged us to turn any sadness surrounding Richard’s death into appreciation for his life and his words. Then further to allow this appreciation to ‘spill over’ into appreciating this wonderful universe which exists all around, including the natural world and one’s fellow human beings.
And doing so is what increases both the scope and the depth of enjoyment, it’s essentially assessing the true worth of what this universe is like and what it means to be alive.
Hmm I would say they are two different things indeed, but that aren’t mutually exclusive and are in fact complementary.
It’s parallel to enjoyment. The way of living life that has come to be known as the actualism method, is one of enjoying this moment of being alive. This does not mean you have to enjoy every thing that happens in your life, particularly unpleasant stuff (like someone throwing a tantrum), but rather that you don’t let those unpleasant things take away from enjoying this moment of being alive. On top of this, however, it is certainly sensible to, and definitely silly not to, enjoy the wonderful things and events that do happen in your life.
So too I would say with appreciating this moment of being alive. On the one hand there is appreciating that it is the only moment of being alive, and how wonderful it is to be spending it enjoying it. On the other, there is appreciating the wonderful things and events that do happen.
And yes, the potent appreciation that has begun happening spontaneously all across the world, that appeared to have started shortly before Richard’s passing, is of course something to partake in and take benefit from and nourish in one’s own life, as it will indeed move one exponentially forward.
I am particularly drawing focus on the “appreciating the enjoyment” aspect because in my experience, in past times, when I would be feeling good, I would not think much of it. And when feeling bad I would feel very bad. At some point when I was feeling good I thought to actually compare the quality of it with feeling bad, and I came to appreciate how immensely better even a basic feeling good was. This appreciation of it did marvels in helping me to cement it and increase it further, it paved the way for higher and more consistent levels of feeling great, excellent, etc.
I’m curious about your thoughts on the matter @Vineeto as it does seem there’s a few different things we’re talking about here.
Cheers,
Claudiu
Hi Felipe,
I just snipped the pieces above to highlight how you’re approaching the topic from a place of wondering whether this or that will work, and whether to try this or that, and what might eventuate from that.
I wanted to highlight this just to bring attention to the fact that the advice I’m giving here is what experientially worked for me, as I just wrote to Kuba:
So, when I’m giving this advice, I’m not wondering about whether it works – I know that it did, at least for me. I am curious if it will work if somebody else tries it as well, but they have to try it first to see 
.
I write this response here in this way to further encourage you to simply try doing what is being outlined here, to see if it works. Then you won’t have to wonder – either it will, which will be wonderful, or it won’t, in which case that will be a valuable thing to report also and then we can confer further about it.
There may still be a disconnect as to what I’m suggesting though, so to go into it in a bit more detail…
I’m not sure why it would be interpreted that way – this is why I specifically highlighted the experiential and contemplative nature of it (emphases added):
So it’s simply a matter of not looking for the intellectual, or thought-out answer, but rather, the experiential and essentially wordless one (which can then be put into words later).
I am pretty sure that what I am attempting to convey here is what the word “contemplation” refers to. It is not an “intellectual” at all approach. Here is how Richard described it:
and:
Maybe I can try to give an example here. If you are looking at a red object, how do you know that it’s red? You don’t know it because you think it, you know it because you are having the experience of “red”. The purpose of this exercise is to bring that same experiential attention to the quality of feeling good, of enjoyment, so as to help the reader (that’s you reading this now!) fully appreciate just how wondrous it is, and how much better than feeling bad and even feeling neutral it is. In my experience, this paves the way to massively heightened levels of enjoyment, it clears the path, so to speak, as one sees for oneself (and not just because they read it on the internet) just how good feeling good is.
“Marvelling” certainly conveys the quality of the desired effect well. I would say it is a matter of putting one’s entire ‘being’ into it. But I wouldn’t say it’s a matter of “feeling out” the answer. It’s not an intuitive approach… it’s one of contemplation.
Maybe the tricky bit is what “contemplation” refers to? Let me know if my attempts to describe it here make sense.
As I write this I realize I am perhaps conflating appreciation with contemplation and that I may be referring to something other than what Vineeto was referring to regarding appreciation – so I invite @Vineeto to comment and elucidate on the terminology if needed
But terminology aside, I will stand behind what I wrote as being that which worked for me to cement feeling good and pave the way forward towards quite unbelievable and unimaginable levels of sheer joy and mirificent wonder at being alive.
Cheers,
Claudiu
Felipe: Thanks for the input, Claudiu. I think you’ve already made this point to me in a past instance. Basically, it is that:
Enjoyment = this feels good
Appreciation = it feels good to feel good
It has a meta function. I do wonder though how to drive appreciation even deeper in a way that it doesn’t remain an intellectual effort and rather it’s a second layer of affect that reinforces and deepens the actualization of it all in the long run. All this in the context of that exponential nature that Vineeto wrote about, that’s an intriguing part that I may be missing. How exactly does the exponential nature come into play? I guess I need to experiment more with it to have an existential answer as well. Been trying to commit more to actualism lately, so this fits great.
Any further input from you or Vineeto will be appreciated [link].
Hi @Felipe,
Your deduction that “Appreciation = it feels good to feel good” is incorrect.
“it feels good to feel good” is the act of taking notice of the hedonic tone of feeling good. Therefore appreciation is not “a meta function” of feeling good, appreciation is something additional, otherwise why even mention appreciation, let along emphasize it?
Can you recognize how you miss the points on appreciation, which my post and Claudiu’s extensive explanation made, by wanting to just quickly think about it and put it aside?
Actualism is a full-blooded approach – and it needs your whole-hearted attention and application to have some lasting effect and success.
Felipe: Update: tapped into that for a bit and I can certainly feel the snowball effect of feeling good → feeling good about feeling good → feeling even better, etc.
I do wonder if this particular activity can help me break the habit of me trying to get distracted/entertainment when feeling good becomes normalized and triggers a “now what?” response. That usually leads me back to normal, so maybe feeling good about feeling good can calm and rechannel that dissatisfaction back to actualism mode? [link].
See what I mean – “tapped into that for a bit” – and you can already “feel the snowball effect” even in this short time and even though you haven’t applied any appreciation yet? And then you stopped enjoying and in the next – intellectually thought-out – sentence you started worrying about getting “distracted/ entertainment”. Why? Is this just a (bad) habit of yours you need to become aware of, or is there more behind this not wanting to keep feeling good for too long?
Here again is a quote from my post, in case you have not read it with care –
“Hence appreciation means assessing of the true worth or value of persons or things and thus adding value, enriching, encouraging (the expansion of your value assessment), highly regarding, cherishing, marvelling”, with a link to Richard’s article how you can appreciate and what there is in this infinite universe to marvel at and delight in. Especially take note of the 3rd paragraph in the above linked article.
And here is more to read with care and leisure to contemplate its significance –
“With the ongoing increase in appreciation and the consequent appreciative enjoyment it will be easy to follow Richard’s instructions further –
[Richard]: “one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ … and after that to ‘feeling excellent’ […] to the point of excellence being the norm”.” [link].
Once you figure out experientially how appreciation exponentially increases and expands on your enjoyment, you can up-level your bottom line or your hedonic fall-back position which both Claudiu and Richard and myself have talked about. (Non-intellectualized, i.e. comprehensive) contemplation, especially apperceptive contemplation, is certainly part of appreciation and can increase it immensely.
When ‘Richard’ the identity decided to dedicate ‘his’ life to live ‘his’ PCE 24hrs a day, ‘he’ started on ‘his’ journey by imitating the actual world as experienced in the PCE, guided by the golden clew of pure intent. And when ‘he’ succeeded, Richard confirmed to all of us that living in the actual world is indeed an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation of being alive –
“The means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end” (as it says in the 4th scrolling banner).
Does this tell you something? The actualism method is imitating the actual world – hence it cannot merely be an affective-only enjoyment and its meta function. It has to be something which increases your experience of being alive exponentially, to more and more imitate the actual world and the experience of a PCE and to lead you to becoming actually free.
Hence any (intellectually) watering down (i.e. depreciating) the act of enjoying and appreciating is going in the wrong direction, a red flag should appear right away, and it indicates a missing ingredient of pure intent(1). The direction to proceed is to do whatever you can to increase enjoyment of being alive, and you do that by “adding value”, “cherishing”, marvelling and living in wide-eyed wonder regarding your enjoyment of being alive, i.e. by appreciating and deeply contemplating the wondrousness and mirificence of the world around, including one’s fellow human beings.
(1) PS: When I said – “it indicates a missing ingredient of pure intent” – just to clarify, it means in the context of your writing pure intent is missing, it is not activated.
In a similar way you are attempting to depreciate, i.e. reduce, the marvellous function of awareness, which encompasses all aspects of being alive and conscious (“The mere awareness or even contemplation could be interpreted to be done merely intellectually”) – another red flag expression. Why are you so carelessly reductive ?
*
PS: @Claudiu: You have described it very well. I would say that at some point in the actualism process enjoyment and appreciation are experientially so closely linked together as to be inseparable. And isn’t that wonderful!
Cheers Vineeto
@Felipe:
Hello, Vineeto , it’s so nice to read you here.
Hello Felipe, Thank you for your kind welcome. Sorry that I missed the first post when I answered the rest just now.
I don’t remember having read such emphasis on appreciation in particular (in the sense that it can be THE element to cause an exponential boost, as you say). It’s one of those words that I’ve misunderstood a lot. At first I took it as the sensorial part (enjoyment = more affective, appreciation = more sensorial).
Naturally feeling being ‘Vineeto’ was aware of the importance of appreciation during ‘her’ years of actualism. I remember once Pamela asking – “Now I feel good, what now”? Richard smiled and said, “appreciate it.” But ‘Vineeto” never wrote much about is – it was just part and parcel of ‘enjoying and appreciating’. Here is an early example from 2000 –
‘VINEETO’: Appreciating the weather, the blue sky and the grey sky, was a useful exercise for me to start noticing the actual world. Usually, when waking up in the morning, I had automatically started to think about my feelings or duties of the day – now I am beginning my day by looking out the window and appreciating the weather, the sky, the clouds, the sun, the rain, the birds, the trees – whatever I can see and hear when looking out the window. It helped me to break the habitual preoccupation with moods, complaints, feelings and self-centred thoughts. At first it was almost an effort to shift the attention away from my self until the synapse in the brain were set to the new course – now it is a delight to watch the ever-changing sky, listen to the sound of the birds blending in with the street noise. There is so much exquisite perfection that has always been here and I have missed it because of myopic ‘self’-centredness!
Yes, it is great to be alive. [link]
I remember that specially in the recent two years I had become increasingly aware how very important appreciation is to the actualism method and actualism process, especially when we had visitors who wanted to know about the actualism method. I could see it in action when they occasionally appreciated the fact of feeling good, of being alive – how this increased exponentially their very enjoyment. Then I of course emphasized it further. In the last weeks before his death Richard was increasingly expressing appreciation, to me, to the marvels of the actual world, large and minute, and to private correspondents. Then he wrote the article about marvelling, which really drove the point home.
During Richard’s sickness and especially after his death the significance of appreciation became overwhelmingly obvious – it was everywhere, often accompanied with a sweetness and tenderness, then also in connection with writing about Richard’s memory, appreciating people, appreciating the universe – pure intent was overwhelmingly pouring in.
As Kuba recently said –
“The focus on appreciation started when Vineeto urged us to turn any sadness surrounding Richard’s death into appreciation for his life and his words. Then further to allow this appreciation to ‘spill over’ into appreciating this wonderful universe which exists all around, including the natural world and one’s fellow human beings.”
Hence I started writing about the significance of appreciation more and more and the responses from members here confirmed how important the comprehensive understanding of appreciation really is.
The word has also been somewhat charged with hints of positive/love feelings (such as love and gratitude), at least in Spanish.
I don’t know who “somewhat charged” it, I certainly never did and neither did Richard. Appreciation is very, very different to love and gratitude.
All this context to ask: can you tell us some specific examples that you remember from your own past experience in which appreciation was an important factor to get you unstuck or ramped up your actualist experience in given moments, or even created breakthroughs in your journey?
I think such anecdotes can help appreciation fully click for some of us. Thanks so much in advance
I don’t remember any specific anecdotes, I think ‘Vineeto’ often equated deep appreciation with pure intent and that certainly facilitated breakthroughs and progress in her process.
Cheers Vineeto
PS: In my last post to you I said – “it indicates a missing ingredient of pure intent”. Just to clarify, it means in the context of your writing pure intent is missing, it is not activated.
@Vineeto Thank you for emphasizing the importance of appreciation for enjoyment and pure intent. I intend to follow thru with applying it (appreciation) in the way you have talked about. I need to reread and practice appreciation in such a way.
“It is also handy that I can consciously set my intent towards appreciating, and from there it seems there in no cap on how wonderful things can get.”
Thanks @Kub933 It clicked for me here where you said “consciously set my intent towards appreciating”. That is what I was looking for as to how to apply appreciation.
Thanks, Vineeto, this is very useful. And yes, my replies were rushed and reductionistic, as I got sucked in a very specific aspect of what Claudiu wrote there and hyper focused there.
And then you stopped enjoying and in the next – intellectually thought-out – sentence you started worrying about getting “distracted/ entertainment” . Why?
Part of the rush. Happens to me often when I’m excited and caffeinated: jump from idea to idea fast, lol. It can also be indicative of my distracted nature (part of why I haven’t been able to fully focus on actualist endeavors all along and rather chase all kinds of cheap dopaminergic rewards).
I will shut up now as this thinking out loud of mine in these last posts isn’t too beneficial for the conversation.
To clarify I’ve experienced the range of experiences you are describing before, I think just I’m still not tuned into it all yet as I’ve been distant from actualism, or at least I practice it on and off, for a while.
Thanks for the responses again.
Hi Felipe,
@Felipe: Thanks, Vineeto, this is very useful. And yes, my replies were rushed and reductionistic, as I got sucked in a very specific aspect of what Claudiu wrote there and hyper focused there.
You are very welcome Felipe. Was it about contemplation and its relation to appreciation?
Vineeto: And then you stopped enjoying and in the next – intellectually thought-out – sentence you started worrying about getting “distracted/ entertainment”. Why?
Felipe: Part of the rush. Happens to me often when I’m excited and caffeinated: jump from idea to idea fast, lol. It can also be indicative of my distracted nature (part of why I haven’t been able to fully focus on actualist endeavors all along and rather chase all kinds of cheap dopaminergic rewards).
That’s understandable – so you will dig a bit deeper into this habit so to be able to focus better on what you really want to do?
Felipe: I will shut up now as this thinking out loud of mine in these last posts isn’t too beneficial for the conversation.
Ah, but that would mean running off again so as to remain as you are – and you didn’t really describe these qualities (rushed, reductionistic, distracted nature, chasing cheap dopaminergic rewards) as something you want to proudly maintain, or do you?
Why not give actualism another go, with new input and insights, and get to an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation each moment again? You will find that people here are happy to help and assist.
Felipe: To clarify I’ve experienced the range of experiences you are describing before, I think just I’m still not tuned into it all yet as I’ve been distant from actualism, or at least I practice it on and off, for a while.
Yes, I understand that – I can recommend the thread “Richard has passed away” as an introduction for why appreciation now gets such a prominent place in the actualism practice.
To clarify further what you had said yesterday –
At first I took it as the sensorial part (enjoyment = more affective, appreciation = more sensorial). The word has also been somewhat charged with hints of positive/love feelings (such as love and gratitude), at least in Spanish. (link)
A good example that translating actualism writing into other languages is fraught with misunderstandings.
Feeling good and appreciation are felicitous feelings, those who allow you to disentangle yourself from the identity-enhancing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings more and more. Whereas love and gratitude are ‘good’ feelings/ to counteract ‘bad’ feelings. Once you marvel at/appreciate how you feel, what you see and experience, there can be no mixing up of the two. As Kuba said only recently –
Kuba: The other interesting thing is that the difference between appreciation and gratitude is clear as day. (link)
Thanks for the responses again.
You are very welcome, Felipe, stick around it might be worth your while.
Here is an inspiring insight from Felix – in fact the whole post might ring a bell with you 
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Felix: Feeling good becomes a value in itself from this vantage point, and is felt to be something incredibly valuable to have and to share. It creates a whole new way of looking at the world and being in the world – all because oneself has changed as the lens through which everything is experienced and perceived. I have been the block all along. Which we always knew but it’s weird to see how true it is… (link)
Cheers Vineeto