@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.