It seems that a subtle fundamental shift has happened. I have gone from thinking/feeling that I don’t have long to live to ‘expecting’ that I am going to have a long happy and harmless life of enjoyment and appreciation. I am back to enjoyment and appreciation now. Bring it on.
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I have decided to make a one word change in my above revelation. I am changing ‘knowing’ to ‘expecting’. This seems more appropriate.
I have caught a glimpse of why I have never made a lasting connection to pure intent. I think it could be because I have looked inwardly for pure intent and it is not inner. It is outer.
I think I need to look for pure intent outwardly.
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James: I have caught a glimpse of why I have never made a lasting connection to pure intent. I think it could be because I have looked inwardly for pure intent and it is not inner. It is outer.
I think I need to look for pure intent outwardly. (link)
Hi James,
I remember that in November last year you had the same insight with similar wording –
James: I saw what I’ve been doing wrong. I’ve been trying to make an inner connection to pure intent and pure intent is not inner. It is outer. As soon as I saw that my senses perked up. The wind became stronger and the sounds became louder. The waves on the water started shimmering. Everything became brighter. I am confident that I can make a connection to pure intent now. (link)
This was my reply –
Vineeto: Hi James,
This is great news, James!
Just a slight correction which might be helpful – pure intent is neither “inner” nor “outer”. The outer world is the projection of the “inner” world of the identity onto the material world and as such pure intent is outside of both worlds. That’s how pure intent facilitates you to aim for that which is entirely outside of ‘you’, outside of ‘your’ inner world and outside of ‘your’ outer world, just as the PCE from which you derive pure intent is outside or ‘your identity’s’ perception.
You may have already experientially understood this because you say that “Everything became brighter. I am confident that I can make a connection to pure intent now”. (5 Nov 2024)
Later on the same day you had a clear long-lasting PCE – Check the links and read for yourself (link)
Perhaps bookmark these messages so that your brilliant insight stays in your memory.
Cheers Vineeto
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I still love her. I’m never going to be free if I don’t get past that. This was a 50yr love affair. It’s been off and on for years at a time.
It’s all feeling/memory now which still lingers. I told her not to call or write anymore and that hasn’t ended the feeling/memory.
I need to see the futility of it.
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James: I still love her. I’m never going to be free if I don’t get past that. This was a 50yr love affair. It’s been off and on for years at a time.
It’s all feeling/ memory now which still lingers. I told her not to call or write anymore and that hasn’t ended the feeling/ memory.
I need to see the futility of it. (link)
Hi James,
To simply avoid the person you feel love for is not going to eliminate the feeling you have for her – on the contrary, the image you have of her can grow more rosy in absence.
The first thing to figure out for you if you “need to see the futility” or if you want to do that and why. ‘You’, your ‘self’, can provide many soothing reasons to keep having sweet memories of love. Hence letting go requires the conviction of your experience of the enjoyment and appreciation of being alive now, and for instance the rememoration of your long-lasting PCE last year (6 Nov 2024) to have something far more valuable to replace those affective memories with. Kuba said it well in his recent messages –
Kuba: With the immediate reward being the wonder and amazement itself rather than any intellectual answer. I am amazed each time this flavour is tasted because it is just as wondrous every time. This flavour, what it is and where it leads is the direction I want to go in, and not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. It is what I want to do with my life. And there is a golden clew in place now back to this flavour, and it is so very worth it every time. (link)
And –
Kuba: Having experienced pure intent ‘I’ can never fully forget the experience, the wheels are in motion and ‘I’ can either kid ‘myself’ or press on. (link)
So you see, “I need to” is not going to eliminate/ dissolve your feeling/ memory of love, as powerful as the feeling of love can be, you can only find the reason why love is not good enough, in fact “mere baubles”, in comparison with the rememorated or direct experience of the actual world.
Richard: When one walks naked (sans ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul) in the infinitude of this actual universe there is the direct experiencing that there is something precious in living itself. Something beyond compare. Something more valuable than any ‘King’s Ransom’. It is not rare gemstones; it is not singular works of art; it is not the much-prized bags of money; it is not the treasured loving relationships; it is not the highly esteemed blissful and rapturous ‘States Of Being’ … it is not any of these things usually considered precious. There is something ultimately precious that makes the ‘sacred’ a mere bauble.
It is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe – which is the life-giving foundation of all that is apparent – as a physical actuality. The limpid and lucid purity and perfection of actually being just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time is akin to the crystalline perfection and purity seen in a dew-drop hanging from the tip of a leaf in the early-morning sunshine; the sunrise strikes the transparent bead of moisture with its warming rays, highlighting the flawless correctness of the tear-drop shape with its bellied form. One is left almost breathless with wonder at the immaculate simplicity so exemplified … and everyone I have spoken with at length has experienced this impeccable integrity and excellence in some way or another at varying stages in their life.
This preciosity is what one is as-one-is – me as I am in actuality as distinct from ‘me’ as ‘I’ am in reality – for one is the universe’s experience of itself. Is it not impossible to conceive – and just too difficult to imagine – that this is one’s essential character? One has to be daring enough to live it – for it is both one’s audacious birth-right and one’s adventurous destiny – thus the pure consciousness experience (PCE) is but the harbinger of the potential made actual. (Richard, List B, No. 21g, 26 Oct 2001a).
The insight you are looking for is experiential, not cognitive.
Cheers Vineeto
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Yes, the experience of the PCE which brings forth pure intent is what is missing. This is why love must go so as not to interfere with this experience.
Vineeto: The insight you are looking for is experiential, not cognitive.
James: Yes, the experience of the PCE which brings forth pure intent is what is missing. This is why love must go so as not to interfere with this experience. (link)
Hi James,
You saying “this is why love must go” shows that you better re-read what I said in my last message –
Vineeto: So you see, “I need to” is not going to eliminate/ dissolve your feeling/ memory of love, as powerful as the feeling of love can be, you can only find the reason why love is not good enough, in fact “mere baubles”, in comparison with the rememorated or direct experience of the actual world.
‘You’ cannot command your ‘self’ to do something or not do something – you would only split yourself in two and have a fight with yourself.
I understand that it can be difficult to recall the memory of a PCE or to connect to pure intent when in the grip of a strong emotion.
Can you get back to feeling good? If so, once feeling good, find out what is so attractive about love/ the memory of love, in a friendly not forceful way, i.e. without antagonism or blame. In a relaxed inquiry the answer will eventually come forth.
Having found out the reason for love being so attractive to you, and acknowledged that ‘you’ are your feelings and your feeling are ‘you’, you can then experientially experiment with neither expressing (imagining) or repressing (“must go”) this strong feeling and contemplate, with sincere, genuine fascinated attention, about the way ‘you’ (the instinctual passions) operate.
Sincerity being the key to naiveté, a third alternative might hove into view.
Cheers Vineeto
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The fact is that love is not better than the actual world. Never has been and never will be. Love is a distraction from the actual world.
Vineeto: Can you get back to feeling good? If so, once feeling good, find out what is so attractive about love/ the memory of love, in a friendly not forceful way, i.e. without antagonism or blame. In a relaxed inquiry the answer will eventually come forth.
Having found out the reason for love being so attractive to you, and acknowledged that ‘you’ are your feelings and your feeling are ‘you’, you can then experientially experiment with neither expressing (imagining) or repressing (“must go”) this strong feeling and contemplate, with sincere, genuine fascinated attention, about the way ‘you’ (the instinctual passions) operate.
Sincerity being the key to naiveté, a third alternative might hove into view. (link)
James: The fact is that love is not better than the actual world. Never has been and never will be. Love is a distraction from the actual world. (link)
Hi James,
As you said yourself in your last message “the experience of the PCE which brings forth pure intent is what is missing” (link), the “fact” which you state above is not experiential, hence presently ineffectual.
When you are ready to investigate further why love still has a hold on you, perhaps what Chrono said today might give you some clue how to look deeper –
Chrono: Why do I want this dream (of love and limerence) to be true? What is this dream composed of? I realized this past week that for the unknown path to become apparent that the belief in ALL of ‘my’ dreams would have to go. All of ‘my’ dreams were somewhere and somewhen else. They would never actually manifest here. This brought a strange sense of relief. I know at some level that I am only fooling myself with some deception. Then while leaving work and heading home I experienced a sensuousness I quite often experience at the end of the day and had a spontaneous realization that the end of ‘my’ dreams was also the end of all of ‘my’ nightmares. (link)
As Richard found out while he investigated the various components constituting his state of enlightenment –
Richard: By the time I had worked my way through this philosophical dilemma [of pacificism] I had to turn my sights upon the last thing that stood between me and an actual freedom. I would have to let go of the deeply ingrained concept of ‘The Good’. For this to happen I would have to eliminate ‘The Bad’ in me, or else I would be likely to go off the rails and run amok. Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out. [Emphasis added] (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Enlightenment Resumé, #ahimsa).
Cheers Vineeto
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Love still has a hold on ‘me’ because it is the memory of the feeling of love. As we know this feeling doesn’t last and we are back to the bad side of love with hate and all the rest of it sooner or later.
Nevertheless I have been thru that many times before yet the feeling persists and continues to return along with the memory.
I’m thinking that if I stay with the feeling I can burn it out.
I’ve never really stayed with the feeling long enuf to extinguish it.
James: Love still has a hold on ‘me’ because it is the memory of the feeling of love. As we know this feeling doesn’t last and we are back to the bad side of love with hate and all the rest of it sooner or later.
Hi James,
Who is “we”?
James: Nevertheless I have been thru that many times before yet the feeling persists and continues to return along with the memory.
I’m thinking that if I stay with the feeling I can burn it out.
I’ve never really stayed with the feeling long enuf to extinguish it. (link)
Whereas the actualism method is –
Richard: … consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is. And this is because the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself. (…)
The more one enjoys and appreciates being just here right now – to the point of excellence being the norm – the greater the likelihood of a PCE happening … a grim and/or glum person has no chance whatsoever of allowing the magical event, which indubitably shows where everyone has being going awry, to occur. Plus any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway. (Richard, Articles, This Moment of Being Alive).
I am reminded of the conversation you had with Richard about addiction –
James: … Would you say that an addiction is the ‘me’ trying to cling to or recreate a ‘good’ feeling?
Richard: Indeed … but there possibly is more to it than that (I was involved in a verbal discussion about this only a couple of days ago) as what may become obvious, upon closer investigation, is that ‘I’ can be as much addicted to the suffering, which ensues as the eventual result of the high evaporating, as ‘I’ am addicted to the high in the first place.
Arguably more so, perhaps, despite how perverse the notion may sound at first hearing. (Richard, List B, James3, 22 Oct 2002
(…)
James: Upon looking at it further it appears that I am addicted to ‘me’ (suffering) but that I am also addicted to the escapes from the ‘me’.
Richard: Okay … is the addiction to being ‘me’ stronger than the addiction to escaping from being ‘me’?
I only ask because if the addiction to being ‘me’ is the more powerful addiction then successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods).
Whereas if the addiction to escaping is the more powerful addiction then successful escape can (and will) happen. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)
In other words, when you say “love still has a hold on ‘me’” is it because you hold onto love and its bitter-sweet memories? After all, ‘you’ are your feeling and your feeling are ‘you’.
Cheers Vineeto
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As ‘we’ know was referring to you and I when I said “As we know this feeling doesn’t last”.
Thanks for the reminder about the method. I woke up feeling good this morn with no pain and I am enjoying and appreciating. I am having fun and enjoying writing to you and I really do appreciate you.
Yes, the quote about addiction is spot on. Toward the end of that discussion with Richard he said that what we (humanity) are addicted to is ‘me’ which is suffering so I am looking to
see exactly how this works. I think this feeling of love keeps me addicted to ‘me’ or maybe ‘me’ keeps ‘me’ addicted to love. Iow: I am ‘my’ feelings and my feelings are ‘me’.
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James: As ‘we’ know was referring to you and I when I said “As we know this feeling doesn’t last”.
Hi James,
The reason the ‘we’ is not applicable because the person who knew that “this feeling doesn’t last” was feeling being ‘Vineeto’ who became extinct in January 2010. Also, that the feeling “doesn’t last” was not ‘Vineeto’s’ experience, she had to actively look into ‘her’ dreams and hopes regarding love and relationship in order to uproot love in herself – love certainly did not just disappear of its own accord. ‘She’ wrote about ‘her’ successful investigations –
‘Vineeto’: My traditional response to the feeling of being trapped had been that the man should give me his love and reassurance. But the way to the intimacy that I had already experienced and wanted to have with Peter all the time, was that I had to question, examine and eliminate the notorious bunch of feelings called love. Peter’s description of our adventure into freedom and intimacy is certainly not just a male point of view. Did he love me enough or not, or did I love him enough or not, was not the question – I discovered that love was not the solution but the problem itself!
The answer again lay 180 degrees in the opposite direction to what I had come to know up to now. I had expected or assumed someone was to love my ‘grotty self’, when even I could not stand those parts of me! A person who ‘loves me’ is supposed to accept all those ‘quirks of my personality’, which no intelligent human being would be able to put up with without blind nature’s intoxication known as ‘being in love’. And for years I had tried the same with the men I had ‘loved’, without success or happiness, let alone lasting intimacy. Intimacy can only happen when there is no emotion, no feeling or projection in the way between us. So, one of the first things that we discovered to be in the way of actual intimacy were the feelings of love – that sweet syrup that was usually poured over the spiky, malicious, miserable ‘self’, which I was most of the time!
One thing that I particularly didn’t like about falling in love was the pining. Whenever I was not with Peter I felt I was tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself. Digging into what could be the reason for my pining, I discovered what I call the ‘Cinderella-syndrome’ – the romantic dream that most women have about the perfect and noble man. We are not only looking for someone who takes care of us when our own strength fails us, but also for someone who gives perspective, meaning, definition and identity to our lives, be it as father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life. According to this dream Peter should be the answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’
I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, 44 years old and as silly as a teenager! After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life.
In the end, I had to admit that, whatever it was, it had not the slightest thing to do with anything that Peter could do for me. I wanted to be perfect and I had to do it myself. I still had to clean myself up. Just having found a probable good mate had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t the best I could be; that I wasn’t free. I decided there and then to face the challenge, to abandon the love-dream and go for the actual experience – meeting another human being as intimately as possible instead of looking up to him and waiting for him to be the ‘hero of my dreams’.
That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself. I had recovered my autonomy – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness. (A Bit of Vineeto, #love)
There is a second part to ‘Vineeto’s’ story about love, you can read it here – (A Bit of Vineeto, #love2)
James: Thanks for the reminder about the method. I woke up feeling good this morn with no pain and I am enjoying and appreciating. I am having fun and enjoying writing to you and I really do appreciate you.
Great to hear you are having fun and enjoying and appreciating being alive and corresponding with me.
I have reminded you about the actualism method because what you said you were doing. “Burn it out”, stayed with the feeling long enuf to extinguish it” are your own inventions and not how Richard described the actualism method.
James: Yes, the quote about addiction is spot on. Toward the end of that discussion with Richard he said that what we (humanity) are addicted to is ‘me’ which is suffering so I am looking to see exactly how this works. I think this feeling of love keeps me addicted to ‘me’ or maybe ‘me’ keeps ‘me’ addicted to love. Iow: I am ‘my’ feelings and my feelings are ‘me’. (link)
There certainly seems to be an addictive quality to the love you experience, and the suffering that accompanies it. Remember, it’s not love’s doing (like another entity or power) but your doing. That means you can stop doing it when you find out why you keep it around by discovering which hopes and dreams are the reason for you to hold onto it.
Enjoy playing Sherlock Holmes with your own mind.
Cheers Vineeto
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Health issues aren’t healing. The ex is gone. Af seems unlikely. Nothing and no hope is left. Maybe this is how it needs to be.
James: Health issues aren’t healing.
Hi James,
You made a nice list to justify why you feel despondent. However, this is a feeling reaction, so could be, or not be, a fact.
What is an undeniable fact is mortality – everybody dies sooner or later. To feel bad about it would be wasting your precious moment of being alive while you are alive. So even if your health is not improving this is no valid reason to mourn your death before it happens. Only some months ago you wrote –
James: As I approach the end of my life I decided to look at my regrets and then I realized that I don’t have any. I consider this a good thing and due to actualism. (24 June 2025).
When you realise (again) that you are ‘your’ feelings and your feeling are ‘you’, you can choose, at any time, to be a more enjoyable feeling. Why waste your most precious asset, your time, by feeling miserable, for whatever reason?
James: The ex is gone.
Ah, the other side of love, the bitter-sweet memories you wanted to “burn […] out” because you “know this feeling doesn’t last”. Now you mourn that it hasn’t lasted. A salient demonstration how fickle one’s feelings are.
James: Af seems unlikely.
Yes, particular when you are in a glum and gloomy mood. But then you have had a lot experience of successfully enjoying and appreciating being alive – which is not an actual freedom but nevertheless enjoyable in the meantime. So why not get back to feeling good as soon as you can and enjoy those last precious days, months, years of being alive?
James: Nothing and no hope is left. Maybe this is how it needs to be. (link)
I don’t know about “nothing” but “hope” is certainly a feeling useful to abandon.
Richard: Please, whatever you do with me, throw faith, belief, trust and hope right out of the window … along with doubt, disbelief, distrust and despair. (Richard, List B, No. 11, 22 Mar 1998)
Richard: Hope, the antidote to despair, is what most people live on. Living in hope – having faith or trusting – is a poor substitute for the living purity of the perfection of the actual. Hope sets one up for disappointment time and again … and all it is, is the antidote for despair. All trusting, believing, hoping and having faith and certitude are but the antidotes to distrust, disbelief, despair, doubt or suspicion. (…)
And look for passion … the passionate involvement required to maintain the synthetic credibility of whatever is believed in, or what one has faith in, or what one trusts and what one hopes for or has certitude about. It is impossible to dispassionately believe, dispassionately have faith, dispassionately trust or dispassionately have hope or certitude. Anyone who claims otherwise does not understand the experiential reality lying under those words.
I am consistently urging not only the discarding of all beliefs, but to examine and discard the very action of believing itself. (Richard, AF List, No. 14, 3 Mar 1999).
There is nothing which “needs to be” in a certain way. It is up to you how you want to experience this moment of being alive. But if the above quote makes sense to you and you understand that hope only invites disappointment and despondency, you can give it up voluntarily because this simply makes sense.
Then you can begin to appreciate what is actually happening and pay fascinated attention to what is happening in this moment – without expectation that it should be otherwise. It is so delightful to be here in this moment where you are actually alive.
Richard: Okay. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness does not mean a thing if one is miserable now … and a hoped-for happiness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting.
Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now. (Richard, List B, No. 19, 17 Mar 1998a)
In regards to you saying “maybe this is how it needs to be” you might find this informative –
Respondent: Why am I afraid of ending the conflict?
Richard: Is it that up until now conflict has been ‘my’ raison d’être? Is it that ‘I’ have invested so much into it that it has become ‘my’ very identity? The reason is not all that important … what is important is:
Just do it.
Respondent: I will have to relinquish all of my hopes, dreams, desires, yes?
Richard: In order to enable that which is vastly superior to all your ‘hopes, dreams, desires’? Yes … willingly, cheerfully.
Respondent: All of my cherished pains, self-pity, causes, no?
Richard: All these and more are what ‘I’ am made up of … these cherished things are ‘me’.
Respondent: And I have a market mentality. I want to know what I will get in exchange. I am quite bamboozled … what to do?
Richard: There is no problem about a ‘market mentality’ whatsoever … ‘sacrifice’ means an altruistic offering, a philanthropic contribution, a generous gift, a charitable donation, a magnanimous present; to devote and give over one’s being as a humane gratuity, an open-handed endowment, a munificent bequest, a kind-hearted benefaction. A sacrifice is the relinquishment of something valued or desired for the sake of something more important or worthy … it is the deliberate abandonment, relinquishment, forfeiture or loss for the sake of something illustrious, brilliant, extraordinary and excellent. It means to forgo, quit, vacate, discontinue, stop, cease or immolate so that one’s guerdon is to be able to be unrepressed, unconstrained, unselfconscious, uninhibited, unrestrained, unrestricted, uncontrolled, uncurbed, unchecked, unbridled, candid, outspoken, spontaneous, relaxed, informal, open, free and easy.
As I have remarked before, ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory. (Richard, List B, No. 25f, 19 Jun 2000)
Cheers Vineeto
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Thanks for the wonderful reply. It helped to express how I was feeling yesterday. I woke up feeling good this morning.
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Actualism has helped to rewire my brain after my heart attack/stroke. By staying engaged in the process I no longer stop in mid-sentence forgetting what to say.
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Having lost my way lately I asked myself : ‘How can I reconnect to pure intent ?’ and then it dawned on me ‘Come to your senses’. This is what Richard said from the beginning.
Come to your senses and enjoy and appreciate is all one needs to do. This is simple and immediate.
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Hi James,
I have not been keeping up with what people are posting much. Mainly focusing on myself. One thing that is becoming obvious is how age and being closer to death is actually an advantage in terms of being honest and looking at what is in the way of feeling good, but more importantly actual freedom.
It’s a gift that nature gives everyone, eventually. When all the distractions of youth and middle age (I seem to be a couple of decades older than my birth certificate says, emotionally!) are faded, then there is the far cleaner opportunity to choose.
Five minutes of being actually free would make any and all efforts, and that much talked about ‘sacrifice’ worth it! According to our now “late” mutual friend.
Cheers
Andrew
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