João's introduction

[bn.j]

@Vineeto

Hi João,

Welcome to the Discuss Actualism forum.

Hi Vineeto,

Thank you. The forum is an inestimable resource which your active participation greatly enhances. I don’t quite compute that I can just communicate with you, but here I am.

@Vineeto

I appreciate your gracious and sincere introduction and took particular note when you said you found in the description of an actual freedom something you “I had been seeking for most of my life” . This will give you a solid basis to persist in not only finding it in the writing but more and more experiencing it yourself when you start applying the actualism method.

When seeing that quote singled out I paused and pondered whether I had been a bamboozler once again, especially since this was a late inclusion, when urging to end and publish, already mentally fatigued of how long it was taking. The phrasing is not very precise and lacks “, and more” after, but you understood the gist of it. After careful consideration, what I can say is that, although I believed it to be unseekable, which contradicts what I said, the flavor of the phrase is unquestionably sincere. Favorably, this appears to be the pertinent part.

@Vineeto

It seems the main obstacles at present is what you call “a lack of desire for feeling good (there is an extant tendency towards indifference)”, which might well be a both a basic resentment as in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ plus what you have practiced when applying the teachings of those you named above.

I have no awareness of ever practicing anything of those I named above, all I did was read and ponder. But since I appear to have given an inaccurate impression, I will clarify with additional information that should have been included from the start. In my effort to excise my cunningness I appear to have excised excessively (or cunningly, not sure).

While growing up, I was inculcated and/or acquired a misguided way of dealing with life. As far as I can tell, that and it’s offshoots are the main obstacles that I am facing now. The indifference is one example: it was inculcated and acquired as a way to avoid suffering. So I actually know where it comes from, it mostly comes from my own intentional doing.

@Vineeto

So when you are ready to ‘roll up your sleeves’ and decide to aim for feeling good the initial inertia would be one of the habits to pay attention to and replace it with enjoying being alive (however little it may be at the start) and appreciating both your own success in doing so and appreciating the wondrousness of the world around you. I remember when feeling being ‘Vineeto’ did ‘her’ first baby-steps in actualism ‘she’ suddenly noticed that ‘she’ had never really looked at the sky, or the weather, because ‘she’ had been so busy with ‘her’ often sullen, always serious, thoughts and feelings about life.

I much appreciate you saying this, it is very worthwhile to read and reread.

@Vineeto

The instinctual passions and the identity formed thereof are at the core of the disease called the human condition. However, at first glance many people assume that by suppressing/ repressing emotions they can solve their problems.

Indeed. That is connected to the indifference and is another inculcated and acquired thing, the belief that feelings are bad and that one is better off without them.

I experience myself as a cognitive being that has a feeling from time to time, which is detected and, usually, the trigger identified. Although I don’t mean that there is a feeling from time to time, it must be that I am not aware of the other ones.

@Vineeto

What Adam described in the above quote is indeed a mixture of enjoyment and appreciation but there is no need to separate them in your experience of having fun being alive. Appreciation is putting the stamp of approval both on your sensate and your affectively-felicitous experience and thus increase and perpetuate the enjoyment. 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!

Thank you for clarifying and for the additional information. When I looked at it what I saw were expressive statements about one’s experience, which sounds like appreciation to me instead of enjoyment. But I don’t think I was necessarily separating them, it was more a telling them apart. I do see how they may intertwine and become inseparable, at least intellectually.

There was another thing that I noticed in Adam’s thread and that I don’t think I had ever noticed before. In the phrase “enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive” what I see is enjoyment of this moment of being alive and appreciation of this moment of being alive. Yet (at least) you and Claudiu speak about appreciation of the enjoyment of this moment of being alive. I am a bit confused by that. In my mind that almost seems as if this moment of being alive is being slighted, that all one appreciates is one’s enjoyment of it, in a self-centered way.

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I appreciate you taking the time. I can see that I am thinking more than I am doing. Addressing this sooner rather than later is definitely a sensible thing to do.