Vineeto to Henry: Contrary to popular conception, it doesn’t take ‘time out’ to adopt the habit of affectively monitoring your mood and pay attention to when the mood-meter goes below feeling good. Then apply whatever tool is necessary to get back to feeling good and resolve what triggered feeling less than good so that it doesn’t occur again. (link)
Andrew: Really? It take far more than “time out”. It take something that very few have ever managed.
Hi Andrew,
I see that since then you deleted the message but I still find that it had enough worthwhile points to respond to it.
Here is the detailed context about my statement that “it doesn’t take ‘time out’ to adopt the habit of affectively monitoring your mood” –
Richard: As you referred to ‘being attentive to my feelings’ half-a-dozen times, all told, it further occurred to me to anecdotally illustrate what is conveyed by the [quote] ‘current-time awareness’ [endquote] term, in that email of mine (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 24 Jan 2016) , so as to spell out in some detail how that awareness comes about such that it soon becomes possible, at any given moment, to ‘instantly answer the question’ you articulated as follows. Viz.:
• [Claudiu]: ‘To have a current-time awareness of how I am experiencing this moment of being alive means being able to instantly answer the question, if anybody asks or if I ask myself, of ‘How am I feeling?’ … or, in full, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ Or to put it in other way… if I ask myself, ‘how am I feeling?’, and I don’t immediately know the answer, but have to do some digging… that means I am lacking that current-time awareness!’ [endquote].
As what is conveyed by that term is already provided in the ‘This Moment of Being Alive’ article – and specifically referred to elsewhere via words such as ‘diminishment’ or ‘diminution’ and ‘flashing red light’ or ‘a warning buzzer’ on more than fifty occasions on my portion of the website – then this expanded post is more about drawing attention to it, even to the extent of belabouring the point, than anything else.
So, first the anecdote. Early on in my six-month visit to India in 2010 the person anonymised as Respondent № 04 on The Actual Freedom Trust list – whose first post is date-stamped 09 Jan 1999 on my portion of the web site (Richard, AF List, No. 4, 9 Jan 1999) – arranged to meet with me. Arriving after an early-hour inter-city train trip he spent around four or five hours with me and about an hour or so into the conversation he happened to mention, en passant, how he was not able to put the actualism method into practice at work as he could not be attentive to how he was experiencing this moment of being alive, each moment again, during his workaday hours as the job-description required that a large percentage of his time be spent at a computer station being attentive to the myriad manoeuvres on the computer screen virtually every moment of the day.
Although somewhat taken aback by the implications and ramifications of such obvious ignorement/ ignoration of my specific responses and explanations, online, it was a simple matter to point out how the moment-to-moment monitoring of the affections is, of course, an affective monitoring – along with reminding him how the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was a family man working 12-14 hours a day for 6-7 days a week in order to feed, clothe and house everyone (mortgage commitments, hire-purchase payments, and etcetera) – and to thereafter verbalise what is freely available for perusal and edification on The Actual Freedom Trust web site. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016)
As you may or may not have discovered for yourself, you can be intellectually engaging in something while simultaneous being affectively aware of how you feel. As such it does not take ‘time out’ from engaging your intellect, or digging a hole in the garden, for that matter, to be able to being affectively aware of how you feel while doing this.
Andrew: For example, if I were to give personal examples, which I will not for reasons which the internet has now ensured are sensible, becoming someone who can “feel good” in all circumstances is far more “time out” than can be imagined.
Indeed, I would say that it takes a lot more than “time out”, and that “popular imagination” goes not even a fraction of the way to “ensuring it doesn’t happen again”.
For a start, it does not take ‘time out’ to notice a change in your affective mood and this is what was conveyed in the above sentence of mine. This is eminently possible for an intelligent human being, for instance –
Richard: … how the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was a family man working 12-14 hours a day for 6-7 days a week in order to feed, clothe and house everyone (mortgage commitments, hire-purchase payments, and etcetera) …
Then, if one is motivated to get back to feeling good (because it feels good to feel good), one can see the silliness of feeling bad.
Richard: “once the specific moment of ceasing to feel good is pin-pointed, and the silliness of having such an incident as that (no matter what it is) take away one’s enjoyment and appreciation of this only moment of being alive is seen for what it is – usually some habitual reactive response – one is once more feeling good … but with a pin-pointed cue to watch out for next time so as to not have that trigger off yet another bout of the same-old same-old. This is called nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand … with application and diligence and patience and perseverance one soon gets the knack of this and more and more time is spent enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive …” (This Moment of Being Alive)
Of course, at present for you such application has no appeal because you, never having applied it, consider it “next to useless”.
Andrew: Such advice, while most obviously is orthodox “actual freedom” advice, is next to useless.
It is quite risible to label something entirely new to human consciousness as “orthodox”. I understand that you presently find it useless to pay affective attention to your mood. And when all is said and done it is your life you are living. It is you who either reaps the rewards or pays the consequences for any action or inaction that you may or may not do. It entirely up to you.
Andrew: What Henry meant by “spiritual bypassing” I assume is what is commonly discovered at some point; it’s really difficult to make money. Making enough money to have some level of freedom is progressively more difficult. (link)
Rather than speculating (“I assume”) what Henry meant here is what he actually said –
Henry: Yes precisely, basically I had some real-world issues that I hadn’t settled and was avoiding. (…) Currently I find my mental ‘to-do’ list to be a bit overwhelming, (link)
As you go on to say that one needs “enough money in order to have some level of freedom” then this is clearly your approach/ your interpretation of what freedom is – the materialist understanding of freedom from physical needs. Indeed, making money or providing for the basics needs to stay alive is what all humans have to sort out for themselves. It’s a fact of life. Animals live by the same imperative – to do whatever it takes to survive.
Richard: The bodily needs – there are no bodily desires – can be summarised as follows:
(1) air;
(2) water;
(3) food;
(4) shelter;
(5) clothing (if the weather be inclement).
Virtually anything else deemed a need is an instinctive drive (an urge, an impulse, a compulsion) and being affective anything instinctual can be readily distinguished by its emotional/ passional nature … desire, for instance.
Respondent: Is the example above the outcome of one’s instinctive urge to desire or should it be considered a ‘sensible’ bodily desire?
Richard: A general rule of thumb is: if it is a preference it is a self-less inclination; if it is an urge it is a self-centred desire. (Richard, AF List, No. 27d, 14 Jan 2004).
Of course, you can concentrate on the material necessities only and resent that you have to do all this so physically survive – what we are discussing here is how the instinctual survival passions (and the identity formed thereof) make taking care of one’s bodily needs a burden, an emotional suffering, a permanent complaint and a desperate exasperation about the fact of being alive … and how to change one’s affective attitude and emotional inclination regarding this moment of being alive.
A materialist seeks to fulfil their instinctually driven desires as victoriously as possible, whereas the aim of actualism is to enjoy and appreciate being alive (all the while providing the bodily needs) by diminishing the harmful and detrimental influence of the self-centric attitudes and instinctual survival passions. And more than a few have indeed reported that they have successfully done so.
As you may, or may not, have experienced, there is an actual world right under your nose. It’s when the instinctual survival passions and identity formed thereof temporarily go in abeyance (giving you a taste of what is possible) … and there is also a way to persuade this identity, ‘you’, to diminish ‘your’ dominance, and eventually give up ‘your’ ghostly existence.
One way to begin this process is to become aware of, acknowledge, intelligently contemplate and sensibly give up this basic resentment of having been born in the first place. Even if this was the only thing you do, it would already make your life eminently more enjoyable and less antagonistic as it is now.
Henry gave you a clue –
Henry: I am definitely still vitally interested in actualism and becoming free. I have found this period of consolidation productive in clearing the cobwebs out of some ‘dark corners’ of myself. I’ve also found the appearance of new problems informative. (…) I appreciate this message. I’m experiencing it as something of a wake-up call… a reminder of pure intent. (…) I am happier and more harmless than I was 1 or 2 years ago, and I’m pleased about that. Perhaps it’s time to step on the gas regarding attention to pure intent. (link)
Cheers Vineeto