Vineeto: 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” –
Andrew: Hi Vineeto,
I deleted the post, as it was very childish. Basically, I was objecting to something, and demanding someone else solve the “problem” I imagined.
As you saw fit to respond anyway, I will do my best to be constructive and explore what it is I wanted “solved”.
I have for a while suspected that Actualism is operating on a “direct pointing” type of psychic effect. This is a reference to Zen, where the student is made, sometimes with violence, to “see” some essential truth. I experienced this myself in an online environment once. Participants are instructed repeatedly “look! There is no self!” In various ways. The participants want to achieve what is being instructed, and it does work, to a point. The instruction itself is faulty in that method, as it bypasses the obvious; I am a self. At best it “peaks” at a “no self” experience, but won’t sustain it.
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for your considered reply.
It’s best to understand actualism without any preconceptions from previous involvements, if that is possible.
The other suggestion I have is to start where you are at and make it easy for yourself – set your bottom line to feeling good (not getting rid of ‘self’ or something like that).
Kuba has explained pretty well already to choose how to be the feeling, additionally there is Richard’s article This Moment of Being Alive. I add a post from No. 60 (Yahoo List No. 4), who had a lot of trouble with the actualism method and once he got the knack explained brilliantly how to choose which feelings to be –
Richard: You do comprehend that you are your feelings/ your feelings are you (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’) do you not? Viz.:
• [Respondent No. 60]: ‘It has taken me a hell of a long time to understand the difference between having feelings and being those feelings. Because I have not clearly understood this, I’ve never quite got the hang of paying attention to feelings without praise or blame, and without notions of innocence and culpability, right and wrong, etc getting in the way.
This makes things very interesting. The moment I regard my ‘self’ as ‘having’ a feeling, I’m split down the middle and there’s a secondary reaction on the part of the social identity (an urge to “do something” about the feeling, which in turn evokes more feelings, and so on). Conversely, if I recognise that I am the feeling, it most often dissolves into thin air – and usually pretty quickly too.
This is great. It’s especially helpful with regard to anger and frustration which have been two of my biggest hurdles to date. Previously, when I caught myself being angry, annoyed or frustrated, identifying and paying attention to this feeling would NOT cause it to disappear. On the contrary, the feeling and the awareness of myself as ‘having’ it would sometimes become like a microphone and amplifier locked into a screaming feedback loop.
I’m really pleased that this is no longer happening. It seems almost too easy’. [emphasis in original]. (Thursday 28/10/2004 6:55 PM AEST).
Richard: And again there is a reference to how ‘almost too easy’ actualism is.(Richard, AF List, No. 60g, 30 Oct 2005a).
In short, when you don’t keep the feeling you experience at arm’s length but accept that this is who you are, then you can choose that you might want to be a different (enjoyable and harmless) feeling.
Of course, as Kuba said, it can sometimes be that “‘I’ have a stake in ‘my’ suffering”.
Andrew: We have, over many years, in various forums discussed the “at work” environment.
It is a fact that no one as yet, has become “officially” actually free working a corporate job, in an office building, surrounded by modern working relationships.
I say “officially” as Craig did achieve that, by his report, but my understanding is that he is not regarded as actually free by yourself.
Everyone so far, has been in an “alternative” scenario. Self-employed, otherwise “off the beaten track”.
Quoting Richard’s experience, while also knowing that an artist on his own farm is a far cry from a corporate office, still leaves the assertion that being affectively aware, without cognitive engagement, in unproven.
Unless Craig is Actually Free.
Regards
Andrew (link)
If you are curious what Craig is up to you can ask him personally.
Here is an answer to Kuba from December last year about presently newly and fully free people I know, or know of –
KUBA: And of course it goes without saying that those effects apply not just between Actualists but inevitably affect all of one’s fellow human beings.
That when ‘I’ am ‘being’ felicity and innocuity and ‘I’ am ‘being’ naïveté, that ‘I’ have already affected others.
As to how others are affected by the existence of actually free fellow human beings I am not too sure. Of course there is the negative aspect, and what I mean by that is that the absence of sorrow and malice will of course have a beneficial effect, essentially 1 less sorrowful and malicious entity in existence.
But I wonder if there is a positive aspect, that just like when ‘I’ am happy and harmless ‘I’ inevitably bring others with ‘me’. Is there something intrinsic to the existence of actually free humans that pulls others closer to perfection and purity. This would certainly supply motivation to proceed. It would be so very worth doing.
VINEETO: Hi Kuba,
First the obvious reasons which everyone can understand.
-You would not be writing on this list if Richard had not discovered the actual world and written about it extensively. Tangible?
-The Direct Route was opened by Richard and Peter and Peter became actually free one day after. Peter thus confirmed that Richard is not a freak of nature and that no-one has to go via enlightenment to become actually free.
-Vineeto benefited from the Direct Route, confirmed after Peter that it is safe and confirmed that an actual freedom is as available for females as it is for males (of course!)
-Justine became actually free (later withdrew the publication of it) on another continent without having met Richard – proof that it is possible anywhere in the world.
-Grace and then Pamela became free – confirmation that women are as keen to be actually free as men.
-in 2011, a person of Indian birth and upbringing came for a visit and “was actually free of blind nature’s instinctual passions/the feeling-being formed thereof less than 24 hrs after landing.”(Richard, List D, Rick, 31 Dec 2011). They demonstrated, to many people’s astonishment, that the rapid (and sudden) way is indeed possible for someone with sufficient pure intent and urgency. (Richard, List D, Rick, 3 Dec 2009)
-2015 to 2018 three more people became actually free, and forum members reported they have benefited and drawn inspiration from their reports and correspondences (to an extent they would not have, if the persons had been not actually free).
-Also Bub and Scout recently lamented (and many others before them) that actualism isn’t very successful because only so few people (sic! 10 people in 26 years of its inception and publication) have had success – and for them virtual freedom does not count as success in that it would inspire them to get more confidently involved).
You can see, when you look more closely, that the whole forum only exists because so many people have dared to care and cared to dare to go all the way to self-immolation. (26 Dec 2024)
If that list has you still hesitate to begin to apply the actualism method in order to become more happy and harmless yourself then you might have to wait another decade or two until someone in your chosen category becomes actually free.
Personally, ‘Vineeto’ applied the actualism from the moment she fully understood that an actual freedom was the solution to peace on earth and the meaning of life, which the spiritual path could never ever supply. But everyone has different criteria for being vitally interested.
Andrew: Hi again,
I can be even more exploratory in my response, especially to the quoted text of Richard about “current time awareness”.
At any point of the day, I could give a detailed account of my psychological and emotional state.
In fact, I don’t think this is even a rare ability, at a certain point in a person’s life, especially in this era of popular psychology being “baked into” much of our lingo and understanding.
What is rare, and perhaps isn’t necessarily naturally there, is choice.
Choice.
Choosing one feeling over another, I don’t get.
I can say the words.
Perhaps, and this is me finding common ground between what I suspect the method actually is, and where I am, learning, or training, acquiring such an ability may indeed be the radical shift needed.
As I have only been able to do 50% of the method. I don’t need any sort of pause to tell anyone asking what I feel. What I can’t do, and I assume it’s because it’s an acquired skill, it choose to feel otherwise. (link)
The actualism method is about enjoying and appreciating being here – there is your choice, your priority in general. You not only have “current time awareness” but you have a preference for the felicitous and innocuous feelings and do something (as per instructions) about those feelings which are not felicitous and innocuous. You don’t need any psychology to work that out, in fact psychology only confuses the matter with theories and concepts.
The other decision that has been very helpful is to decide to put everything on a preference basis – you prefer things or people to be in a certain way but if that is not the case, it doesn’t really matter. This upfront decision removes a lot of force/ demand/ wilfulness out of your emotional reaction and reduces ‘self’-centricity (which generally causes more problems than it’s worth).
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, 25d, 14 Jan 2004)
Andrew: The obvious conclusion is that accepting that acquisition of the ability to choose IS akin the “direct pointing”, as in “just do it”, then it’s really just the abandon needed to do it, “come what may”.
However, uncoupling a feeling from action is where the fear kicks in.
As, come what may, for the majority of my time in work, would be, to walk away and disappear into whatever wilderness I can find.
Hardly practical. (link)
Well, you can equally say, just allow the malicious and sorrowful feeling to fade away by recognizing how silly it is to hang onto it. The more you tune into the quality of actuality (as you would do in the “wilderness”) the more you’ll experience the benevolent and benign quality (check out FAQ 66a for instance). What I mean is that it takes energy to keep up the ego- and self-enhancing emotions, whereas being happy and harmless comes natural when you remove the mostly habitual and attitudinal obstacles.
As a very general observation (without the usual caveats) just look how children have the capacity to go back to being happy once their problems such as food, cleanup, a plaster and so on are taken care of, whereas sophisticated adults get worried when there is nothing to do, nothing to prove, nothing to justify one’s existence and all the duties, obligations and expectations to be fulfilled. Your choice can be to simplify life, not just practically but emotionally, in other words in the direction of allowing more naiveté.
Nice to chat again after such a long time.
Cheers Vineeto