Kuba: Hi Vineeto,
Thank you for your reply, actually I was going to take some time off from all things actualist but this just ended up with me getting stressed over a phone transfer that refused to go smoothly…
Hi Kuba,
It’s quite informative that when you are “going to take some time off from all things actualist” – perhaps because you remembered Geoffrey’s “So I decided I needed a holiday from ‘doing’, from ‘trying’” (Geoffrey, Report of Becoming Free, #Q5) – that you “ended up with me getting stressed over a phone transfer”.
That event might well be an indicator that you are not at the point where taking “a holiday from ‘doing’” is a path to take but rather that your imaginary map to actual freedom is giving you the wrong coordinates. This “getting stressed over” such a minor occurrence like a slow phone transfer is clearly a “warning buzzer”, a “flashing red light” that one has gone astray and that it’s time to take out the instruction manual (Richard, This Moment of Being Alive) to look up exactly what is amiss or where one has missed a vital ingredient. When I searched the AFT for “flashing red light” I found an excellent and very detailed email to Claudiu explaining the actualism method at the start, which you may have skipped thinking being already close to the finish line.
Richard to Claudiu: Whilst reading your above email online it occurred to me to post a brief note, there and then, and simply reiterate how ‘being attentive to my feelings’ only takes place, of course, on those occasions when/ where an otherwise ongoing enjoyment and appreciation diminishes.
Plus, how the very act of thus ‘being attentive to my feelings’ is initiated by that diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation.
In other words, being (cognitively) attentive to one’s (affective) feelings – instigated by the diminution in the quality of affectively enjoying and appreciating being alive/ being here, each moment again, come-what-may – happens less and less once one gets the knack of thus affectively monitoring one’s moment-to-moment (affective) mood and/or temperament via the increasingly subtle variations in one’s (affective) enjoyment and appreciation.
Essentially, ‘feeling good’ as a bottom-line each moment again for the remainder of one’s life means rarely, if ever, needing to (cognitively) be ‘attentive to my feelings’ due to that habituation of the actualism method (such as to result in a still-in-control/ same-way-of-being virtual freedom).
*
Howsoever, upon re-reading your email with the notion of just a brief note in mind, the very detail and thus expansive length of it persuaded me to expand somewhat upon the subject myself and especially so in view of your observations regarding a particular hangover from your earlier buddhistic practice.
(…)
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. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016)
As you said you have practiced/ dabbled in buddhistic practice yourself, a similar reassessment to any ‘’hangover” might be needed to get the most benefit and lasting success from practicing the actualism method “as to result in a still-in-control/ same-way-of-being virtual freedom”. Now Richard goes into great detail in this particular post to Claudiu to highlight again that simply being attentive to one’s thoughts and feelings (à la buddhistic attentiveness) is not the actualism method –
Richard: The search-string returned 36 hits and a search for resulted in the following exchange.
Viz.:• [Respondent № 27]: Also specifically which emotions are advantageous to ‘not express’?
• [Richard]: All and any emotion … what I would oft-times say to people twenty one years ago, when I first put this into practice, was that *emotions are life’s way of reminding oneself that one has gone astray* (that one has wandered off the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition).
An emotion is like a warning buzzer … or a flashing red light. [emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 27a, 24 Jan 2002).This particular quote is included because it depicts the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago uncritically declaring how it was via the emotions (i.e., per favour the affections generally) – and not cognition (i.e., not per favour being cognitively attentive) – that it became noticeable ‘he’ had gone astray. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016)
Here is another example from the above email –
• [Respondent № 04]: [Okay, then why is it important to ascertain causation and the succession?] Does it help to see the silliness?
• [Richard]: (…)
The name of the game is to habituate an affective imitation of the actual each moment/ each place again – to consistently feel as happy and harmless (free of both malice and sorrow and, thus, their antidotal pacifiers love and compassion) as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – so as to enable the already always existing peace-on-earth to be apparent sooner rather than later … therefore *whenever/ wherever there is the slightest diminution of that felicity/ innocuity it speaks for itself* that some event, which has been constantly granted the power such as to customarily render that peace and harmony short-lived, has been permitted, via a lifetime of continuous/ routine ignoration, to wreak its havoc once again. [emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 4a, 31 Jul 2005).
It’s too long to quote more, even though I can highly recommend to read it in full including the tooltips for anyone who is not clear about any aspects of the actualism method.
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I appreciate your assessment of experiencing a “safe haven” – it also facilitates to be honest and sincere in our communications.
Now we come to what you perhaps consider “ascertain causation and the succession” –
Kuba: You know experientially it seems that ‘I’ as the ‘controller’ have ‘my’ claws dug in quite strong, ‘I’ can deceive ‘myself’ that everything is going smoothly but all it takes is for a phone transfer to go south and ‘I’ start grasping and arrogating and fighting etc.
We talked in the past about my “inner mother”, and this is not to apply any blame to my mother at all, but I am pretty certain this is a still unresolved aspect of it. I remember my mother from my youngest years to similarly have life tightly grasped in the claws of the ‘controller’, far beyond what ‘normal’ would be. It was like this mix of fierce attempts to control life with this constant underlying anxiety, expressed as an ongoing state of stress with angry outbursts. It seems that ‘I’ absorbed like a sponge the same kind of basic MO for life. And then the narcissism and the self-importance only cemented all this further.
Of course ‘I’ do not want to ‘be’ this any more, and not even just for ‘my’ sake but for everyone’s benefit. So this seems like a pretty big and obvious obstacle that is staring me right in the face, and I am not sure how it is to be addressed yet, I can see cracks in it but I cannot yet sincerely contemplate dissolving the whole thing. (link)
If what you describe is what counts for looking at the causation of getting upset about “a phone transfer to go south” then this clearly has not worked and will not work to prevent it from happening again and again. Your explanation is attributing causation of this event onto your mother, your childhood experience and habituation since having been a toddler, and this does more to justify and cement your reaction rather than uproot it. Also, “dissolving the whole thing” in one go is a typical all-or-nothing approach and certainly not the only option.
Whereas when you look at the event itself it is very simple – there was an expectation and a strong desire to have it happen quickly and smoothly (because you had probably already planned out the follow-up events) – and when things didn’t go your way you got “stressed”, perhaps even angry, and, as you say, you had this MO since forever.
Seeing the fact very clearly how destructive this MO is not only to your mood but for everyone else around you, there is no sensible reason at all to react in the same way again, ever. All it needs is seeing the fact and the sincere intent to be felicitous and innocuous and then put some such events which are not in your control genuinely on the preference basis.
Kuba: Actually I think I have some idea as to how to proceed with this obstacle, which is for now to allow that underlying anxiety/ fear which feeds the ‘controller’ to come to the surface and see what it is all about. (link)
Can you see that the deciding factor between analysing your past and seeing the fact now is that you have the choice, right now, to actually change – not because you are forced to for moralistic reasons but because you are intelligent and have a benign and benevolent aim in life? This intelligence with benign and benevolent intent means (according to the actualism method) you proceed by getting into the habit of affectively monitoring your mood and therefore detect finer and finer diminution and therefore catch the habitual “stressing” before it has time to grow into a large event. From the same above quoted email –
Richard: As to how simple, easy and thus effortless this way of living/ this course of action is, when sincerely put into practice, it may be handy to also anecdotally reference how the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago took the first step, on what has become known as the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition,
(…)
For what ‘he’ had twigged to, in the beginning stages of their joint venture (and particularly exemplified by ‘his’ wife’s predilection for venting over voicing), was how it was far, far easier and simpler to stay in a good mood come-what-may – preferably a happy mood of course – than claw ‘his’ way back up to feeling good, again and again, after having habitually reverted to type.
Hence being (affectively) aware, each moment again, of more and more subtle variations in the quality of one’s moment-to-moment enjoyment and appreciation of being alive/ of being here so as to earlier and earlier pre-empt any potential reversion to type.
Also, repeated experience had shown ‘him’ that minor dips in that quality presaged each major diminution – indeed miniscule blips soon became evident even earlier than those minor dips as ‘his’ ability to (affectively) detect subtle variations in the affective tone of mood and temperament became evermore fine-tuned – and the earlier such habituated silliness could be (affectively) discerned the sooner ‘he’ could thus nip these instinctual potentialities in the bud. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 3 Feb 2016).
To summarize –
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Ignore the coordination markers of your imaginary map, start where you are at -
Don’t *“take some time off from all things actualist”*, i.e. continue affectively monitoring your mood until it becomes a wordless habit. -
The all-or-nothing approach is a typical ‘controller’ attitude -
Find out where you may have misunderstood or inaccurately applied the actualism method and adjust where necessary. -
Put everything in your life on a preference basis -
When looking for a causation of an emotional occurrence the trigger and attitudinal cause is much closer than you may have thought/ felt (actualism is **new**, not old as in psychology) -
If all else fails, read the instructions again, with fresh eyes and an active connection to pure intent.
Cheers Vineeto