Hi Vineeto,
This was very useful thank you, where you wrote :
”Find out where you may have misunderstood or inaccurately applied the actualism method and adjust where necessary.”
I think there is something here and really I can summarise it with the word - rumination. And actually just the google definition for it speaks quite well of why it’s a dead end :
”Rumination is the focused attention on the symptoms of one’s distress, as well as its causes and consequences, rather than seeking solutions. It involves endlessly replaying negative thoughts, past mistakes, or worries in a mental loop”.
I remember a video with Geoffrey talking about the kind of ‘investigation’ that actualists can get caught up in (which now I see more as rumination) and how he was now wondering whether ‘he’ succeeded because of this kind of thing or despite of it.
And I think this may be similar here with me, in that throughout my involvement with actualism I have been applying rumination believing it was the reason for whatever successes I had, but actually this rumination was more a crippling effect, and there was some successes despite of it.
It has been fascinating having you write on this forum because the few years prior to that I was consistently doing something, but at the same time there were so many misunderstandings and self-deceptions thrown into the mix. So the past couple of years interacting with you it was like all those misunderstandings and self-deceptions have been slowly identified and cleared one after the other.
And there is for sure successes that have come from this venture, for example what Sonya wrote in her journal the other day about the vibes at home, it is really like that now where fundamentally every day we like each other and we get on together. It is the main reason why I simply could not have ‘me’ ‘being’ the stress, as in I could not accept it because I can see what it has the potential to do. But also I think since the talks we had about blame it clicked for both of us, so now there is this (very nice) outcome where we both naturally give each other grace when the other falls of the wagon for a bit. So this elimination of blame for us both was a solid success indeed, and it was not the outcome of rumination or an all or nothing approach, it was something more sincere that did it.
So I guess the main thing I need to experientially clarify for myself, is what leads to change.
You wrote :
”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)”
This is also a good clue, because I do have this tendency to treat it as if it is some psychological case, that is where the rumination and the all or nothing approach comes in. That ‘I’ will observe these feelings and structures and ‘I’ will draw a map of the various past causes etc But then by the end of it, there is no change! It seems where change typically has happened is where I get sick of going round in circles and just stop 
. So it is like I get there in the end but with much time wasted.
And from what I can see, what leads to change is essentially what you wrote here :
“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?”
So essentially this rumination is clutter, and it can be discarded, which means then I do not require some long thought out process to grant me the permission to get back to feeling good or to leave behind some dearly held aspect of ‘me’.