Hi Kuba,
It seems the faux actualist has been a disguise for the high achiever as well. Always searching never arriving …
It’s quite a common trick for other actualists I know and yet everyone has to find out for themselves.
Kuba: Sonya is currently abroad and so I have been hanging out by myself mostly. We have this saying for what we experience when the other is away for extended periods – “just existing”. As in some kind of mix of loneliness with pointlessness etc. I experienced this initially when she left, that is likely why the whole thing of “ceasing to survive”, it was just a reactionary response to those feelings of loneliness.
It appears that this loneliness/ pointlessness has born some beneficial fruit.
Kuba: So anyways, the past couple of days I simple allowed myself to just live my life, without those ‘side missions’, and I found that I am inclined towards enjoyment and appreciation, as in that is what I want as an end in itself, and also that I naturally attend to the impediments to this. I have been doing some upgrades to my gym room and I was driving to pick up some items from a far away location yesterday, it was a gorgeous sunny day and where we live – North Yorkshire – is such a picturesque location, with long stretches of farm lands and cute little villages in between etc. And I was very much naively enjoying and appreciating life, not because of what it means according to any ‘actualist identity’ but because this is what I want for myself.
This is quite a realisation, “naively enjoying and appreciating life … this is what I want for myself”. It can cut through a whole lot of staged drama in one go when you remember why you started being interested in actualism in the first place – it feels good to feel good … and that I want this naïve enjoyment and appreciation more than I want to hold onto any achievements of ‘me’, the identity.
Kuba: Later on I was training BJJ and I got a little bit sour because the session did not go the way I wanted it to go, and right there it was probably the closest I have ever understood to what Richard referred to when he said that it is silly to waste this moment of being alive feeling bad when one could be feeling good. As in the reason I got back to feeling good, and abandoned that which was in the way of feeling good, was simply because I want to enjoy and appreciate life. It was not some step by step ‘actualist formula’ coming with its own morality, but rather a down to earth realisation that I want to be happy and harmless now, for its own sake.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that somewhere in all this I have forgotten the simple reason for why I am doing all this, which is to enjoy and appreciate life, and instead I have been running some side missions which are not actually concerned with that goal!
Perhaps now you understand a little better why Richard kept saying actualism is really simple and that is why people priding themselves in being sophisticate so easily miss it. Being naïve is to rediscover how simple it is to enjoy and appreciate being alive for its own sake. You may like this one –
Respondent: Basically I think ‘actualism’ asks too much for many people.
Richard: Whereas the actualism on offer on The Actual Freedom Trust web site asks very little … so little as to appear simplistic to some. For instance:• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Whatever presents itself in terms of divisive thought and feeling can dissolve in awareness.
• [Richard]: ‘Nothing substantive can happen in awareness while the instinctual survival passions dominate … and the word ‘survival’ should explain why.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘It comes through earnest self-study.
• [Richard]: ‘If the above quoted understanding [‘the self is nothing other than conditioning, the thinker/ feeler/ doer is thought’] is what comes through ‘earnest self-study’ then perhaps something else is called for.
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘You mean simplistic advice like keep asking ‘what am I experiencing?’
• [Richard]: ‘Ahh … I always like it when someone says something like this as it shows that they are beginning to take notice that when I say naiveté I mean naiveté.
Maybe its very simplicity is why it has been overlooked all these aeons? (Richard, List B, No. 12r, 11 Jan 2003).
In a nutshell: to the cultured sophisticate to be simple is to be simplistic [Antonym: sophisticated]. (Richard, AF List, No. 68d, 25 Oct 2005)
Kuba: So when you say I always find another problem to solve that is exactly why, because the motivation is to continue on some side mission, rather than to enjoy and appreciate life.
Richard said that for him the immediate is the ultimate, of course that is actual freedom but in that same manner the sincere actualist in me wants enjoyment and appreciation as an end in itself now, whereas the faux-actualist wants that thing ‘over there’, and steps right over the main event. (link)
Indeed, the immediate is the ultimate, and not only when you are actually free but whenever you fully and wholeheartedly enjoy and appreciate this very moment of being alive. Keep a look-out for when the faux-actualist (the ‘controller’) wants to take over (and ‘I’ will do anything to survive), so that your naïve enjoyment and appreciation can continue uninterrupted and take over your life.
Richard: It is so incredibly simple to be here now, living in time and space, letting this wondrous moment and place live me. When I wake up in the morning, I have again a marvellous day to look forward to; not specifically for what I am going to do in the day, but merely being here now; being alive and living this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. (Richard’s Journal, Article Eighteen)
Cheers Vineeto