Vineeto to Kuba: What happens if you allow the feelings associated with this “most central part of my persona” to come closer, and closer, so intimately close that you affectively feel that ‘I’ am my feelings [of this original image] and my feelings are ‘me’? Not as a cognitive analysis but as an existential affective experience? (link)
Claudiu: Wonderful things happen. It’s quite a short path from the fear/ dread/ reluctance/ reticence to do so/ putting it off/ avoiding it/ etc., to the actually usually quite mild discomfort whilst doing so, to the “what was the fuss all really about?”, to forgetting ever had that issue in the first place haha. (link)
Hi Claudiu,
What an excellent experiential feedback of how to successfully apply the actualism method. Because most of human beings shy away from acknowledging and/or feeling negative feelings, it sometimes takes a deliberate conscious step to bring the feelings closer, and closer, until one affectively experiences that ‘I’ am this feeling. Then magic can happen in an instant and the door to naiveté opens.
This step is often overlooked when at first applying the actualism method because this dis-association happens so automatically for many that it takes some practice to become aware of it happening. Often correspondents have complained that Richard wrote as if the actualism method worked instantly for him – and why does such success elude them. As far as I know from his writing that Richard didn’t experience such automatic dis-association in his application of ‘imitating the actual’ and hence has barely written about it. Having had no concept of a ‘good actualist’ for instance, he did not fight his feelings, but was instead curious, inquisitive, fascinated, explorative – and it worked like a cinch.
I am also reminded of the now famous feedback from No. 60[AF] –
Respondent: ‘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).
I much appreciate that you highlighted and emphasized this course of action with your hands-on report.
Cheers Vineeto