This has been on my mind alot, contemplating what actual innocence is referring to. And although ‘I’ cannot be actually innocent it has given me a fuller understanding of what harmlessness and happiness is all about. I think this had a big part in allowing me to locate ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings.
With the above in mind I have been sorting through those feelings (good and bad) which were hiding under the apparent “feeling good” umbrella, and yet they were “nocent”, both to ‘me’ and to others. And I found that only the genuine felicitous and innocuous feelings are free of this propensity to inflict hurt, in whichever direction.
So it’s quite interesting, I can’t put it into words very well yet, but it is the focus on harmlessness, whilst holding in mind what actual innocence means, which allowed me to sort through the various feelings and begin to let go of those which had the capacity to inflict hurt. And doing this I have located these ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings, which are like a “fresh summer breeze”.
And it is so clear to me now that one can only be happy if one is also harmless, because to inflict harm is to experience / ‘be’ harm. It reminds me of Richard’s descriptions of actual freedom, this one in particular has been coming to mind :
”One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence”.
Respondent:‘(…) In my personal experience: having ‘feeling good’ as an aim – and then trying to feel good – sucks. But having an aim that does feel good, and then using ‘feeling good’ as a guide to whether or not one is on track with that aim, doesn’t suck, and makes sense’. (…) Richard: […] It is pertinent to note, at this point, that the root cause of sorrow – and, hence, malice (e.g., the ‘basic resentment’ above) – is being forever locked-out of paradise. (…)
Not surprisingly, the word innocent (as in, ‘harmless’, ‘innoxious’; ‘sinless’, ‘guiltless’; ‘artless’, ‘naive’; ‘simple’, &c.) stems from the same root as the word nocent (as in, ‘harmful’, ‘hurtful’, ‘injurious’; ‘guilty’, ‘criminal’, &c.) does … namely: the Latin nocēns, nocent-, pres. part. of nocēre, ‘to harm’, ‘hurt’, ‘injure’, with the privative ‘in-‘ affixed as a prefix (i.e., in- + nocent). Viz.:
• innocent (in′ȱ-sënt), a. and n. [‹ ME. innocent, innosent, ‹ OF. (also F.) innocent = It. innocente, ‹ L. innocen(t-)s, harmless, blameless, upright, disinterested, ‹ in- priv. + nocen(t-)s, ppr. of nocere, harm, hurt: see nocent]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).
• nocent (nō′sënt), a. and n. [‹ L. nocen(t-)s, ppr. of nocere, harm, hurt, injure]. I. a. 1. hurtful; mischievous; injurious; doing hurt: as, ‘nocent qualities’. 2. guilty; criminal; nocently (adv.): in a nocent manner; hurtfully; injuriously [rare]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia).
(Richard, List D, No. 4b, 4 July 2015)
Kuba: This has been on my mind a lot, contemplating what actual innocence is referring to. And although ‘I’ cannot be actually innocent it has given me a fuller understanding of what harmlessness and happiness is all about. I think this had a big part in allowing me to locate ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings.
With the above in mind I have been sorting through those feelings (good and bad) which were hiding under the apparent “feeling good” umbrella, and yet they were “nocent”, both to ‘me’ and to others. And I found that only the genuine felicitous and innocuous feelings are free of this propensity to inflict hurt, in whichever direction.
So it’s quite interesting, I can’t put it into words very well yet, but it is the focus on harmlessness, whilst holding in mind what actual innocence means, which allowed me to sort through the various feelings and begin to let go of those which had the capacity to inflict hurt. And doing this I have located these ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings, which are like a “fresh summer breeze”.
And it is so clear to me now that one can only be happy if one is also harmless, because to inflict harm is to experience / ‘be’ harm. It reminds me of Richard’s descriptions of actual freedom, this one in particular has been coming to mind :
Richard: “One is pure innocence personified, for one is literally free from sin and guilt. One is untouched by evil; no malice exists anywhere in this body. One is utterly innocent. Innocence, that much abused word, can come to its full flowering and one is easily able to be freely ingenuous – noble in character – without any effort at all. The integrity of an actual freedom is so unlike the strictures of morality – whereupon the entity struggles in vain to resemble the purity of the actual – inasmuch as probity is bestowed gratuitously. One can live unequivocally, endowed with an actual gracefulness and dignity, in a magical wonderland. To thus live candidly, in arrant innocence, is a remarkable condition of excellence”.(Richard’s Journal, Article Nineteen, p. 141-2)
Ah, what great outcome of your persistent contemplation to get to the core of what innocence actually is. It seems you have come full circle to the time when you first wrote that what you dearly want is “to be innocence personified” –
Kuba: In short what ‘I’ deeply and passionately care about is to be innocence personified. To live that which the PCE demonstrated and in doing so to offer (and demonstrate) a solid alternative to the “hypocrisy, the lack of equity, the ignorant irresponsibility and the harm that was being done by all”. This innocence is what I (and I am sure others on this forum) detect from you and if I had not experienced it first hand I would probably have believed it to be impossible. (Kuba5, 8 March 2025).
When you look back through your journal, many obstacles and objections had to be overcome and ‘secrets’ to be exposed to yourself until you developed sincerity to a fine art that would not allow you to leave any stone unturned or any dirt under the carpet. For instance, you had to experience, and then honestly admit to yourself that you harboured aggression and chip away at the much-prized assertiveness. You said in a previous post –
Kuba: I was just contemplating this and something interesting popped up. Which is that as ‘I’ become more sincere i.e. more in line with facticity, it is harder for self-centricity to be maintained. (…) But this action of warping the world around ‘me’ requires continued effort from ‘me’, it requires that ‘I’ continually disregard the facts and instead interpret every situation in a self-centric manner, that is the “story of ‘my’ life”. And although this is the instinctive norm of being ‘I’ find that it is painful, not only for ‘me’ but also for others. But I saw a chink in the armour of self-centricity, which is that it requires deception in the first place. (link)
This is very perceptive – perspicacious, penetratingly observant, to be precise. One can only really see that, acknowledge that, when one is no longer invested in a self-serving image-presenting deception, when facts and actuality are one’s guide and value.
And now, as you say here“it’s such a simple earthly joy of being here, I realise that this is actually all that I want.”
This persistent and utterly honest sincerity enabled you to now “have located these ‘pure’ felicitous and innocuous feelings, which are like a “fresh summer breeze”.”