I have two takeaways from your reply:
Vineeto: Remember that it is an active dynamic connection to pure intent, where you experience “a genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe”. It is so delicious to experience it that you will be drawn to experience it again and again. Besides, nothing less will do the trick.
James: I have two takeaways from your reply: 1. Pure intent is dynamic and ongoing happening again and again.
Hi James,
Pure intent, an uninterrupted “genuinely occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe” and as such not “happening again and again”. It may appear so to you when you switch on and off the connection to pure intent but it is always happening, that’s why Richard described it as “stream”. What is dynamic (i.e. presently active), or not, is your connection to pure intent.
Perhaps for you these are mere words rather than the rememoration of an experience for you?
James: 2. Altruism has two aspects. I am wondering if the one-time altruistic act could happen upon my impending physical death? If so, this could be something to look forward to. (link)
I repeat part of Richard’s quote from the previous message for your elucidation because it looks like you have glossed over it –
Richard: It [altruism] has … everything to do with wanting, with all of one’s being, to bring to an end, once and for all, the inherent suffering which epitomises human nature. Viz.:
• [Richard]: ‘… one has to want to be free from the human condition like one has never wanted anything before. Because unless one is vitally interested in peace on earth one will never even begin to free the crippled intelligence from the debilitating passions bestowed by blind nature. Yet becoming vitally interested is but the preliminary stage, because until one becomes curious as to whether what is being written here about genetic inheritance can be applied to themselves, only then does the first step begin. For it is only when one becomes curious about the workings of oneself – what makes one tick – is that person participating in their search for freedom for the first time in their life. This is because people mostly look to rearranging their beliefs and truths as being sufficient effort … ‘I’ am willing to be free as long as ‘I’ can remain ‘me’. In other words: their notion of freedom is a ‘clip-on’. (…) [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 45, 14 Nov 1999).
Now you say your “takeaway” is your “wondering” if you could postpone the altruistic act upon your “impending physical death?” Quite demonstrably, you do not yet experience that you “want to be free from the human condition like one has never wanted anything before”, else why ask for reprieve until you physically die. Of course, you can wait as long as you like – after all, it is your life you are living and you are reaping the rewards or paying the consequences of the choices you make. Yet all you get by waiting is more waiting, as now is the moment where it all happens; everything which happens only ever happens now.
Did you take notice that you did exactly what I warned you about –
James: “You are right that I have a life-time habit of sitting back and bowing out”. (link)
There is another reason why it is not only counterproductive but impossible to do what you are wondering about –
Richard: With the absolute certainty/ total absence of choice of the PCE the invocation of destiny (oblivion/ extinction) is the deadly simple and fascinated contemplation of the fact that, as physical death is the end of ‘being’ anyway, it might as well happen sooner rather than later. (The oblivion/ extinction of ‘being’ at physical death is entirely without benefit in regards peace-on-earth whereas the oblivion/ extinction of ‘being’ at this moment in time is entirely beneficial to the host body and of a facilitatory benefit to all other bodies).
The fascinated contemplation – ‘fascinated’ as in a moth to a flame – morphs into a pure contemplation (as in an apperceptivity) upon it becoming startlingly apparent as an experiential actuality that this moment in time has no duration.
What this means, to an identity for whom time moves (as in past/ present/ future), is that the keep-it-safe extinction of ‘being’ (cunningly projected into some future moment) will be happening now when it does take place. (Time has no duration in actuality; now, being eternal, is already always dynamic in that everything happens now; nothing ever happens in past/ present/ future time).
As now is the way, then now is the means; as now is the means, then now is the end … !Bingo! … it is no longer possible to distinguish between life being lived and life doing the living as any such cause and effect has vanished without a trace (it never was anyway as time, as in past/ present/ future, has no existence in actuality).
This is ‘my’ moment of glory; this is ‘my’ crowning achievement; this makes ‘my’ petty life all worthwhile; this is ‘my’ most noble sacrifice[1] for ‘I’ am what ‘I’ hold most dear; this is ‘my’ legacy for all humankind; ‘my’ reward is to go blessedly into the oblivion ‘I’ have secretly craved all along.
‘My’ extinction made all this possible.
Regards, Richard.
P.S.: The key-word is: inevitability. [Emphases added]. (Richard, List D, Rick, 3 Dec 2009).Footnote: Most noble sacrifice [1]: ‘Voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice means an altruistic offering, a philanthropic contribution, a generous gift, a charitable donation, a magnanimous present; to devote and give over one’s being as a humane gratuity, an open-handed endowment, a munificent bequest, a kind-hearted benefaction.
A sacrifice is the relinquishment of something valued or desired for the sake of something more important or worthy … it is the deliberate abandonment, relinquishment, forfeiture or loss for the sake of something illustrious, brilliant, extraordinary and excellent.
It means to forgo, quit, vacate, discontinue, stop, cease or immolate so that one’s guerdon is to be able to be unrepressed, unconstrained, unselfconscious, uninhibited, unrestrained, unrestricted, uncontrolled, uncurbed, unchecked, unbridled, candid, outspoken, spontaneous, relaxed, informal, open, free and easy.
As I have remarked before, ‘I’ go out in a blaze of glory’. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 33c, 26 June 2000).
When you read all these carefully chosen expressions for being generous, philanthropic and magnanimous regarding the “most noble sacrifice”, what would be the word for someone who wants to withhold/ postpone such possible generosity, which they at first considered the perfect act to allow to happen, until just shortly before they die so as to hold onto their ‘precious’ until the last moment of real-world time (because “this could be something to look forward to”) but then ask if they would still reap the benefit of the allegedly altruistic experience?
My mind still reels of the cunning ways identities invent to stay in existence and thus avoid paying the price.
Practically speaking, do you find it feasible that after months or years of “sitting back and bowing out” you suddenly can revitalise your connection to pure intent sufficiently to allow to happen what you have postponed all your life?
Besides, this imaginary plan is not viable simply because there would be no benefit whatsoever for this body (which is about to die) nor for that body nor for anybody, and therefore no altruistic motive. It would not be a generous offering for anybody. Viz.:
Richard: The oblivion/ extinction of ‘being’ at physical death is entirely without benefit in regards peace-on-earth …
Here is something for you to consider to do in the meantime –
RESPONDENT: Does it rule out the possibility of man one day finding the elixir of life?
RICHARD: There is no need to even search for an elixir vitae – the very stuff each and every body is comprised of (and each and every thing for that matter) is already always existent – let alone find one.
If you were to hold a hand up before the eyes, palm towards the face, and rotate it slowly through space – all the while considering that the very stuff the hand is comprised of is as old as the universe – whilst looking from the front of the eyes, as it were (and not through the eyes), what is being discussed may very well become apparent as an experiential understanding.
One experience is worth a thousand words. (Richard, AF List, No. 66, 19 May 2005).
Cheers Vineeto
Everything you’ve said here rings true. I still haven’t recovered from my health incident a year ago to reach the same level of enjoyment and appreciation that I had. The vitality is just not there although I have somewhat recovered.
I may never fully recover due to age.
This could be as good as it gets which is not bad
Thanks to you and actualism I am still able to do what I am doing.
Hi James,
I appreciate your response and getting on in years I experience some side-effects of senescence myself. It’s good to hear that “as good as it gets” “is not bad” and that actualism has helped you to still do what you are doing.
I wish you the maximum enjoyment, and appreciation you can experience, in this very moment of being alive.
Cheers Vineeto
So last week or so has been a bit of a germination period, this time I have not been getting upset over phone transfers or anything of the kind though 
.
The past day or so I have started to experience these moments of apperceptiveness but it’s different now. Perhaps it’s because when ‘I’ come back ‘I’ know that ‘I’ become extinct for an actual freedom to eventuate. It’s like before ‘I’ saw it as 2 worlds and it seemed like maybe (if ‘I’ hoped very hard) ‘I’ would manage to squeeze through into the actual world… But of course in practice it ended up being something like the below :
@Vineeto I think this is the video that you were looking for the other day, I had a good giggle re-watching it .
So since that experience of ‘the veil’ it has been so clear that ‘I’ become extinct and then actual freedom eventuates. BUT this “then” is actually instantaneous, this is what those moments of apperceptiveness show. That when ‘I’ blink out there is already a completeness in place, as Srinath wrote there is “a new consciousness – of a piece with the body”. From those experiences I can understand now what Peter wrote here :
Peter: The whole experience was like a seamless transition between two worlds – from being a feeling being trapped within an illusionary all-encompassing self-created and sustained bubble to being here in the actual world
The other thing which has been going on recently is that I am finally getting into the habit of feeling good come what may. It’s like the first few years of my involvement with actualism I did a lot of intellectualisation without much action, then the past couple of years was a period of pedal to the metal aiming for either out from control or actual freedom. But in all those years I ignored the meat and potatoes of the actualism method. Richard said nothing can be swept under the rug, indeed not, especially when it is the thing which the actualism method is all about .
And it is working in a very simple way, to borrow Geoffrey’s metaphor - I am walking down the wide and wondrous path where the sun is shining and the birds are signing, and all is well. Then all of a sudden I notice I took a couple of steps off the path and towards the woods nearby, and noticing this I simply decline, and sure enough I am back on the path. And the more I do this the less I am prone to wander off.
And when I think about why I didn’t/couldn’t do this in the past it seems it is because I wanted/needed to go into those woods again and again, to finally be completely certain that there is nothing of interest to be found there.
Now when I notice that I took a step or two off the path and I see where I am going, it is so clear that it is towards a place which I have been to countless times, and nothing fruitful ever came of it, so I decline.
And that ‘place in the woods’, these are habits which (as Richard said) have simply been given reign countless of times in a lifetime, and now the habit can be broken, by not taking a single step down that path again and instead getting back to where the sun is shining and the birds are singing.
Kuba: So last week or so has been a bit of a germination period, this time I have not been getting upset over phone transfers or anything of the kind though.
The past day or so I have started to experience these moments of apperceptiveness but it’s different now. Perhaps it’s because when ‘I’ come back ‘I’ know that ‘I’ become extinct for an actual freedom to eventuate. It’s like before ‘I’ saw it as 2 worlds and it seemed like maybe (if ‘I’ hoped very hard) ‘I’ would manage to squeeze through into the actual world… But of course in practice it ended up being something like the below : (snipped video with membrane)
Vineeto, I think this is the video that you were looking for the other day, I had a good giggle re-watching it.
So since that experience of ‘the veil’ it has been so clear that ‘I’ become extinct and then actual freedom eventuates. BUT this “then” is actually instantaneous, this is what those moments of apperceptiveness show. That when ‘I’ blink out there is already a completeness in place, as Srinath wrote there is “a new consciousness – of a piece with the body”. From those experiences I can understand now what Peter wrote here :Peter: The whole experience was like a seamless transition between two worlds – from being a feeling being trapped within an illusionary all-encompassing self-created and sustained bubble to being here in the actual world.
(link)
Hi Kuba,
Thank you for the update report and the video – I vaguely remember it from the first time. After you had these experiences you described are you now confident that it is safe to give the ‘green light’ to leave your ‘self’ behind?
Peter’s quote continues where you left off –
Peter: There was no dramatic end for ‘me’, no death-like traumatic experience, no prior psychic events or escapades, no “wall of fear”, no “abyss” – rather there was a profound experience of sweetness, a ready acknowledgement of my destiny and a final understanding that the feeling of separateness was nothing other than an illusion of ‘my’ own making.
The paragraph finishes with a comment from Richard partly quoted below –
Richard: And the reason why the word ‘magic’ is utilised (magic as in prestidigitation and not as in a sorcerer’s magic) is because no other word currently exists to adequately convey how a lifetime of cares and woes – all the misery and mayhem which epitomises the human condition – can vanish in an instant (and vanish so completely as to have never been in the first place). (Long Awaited Announcement, 3rd [R] tool-tip).
It is a truly wonderous adventure.
Here is a correspondence I had on the Direct Route mail-out three weeks after becoming actually free –
Vineeto: Peace-on-earth, the desire of the identity for peace-on-earth is the means to an end and the end is far, far bigger than peace-on-earth, which is quite a big thing already. The desire for peace for everybody, the near-actual caring for everybody (which always includes yourself, of course) and the yearning for a near-actual intimacy with your fellow human beings is what carries you across personal fears and panic attacks when the identity throws its survival-driven tantrums.
A goal beyond one’s personal happiness is required to cross or slide on past the wall of fear (as we recently termed it) or to overcome nagging doubts and buckling knees in the face of extinction. Without it you would be defeated by confusion, everlasting hesitation and pernicious power play.
I found near-actual caring for others to be the path to the gate to an actual freedom for both Peter and I but once I am here, as this flesh-and-blood only, in the actual world, actual caring comes effortless as a by-product of actual intimacy and is no longer the means to an end but the delicious fellowship regard that comes with the territory of having discovered something so magical, so precious, that I can’t help but want to share it with everyone.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write this to you. It gave me a memory of the sweetness that the identity experienced when ‘she’ was soo close to her destiny. (Direct Route, Vineeto to No. 4(D), 20 Jan 2010).
-
Kuba to Chrono: Just to add to the above, I was thinking about this with regards to me and Sonya, that it is simply “how things are” now when we are together that there is a lack of conflict and a mutual liking. That it would be ‘weird’ to operate in the way which would be classed as ‘normal’. As in those felicitous and innocuous vibes are the norm, to relate in sorrow and malice would now be the outlier. (link)
It’s a good sign and great to hear that you now consider ‘normal’ behaviour, i.e. the way ‘sane’ people operate and behave with each other as “weird”. I remember ‘Vineeto’ giggling at some point when ‘she’ realised how far ‘she’ had moved away from being ‘normal’ – and then it no longer mattered in the fascination of what was unfolding.
It’s also the perfect situation of exploring even more intimacy and playing with “how close we can get” – a game potential crew members of the convivium played after becoming new actually free – but one can play it at any time.
Cheers Vineeto
P.S.: I noticed that in the embedded video people in the alleged paradise all only danced by themselves, apparently intimate interacting is beyond normal imagination of a ‘good trip’.
Kuba: The other thing which has been going on recently is that I am finally getting into the habit of feeling good come what may. It’s like the first few years of my involvement with actualism I did a lot of intellectualisation without much action, then the past couple of years was a period of pedal to the metal aiming for either out from control or actual freedom. But in all those years I ignored the meat and potatoes of the actualism method. Richard said nothing can be swept under the rug, indeed not, especially when it is the thing which the actualism method is all about.
And it is working in a very simple way, to borrow Geoffrey’s metaphor – I am walking down the wide and wondrous path where the sun is shining and the birds are signing, and all is well. Then all of a sudden I notice I took a couple of steps off the path and towards the woods nearby, and noticing this I simply decline, and sure enough I am back on the path. And the more I do this the less I am prone to wander off.
And when I think about why I didn’t/ couldn’t do this in the past it seems it is because I wanted/ needed to go into those woods again and again, to finally be completely certain that there is nothing of interest to be found there.
Now when I notice that I took a step or two off the path and I see where I am going, it is so clear that it is towards a place which I have been to countless times, and nothing fruitful ever came of it, so I decline.
And that ‘place in the woods’, these are habits which (as Richard said) have simply been given reign countless of times in a lifetime, and now the habit can be broken, by not taking a single step down that path again and instead getting back to where the sun is shining and the birds are singing. (link)
Hi Kuba,
It’s great that your awareness is so fine-tuned now that you notice earlier and earlier when you have wandered off the path, so to speak, and can – “with knowledge aforethought – sensibly decline to futilely go down that well-trodden path to nowhere fruitful yet again”.
You are probably aware that there is more to be able to stay on the wide and wondrous path, because sometimes certain feelings are so persistent that declining would amount to suppression and further investigation is required. As you said to Leila –
Kuba: … once feeling good again ‘I’ can actually have fun working out how ‘I’ tick. (24 Jun 26)
Last time we talked about investigation you discovered that what you had done was “rumination” (link), which of course is not going to prevent the same feeling to be triggered again and again in similar situations.
Most feelings which arise are more than habits, after all, feelings and emotions are rooted in the instinctual survival passions and sometimes have to be meticulously taken apart, sorting out fact from fiction.
Richard: What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later. (Richard, AF List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005).
‘Vineeto’ has always liked mystery novels and ‘she’ likened finding out how ‘she’ ticked like solving a mystery – with practice, it became a fun game.
First, label the trigger and the feeling and gather the facts of the sequence when applicable. After all, sincerity is being “aligned with factuality”.
Then determine if the particular reaction is just a habit from which to ween oneself off, or a deeper-seated worry, fear or aversion having been triggered. It could be a pattern, a concept, a revered moral/ ethical/ spiritual value, a nice self-image, a ‘truth’ or pride, a power-trip, wanting to win a silly battle, to name just a few. What am I afraid to uncover? What will change when I give up this feeling?
If that does not yield any results, look on the ‘good’ side – what are the hoped-for rewards one is afraid to lose? What are the ‘good’ feelings I want to keep? In other words – the most significant question in any mystery – who benefits from having this drama?
I wish you best of fun to further unravel your identity.
Cheers Vineeto
Hi Vineeto,
That is a great question and I can confidently say yes, in those experiences (those moments of appercetiveness) it is not just that ‘I’ blink out, because from the perspective of that apperceptive seeing ‘I’ have never actually existed in the first place, and everything is complete.
So those experiences make me understand that quote of Richard’s :
Richard: And the reason why the word ‘magic’ is utilised (magic as in prestidigitation and not as in a sorcerer’s magic) is because no other word currently exists to adequately convey how a lifetime of cares and woes – all the misery and mayhem which epitomises the human condition – can vanish in an instant (and vanish so completely as to have never been in the first place). (Long Awaited Announcement, 3rd [R] tool-tip).
In those experiences this is exactly what happens, but only temporarily, ‘I’ am here one second and then next ‘I’ have never existed, ‘I’ am seen for that “dream which in fact never was”. So when ‘I’ come back the memory of this is imprinted, along with the knowing that it is safe for ‘me’ to become extinct.