Kub933's Journal

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1616

Yes all this talk around naivete is really something, I especially liked the below which Vineeto wrote to Claudiu :

Ha, the addiction to sudorifically finding one’s way through an imagined jungle of chores and traps is not easy to abandon, hey, but it’s really worthwhile. Make friends with not knowing what’s going to happen next, with experimenting living without plan and scheme, don’t envision you have to ‘tick off’ ‘self’-set tasks. It’s not vigilance you need, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself and towards your fellow human beings. Re-discover how to play and play together.

Indeed that is exactly how I experience becoming more naive, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself, it’s a fundamental shift in how ‘I’ experience being alive, and with far reaching consequences. I experience it as if working from the very depths of ‘my’ being and out towards the “outer layers of the onion”, rather than the usual way which is something like tinkering with the outer layers whilst the core of ‘me’ remains unchanged.

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Claudiu: I think there’s just a disconnect here. The funny and delightful thing is that from the self centric way of being it’s a big social identity issue, wanting to show that I “know the answer” and defend myself. But writing now from the being naive way of being it just doesn’t ‘matter’ at all haha, at least this aspect of it.
In any case it does seem beneficial to flesh it out in case I am missing something. So: If you read it as a normal/in-control self-centric being looking at a checkbox of stuff like “ooh gotta add some caring” and “oh yea can’t forget about the altruism!”, trying to check off boxes or add these in as ingredients to some dish, then I can see why you wrote what you did. Indeed it’s obvious that wouldn’t work, that isn’t how to proceed from being in an in control way of being.
The way to proceed is rather to go from an out from control way of being which is what being naïveté is, which is also called an excellence experience. This isn’t an out from control virtual freedom, the distinction there (which I asked Richard about) is that pure intent isn’t fully and dynamically operative yet. But that’s just words describing something I haven’t experienced yet so it’s not so relevant now except as to know there’s something ‘more’ (but it is unknown to me what that is like).

Hi Claudiu,

I demure. You can only proceed from where you are at. How can you “go from an out from control way of being” when you are not in “an out from control way of being”? How can you go from “being naïveté” when you are not “being naïveté”? Being naïveté itself is to be permanently out-from-control.

Richard: A rather quaint clay-pit tale which nonetheless depicts the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself⁽⁰¹⁾ to an actual innocence.
⁽⁰¹⁾To be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as a childlike persona with adult sensibilities), which is to be the closest one can to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not), one is both likeable and liking for herewith lies tenderness and/or sweetness and togetherness and/or closeness whereupon moment-to-moment experiencing is of traipsing through the world about in a state of wide-eyed wonder and amazement as if a child again (guileless, artless, ingenuous, innocuous)—yet with adult sensibilities whereby the distinction betwixt being naïve and being gullible is readily separable—simply marvelling at the sheer magnificence of this oh-so-material universe’s absoluteness and unabashedly delighting in its boundless beneficence, its limitless largesse, as being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian (due to the near-absence of agency which ensues when the controlling doer is abeyant and the naïve beer is ascendant), with a blitheness and a gaiety such that the likelihood of the magical fairy-tale-like nature of this paradisaical terraqueous globe, this bounteously verdant and azure planet, becoming ever-so-sweetly apparent, as an experiential actuality, is almost always imminent. (A Clay-Pit Tale, last tooltip)

Given that you recognized (link) that you are not out-from-control, i.e. not consistently in an excellence experience or intimacy experience, with the ‘controller’ still operating, not “being the experiencing [which] is inherently cornucopian”, fully comprehending this with all of your ‘being’ experientially, this can the only point from where to start.

Claudiu: So what I was attempting to convey, perhaps poorly, is that the way to continue from here seems to be to more consistently be naïveté, to be more and more of the time in this excellence experience way of being rather than not. I put ‘stabilize’ in squotes cause it’s not a great word, but don’t know what a good one would be. But basically to be it more consistently.

To say it again for emphasis, the change from being in a methodological, in-control virtually freedom to a dynamic out-from-control different way of being is a paradigm shift, not “to be more and more of the time” in the way you have been –

Vineeto: Unfortunately I was unable to find the exact quote where Richard used a similar description [“somewhat analogous to an automatic transmission changing into a higher gear”] when in January/ February 1981 the change into virtual freedom occurred … (link)

To use a physical-world simile – there is a major difference between driving a car and flying in a rocket-ship.

Claudiu: And the way doesn’t seem so different from establishing a baseline of feeling good, it’s a matter of noticing when I have fallen out of it and getting back to it soonest.
So when you write the way to go out from control virtual freedom is by being naïveté it sounds like you’re saying the same thing — what do you think? (…)
Yea I do think we are saying the same thing. Last few days have oscillated from being in control self-centric way of being and feeling or wondering if everything is horribly awry and I’m way off track, to the out-from-control naive way of being and it’s like oh ok I’m basically going in the right direction. As of now I do think I’m basically on the right track, but the doing/being of it will be the proof in the pudding of course. (link)

As the remainder of your reply is in a similar vein of just doing more of the same/ more consistently doing the same, and that we are talking about “the same thing”, let me use your own words of your report when your visit to Geoffrey was still more fresh in your mind –

Claudiu: Two other key pieces: the major one was we figured out that I had been trying to put myself into actuality, as in I as identity, as a feeling-being, will continue somewhat beyond self-immolation. There were many ways I had justified it, like “Oh but Peter said there was a continuity of consciousness…” and he’s like “Consciousness! You’re translating that into ‘identity’! It’s not identity that continues!” or “But I remember disappearing in a PCE” and he’s like “No you don’t! You are putting yourself into the PCE and spoiling the memory. This is why you are supposed to rememorate it not remember it.” etc. (…)
He also really impressed upon me just how significant this is. It’s not kid stuff. It’s not a playground ride or a roller coaster where you get on it then come back and get off and you’re back to where you were. It is a one-way ride with no return ticket. So long as the enormity of it is not grasped – to which fear and dread are a normal response – then it’s still just being on the playground ride.
Only once this is grasped then can the decision be made to take the leap and continue anyway (otherwise you’re just imagining yourself to be on a cliff but you’re really on a flat ground, and you don’t see the edge to jump off of but only think you do). So you have to actually get to the edge of the cliff (seeing the enormity of the extinction) and only then you can decide to jump. (…)
In any case the main take-aways for me from the trip was A) see that I really will disappear entirely, B) see the enormity and significance of this (the stakes are indeed high), C) stop kidding myself with fake hurdles that feel real, it really (for me at this point) is all avoidance tactics to avoid facing the real thing, which is the total extinction of it. In short, go up to the edge of the cliff, see if I really want it, then joyfully/gaily/cheerfully (not seriously) jump/traverse the wall of dread/whatever the metaphor, do whatever you can to do it, and then extinction will be nigh. (link)

Even though this first of “two key pieces” does not appear in your list of “main take-aways” I think it is an all-important revelation – that you “had been trying to put myself into actuality”. It might well require a certain gestation period to fully grasp the enormity of the impact on your imaginary way of “trying to put myself into actuality”. Because when fully understood, with all of your ‘being’, not just intellectually, it will have/ would have, completely taken the carpet from under your feet. Hence my reference to a gestation period –

Richard: My experience with the peoples who have chosen to give felicity/ innocuity a go is, as a generalisation, that the necessary paradigm shift has usually been a gradual process of comprehension – not necessarily an instantaneous shift – and which paradigmatical change commences because of that choice … and that choice mainly comes after a gestation period (which itself follows intelligent appraisal/ thoughtful consideration).
And, by way of personal example, I need only point to the six-month incubation period already mentioned. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 60g, 30 Oct 2005b)

It would be a pity if you missed the full import of what transpired during your visit to a fully free human being.

Cheers Vineeto

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Kuba: Yes all this talk around naivete is really something, I especially liked the below which Vineeto wrote to Claudiu :

Vineeto: Ha, the addiction to sudorifically finding one’s way through an imagined jungle of chores and traps is not easy to abandon, hey, but it’s really worthwhile. Make friends with not knowing what’s going to happen next, with experimenting living without plan and scheme, don’t envision you have to ‘tick off’ ‘self’-set tasks. It’s not vigilance you need, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself and towards your fellow human beings. Re-discover how to play and play together.

Kuba: Indeed that is exactly how I experience becoming more naive, it’s a change in attitude towards life itself, it’s a fundamental shift in how ‘I’ experience being alive, and with far reaching consequences. I experience it as if working from the very depths of ‘my’ being and out towards the “outer layers of the onion”, rather than the usual way which is something like tinkering with the outer layers whilst the core of ‘me’ remains unchanged. (link)

Hi Kuba,

Thank you for your lucid understanding – “working from the very depths of ‘my’ being and out towards the “outer layers of the onion”, rather than the usual way which is something like tinkering with the outer layers whilst the core of ‘me’ remains unchanged.”

Cheers Vineeto

1619

Wow reading these words right now I am simply blown away, by what is being described but also the accuracy with which Richard conveyed it. So to write a report of how things are going (and this isn’t any kind of claim, rather a description of how I am currently experiencing being alive) - Experiencing is certainly cornucopian, I was looking for a word to describe what is going on as I was teaching BJJ ealier today and when I read this post that word (cornucopian) fit exactly. Another way to describe it is that where I am is “bester”, it is more than just ‘my’ affective happiness and harmlessness, like ‘I’ am completely open to and actively on the receiving end of the universe’s largesse. And there is this tingling excitation that comes with this, but it’s not fearful in a way that is hedonically unpleasant, it would be more likely to make me squeal like a child going down a slide rather than scream like a serious adult going down a rollercoaster. It is a very wonderful thing all in all haha. And I can see now that ‘me’ as the doer has nothing productive left to say at this point, as you wrote Vineeto to me a while back, it is not ‘do-able’ but rather ‘be-able’.

And it seems that having given ‘myself’ permission to abandon the ‘doer’ there is no longer any resistance to all this. That resistance which I experienced the past year or so it was hedonically unpleasant, and ‘I’ was trying to sudorifically push through it. This is all very fun right now, in a tingling and exciting and making me want to squeal kind of way :laughing:

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And what does the serious adult say when he gets off that rollecoaster “phew I’m glad that is over and I survived”, whereas that happy squealing kid says “I want more!” haha.

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And thank you Vineeto for what you have facilitated since writing on this forum, I am so full of appreciation and admiration for what you demonstrate daily. It has been no less than a life changing experience for me, what has happened the past year. And what is at stake, what we are all here for, it is so very precious. I am reminded of what Richard wrote, that he would go to any length to better understand a fellow human being and thus be able to assist them in becoming free - of course because what we are aiming for is precious beyond compare.

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So I am understanding this more and more experientially, it really is a different way of being and it’s way beyond normal human expectations. When the doer is abeyant and the naive beer is ascendant it is already so wonderful that it seems surely it can’t get better. I am not there all the time, it seems I can still bounce back into where the controller is in place. It’s funny because the controller is deathly afraid of releasing that vice-like grip and yet when ‘he’ does there is such a wonderful and marvellous freedom that unfolds.

I can see that it does require naivete in buckets, because the controller feels/believes that ‘he’ is somehow required, apparently for some very serious reason ‘he’ must remain in control. In order for the controller to go into abeyance it is as if ‘I’ have to agree (at the very depths of ‘my’ being) that life is not a serious business, that it is not a vale of tears, it is not a dog eat dog world out there etc. ‘I’ say a big, resounding yes to being alive right now, with no resentment or resistance whatsoever and then the controller can go into abeyance. And when this happens it really is “bester”, that this is what ‘I’ can have as a feeling being.

So it is great that I can see what is possible now, and the reward is immediate. It’s funny because I was so desperate about actual freedom and now seeing what is possible even before it I am thinking if I was to live like that all the time then my life would be already complete, it is that amazing.

But then again I remember living like that as a child, I have many memories of living as if in a wonderland, there was no resentment or looking for more. In Poland there was very little structure in terms of what kids would do after school. I just remember going on various “adventures” with my friends at the time, jumping across the streams and catching frogs and building tree houses etc. I was truly having the time of my life back then. So basically what I lived back then is what is humanly possible ie what I can have as a feeling being now.

I remember one occasion where I was visiting my grandparents and my auntie took me with her boyfriend at the time to go mushroom picking - the joy and excitement I experienced at going mushroom picking was off the scale! I still remember it, it was something like what Srinath wrote in his report :

I pondered on what I had wanted before and recalled a simple childhood memory of being excited about going to the swimming pool when I was about 10 years old. There was this completely sincere and thrilling ‘jumping out of my skin’ desire to get in the pool

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So looking more at all this I can see a little better what has been going on for a while now. Because I have indeed been spending a lot of time enjoying and appreciating in gay abandon, many extraordinary experiences.

But the main point is that there was always something else to return back to. In that I would go into gay abandon have all these amazing experiences and then fall back to somewhere just before the gay abandon.
So the reason it has not been a constant acceleration forward is because I have had somewhere to return back to. So those “outings” into gay abandon were like little trips that ‘I’ would take to check out the territory, but always I would return back. It’s like flying off into space except it’s one of them Elon Musk rockets that can come back :laughing:
And many of those extraordinary experiences it did seem like ‘I’ could disappear for good at any moment, and yet the fact of having somewhere to return back to ensured that ‘I’ never became extinct. It was always “oh wow ‘I’ could become extinct right now” rather than it being an inevitability due to there being nowhere else to return back to, only the acceleration forward.

So it’s all pretty cool right now because it’s like I had some time to regroup and recharge first of all :laughing: Secondly and this is very good to realise is that now I see that going all the way into actual freedom has got nothing to do with - seriousness, suffering or anything sudorific.

I already have a good sense of the direction to travel in and now I can see that proceeding in that direction without anywhere else to return back to is not to do with pushing myself in a sudorific manner, this cannot work. At best ‘I’ will end up getting on a rollercoaster ride that ‘I’ don’t want to be on :laughing: And the ride which ‘I’ don’t want to be on ends up being a return ticket every time.

As Srinath wrote :

There was this completely sincere and thrilling ‘jumping out of my skin’ desire to get in the pool

It seems that this is the kind of thrill which is experienced on the one way ride. It is not hedonically unpleasant because it is a ride which ‘I’ deeply desire and willingly choose to be on.

And so comprehending the above there isn’t the resistance anymore, because before ‘I’ did a lot of pushing, and pushing through some pretty intense feelings, and I just wore ‘myself’ out doing that, I can’t do that again, but also there is no need for it haha.

Richard wrote :

in fact I have some very blurry black and white ‘home movie’ type footage of myself, circa March 1981, which ends with ‘me’ saying: ‘Do your own thing … but have fun; if you’re not having fun then, hell, stop doing it, something is wrong; if you’re not having fun, if you have to force yourself to go to work, if you’re unhappy, something is wrong’

Of course it’s no different with proceeding towards actual freedom. This one way ride that ‘I’ am to get on is to be a jaunt of a lifetime, not something that ‘I’ grind through.

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What seems to be the most obvious way to proceed is to discover how to ‘be’ naivete itself, I am having some intimations of what that is like and I can see that it is a fundamental change in how ‘I’ experience what it means to be here and doing this business called being alive. It’s not changing this or that bit of programming but something more akin to a paradigm shift for ‘me’. In fact there isn’t really any “outer bits of the onion” that ‘I’ could be re-shuffling at this point.

I had this question to ‘myself’ earlier which was something along the lines of - “what do ‘I’ experience to be the reason for being here and doing this business called being alive”. I remember a while back I wrote about the universe - by giving birth to this body - handing out an invitation to paradise which reads “you are here to enjoy and appreciate only”.

That is to say I am here to play, to delight, to enjoy and to appreciate. That is very much the direction, the flavour of the kind of “orientation” which typifies naiveté. And I remember my little brother (not so much anymore) displaying this effortlessly every time I saw him, that is what life was for him up until recently.

If I am here to play, to delight, to enjoy and appreciate then what ‘normal’ place would ‘I’ be looking to return to?

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So what happens when I walk the wide and wondrous path is that I am going deeper and deeper into enjoyment and appreciation, until this becomes a way of living that reverberates to the very depths of ‘my’ being. This is where those last shreds of normality are cast away and there is no longer anything to return to. As Vineeto wrote a while ago one needs training for life in Terra Actualis :smile:

But this is exactly it, can ‘I’ contemplate a life where unconditional enjoyment and appreciation is a fundamental way of living. Not a temporary respite from something but more like a given. The naive child called Kuba certainly experienced it as a given that he lived in a wonderland, he never even considered otherwise, until he became a serious adult that is. As I write this now I remember a trip with my brother and dad to a frozen lake near our house, all around was covered in deep snow, it was dark already and it was a wonderland.

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Hi Vineeto,

I see the disconnect and I can unravel it. Basically, the way forward is clear to me: it’s the way towards naïveté, being way way more naive than has been my usual way of experiencing myself the past year, to the point of being naïveté, and revelling in it, this palpable naïveté that is now such an obvious direction to go into. It’s so obvious and clear that it’s the way to go that I am not sure anyone could convince me otherwise :joy:

So to allay your concerns, no it’s not that I’m gonna do the same thing I have been doing the past year. That will only lead to another year of the same. Rather it’s to go into this clear, far-far-more increased naïve way of being alive.

What I was getting at (but poorly it seems) is that this palpable naïveté is something that I have experienced on occasion the past year, actually somewhat frequently, and I would say I have gotten a knack at getting back to it – but no it hasn’t been a 100% or even 99% ongoing experience. However it’s not an entirely unknown and unfamiliar direction, was what I was saying, it’s more just going to that already-somewhat-familiar direction, but more, much much more, with renewed intent and vigor, and it certainly appears to go “deeper” than I’ve gone into it before.

I can’t think of a better way to depict the sheer fun of this naïveté than the interaction with my partner when I just got home now. I’m walking in having a blast, and she gets an amused look and says I have a mischievous grin on my face (I didn’t realize I was grinning lol). So then I go up closer to her and hug her on the couch and say “Oh I have a secret”. And she’s like oh? What’s the secret? And I pause and say … … “I’m having a lot of fun”. And she just bursts out laughing, this hearty, full-on laugh. It certainly is contagious :joy:.

I ehhh wrote another 1,200 words about the various terms and terminology for all this but… I think it’s unnecessary for now lol. So I’ll just leave it here for now :blush:

Cheers,
Claudiu

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Lots of posts about naivete right now haha, let’s turn the bug into a pandemic! :smile:

Just a quick one as I am about to go in to do some training. I noticed this specifically before I am about to go and interact with others (like right now for example). There is this fear of remaining naive, it feels tender but to the point of being vulnerable.

It reminds me of what Richard wrote that naivete is the intimate aspect of oneself which one has locked away due to fear of ridicule - this hits the nail on the head.

It’s like I am not supposed to be this intimate around others, there is certainly a fear there. I thought I had resolved this in the past but clearly there is more there.

I remember that fear is ‘my’ hiding place, and when I consider what specifically it is that ‘I’ am hiding nothing comes to mind. It seems it is more that ‘I’ am afraid to be seen, not anything specifically about ‘me’, rather ‘I’ am afraid to be seen full stop.

This seems to be part of the reason why I would always return to some kind of a ‘normal’ after all those extraordinary experiences. They would be precious but almost too precious to consider bringing them out into the open in my day to day living. So I would return to ‘normal’ which includes some kind of a ‘shield’, this is ‘me’ as the controller.

I notice for example it is even harder to remain naive in the company of other men, due to the conditioning which precludes men from having intimacy with each other. It is quite weird allowing such sweetness with other men, that it is somehow wrong to be this close.

But now I am reminded of a certain game which I stopped playing - how close can we get. No reason not to play this game with other men and confirm experientially whether it is safe or not.

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OK a further report of what I can see so far. I woke up feeling quite ‘clean’ compared to how I usually do. However there is still a contrast which I find fascinating. The “contrast” is that the world around I could describe as this crystal clean prism which refracts light into various wonderful colours. And then there is what I would describe as a black/red “blob” :laughing: which is the core of ‘my’ being.

So in the past this is usually where I would begin pushing, I would be somehow trying to push through this dark and stagnant energy. I can tell that those times where I am having those “extraordinary experiences” is when this dark and stagnant energy changes also, like the core of ‘me’ also becomes the crystal clean prism refracting into various wonderful colours.
That one experience which I wrote about a while back - about the world and myself being a jewel - it was the very height of this kind of thing.

This black/red blob or the dark and stagnant energy, this is the ‘normal’ which ‘I’ return to, this is the ‘gravity of being’. It’s actually really nice to be able to look at it in a way that is genuinely fascinated and without moving in either direction, this is the very core of ‘me’.

I can see that something will happen for this energy to change into being naivete itself. Right now I can see it, the looking is more innocuous vs what it was in the past, it’s a fascinated attention rather than a poking and pushing, which is what in the past elicited the screaming and kicking.

And this core of ‘me’ it sits there like an embryo, the energy it consists of it cannot be reduced or split up, what it can do is shift/morph in line with the perfection and purity.

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Claudiu: Hi Vineeto,
I see the disconnect and I can unravel it. Basically, the way forward is clear to me: it’s the way towards naïveté, being way way more naive than has been my usual way of experiencing myself the past year, to the point of being naïveté, and revelling in it, this palpable naïveté that is now such an obvious direction to go into. It’s so obvious and clear that it’s the way to go that I am not sure anyone could convince me otherwise

Hi Claudiu,

Ha, with ramping up naiveté (liking yourself and others, being likeable and liking) you can’t go wrong. With naiveté it’s so much easier to let any self-image, social status problem, concerns about previous concepts or one’s place on the map fall by the wayside because life is then experience as the best one can be, and let active pure intent do the rest.

Claudiu: So to allay your concerns, no it’s not that I’m gonna do the same thing I have been doing the past year. That will only lead to another year of the same. Rather it’s to go into this clear, far-far-more increased naïve way of being alive.

My point rather was, not that you would do that intentionally but that ‘you’ the identity, having a vested interest in surviving another day, will secretly, unnoticed, step in and pervert the cause of facticity. After all you said in your report about your visit to Geoffrey –

Claudiu: “But I remember disappearing in a PCE” and he’s like “No you don’t! You are putting yourself into the PCE and spoiling the memory. This is why you are supposed to rememorate it not remember it.” (link)

Sometimes it takes a while to digest, rememorate and then fully abandon one’s previous modus operandi, even a possible gestation period. This is only natural given the complexity and weirdness of the human condition.

For instance, ‘Vineeto’ had a severe shock and re-orientation and re-adjustment when Richard told ‘Peter’ and ‘her’ that their virtual freedom was not the dynamic different-way-of-being, ‘Vineeto’ needed a day to emotionally and mentally digest this, including the fact ‘she’ had deceived not only ‘herself’ but also a lot of others in ‘her’ writing. So I know from personal experience how self-deception operates and how one can feel upon exposure/ revelation.

At that time ‘Vineeto’ was also experiencing competition with Pamela about who would be the first female to become actually free. Richard always gently played on our competitive feelings by saying to each of us that “you could be the first”. He figured that anything which helps to overcome our inertia was beneficial. I remember the competitive feelings were particularly acute for ‘Vineeto’ when Pamela had her 5-months PCE which at first, of course, looked like ‘she’ had ‘done it’.

Claudiu: What I was getting at (but poorly it seems) is that this palpable naïveté is something that I have experienced on occasion the past year, actually somewhat frequently, and I would say I have gotten a knack at getting back to it – but no it hasn’t been a 100% or even 99% ongoing experience. However it’s not an entirely unknown and unfamiliar direction, was what I was saying, it’s more just going to that already-somewhat-familiar direction, but more, much much more, with renewed intent and vigor, and it certainly appears to go “deeper” than I’ve gone into it before.

It is not a matter of “poorly” conveying what you wanted to say but the very fact that you were trying to move forward, “with renewed intent and vigor”, before you really digested and fully assessed the major game-changing events which happened during your visit to Geoffrey.

Claudiu: Two other key pieces: the major one was we figured out that I had been trying to put myself into actuality, as in I as identity, as a feeling-being, will continue somewhat beyond self-immolation. There were many ways I had justified it, (link)

And:

Claudiu: But this has got me all looking around, now that I’m confident I am not out-from-control in the way Geoffrey was at the end … (link).

The planning for going ahead, as in “but maybe the way to do it is just to be vigilant and purposefully choose not to go down the self-centric route” (link) sounded to me originating from the ‘planner’, the ‘controller’, the reasonable, rational ‘Claudiu’ who is quickly mapping the course of action before the full impact of the experience of what was learnt during your visit made itself experientially felt and comprehensively understood in a life-changing way.

Whereas when you first feel good, feel great, feel excellent, and become more naïve, then everything – I mean every thing – is seen in a different light, including what to be next (and I don’t mean be vigilant).

It’s promising that you say “it certainly appears to go ‘deeper’”.

Claudiu: I can’t think of a better way to depict the sheer fun of this naïveté than the interaction with my partner when I just got home now. I’m walking in having a blast, and she gets an amused look and says I have a mischievous grin on my face (I didn’t realize I was grinning lol). So then I go up closer to her and hug her on the couch and say “Oh I have a secret”. And she’s like oh? What’s the secret? And I pause and say … … “I’m having a lot of fun”. And she just bursts out laughing, this hearty, full-on laugh. It certainly is contagious .

This is a lovely fun story and in that experience you have indeed “a secret”.

To once in a while have fun is easy to start with – to give full permission to always have fun needs some “awareness-cum-attentiveness” (link) in order to persistently decline the directives of the ‘doer’/ ‘controller’. Kuba said it well yesterday –

Kuba: In order for the controller to go into abeyance it is as if ‘I’ have to agree (at the very depths of ‘my’ being) that life is not a serious business, that it is not a vale of tears, it is not a dog eat dog world out there etc. ‘I’ say a big, resounding yes to being alive right now, with no resentment or resistance whatsoever and then the controller can go into abeyance. And when this happens it really is “bester”, that this is what ‘I’ can have as a feeling being. (link)

Claudiu: I ehhh wrote another 1,200 words about the various terms and terminology for all this but… I think it’s unnecessary for now lol. So I’ll just leave it here for now. (link)

Excellent.

Cheers Vineeto

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Kuba: I can see that it does require naivete in buckets, because the controller feels/ believes that ‘he’ is somehow required, apparently for some very serious reason ‘he’ must remain in control. In order for the controller to go into abeyance it is as if ‘I’ have to agree (at the very depths of ‘my’ being) that life is not a serious business, that it is not a vale of tears, it is not a dog eat dog world out there etc. ‘I’ say a big, resounding yes to being alive right now, with no resentment or resistance whatsoever and then the controller can go into abeyance. And when this happens it really is “bester”, that this is what ‘I’ can have as a feeling being.
So it is great that I can see what is possible now, and the reward is immediate. It’s funny because I was so desperate about actual freedom and now seeing what is possible even before it I am thinking if I was to live like that all the time then my life would be already complete, it is that amazing.

Hi Kuba,

I appreciate your description, especially that this is “bester” and “if I was to live like that all the time then my life would be already complete, it is that amazing”. When life becomes so great that you no longer desperately want to become actually free – except knowing that this “bester” is still second best compared to being actually free.

Kuba: But then again I remember living like that as a child, I have many memories of living as if in a wonderland, there was no resentment or looking for more. In Poland there was very little structure in terms of what kids would do after school. I just remember going on various “adventures” with my friends at the time, jumping across the streams and catching frogs and building tree houses etc. I was truly having the time of my life back then. So basically what I lived back then is what is humanly possible i.e. what I can have as a feeling being now.
I remember one occasion where I was visiting my grandparents and my auntie took me with her boyfriend at the time to go mushroom picking – the joy and excitement I experienced at going mushroom picking was off the scale! (…) (link)

It does help a lot to unlock one’s memories of childhood, which confirm and provide confidence that for periods of time one could live in a wonderland without the regular obligation of being serious, ‘responsible’ and controlled.

Kuba: So looking more at all this I can see a little better what has been going on for a while now. Because I have indeed been spending a lot of time enjoying and appreciating in gay abandon, many extraordinary experiences.
But the main point is that there was always something else to return back to. In that I would go into gay abandon have all these amazing experiences and then fall back to somewhere just before the gay abandon.
So the reason it has not been a constant acceleration forward is because I have had somewhere to return back to. So those “outings” into gay abandon were like little trips that ‘I’ would take to check out the territory, but always I would return back. It’s like flying off into space except it’s one of them Elon Musk rockets that can come back.

Ha, a great metaphor and a perspicuous discovery that one can indeed move even further, from being naïve in gay abandon to being naiveté itself as a state of ‘being’. You will need a new word for what is better than bester!

Kuba: And many of those extraordinary experiences it did seem like ‘I’ could disappear for good at any moment, and yet the fact of having somewhere to return back to ensured that ‘I’ never became extinct. It was always “oh wow ‘I’ could become extinct right now” rather than it being an inevitability due to there being nowhere else to return back to, only the acceleration forward.
So it’s all pretty cool right now because it’s like I had some time to regroup and recharge first of all. Secondly and this is very good to realise is that now I see that going all the way into actual freedom has got nothing to do with – seriousness, suffering or anything sudorific.
I already have a good sense of the direction to travel in and now I can see that proceeding in that direction without anywhere else to return back to is not to do with pushing myself in a sudorific manner, this cannot work. At best ‘I’ will end up getting on a rollercoaster ride that ‘I’ don’t want to be on. And the ride which ‘I’ don’t want to be on ends up being a return ticket every time.

Finally you understand what I meant when I said to you only five weeks ago “sit back and enjoy the ride” (link) – you couldn’t quite believe it at the time.

Kuba: As Srinath wrote : There was this completely sincere and thrilling ‘jumping out of my skin’ desire to get in the pool. (Becoming Free Reports, Srinath)
It seems that this is the kind of thrill which is experienced on the one way ride. It is not hedonically unpleasant because it is a ride which ‘I’ deeply desire and willingly choose to be on.
And so comprehending the above there isn’t the resistance anymore, because before ‘I’ did a lot of pushing, and pushing through some pretty intense feelings, and I just wore ‘myself’ out doing that, I can’t do that again, but also there is no need for it haha.

Well, don’t be so confident that you will have “the kind of thrill” “on the one way ride”. Vineeto didn’t even notice at first when it happened –

Vineeto: I heard myself saying to Richard that ‘We’ve got all the time in the world’ and when I contemplated on the sentence that had just slipped out, time suddenly stood still.
I stopped in mid-sentence and the ensuing silence caught the attention of my two companions.
It was all over, in an instant. (link)

And no thrill at this moment for Geoffrey either –

Geoffrey: There was the actual world just right there in front of me, obviously existing, pure and perfect, and then there was ‘me’, ‘humanity’. The contrast was simply hilarious. I can’t describe how hilarious this contrast was. What we’ve all been doing forever and ever, on a ridiculous parade of malice and sorrow, with the greatest seriousness.
I realised that I would indeed gladly die right now, gladly give away all I am, all I ever was, all I’ve done and felt since I was born, for peace-on-earth to be apparent (not even for me but) for everybody. For things to be as they are. And that it would be of no importance at all. No ‘weight’, no drama… just the only thing that made sense, the only sensible thing.
I was walking on a dirt path, in the shadows of the trees, a few hundred meters from home, with a big smile on my face, when everything stopped. (link)

In other words, you just can’t plan ahead, or even imagine.

Kuba:

Richard wrote: in fact I have some very blurry black and white ‘home movie’ type footage of myself, circa March 1981, which ends with ‘me’ saying: “Do your own thing … but have fun; if you’re not having fun then, hell, stop doing it, something is wrong; if you’re not having fun, if you have to force yourself to go to work, if you’re unhappy, something is wrong”. (Richard, List D, No. 6, 14 Dec 2009)

Kuba: Of course it’s no different with proceeding towards actual freedom. This one way ride that ‘I’ am to get on is to be a jaunt of a lifetime, not something that ‘I’ grind through. (link)

Being on this “wide and wondrous” path (now you know experientially why it is named this way) it is bound to happen when the time is right.

Cheers Vineeto

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Kuba: What seems to be the most obvious way to proceed is to discover how to ‘be’ naivete itself, I am having some intimations of what that is like and I can see that it is a fundamental change in how ‘I’ experience what it means to be here and doing this business called being alive. It’s not changing this or that bit of programming but something more akin to a paradigm shift for ‘me’. In fact, there isn’t really any “outer bits of the onion” that ‘I’ could be re-shuffling at this point.
I had this question to ‘myself’ earlier which was something along the lines of – “what do ‘I’ experience to be the reason for being here and doing this business called being alive”. I remember a while back I wrote about the universe – by giving birth to this body – handing out an invitation to paradise which reads “you are here to enjoy and appreciate only”.
That is to say I am here to play, to delight, to enjoy and to appreciate. That is very much the direction, the flavour of the kind of “orientation” which typifies naiveté. And I remember my little brother (not so much anymore) displaying this effortlessly every time I saw him, that is what life was for him up until recently.
If I am here to play, to delight, to enjoy and appreciate then what ‘normal’ place would ‘I’ be looking to return to? (link)

Hi Kuba,

Ha, once your experience being naiveté for a while, so much so that you take it for granted, then everything you called “’normal’ place will fade from your memory. At least that is how ‘Vineeto’ experienced it in ‘her’ out-from-control period. I like how you defined the peace-on-earth freedom’s meaning of life – “I am here to play, to delight, to enjoy and to appreciate”.

Well said.

Kuba: So what happens when I walk the wide and wondrous path is that I am going deeper and deeper into enjoyment and appreciation, until this becomes a way of living that reverberates to the very depths of ‘my’ being. This is where those last shreds of normality are cast away and there is no longer anything to return to. As Vineeto wrote a while ago one needs training for life in Terra Actualis. (…) (link)

Indeed, and the actualism method of enjoying and appreciation is the very training because the means to the end is not different to the end. Here is what Richard said in his journal –

Richard: ‘After living in the condition of virtual freedom for sufficient time to absorb all the ramifications of a blithesome life, it is highly likely that the ultimate condition can happen.
‘I’ do not make it happen, because ‘I’ cannot make it happen. What is more … ‘I’ am not required to make it happen. An actual freedom happens of itself only when one is fully ready, and not before. One has to become acclimatised to benignity, benevolence and blitheness, because the purity of the actual is so powerful that it would ‘blow the fuses’ if one was to venture into this territory ill-prepared. To precipitously apprehend the vast stillness of infinitude would be too much, too fast, too soon … one could go mad with the super-abundance of pleasure that pours forth’. [Emphasis added]. (‘Richard’s Journal’ ©1997 The Actual Freedom Trust. Page: 150).

Kuba: Lots of posts about naiveté right now haha, let’s turn the bug into a pandemic!

Hi Kuba,

Yeah, let’s. You’ll be surprised if you ever found out how many people are getting temporarily infected but the benevolence of the universe (pure intent) doesn’t provide any records when active because the ‘record-keeper’, in your case the ‘controller’ is in abeyance.

Kuba: Just a quick one as I am about to go in to do some training. I noticed this specifically before I am about to go and interact with others (like right now for example). There is this fear of remaining naive, it feels tender but to the point of being vulnerable.
It reminds me of what Richard wrote that naivete is the intimate aspect of oneself which one has locked away due to fear of ridicule – this hits the nail on the head.
It’s like I am not supposed to be this intimate around others, there is certainly a fear there. I thought I had resolved this in the past but clearly there is more there.
I remember that fear is ‘my’ hiding place, and when I consider what specifically it is that ‘I’ am hiding nothing comes to mind. It seems it is more that ‘I’ am afraid to be seen, not anything specifically about ‘me’, rather ‘I’ am afraid to be seen full stop.

Yes, that is exactly it – because when ‘you’ are seen fully ‘you’ have no leg to stand on, so to speak – you have no substance. In the meantime ‘you’ are ‘your’ hiding place.

I remember around 2000 Richard told me about an intense conversation he had with Grace and that at some point he told her “I know your secret”. I puzzled for years what he meant, now I know.

It was ‘me’ in ‘my’ hiding place, being a phantom.

Kuba: This seems to be part of the reason why I would always return to some kind of a ‘normal’ after all those extraordinary experiences. They would be precious but almost too precious to consider bringing them out into the open in my day to day living. So I would return to ‘normal’ which includes some kind of a ‘shield’, this is ‘me’ as the controller.
I notice for example it is even harder to remain naive in the company of other men, due to the conditioning which precludes men from having intimacy with each other. It is quite weird allowing such sweetness with other men, that it is somehow wrong to be this close.

There is a good reason why at first being naïve seems scary, foolish, insecure and men have a certain standard with each other just like women do. One can’t follow that standard and be naïve (on pay lip-service when needed). Surely it will be a fascinating and interesting journey to be yourself, be naked, be naïve in the company of men and intimacy does not necessarily take the form of sweetness. Here is a conversation between Richard and Devika (in italics) from Richard’s journal as an example how intimacy with anyone can unfold –

“Now what about actual intimacy? In intimacy you see the other as they actually are … ‘warts and all’ is the expression”.
“That is not only better … it is far more interesting”.
“It does not make you repulsed. One is neither attracted nor repulsed”.
“Exactly”.
“How are you with the other, then?”
“One hundred per cent. They get the all of me”.
“In actual intimacy, when you are with another person one hundred per cent – and there is neither attraction or repulsion – and you see clearly what other people would call attractive or repulsive … what does that do?”
“Oh, that’s delicious! That’s delicious because that is freedom. Then I’m free from the grip of emotions”.
“So, seeing the other for what they actually are, do you see the ‘Good’ in them? The potential?”
“There is good and bad in everybody. I am aware of what humans call good or bad. I can see them with either eye, as it were; I can see them with intimate eyes or ‘human’ eyes. I am aware of that and I don’t take much notice of the ‘human’ measurement. In actual intimacy this whole moment, everything, is magnificent”.
“In the orthodox way, people who are described as ‘Goody-goodies’, see the good in somebody and try to draw out the good and make them a better person. What do you do, in actual intimacy, when you see both good and bad?”
“I don’t feel like interfering at all. I stay in myself”.
“And you talk from that?”
“I talk from here, yes. I respond according to the circumstance, whereas my identity would react. In intimacy I can respond, taking the whole scenario, the whole situation, into consideration. Whilst the identity goes from identity to identity. In intimacy I can easily sit here …there is me as I think I am; there is me as I feel I am; there is me as I assert myself and there is me as I actually am. I am this body … I have given way for the universe to live this body and with that I go anonymous. There are ripples of pleasure going through the body”.
“So you are like that, in virtual freedom there are ripples of pleasure, and being like that, what are you doing with the other person? What do you want, for them?”
“I want the very best. I would wish this upon them”.
“What do you say, then? Seeing the attractive and the repulsive … and you do not try to draw out the good …”.
“I’ve stopped doing that … and I’ve also stopped stopping the bad. I sit with this totality of what is happening in the moment; this moment gives all this and this person is in front of me and there is this strange atmosphere between us and we both are trying – for I see that the other also wants the best – and I want for the other to be also here”.
“Ah! You want for the other to be here, where this moment is happening”.
“Oh yes, of course. What else could I want … that is the very best I can want”.
“Would you say, then, that you brush aside the potential for good or bad in the other and – simply because they are a human being they have all the qualifications necessary to be here – it does not matter where they come from? They are a physical body and you want them to be here where their body is? You invite them to partake in intimacy. You are able to do it, for everyone has the capacity to be here … they are just unaware that it exists”.
“Yes, and that is all what I could want, too. Then they can experience it for themselves”.
“Then you can talk directly”.
“Yes. Then we can all have fantastic fun. In intimacy”. (…)
(from pp. 256-259, ‘Richard’s Journal’, 2nd. Ed., in Article 36, ‘There comes a Time when one must Leave the Nest and Fly’).

Kuba: But now I am reminded of a certain game which I stopped playing – how close can we get. No reason not to play this game with other men and confirm experientially whether it is safe or not. (link)

I am pleased you remembered.

Even when you feel you are close, you can always get closer, there are no limits in (actual) intimacy.

Cheers Vineeto

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Another quick one as I can see better now what it means to “sit back and enjoy the ride”, for I have still been looking for some kind of a static plateau - “when I get to X then I can chill out”. Whereas I can see that where I am now there is no such thing. The words dynamic and destinal pretty much spell this out already lol.

To look for that static plateau, something that ‘I’ can grasp, own and control as a means of generating a ‘security’ - this is inviting the ‘controller’ once more.

It seems a lot of the ‘problems’ (which were more like furphies) were generated by this kind of mindset, creating maps and then getting ‘my’ knickers in a twist over where on this imaginary map ‘I’ am apparently located. This is all the very antithesis of what it means to be out from control, to live a dynamic and destinal virtual freedom.

Living naively has nothing to do with looking to tick off checkpoints on an imaginary map, there is such an exciting freedom to contemplating this also! Like wow I could live like that, where I don’t know what comes next. I always resented the blueprints and the working out what happens next and such like. There is something so refreshing in living without all that.

Ah and a great quote from Richards journal just came to mind which describes this (although he is talking about actual freedom) :

It is funny, at times, for I often gain the impression when I speak to others, that I am spoiling their game-plan. It seems as if they wish to journey forever … they consider the stasis that ensues in arriving at perfection to be a static equipollence rather than a motile equanimity. How can unconditional happiness, twenty-four-hours-a-day, possibly be monotonous?

It was as if actual freedom was to be the last checkpoint in ‘my’ game plan. It’s all ‘security’ seeking behaviour, ‘I’ am looking for that static plateau to keep ‘me’ safe. Where ‘I’ am proceeding now there is no plateau of any kind and this is fun.

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This a great post

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Kuba: OK a further report of what I can see so far. I woke up feeling quite ‘clean’ compared to how I usually do. However there is still a contrast which I find fascinating. The “contrast” is that the world around I could describe as this crystal clean prism which refracts light into various wonderful colours. And then there is what I would describe as a black/red “blob” :laughing: which is the core of ‘my’ being. (…)
And this core of ‘me’ it sits there like an embryo, the energy it consists of it cannot be reduced or split up, what it can do is shift/ morph in line with the perfection and purity. [Emphasis added]. (link)

Hi Kuba,

Just a quick note so there is no room for misconception – this ‘me’ you describe “as a black/red ‘blob’” cannot and never will “shift/ morph in line with the perfection and purity”. Perfection and purity is perfect and pure and any aspect of ‘you’ is not.

‘You’ will, with ‘your’ permission, become extinct, ‘blobbed’ out, dead as a dodo, disappear as the phantom of passionate imagination ‘you’ are.

I thought I point this out so you don’t do the same as Claudiu –

Claudiu: “that I had been trying to put myself into actuality, as in I as identity, as a feeling-being” (link)

Cheers Vineeto

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Hi Vineeto,

Thank you for re-emphasising this point. What I meant to convey was that when ‘I’ am in that ‘normal’ place this dark/red blob is how ‘I’ experience ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself.

However when ‘I’ enjoy and appropriate naively and in gay abandon something does happen to that blob. In fact during those times I cannot clearly detect this heavy black/red blob anymore, somehow the very essence of the blob has morphed into a different kind of energy - a felicitous and innocuous energy I presume.

Then it doesn’t seem so heavy, so dark, so gunky, it’s more light and that burden of ‘being’ is greatly diminished. So it seems that when ‘I’ am ‘being’ naive the very core of ‘me’ shifts somehow. ‘I’ am no longer in reality and yet it’s not actuality either, it’s that wonderful inbetween, and the core of ‘my’ being seems to match that wonderful aspect, it becomes a lot more light and fluffy.

It seems it is from that kind of experiencing that self immolation could take place because then ‘I’ am not so strongly rooted, that ‘gravity of being’ is much reduced. Like ‘I’ could dissapear at any moment and there would be no ‘weight’ to it, no drama etc Whereas when ‘normal’ that black/red blob is too heavy and too persistently situated to budge. When naive ‘I’ am so light that it seems ‘I’ could just float away and never come back.

I will just add this as well, which it seems to imply that ‘I’ am not trying to take ‘myself’ into actuality. Because whenever those experiences happen and ‘I’ am so light like ‘I’ could just float away, there is always the thought of - ‘I’ would gladly disappear for good right now. There is never a thought of “I can’t wait to be actually free etc”.

As in there is a progression of ‘my’ burden being diminished and from there ‘I’ can see that what ‘I’ deeply desire is for that burden to end altogether, for ‘me’ to become extinct and to allow life to happen of it’s own accord without ‘me’ spoiling things anymore.

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