Quotes

[Almog]

i’m reposting this quote by Richard, who might be useful to someone who is hovering on the edges of allowing the universe to live his life:

(…) It is indeed a vastly different ‘form of ego’ who sees that voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice (‘self’ as in ‘I’/‘me’ who is the root cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and the such-like) is noble. It is indeed a vastly different ‘form of ego’ who understands that voluntary ‘self’-sacrifice is an altruistic offering, a philanthropic contribution, a generous gift, a charitable donation, a magnanimous present for the human race. It is indeed a vastly different ‘form of ego’ who is willing to cheerfully devote and give over his/her very ‘being’ as a humane gratuity, an open-handed endowment, a munificent bequest or a kind-hearted benefaction for the benefit of each and every body. (…)

[emp]

I was reminded of the whole quote below while reading through Geoffrey’s recent correspondence with Vineeto:

[Vineeto]: “Since then I experience myself as what I am, not just this physical body but with particular qualities to the experiencing which to my own surprise I called ‘what I always wanted to be/what I have always been’ even though I have never lived it. For an analogy of how I experience what I am at core I have to go into the Greek mythology where people’s imagination had populated nature with nymphs, inherent/chthonic to springs or trees or groves. This experience of myself is very light and playful, as if living naked in the wilderness, utterly on my own and undeniably undefined by either people or events. I described it as being innocence personified. Sensuosity, sensuality and sexuality are as much part of what I am just as sexuality and abundance are happening in nature everywhere. As such I am no different to a tree, a rock, a spring, a mountain or a distant star and can truly say that I am the universe experiencing itself as this flesh and blood body. I am here to play, play in this abundant effervescent universe, innocent for the first time, carefree in gay abandon, forever fulfilled and exquisitely aware each moment again of the magic of both nature and the wonderful intimacy that is possible with another human being. Needless to say that I am having the best time of my life…”

I believe I’ve posted this one before but it’s one of my favorites so I’ll just post it again. It rings so many bells as to turn my head into a full on cathedral.

[Kub933]

It is a wonderful quote! It has always stuck with me also, indeed it is exactly what I always wanted/want to be. The flavour of it is exactly what I was describing here :

Kub933's Journal

[IMG_1797] [IMG_1798] I came across some art yesterday and I noticed how much I enjoy looking at it. But there was something there, some flavour that came out whenever I looked at these images. I realise that l was rememorating a world where ‘I’ and ‘humanity’ never existed. It is a world utterly free from the influence of ‘being’, a magical fairy tale like world. I realise that this fairy tale like quality is precisely because ‘being’ and ‘humanity’ have never existed there. That flavour i…

[Vineeto]

Hi all,
I found this sequence so funny I thought I’ll share it with you.
No. 60 is asking how not to become enlightened …

RESPONDENT: A practical question: if what I’m doing happens to kick-start the physiological process (which hasn’t happened yet), is there anything you would recommend doing, or not doing, if it begins?
RICHARD: In brief: never, ever, overlook the pristine purity of this actual world (as evidenced in the PCE) … and forsake each and every blandishment to be the latest Saviour of Humankind.
RESPONDENT: Not to pre-empt things too much, but it must be extremely hard not to ‘pike out’ when things start to get very intense.
RICHARD: Ha … it is years since I have heard that expression.
RESPONDENT: There would be the fear of spinning out completely, physically dying, or worst of all, leaving oneself a neurological omelette (as U G Krishnamurti seems to me to be).
RICHARD: You do have an expressive way of putting it … but, yes, there is a very real fear of spinning out, becoming a basket case, or whatever, and pulling back in urgent alarum to the (supposed) safety of the already-known.
RESPONDENT: I’d guess you’d favour the ‘boots and all’ approach, but just to be sure, is there anything one should be specially careful of?
RICHARD: Hesitancy (an opportunity is quite often a very rare thing).
RESPONDENT: Am I understanding you correctly that, once the process begins, you throw caution to the wind and just go all the way, come what may?
RICHARD: Provided there be pure intent (and that is no little proviso) … yes. (link)

[FrankN]

[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).

And again there is a reference to how ‘almost too easy’ actualism is. (Richard, AF List, No. 60g, 30 October 2005a).

RESPONDENT: From that mildly dissociated state, feelings are something that happen, something that I react to. The dissociated ‘I’ is indeed quite powerless to reach in and change the feeling substrate because that ‘I’ is insubstantial; it is a cluster of images/ ideals/ identifying tokens etc, whereas feelings (although not actual) constitute the real, organic, living ‘being’ itself. So a mildly dissociated person trying to change an underlying feeling state is roughly analogous to a shadow trying to exert physical force upon a real-world object. And because I am identified with the one who is trying to exert this force, and because this force is quite ineffectual, it generates frustration, and eventually exasperation and anger.

RESPONDENT: (I could, and did for a while, get relief from this frustration by being further dissociated, less inclined to try to change anything, more inclined to just happily accept whatever must be).

Richard’s Answer to above:
RICHARD: And that method – gaining relief by being further dissociated/ by not changing anything/ by accepting whatever must be – is, in a nutshell, the essence of the religio-spiritual/ mystico-metaphysical approach to the human condition/ the ills of humankind.

[FrankN]

RESPONDENT: But if I understand that I am this whole package, the whole feeling being, as opposed to identifying with just the fragment of self who is assumed to have feelings, then choosing the way I feel is equivalent to simply
OPTING — TO BE — A DIFFERENT WAY at this moment in time. And that is a different ball-game altogether. That is do-able. That is easy!

RICHARD: It is indeed easy … and, when the choice to give felicity/ innocuity a go becomes (via its ensuing paradigmatical change) the default position, as it were, opting to be a different way at this moment is then as simple as letting go of whatever other way of being may have inadvertently crept in under the radar, so to speak, and !Hey Presto! happiness/ harmlessness appears of its own accord.

And that happiness/ harmlessness readily enables a straight-forward sussing out of where, when, how, why – and what for – that other way of being came about.

[FrankN]

RESPONDENT: Instead of paying attention to feelings, trying to somehow induce (or allow or facilitate) felicitous ones and avoid other ones, I can just choose to BE different in the way I approach the living of this moment. IOW (= In other words ), feeling-as-‘me’ and ‘me’-as-feeling are not passive and helpless like they are in a dissociative state. A feeling being isn’t powerless to influence itself, but a dissociated fragment thereof is quite powerless.

RICHARD: Sometimes to the point of being so powerless that submission/ surrender becomes the only option.

RESPONDENT: In practical terms this insight is only about 40 minutes old, so I’m not totally sure about all the details … and I hope I’ve expressed it in a way that is comprehensible. I would appreciate some feedback here because if this is roughly how it works, and it seems to be so far, it would explain a lot.

Any comments welcome.

RICHARD: Just this: seeing the fact (that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’/ that it is ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment) enables sincerity, as to be in accord with the fact/ being aligned with factuality/ staying true to facticity is what being sincere is (being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous), and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté … an aspect of oneself locked away in childhood through ridicule, derision, and so on, which one has dared not to resurrect for fear of appearing foolish, a simpleton.

Yet without naiveté – the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ – pure intent will remain still-born. (Richard, AF List, No. 60g, 1 November 2005).

[Vineeto]

Frank quoted: (link)

[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).

Hi Frank,

I too find this is such an excellent quote, almost obligatory for every practicing actualist who is looking for the knack to get back to feeling good after a diminishment of feeling good.

It takes courage and naiveté to acknowledge that ‘I’ am indeed ‘my’ feelings, that ‘I’ am this swirling vortex of instinctual passions expressing themselves in an array of feelings. And yet, magically, just as No. 60 describes, once you do that, you can change how you feel. You can’t change your feelings by remote (by saying I have feelings), like they are somewhere in a sock-drawer and you just change them from red to blue. No, you have to genuinely admit that all these ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings are what ‘you’ are, and then you can choose how you feel – pure magic! And as Richard emphasized in your quote – “And again there is a reference to how ‘almost too easy’ actualism is.”

Here is another quote I found useful when, once feeling good, one tracks one’s emotions in order to find out what is behind a stubborn pattern repeating itself –

GARY: I gave some thought as to whether I am ‘tracking’ the waking entity, and I think I am. I seem to go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax, often to but take up the tracking the next day.
RICHARD: If it be not fun to track oneself in all of one’s doings then one might as well ‘give up the chase and relax’ … however what you describe as a modus operandi does not make sense to me (‘go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax’).
To need to (and to be able to) ‘relax’ means there must be tension in the first place to relax from … thus the tracking down has changed from tracking down the ‘same emotions’ or the ‘same repetitive thoughts’ to tracking down the tension … and you did not notice that the game had changed horses in mid-stream. The need to ‘relax’ is a flashing red light that the game-play has changed: ‘when did this tension start?’; how did this tension begin?’; ‘what was the event that initiated this tension?’; ‘what were the feelings at the time?’; ‘what was the thought associated with that feeling?’ … and so on. Usually one has only to track back a few minutes or a few hours … yesterday afternoon at the most. Then one is free from both the tension and the ‘Tried and True’ cure of ‘relax’.
Speaking personally, I never relaxed in all those years of application and diligence, patience and perseverance … upon exposure to the bright light of awareness the tension always disappeared. [emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, Gary, 28 Jan 2001)

‘I’ can be very tricky to avoid attention about ‘my’ favourite problems … but then such an added challenge can be also increased fun in chasing the culprit (better than any fiction murder mystery).

Cheers Vineeto

[Vineeto]

Just for fun:

RESPONDENT: Which percepts tell you ‘that thing is different from what it ought/ what I want it to be’?

RICHARD: The word ‘percept’ can refer to two things: ‘percept: (1) an object of perception; (2) the mental product or result of perceiving (as distinguished from the action)’ (Oxford Dictionary). If you are asking which object of perception occasions the noticing that something is different from what it ought to be, or from what it is wanted to be, then it can only be that very object of perception which is indeed different from what it ought to be or from what it is wanted to be (such as, for example, an approaching vehicle being on the same side of the road as the vehicle being travelled in is on). If you are asking which mental product, or result of perceiving, is informative about something being different from what it ought to be, or from what it is wanted to be, then it can only be the mental product, or result of perceiving, which the object of perception that is different from what it ought to be, or from what it is wanted to be, readily evokes (by virtue of the cognitive, ratiocinative/ conceptive and insightful faculty being able to operate freely under an overall apperceptive attentiveness/awareness) by the very fact of it being indeed different from what it ought to be or from what it is wanted to be.

RESPONDENT: To me, this has never been a ‘fact’.

RICHARD: As it is not a fiction (that the object of perception is different from what it ought to be or from what it is wanted to be) then what is it, according to you, if it be not a fact?

Before you reach for the keyboard … the example already provided can serve as a demonstration:

1. A vehicle is sighted.
2. That vehicle is visibly moving.
3. That moving vehicle is visually seen as approaching head-on.

Hence:

1. It is a fact it is a vehicle; it is a fiction it is a tree (for instance).
2. It is a fact that the vehicle is moving; it is a fiction it is stationary (either parked or immobilised).
3. It is a fact that the moving vehicle is approaching head-on; it is a fiction it is approaching side-to-side (not on a collision course).

Here are the parameters of the example:

1. All users of vehicles have tacitly agreed to a sensible convention (to only travel on an agreed-upon side of the road).
2. That sensibly agreed-upon convention has been codified as law (enforceable by appropriate penalties).

Ergo:

1. It is a fact that the approaching vehicle is not where it is wanted to be (for reasons of safe passage) as per the agreement; it is a fiction that it is where it is wanted to be.
2. It is a fact that the vehicle is not where it ought to be (for reasons of being penalised) as per the law; it is a fiction that it is where it ought to be.

Thus it is certainly by [quote] ‘the very fact’ [endquote] of the object of perception (the approaching vehicle) being indeed different from what it ought to be (it ought not be approaching head-on), or from what it is wanted to be (it is not wanted to be approaching head-on), which readily evokes the mental product, or result of perceiving, which is informative – by virtue of the cognitive, ratiocinative/ conceptive and insightful faculty being able to operate freely under an overall apperceptive attentiveness/awareness – about something (the approaching vehicle) being different (being not on the other side of the road) from what it ought to be (in accordance with the law), or from what it is wanted to be (in accordance with sensibility).

Just in case that is not clear enough: what you are saying, in effect, is that the the object of perception (the vehicle approaching head-on) is not a vehicle/ is not approaching/is not head-on until you cogitate it into being just that (a vehicle approaching head-on).

Methinks thou hast quaffed copiously at the fountain of quantum. (Richard, AF List, No. 103, 4 Oct 2005).

Cheers Vineeto

[Andrew]

This is an amazing coincidence!

I will write more in my journal later, however it’s worth commenting here briefly.

In my considerations on how to continue minimising intellectualism in regards to everything, and having an affective awareness of any deviation from feeling good, I came up with a brief reminder, a saying if you will; “my emotions are information on what is happening within me, but are not about what is factual in the actual world.”

The freeway traffic jambs were a perfect test of this premise.

My eyes can see a car cutting in. That’s a sensory fact. Braking is now the factually correct action.

‘my’ proto-annoyance, a twinge of a potential anger is not informing me of what is factually happening. For example, if I allowed annoyance to inform me, I may think “this is a rude and selfish person driving like that”.

The fact of who the driver is, what their motivation to change lanes was, and whether they are abnormally rude or selfish, are completely unknown. As a fact!

(Turned into a journal entry after all😉).

[Kub933]

Driving is an interesting one! It is a little like conversing over text in that there is a bigger window for emotional interpretation to “fill the gaps”. I do remember having this exact experience of driving and just as this “proto-annoyance” began to develop I got a glimpse of the actual driver (as I was close enough to their car), I saw a fellow human being going about their business of being alive, and then ‘I’ could no longer proceed with ‘my’ emotional (self-centred) interpretation of what was apparently going on.

[Vineeto]

RESPONDENT: Hello, I have a few questions regarding: ‘the ancient, hoary and persistent belief that you can’t change human nature.’ (www.actualfreedom.com.au/introduction/actualfreedom1.htm).

(…) I don’t believe that suffering can ever be eliminated (…)

RICHARD: Voilà [voilà: there it is!, there you are! ~ (Oxford Dictionary).]
(Richard, AF List, No. 104, 23 Dec 2005g)

[Vineeto]

RESPONDENT: Now my better nature (huh?) knows that I should have ignored your posting, but my ego is just so itchy!

RICHARD: Ha … maybe it is just worms. (Richard, AF List, No. 104, 28 Dec 2005)

[Andrew]

That one is more subtle than first glance would suggest…