When I read consciousness is boundless it seems for a feeling being (maybe just me) it could easily segue into an idea of some force which is unborn and undying, existing separated from this body, then before I know it ‘I’ am the Absolute Consciousness.
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I get what you’re saying. To avoid flying off with the fairies with all this, it’s good to remember that the universe, although conscious (as sentient creatures), is also much, much more than merely conscious.
Consciousness, in the end, is no more special than a piece of drywall or a gust of wind. I mean, it holds special status for us, of course. But we are biased.
Where does the drywall begin, where does it end?
Haha - it’s somehow less profound and credible when we start describing the rest of existence in like manner.
If there’s unlimited consciousness, it’s only fair there should also be unlimited drywall.
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Indeed, as an ex-ceiling fixer, there is far too much drywall. Infinite drywall is probably the hell I will go to for not being a good actualist.
I did everything I could to be as happy and harmless (free of sorrow and malice) for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by first putting everything on a it-does-not-really-matter basis. That is, I would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way but, if it did not turn out like that, it did not really matter for it was only a preference. I chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make me annoyed, irritated, irked, or even peeved, if that was possible.
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This is so key. He basically applied relentless stoicism to his life, treating everything not in his power as indifferents.
“ The crux of the issue is that, as each and every identity is a feeling-being at root (i.e., ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’), all identities are hereditarily programmed by blind nature to emotionally-passionally react, instantaneously, to affectively-felt and/or psychically-intuited threats to their existence because, at their very core, it is ‘being’ itself at dire risk (i.e., ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself).”
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If one is not happy and harmless now, then one has something to look at to discover why not … and one keeps on looking until one is back on track. Being ‘on track’ means a general sense of well-being … a grumpy person has no chance whatsoever of becoming free.
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VINEETO to Alan: A word about stuckness: the emotion that usually kept me from looking at the issue was mainly fear, sometimes disguised as confusion, mental laziness or simply avoidance. But after a few days, or a few hours, I would simply see the silliness of avoiding the issue and thus wasting my time by not being ‘here’ and then start off the examination. It often would go like this: OK, damn, what is it this time? What has happened just before I turned numb, or grumpy or zombie? Ah, that person said something. No, can’t be it, I’m over with this. Oh, well, maybe still a little trace? Wow, big fear now. What belief made me react? Where is the hook? And then, like a dog, I would pick up the scent and follow the trail until I had the bugger by the throat. The first resistance was the most difficult to overcome – once I had started to investigate, thrill would keep me going, and curiosity, of course.
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Yeah, usually behind any excuse, there is some fear
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@claudiu :
RICHARD: Now, as the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago was in an out-from-control virtual freedom for something like five months – although not named as such back then, of course, nor thought of in those terms – I can readily report how ‘he’ was more empathetic during that period than ‘he’ ever had been in all ‘his’ 34 years of existence. So much so, in fact, that I would be inclined to characterise a near-actual caring as an acutely-empathic caring.
This acutely-empathic characteristic of the near-actual caring which prevails in the out-from-control way of being is, by virtue of not being self-centred/ self-centric, universal in its scope. […]
I’m curious about empathy and near actual caring. Richard said near actual caring is acutely empathetic… but on the site it’s written that empathy does not work because you get too tangled up with the other’s feelings to be sensible (something to that effect). Could you ask them to go into more detail about how near actual caring is empathetic and why it works (whereas ‘regular’ (?) empathy doesn’t)?
Dona: when Richard was out-from-control he experienced empathy to a heightened degree, and saw it as a valuable tool, that assisted him in his movement forward. He could experience that others were caught up in the same human condition he was in, and know the only way was to be free of it. To be of assistance to himself and others was to eliminate the human condition in himself.
Vineeto found it a valuable tool as well, as prior to that she had blocked herself off from feeling the sorrow and malice of the human condition, and once she allowed herself to be empathic she was then able to know for sure that she didn’t want to be here, and the only way to help them was to get out of it herself… To show others that it is possible.
The reason he says near actual caring is acutely empathic is that you are getting as close, as a feeling being can, to another. To experience the human condition operating in others.
Both Richard and Vineeto agree that it is easy to get “tangled up in others feelings” (note: it is almost always not their feelings - it’s that they spark the feelings in you, but it often feels like it is theirs), so that might have been just a “warning”… Though we could not find the link to that either… Could you please supply it?
Alan; Dona has done well to relate what was said and I don’t think I can add much. It is the experiencing (feeling?) the human condition in others and knowing the only solution is to end it – in oneself. He felt it like he never had before – hence acutely-empathic. (The spelling and hyphen were the reason we did not find it yesterday)
(Via Alan and Dona’s questions to Richard & Vineeto in 2017)
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Quotes on empathy for comparison:
Vineeto seeks to gradually become free from empathy:
Vineeto (2002): I had to look closely into my feeling connection with humanity in order to become gradually free from ‘my’ empathy and compassion, ‘my’ righteousness and idealism.
V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondent # 38 2
Empathy (along with love, compassion, pity, etc.) is an artificial bridge:
Richard (1998): Whereas ‘I’, out of loneliness, attempt to bridge the separation between ‘myself’ and others similarly afflicted with ‘being’, via emotions – be it affection, love, pity, sympathy, empathy or compassion – to induce an artificial intimacy.
Richard's Selected Writing on Love
Empathy, love, and compassion come out of sorrow:
Richard (2006): Yes, well that is very important, seeing the connection between love and sorrow. Empathy – and compassion – come out of sorrow … they do not have the root word ‘pathos’ in them for nothing.
Something Has Definitely Changed In Me
Lumping empathy with love and compassion again:
Richard (1998): Just consider the fact that where one has the ability to be able to feel pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love, then it is a case of the blind leading the blind.
Using empathy to achieve enlightenment:
Richard (2005): And if that intense human love cannot immediately be felt (as in step No. 1 above) then the quickest way to activate it is to go deeply into personal sorrow (which can readily be done just by feeling sad about the whole sorry mess which is the human condition and empathy will take over) until it becomes universal sorrow – the essential pathos of all sentient creatures – whereupon it flips over and turns into compassion … which passion, upon fully flowering in all its goodness and charity, becomes a radiant love for all suffering beings.
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 60
Actualism’s attentiveness doesn’t get involved with empathy:
Richard: Attentiveness is not sentimental susceptibility for it does not get involved with affection or empathy.
Richard's Selected Writing on Fear
Deprecating empathy along with the usual suspects: trust, forgiveness, compassion, etc.
Richard (2000): I thought that I had lost the plot – yet all about people were hurting and being hurt: bickering, quarrelling, arguing, fighting and then applying band-aid solutions such as the cycle of guilt, remorse, repentance, forgiveness, empathy, trust, compassion through to love … until next time.
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 7
In the usual suspects lineup again:
Richard (1999): It would appear that mental order (sanity) is stringently defined as having the ability to successfully keep instinctive drives, furious urges, impulsive rages, inveterate hostilities, evil dispositions – all malicious and sorrowful tendencies – under control with the aid of compensatory nurturing, sympathising, empathising, being compassionate, being loving, keeping hope alive, having faith, being trusting and so on
Mailing List 'B' Respondent No. 35
Usual suspects: love, compassion, sympathy, and empthy:
Vineeto (1999): Love and compassion, sympathy and empathy are our usual ways of relating to family and friends and through the same emotional ‘channel’ we also invite their fears and worries, sorrow and resentment, anger and hatred.
V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondent # 16
Being empathetic plugs one into collective misery:
Vineeto (1999): The moment I am empathic for someone’s suffering I plug into the collective misery of mankind.
V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondent # 16
Empathy puts one in a mess of feelings:
Vineeto (2000): It is simply not possible to empathically understand someone without ending up in one’s own mess of feelings.
V List D Correspondent # 2
Empathy perpetuates sorrow without any solution:
Vineeto (1999): Empathy, sorrow and compassion make us feel connected to the greater ‘community’ of humankind, thus perpetuating sorrow without any solution.
V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence Alan 3
Vineeto sees the connection between empathy and suffering, and wants no more of it:
Vineeto: But once I understood the intrinsic connection between love and fear, compassion and sorrow, empathy and suffering, I decided to get free of the lot.
V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondent # 16
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A few more regarding empathy:
Peter is troubled by empathy and wants to be rid of it:
Peter (1998): It is only because I have been ‘deeply troubled’ by grief, anger, jealousy, despair, violence, greed, rape, suicide, love, empathy, sorrow, compassion, loneliness, etc. etc. that I wanted to be rid of them in myself for personal peace as well as to stop inflicting my sorrow and anger on others.
P Actual Freedom Mailing ListCorrespondence Irene
Being empathetic is a habit of spiritual practice:
Vineeto (2000): It is one of the notorious and ‘belief-maintaining’ habits of spiritual practice to be vague, loose, empathetic, accommodating and intuitive when communicating my beliefs and feelings.
V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence Alan 4
Empathy is a failed cop out:
Peter (n.d.): I am no longer continually run by emotions or feelings like sympathy, empathy, love, compassion any more – they are a failed cop out.
Peter SW Love, Intimacy and Divine Love
Empathy is grouped in with resignation, detachment, depression, burden, sympathy, gloominess, etc.:
Peter (2001): You start to notice all those times you are feeling melancholic, sad, lacklustre, bored, resentful, cut off, remote, detached, lonely, depressed, burdened, weighed down, resigned, sympathetic, empathic, gloomy, or hoping for a better day. You start to notice how much time you waste being unhappy and not being here.
P Actual Freedom Mailing ListCorrespondent # 3 3
Being virtually free of malice and sorrow for Peter means no longer being empathetic:
Peter (1998): It means that given sufficient effort and intent that one can virtually eliminate sorrow and malice from the human body. This means in practical terms that one no longer suffers from feelings of sadness, melancholy, boredom, neediness, sympathy, empathy, despair or fear, let alone annoyance, offence, anger, revenge or violence.
List CP Correspondent # 15
Universal empathy is a different matter though. This post I just wrote may also help clarify:
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Altogether, it is good fun speculating and trying to make sense – and some of it might be scientifically proven in later years – but the real proof of the pudding is the taste of the pudding – life is eminently delightful, despite and even because of the weird processes that are going on in the brain. To live each moment at the cutting edge of being alive, the important thing becomes not ‘what’ I experience but ‘that’ I am living fully aware, being the senses, 100% alive and enjoying each moment again. It can be a spectacular romp, a sleepy afternoon on a cozy rainy day or a busy working day, meeting all kind of demands. The quality has been improving ever since I started this process 21/2 years ago.
-Vineeto
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“The peak experience provides an objective standpoint to view the identity from. It is easily seen from here that ‘I’ stand in the way of ultimate fulfilment … of ‘my’ destiny. Pure contemplation is the means to provide one with repeated opportunities to make this examination thorough; all doubt is removed and only surety remains. This is the only way one will be convinced that ‘I’ must vanish altogether.”
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“Naiveté is the closest thing one has got to an actual innocence … one can rely much more upon it to see one’s way clearly than one can rely upon the most profound thought or the most sublime feeling. No matter how lofty the thought or deep the feeling, unless one is nearly innocent, one will never succeed.”
-Richard
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- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming happy and harmless.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of sorrow and malice.
- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming blithesome and benign.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of fear and aggression.
- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming carefree and considerate.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free from nurture and desire.
- The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming gay and benevolent.
That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of anguish and animosity.
-Richard
Footnote from:
"As an aside, it is worth mentioning that ‘feeling good’ each moment again over extended periods is thus not an emotion per se but, rather, an affective mood – as in, ‘I’m in a good mood today’ (and, conversely, ‘I’m in a bad mood today’) – just as ‘feeling happy’ moment-to-moment, for the remainder of one’s life, is also an affective mood (e.g., ‘I’m in a happy mood today’) as it would be simply impossible to sustain an emotional happiness day-after-day week-after-week, let alone being passionately happy, due to such being both emotionally draining and, usually, a conditional happiness anyway.
It is correspondingly worth noting that mood is to temperament as weather is to climate inasmuch a person who is predominantly in a good mood is generally described as having an agreeable temperament (a.k.a. as being of a generally cheerful disposition) – as contrasted to those usually depicted as bad-tempered by nature (a.k.a. as being a generally unpleasant character) – such that a prolonged ‘feeling good’ mood becomes a matter of temperament and disposition and, thereby, ultimately of character."
-Richard
(emphasis mine) A useful clarification!
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I didn’t know or remember this one, and was fairly relevant yesterday when I was thinking how I usually go about Actualism and feeling good: it’s usually in bouts which lead me to have a good momentum that lasts 3 or 4 days, and then I get back to normal. Seems like these bouts come from some emotional shock that I then process intellectually and then transform into emotional energy to give me a boost. So how come it is not usually sustainable? Makes sense that the purely emotional approach has its limitations.
Anyway, it leads me to think about what is the exact difference between emotion and mood, as I had assumed that those were more an affective continuum and closely related, but to what extent one belongs to effects/symptoms and the other as root causes? What is template and what is liquid? How the liquid can alter the template (affective feelings altering character and personality, and not only viceversa)? As there’s also this thesis in psychology that personality is one of the most stable traits in humans; fascinating that the actualist process could change it even at the deepest and most fundamental levels.
Also, made me think about the usual comparison of Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo. Could it be that, at Actualism, the Messis born with natural talents to be happy (a disposition at the level of character/personality) while the Ronaldos need constant training and discipline to get there. The formers have the challenge of not being too complacent, while the latter have the challenge to map and recreate what’s needed.
(/end rant, and not sure if this can stay here or should be split; feel free to move, mods.)
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I only vaguely know the story of these two examples, however it seems that the division is somewhat arbitrary. It also puts one side in the “got it easy” and the other in the “worked for the prize” camps.
As a father of two, now “first team” soccer players, the analogy is not lost on me.
Both work very hard. Striations on their quads are a sight to behold. One is naturally more talented, whilst both play at the highest level. The other less talented, is actually far more socially talented. Which, in the context of the team, is powerful.
So, whilst one could say this person naturally is a more talented person, the full spectrum of what actualism is talking about means that we can’t really back up that assessment.
Is everyone who is enjoying life a better “actualist”?
What is the core requirement of going from being interested in actualism to becoming actually free?