It really has woken me up seeing that pattern so consistently
I can see that my belief about loving vs. my loved experience are not matching up. It’s really good to see so obviously!
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It’s remarkable.
I am taking it as a challenge myself, to extricate myself from what causes me to “love/want love”.
Love is pain, reaching out, to grasp that something that appears real. Without the pain, no love arises.
Sorta like what @Kiman is saying about harmlessness. Without the hurt, there is no hurt to be passed on.
Dealing with the pain, as in the “buck stops here” I think is the biggest challenge.
We will only hurt the one’s we “love”.
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We hurt them because we ‘need’ something from them 
Perverse!
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Wanting to be loved is desire. Like all desires, it causes pain. Desire is like: The object of desire is there, and I am here. I’m pushed to cover the distance to get that.
It helps to breakdown love, what it constitutes: feeling desirable, wanting to fill the void(pain) by finding love, need for social approval and ease to socialize with married friends, validation, wanting to feel loved at the end of the day when you get home because you are fatigued by the daily grind etc.
The buck always stops at our needs, how they are tied to our identity, what part of it gets hurt, and how we try to fulfil them. Bringing our needs to awareness helps us see what needs we have are socially inculcated and what needs are we seeking to cover up what underlying pain.
Not sure where to reply, with all the moving of posts… @Kub933
The point of about love and hurt for me is about the specific instance.
Lately, I have been realising that a lot of my ‘romantic love’ is motivated by wanting to be rejected.
It’s something I hadn’t seen before. Further, I also will reject, eventually, those same people.
If that wasn’t my reality, perhaps another ‘hurt’ would be.
So, I agree that in general terms malice arises naturally in everyone at some point early on in life, however the specifics of the expression can be quite different when it comes to how “love” is being experienced and expressed.
As observed by Annie Lennox in that song “sweet dreams”.
“Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused by you.”
With the perverse twist that it can be true of the same person simultaneously.
Could someone provide a source for this, please?
Link: V Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence Gary 3
Cheers Vineeto
Thank you, Vineeto.
I’ve been reading what other actualists have written of love. And it is quite amazing to discover how much we all have in common (I can recognize myself in their words), in regards to how love ‘operates’. Love, which resumed upon re-establishing contact, is finally leaving my system again. Oh boy, I don’t think I want to go through this again … all the more reason to be watchful of the ‘birfurcation’ … and prioritize near-actual intimacy from the get go for future acquaintainces (speaking of which I did speak to someone briefly today and I’m pretty satisfied with how I handled it overall).
‘Vineeto’ to Gary: When Peter and I met, he had grasped enough from Richard’s radical discovery to not want to fall in love again. And yet, as he has described it in his Journal,, falling in love happened despite all good intentions, inevitably unfolding all the typical emotions between man and woman within the Human Condition. To get a handle on the overwhelming impact of my tender emotions, I had to feel, experience, acknowledge, label and investigate each and every single emotion of the bundle called love in order to understand what love consists of. There was sexual attraction, fear of loneliness, my personal dreams and fantasies, my emotional dependency, my expectations of the other, the male and female conditioning, constant mistrust, fear, jealousy, worry and feelings of inadequacy that I tried to overcome by anticipating, attempting to interpret and empathizing with the other’s moods and feelings. (…)
As I successively became aware of and understood one feeling after the other, I first had glimpses and then increasingly longer periods where neither tender nor savage emotions would interfere in the delightful magic of a direct unimpeded peaceful interaction with another human being. It became more and more obvious that love is nothing but a shield of ‘my’ projected feelings that act to keep me at a safe distance and therefore love only stands in the way of intimate interaction with others. (link)
Syd: Thank you, Vineeto.
I’ve been reading what other actualists have written of love. And it is quite amazing to discover how much we all have in common (I can recognize myself in their words), in regards to how love ‘operates’. Love, which resumed upon re-establishing contact, is finally leaving my system again. Oh boy, I don’t think I want to go through this again … all the more reason to be watchful of the ‘bi-furcation’ … and prioritize near-actual intimacy from the get go for future acquaintances (speaking of which I did speak to someone briefly today and I’m pretty satisfied with how I handled it overall). (link)
Hi Syd,
So you had your first encounter with the beginnings of falling in love as an adult – and conclude that reading what other actualists say about love gives you enough theoretical knowledge to “be watchful of the ‘bi-furcation’”. With such high expectations don’t let yourself be discouraged when romantic feelings mixed with sexual desire strike again. As ‘Vineeto’ reported, ‘she’ had to become “aware of and understood one feeling after the other” until eventually, after many investigations, “neither tender nor savage emotions would interfere”.
One experience, by your reports, mixed with some detachment, rejection and suppression of your ‘tender’ feelings, lots of hope and high-flying intentions, is most likely not enough to overall, experientially and affectively, understand how you operate. Hence I suggest to be more realistic, down-to-earth, and patient in order that you can be naïvely interested and genuinely attentive (possibly as in “attentiveness does not play favourites”) about what is happening when the cocktail of what is called “falling in love” starts setting in the next time.
Only by allowing to let the experience itself unfold can you learn about its intricacies, the hopes, dreams and beliefs it all entails, its unspoken assumptions on both sides, the psychic push and pull, the interactive power dynamic and the very cunning mechanism of ‘you’ to ‘get out of here as fast as possible’, or, as you say “I don’t think I want to go through this again”.
Rejection and resentment of the topic you want to experientially research interfere with a thorough and possibly enjoyable inquiry where you can be confident about the results you get. So perhaps your first inquiry is about what was so terrible, so frightful in this past experience, and why.
Kuba gave you an insightful and excellent suggestion how to proceed from there –
Kuba: It seems you have got down to some of the nitty-gritty of what is going on. I remember some years ago having this realisation, that it was my desire which was keeping me a slave. Initially it seemed like it was the woman who was at fault, after-all she had the power over me, the power to affect my self-worth etc. But then it was so clear that I was a self-made slave, it was my desire which made it possible for women to dangle various glittering carrots in front of me, and for me to mindlessly follow.
This is nothing new, that men desire sex and women can and do exploit this… Blind-spot. The game-changing thing with actualism is that I can unilaterally step out of this power game. However, it does require attending to the fundamental fact – it is my desire which is keeping me a slave. (link)
Plenty to explore – don’t forget to enjoy and deeply appreciate solving the puzzle that is one of the top mysteries of the human condition.
Cheers Vineeto
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Hi Vineeto,
Thank you for your considered response. You do know me well so those warnings are much appreciated.
So if it happens I could fall in love again, albeit in lesser intensity perhaps. I’m okay with it — gives me yet another opportunity to look into it, but by then I’d be more prepared so it is all good.
I’ve indeed fallen in love before a handful of times, but since the women would always run for the hills, one way or another, right after my proposing … the feelings would subside soon after. What I experienced back towards end of Nov/ beginning of Dec was special in that she stuck to me, and I got to go through the full rollercoaster of emotions.
I should highlight that I have never written about those experiences in detail here in public. Nor have I written about the full exploration into the ‘resurgences’ of these feelings (Jan 10-20) except the feelings mentioned in the ‘Intimacy’ thread. I’m not sure why you characterize my experiences as “the beginnings of falling in love”. Based on what I’ve experienced I can indeed relate to everything others have written of love. I’m just not sure how comfortable I’m in sharing all of that in public (also, given my unique preferences and predilections I’m unsure if people would empathize anyway). But here’s a recent example Just feel good, bro - #2 by syd
I’ll look into this, as well as the desire (Andrew - #1428 by syd) that is sustaining it all.
Speaking of which, right after sending that last message, I discovered the value of feeling good as baseline (feeling good feels so good compared to what happened before!). 
I decided to maintain the baseline of feeling good (and everything else – PCEs/rememoration/contemplation/… – can happen on the bedrock of feeling good). I’ll write about it after I get to play with it sufficiently over the next few days.
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Vineeto: Only by allowing to let the experience itself unfold can you learn about its intricacies, the hopes, dreams and beliefs it all entails, its unspoken assumptions on both sides, the psychic push and pull, the interactive power dynamic and the very cunning mechanism of ‘you’ to ‘get out of here as fast as possible’, or, as you say “I don’t think I want to go through this again”.
Rejection and resentment of the topic you want to experientially research interfere with a thorough and possibly enjoyable inquiry where you can be confident about the results you get. So perhaps your first inquiry is about what was so terrible, so frightful in this past experience, and why. (link)
Syd: Hi Vineeto,
Thank you for your considered response. You do know me well so those warnings are much appreciated.
So if it happens I could fall in love again, albeit in lesser intensity perhaps. I’m okay with it — gives me yet another opportunity to look into it, but by then I’d be more prepared so it is all good.
I’ve indeed fallen in love before a handful of times, but since the women would always run for the hills, one way or another, right after my proposing … the feelings would subside soon after. What I experienced back towards end of Nov/ beginning of Dec was special in that she stuck to me, and I got to go through the full rollercoaster of emotions.
I should highlight that I have never written about those experiences in detail here in public. Nor have I written about the full exploration into the ‘resurgences’ of these feelings (Jan 10-20) except the feelings mentioned in the ‘Intimacy’ thread. I’m not sure why you characterize my experiences as “the beginnings of falling in love”. Based on what I’ve experienced I can indeed relate to everything others have written of love. I’m just not sure how comfortable I’m in sharing all of that in public (also, given my unique preferences and predilections I’m unsure if people would empathize anyway). But here’s a recent example –
Syd: (…) The message I sent was something along the lines of asking for FWB arrangement:
Gotta be honest: while the emotional heaviness is gone, the sexual desire is very much still there. I’m not looking for strictly friendship. I enjoy our conversations, I want us to be physical too. Is that something you want too?
I really fought tooth and nail with the actualist because I was afraid of directly asking her this. In the end, I decided to just ask and see what happens – both from her standpoint and my own reaction to it.
Trigger: She basically vanished from that point—no response. This caused a surge of fear, and I was no longer feeling good. (Just feel good, bro - #2)
Hi Syd,
I guess I have to spell it out fully what I mean by “perhaps your first inquiry is about what was so terrible, so frightful in this past experience, and why”. The investigation into this topic needs to go further than merely re-stating that your past experiences with women did not result in the outcome that you wanted, mainly the inclusion of having sex. “She basically vanished from that point” you say and that is the end of your explanation of you “no longer feeling good”. In short, the way you portray it that it was her fault (and all the others), end of story.
But this is not the end of story for an actualist style investigation – to start with, in actualism you acknowledge that you are the only person you can change, and if your contemplation don’t yet reveal where and how you need to change, what lies underneath this present attitude and outcome of situations like this, then you need to dig deeper in your understanding.
Simply resolving to be naïve instead, to rememorate a PCE or “by-pass” or “re-channel” your feelings and passions has not worked and will not work. As Richard put it in the excellent quote Pelagash just posted today (link) –
Richard: Is not ‘understanding’ something the same thing as ‘analysing’ something? To understand something is to intellectually grasp a concept successfully. This may be the activity of ‘I’ thinking as clearly as ‘I’ can possibly think, yet it is not the same clarity as the clear seeing obtained in an insight … and an insight is seeing the fact.
When one sees the fact there is action … and this action is the actualising of the insight so that one’s personality is changed, irrevocably. (…) (Richard, List B, No. 12, 16 Feb 1998a)
You are looking for an actual change, a change in attitude, a change in the originally always ‘self’-centric perspective, a change that originates at the core of your ‘being’, where you are able to be naïve. Richard has described the process to you in detail –
Richard: Reach down inside of yourself intuitively (aka feeling it out) and go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until you come to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being … which is ‘being’ itself).
Now, having located ‘being’ itself, gently and tenderly sense out the area immediately below that (just above/ just before and almost touching on the sex centre).
Here you will find yourself both likeable and liking (for here lies sincerity/ naiveté).
Here is where you can, finally, like yourself (very important) no matter what.
Here is the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’.
Here lies tenderness/ sweetness and togetherness/ closeness.
Here is where it is possible to be the key. (Richard, List D, Syd, 26 May 2009).
In order to “go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings … into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings” you first need to stop ignoring, objecting to, pushing away, or ‘setting aside’ or by-pass any ‘inappropriate’ of those superficial and profound passions until you can recognize and fully acknowledge them as ‘you’. Only then will you be able to discover there is something further, “where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being … which is ‘being’ itself”.
If that discovery is genuine (and not a superficial change of wording, which neither changes your underlying feeling nor the vibes you automatically emanate) then you will experience a change in the way you feel, in your attitude and general outlook, where, for instance, women are no longer prey or objects of sexual desire but likeable fellow human beings to enjoy their company whatever form that may take. Until that change in your ‘being’ happens and can be repeated until it becomes your new way of being, your investigations into “what was so terrible, so frightful in this past experience, and why” have barely scratched the surface.
Here is Kuba’s post again for further, perhaps deeper, appreciation and understanding –
Kuba: This is nothing new, that men desire sex and women can and do exploit this… Blind-spot. The game-changing thing with actualism is that I can unilaterally step out of this power game. However it does require attending to the fundamental fact – it is my desire which is keeping me a slave.
There was something very nice though that came along with stepping out of this game, which was that I was more able to experience women as fellow human beings, and weirdly enough they also appreciate the fact that it is not possible to make me a slave. After-all that very game which women play is part of the instinctual programming, it does not care for their happiness and deep down they yearn to be free from it also.
Sooo, to cut a long story short, by attending to the fact that one is a puppet to one’s own passionate drives one can find not only greater freedom for oneself but also a greater intimacy with the person of the other gender – how neat! (link)
Syd: I was investigating along tangential lines recently. I saw that the various feelings mentioned here all stem from the instinctual passion of desire – not just sexual desire but also the desires ‘stuck atop’ it. Instead of sidestepping or reducing this desire, I can channel[1] it towards beneficial means (…), and this makes those other feelings pretty redundant. (Andrew - #1428)
[1]channel: So no longer wasting the instinctual energy on the thing being desired (in the real-world) … be it sexual ‘conquest’, validation (aka. emotional/ identity conquest), possession, a prop for one’s self-worth, an other-person derived source of meaning in life, or whatever. The “energy” of that desire is now freed for other purposes.
Your tool-tip explanation of what you mean by “channel” is typical buddhistic detachment – reject all worldly desires and desire something else instead. It merely changes the name of the goalpost, not your being. It has nothing to do with what can actually happen, with tangible results, when sincerely being attentive, fully investigating and comprehending the issue at hand. You might want to check out feeling-being ‘Vineeto’s’ detailed writing on “Investigate Feelings”.
Vineeto: Plenty to explore – don’t forget to enjoy and deeply appreciate solving the puzzle that is one of the top mysteries of the human condition.
Syd: Speaking of which, right after sending that last message, I discovered the value of feeling good as baseline (feeling good feels so good compared to what happened before!). I decided to maintain the baseline of feeling good (and everything else – PCEs/ rememoration/ contemplation/… – can happen on the bedrock of feeling good). I’ll write about it after I get to play with it sufficiently over the next few days. (link)
It’s good to have a sound feeling-good base when planning to exchange your face-mask and snorkel for deep-sea diving with a scuba outfit … deep into the human condition. Full text on Richard’s Homepage.
Cheers Vineeto
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Hi Vineeto,
Before I respond to the bulk of your post, I wanted to ask if you’ve read Just feel good, bro - #3 by syd (I actually go into my core fears here) ?
Thank you for the “change in your ‘being’” explanation; I hadn’t seen that way. This is something to keep in mind, certainly.
Regarding your reiteration of Kuba’s posts, what I’ve always found odd is that nobody has so far given a detailed report of this ‘desire’ and the various forms it takes.
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Syd: Thank you for the “change in your ‘being’” explanation; I hadn’t seen that way. This is something to keep in mind, certainly.
Hi Syd,
Here is the relevant part of the quote from Richard I posted –
Richard: Reach down inside of yourself intuitively (aka feeling it out) and go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until you come to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being … which is ‘being’ itself). [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Syd, 26 May 2009).
Instead of “change in your ‘being’” I should have more precisely said change in the perception of your ‘being’ as I laid it out in the beginning of the sentence – “you will experience a change in the way you feel, in your attitude and general outlook, where, for instance, women are no longer prey or objects of sexual desire but likeable fellow human beings to enjoy their company whatever form that may take”. (link) As you have reported yourself on occasion, when naiveté operates there is an immense tangible change in how you are.
Syd: Regarding your reiteration of Kuba’s posts, what I’ve always found odd is that nobody has so far given a detailed report of this ‘desire’ and the various forms it takes. (link)
Why do you need others’ “detailed report” to know how to proceed? Richard, Peter, Vineeto, Geoffrey and others proceeded to dive into their psyche without such reports, guided by pure intent, the intent to leave no stone unturned with the overriding aim to actualise what the PCE revealed to be possible. Actualism is something you do by yourself, a unilateral change for the benefit of you and every body.
Here is a useful insight from Adam –
Adam-H: (…) I see again that the key is the genuine willingness/ readiness, it makes total sense to me and fits with my past intermittent experiences. When that willingness/ readiness is there, the practice is hardly even a practice, it’s effortless. But again it feels like this is just saying “here is what it is like when it works.” How does one make an identity… (end of initial reaction)
Vineeto: Hi Adam,
This is a very insightful post and well worth keeping for future references. When the readiness is there then there is no conflict, not one side trying and the other side resisting.
Adam-H: While writing that phrase out I had this thought “wait, I am that identity, I don’t have to ‘make’ it do anything I can just do it.” I can see how I reacted to bad feelings – by becoming a virtuously impatient identity whose narrative is a story about being special for wanting to feel good. As soon as I saw that, there was a feeling of having my ‘split’ self fuse back together with my relatively more naive but stressed self. This consolidated ‘me’ was able to then instantly go back to feeling good because it saw that it was silly to feel good when it was entirely up to me how to feel. I think this is the clearest I’ve ever been on the point that sincerity can unlock naivety.
Vineeto: Excellent – when you had the realisation that “wait, I am that identity” that is the same as realising that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ – no conflict, simply the choice to be whatever feeling you prefer to be. It’s great, isn’t it, when you discover some of the tricks ‘I’ get up to – and once you see it, the trick no longer works and you do feel good. And this is the key to sincerity.
So should you ever struggle to get out of feeling bad, look for this sincerity, the “willingness/ readiness” and see what happens.
(…)
Richard: Indeed it is … so in order to successfully escape one needs to abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods, so that the energy one is frittering away fruitlessly is available for the unknown path, the unfamiliar path, the path that does deliver the goods. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)
(Actualvineeto, Adam-H, 8 Jan 2026)
If you can clearly see the point Kuba is making that “that it was my desire which was keeping me a slave” (link) and when you have the readiness to no longer follow the demands of this passion, this cause of your slavery, then it can happen in an instant – if “that willingness/ readiness is there”. If it is not there (yet), then one is often easily diverted in to all sorts of ‘trying’ by asking more questions, analysing one’s ever-changing kaleidoscope of feelings, finding fault with others and similar tricks of ‘me’ to keep the standard quo.
This early description from Peter might also be relevant, if only to recognize any emotional patterns –
Peter to Alan: Thus it was that I actively practiced denial and transcendence – new tricks to add to the denial and repression of ‘bothersome’ feelings and emotions that I had been taught as a child. Transcendence is such a wonderfully seductive option, for one gets to swan along, literally with one’s head in the clouds, literally above it all. The real world problems of money, relationship, corruption and greed, and the feelings of anger, sorrow and melancholy were still around but ‘I’ was not part of it. The ‘real’ world became a tolerable nuisance – I was not going to let it bother me – the new spiritual ‘me’. (Peter, AF List, Alan-d, 19.3.2000).
It describes how the mechanism of the old paradigm operated, nowadays further disguised by cloaking those “clouds” in new words gleaned from reports of fully free people such as “common consciousness”, “immanence-in-consciousness”, “being genderless, formless, ageless and vast”, “sense of fixed physicality falling apart” (see link) and ‘transcendence’ renamed as “channeling into”, “by-passing” or simply ignoring uncomfortable feelings.
I am not suggesting you are still doing all this but the old paradigm has been operating for thousands of years and hence appears to be the first measure to take when in an emotional crisis. Actualism is not about controlling the feelings but by recognizing and looking at them you eventually get an insight into the pattern of the workings of your identity and see how silly it is to keep doing what you have been programmed to do. And if you first don’t succeed, keep looking (after getting back to feeling good, of course).
From another thread –
Syd: (…) I simply decided to give up those post-arousal mechanisms; they are just not worth holding on to. Simple as!
I now see what Vineeto means by "[enjoying] their company whatever form that may take". And more importantly, I rediscovered my autonomy. (link)
This is an excellent practical example of what I was describing above – “when you have the readiness to no longer follow the demands of this passion, this cause of your slavery, then it can happen in an instant”.
Cheers Vineeto
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Hi Vineeto,
I think I can respod to this now. In the other topic, I already talked about the various feelings regarding women in general and how, upon meeting her back in November, all those feelings “coalesced and focused themselves unilaterally on her and her alone” (Just feel good, bro - #4 by syd). So basically it were the same feelings but focused and intensified (as if burning an ant with a magnifying glass) on one person; putting all my eggs on the same basket so to speak. This was the beginning of falling in love.
I remember the specific moment when the panic started. During the evening of date 3 (earlier this day I remember first developing the ‘bond’ with her after her EFT tapping), in my couch, I awkwardly attempt physical escalation (back and forth casual touching), with no enthusiastic reciprocration from her, and at some point she decides to leave. Right after this, there was a huge surge of panic (accompanied by heavy breath), and the fear was about ‘losing her forever’ (‘she’ had began already merged with ‘me’; see below). And since I had put all eggs on the same basket, so to speak, this meant … well the end of everything. Hence, the panic. The next day, I fell in love (it is possible that the evening before’s physical touch was a precipitating factor, going by my “lead me to fall in love with her sooner than latter because the sexual desire had no other acceptable outlet” comment in Just feel good, bro - #2 by syd) … it was a full-blown being in a love so much that when I went to an organic grocery store that day I was but ‘flying’ or ‘swimming’ in love with various women visibly picking up on that euphoric ‘energy’ of this man in their vicinity (I happenned to spontaneously flirt heavily with a female worker there, who seemed as if she eagerly wanted me to take her home that day).
Over the next week or two, it’d become apparent there’s no reciprocration, so there would be less of euphoria and more of panic. And thus came the ‘clean break’ on mid-December until Jan 10 when I choose to ‘try this again’ with her, wherein the old feelings would come back albeit in lesser intensity. I wasn’t courageous enough yet to face those feelings again, so I asked for a FWB arrangement knowing well that she would likely say no and thus I can officially ‘close the chapter’ with no possibility (or temptation) of returning.
It was like is this: I felt as if ‘she’ became a part of ‘me’ - so ‘rejection’ basically meant that part being ripped out of ‘me’, and there could not be greater pain than this. I could relate to what Richard wrote to Tarin. And the description of how love is but an union between two separative selves. Rejection meant that separation is validated, highlighted and brought to fore, and because ‘I’ coalesced all of ‘myself’ onto ‘her’ … her rejection meant … well … death.
Is there a significant difference between saying “change in your ‘being’” and “change in the perception of you ‘being’”? Once I so-willingly decline all these desire-expressions (I’m still exploring some subtle ones), seriousness basically goes out of the window, and the near-innocense of naivete becomes accessible. Being coy, for one example, instead of being nervous. And there is a general lightness and cheerfulness regardless of other people’s modus operandi. I quite like it, already.
I guess I was looking for a ‘template’ to follow 
but you are right, it is actually way more fun (and authentic) to find out for myself. Besides, only I get know all of my idiosyncracies and intricasies; the same goes for others. Autonomy is operating at levels higher than before.
Ha, good ol’ bag of tricks I now thankfully no longer need.
I do experientially understand this now. And it is fun to do this.
Yes, this was the my first practical demonstration of it. Not only did it begin to free me up from lifetime of misery, but it also laid the initial confidence to tackle other issues similarly.
What you said above (as quoted in Just feel good, bro - #5 by syd and the post above) was seminal in getting me to directly face all these feelings for the first time. I have immense appreciation for it!
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Syd: Hi Vineeto,
Vineeto: So perhaps your first inquiry is about what was so terrible, so frightful in this past experience, and why.
Syd: I think I can respond to this now. In the other topic, I already talked about the various feelings regarding women in general and how, upon meeting her back in November, all those feelings “coalesced and focused themselves unilaterally on her and her alone” (Just feel good, bro - #4 by syd). So basically it were the same feelings but focused and intensified (as if burning an ant with a magnifying glass) on one person; putting all my eggs on the same basket so to speak. This was the beginning of falling in love.
I remember the specific moment when the panic started. During the evening of date 3 (earlier this day I remember first developing the ‘bond’ with her after her EFT tapping), in my couch, I awkwardly attempt physical escalation (back and forth casual touching), with no enthusiastic reciprocation from her, and at some point she decides to leave. Right after this, there was a huge surge of panic (accompanied by heavy breath), and the fear was about ‘losing her forever’ (‘she’ had began already merged with ‘me’; see below). And since I had put all eggs on the same basket, so to speak, this meant … well the end of everything. Hence, the panic. The next day, I fell in love (it is possible that the evening before’s physical touch was a precipitating factor, going by my “lead me to fall in love with her sooner than latter because the sexual desire had no other acceptable outlet” comment in Just feel good, bro - #2 by syd) … it was a full-blown being in a love so much that when I went to an organic grocery store that day I was but ‘flying’ or ‘swimming’ in love with various women visibly picking up on that euphoric ‘energy’ of this man in their vicinity (I happened to spontaneously flirt heavily with a female worker there, who seemed as if she eagerly wanted me to take her home that day).
(…) Rejection meant that separation is validated, highlighted and brought to fore, and because ‘I’ coalesced all of ‘myself’ onto ‘her’ … her rejection meant … well … death.
Hi Syd,
You say that your “desire had no other acceptable outlet” but falling in love to the point where “her rejection meant … well … death”. It’s good to know, and remember, that your love-feelings disappeared (link) and turned into fear and panic, the moment your expectation of a sexual connection was declined, and also how strongly your desire is experienced as love (and possessiveness) and as such, like Kuba said, “it was my desire which was keeping me a slave” (link).
I am also highlighting this because love is not always described or experienced in the same way. Viz.:
Love (Chemistry of Love):
“Love can be distilled into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment; though there are overlaps and subtleties to each, each type is characterised by its own set of hormones; testosterone and oestrogen drive lust; dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin create attraction; and oxytocin and vasopressin mediate attachment (…); the testes and ovaries secrete the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen, driving sexual desire; dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin are all made in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain which controls many vital functions as well as emotion; lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which includes rational behaviour…”. [emphasis added].
[https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/]. (Richard, Abditorium, Love)
The very intensity of your feelings, both euphoria (hope) and deathly panic (despair) are well worth your decision to change your perspective and keep practicing autonomy as you described further down (link).
Vineeto: Instead of “change in your ‘being’” I should have more precisely said change in the perception of your ‘being’ as I laid it out in the beginning of the sentence – “you will experience a change in the way you feel, in your attitude and general outlook, where, for instance, women are no longer prey or objects of sexual desire but likeable fellow human beings to enjoy their company whatever form that may take”. (link) As you have reported yourself on occasion, when naiveté operates there is an immense tangible change in how you are.
Syd: Is there a significant difference between saying “change in your ‘being’” and “change in the perception of your ‘being’”? Once I so-willingly decline all these desire-expressions (I’m still exploring some subtle ones), seriousness basically goes out of the window, and the near-innocence of naivete becomes accessible. Being coy, for one example, instead of being nervous. And there is a general lightness and cheerfulness regardless of other people’s modus operandi. I quite like it, already.
I have noticed a tendency when having one experiential success, to swing into overconfidence and exaggerated hope, only to then fall back into the previous pattern. Given that you only quoted “change in your ‘being’” and overlooked the first explanatory part of that same sentence of mine, I found it important to emphasize that one’s ‘being’ does not change when you occasionally “reach down inside of yourself intuitively” to the core of your ‘being’.
Richard: Reach down inside of yourself intuitively (aka feeling it out) and go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until you come to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being … which is ‘being’ itself). [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Syd, 26 May 2009).
In other words, it helps to be realistic and honest with oneself in order that imagination is not fuelling further escalation of hope and despair.
Vineeto: Why do you need others’ “detailed report” to know how to proceed?
Syd: I guess I was looking for a ‘template’ to follow, but you are right, it is actually way more fun (and authentic) to find out for myself. Besides, only I get know all of my idiosyncrasies and intricacies; the same goes for others. Autonomy is operating at levels higher than before.
I am pleased you can see that.
Vineeto: It [practicing denial and transcendence] describes how the mechanism of the old paradigm operated, nowadays further disguised by cloaking those “clouds” in new words gleaned from reports of fully free people such as “common consciousness”, “immanence-in-consciousness”, “being genderless, formless, ageless and vast”, “sense of fixed physicality falling apart” (see link) and ‘transcendence’ renamed as “channeling into”, “by-passing” or simply ignoring uncomfortable feelings.
Syd: Ha, good ol’ bag of tricks I now thankfully no longer needed.
See what I mean by swinging into overconfidence and exaggerated hope, as if those mechanisms have disappeared forever without a trace from one instance of recognition. But denial and transcendence are part of ‘your’ “tricks” of ‘being’ and often habitual, appearing as the twins of despair and hope, rejection and euphoria. It takes ongoing attentiveness in various situations to suss out how you affectively experience yourself, recognizing them in action, again and again, and decline as quickly as you can.
Sometimes I get the impression that for some people actualism is like an exam where one needs to know the right answers, tick the right boxes, follow the right concepts, in order to ‘level up’ – akin to a religious concept like the Buddha’s “eightfold path” of “right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration”. (see Mahasatipatthana Sutta (d), Richard, List B, No. 13, 8 Jun 1999). It is quite amazing how old habits can sneakily reappear in a new outfit.
Actualism is none of this. There are no levels, no badges of honour, no marks to be earned, no conditions at all.
James: What will it take for me to go the rest of the way to af?
Dona: Richard was confused by this question, as it sounds like you think there are steps, or “a way”.
Actual freedom from the human condition is a pivotal/ decisive moment. You are either actually free or you are not (full stop). It is not possible to go “the rest of the way”. (Dona and Alan’s Report, 4 Oct 2017).
Syd: (…) I simply decided to give up those post-arousal mechanisms; they are just not worth holding on to. Simple as!
I now see what Vineeto means by "[enjoying] their company whatever form that may take". And more importantly, I rediscovered my autonomy. (link)
Vineeto: This is an excellent practical example of what I was describing above – “when you have the readiness to no longer follow the demands of this passion, this cause of your slavery, then it can happen in an instant”.
Syd: Yes, this was my first practical demonstration of it. Not only did it begin to free me up from lifetime of misery, but it also laid the initial confidence to tackle other issues similarly.
What you said above (as quoted in Just feel good, bro - #5 by syd and the post above) was seminal in getting me to directly face all these feelings for the first time. I have immense appreciation for it! (link)
Good. Perhaps you understand now experientially why it is important to keep your feet on the ground, stay down to earth, and avoid feeding one or both of the emotional twins of dramatic high and low feelings but instead get back to feeling good as soon as possible. From there, aim to evince a clear decision to decline “post-arousal mechanisms” or any other harmful mechanisms you encounter/ discover, and thus slowly become more and more autonomous.
Again, for emphasis, facing the particular feelings means you deprive them of additional emotional-psychic energy by neither reacting with fight or flight. You can then see them for what they are – “not worth holding on to”.
Now that you know that it works, and how it works, you might want more of it. 
Cheers Vineeto
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Hi Vineeto,
Ah, I see. I shall now verbalize that I did acknowledge and appreciate (not to mention promptly begin to put into practice) all of what you wrote in those two paragraphs in particular, which I quoted twice in my log (Just feel good, bro - #4 by syd & Just feel good, bro - #5 by syd). What I mainly took was:
- Not to repress or push away feelings (with or without intellectualization on top)
- Feel them as ‘me’ in action (“I” am “my” feelings and “my” feelings are “me”) … else, it would be “me” fighting against “my” feelings
- Thus, change can happen at a fundamental level such that how I feel at my core is transformed, thus reflecting in the vibes I involuntarily emanate
What I’m discovering so far is that sexual arousal per se (in response to visual stimulus) doesn’t disrupt feeling good. That bodily arousal (the electrifying feelings generally between diaphragm and sexual center) in conjunction with the corresponding hedonic pleasure, in fact, is rather a brief pleasure to be enjoyed (sometimes cheekily[1]) for that brief period. It is everything else that happens after that affectively, that’s the problem. I’m still exploring all the components of that ‘everything else’ (including covert forms of hope) but it is easy to pay attention to and decline (as necessary). At the same time, I’m coming to experience the naive feelings (adjacent to that sexual arousal), which provide an alternate way of being as a feeling-being (thus, “experience a change in the way [I] feel, in [my] attitude and general outlook”) when with fellow human beings of certain gender & aesthetic appreciation. What’s cute here is that I can do all this without any need for reciprocral interest whatsoever[2]—I’m the only person who needs to change, and this is an exuberant freedom. I’m feeling rather cheeky and daring, for it seems to go against all social expectations or buckets or hierarchies to be naive like this.
Understood. I can confidently say that I don’t see myself intellectualizing again in the future. But, yes, pushing feelings away or ignoring is still a minor habit, but I do become aware of them instantly, and switch to ‘fun mode’.
That’s an interesting observation, I’ll say. As of now, I see that it comes down to feeling good come what may … as well as, rememorating my PCEs (which I find to be vital when it comes to going past the addiction inherent in desire). I’m not too bothered about anything else right now. There’s a burning desire to make feeling good—enjoying and appreciating being here—the norm.
I need to think about this ‘get back to feeling good as soon as possibe’ (Claudiu and I were discussing this before I got banned here, haha). Sometimes, being the naive feelings also works. I do find a lot of value in exploring feelings ‘in real-time’. But, ‘down to earth’ - yes it always is.
“neither reacting with fight or flight” is an interesting way to characterize this tendency to react to feelings keeping them at arms length. Have you come across their other two siblings, by the way?
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are the four primary, instinctive survival responses your body uses to react to perceived threats or trauma, orchestrated by the autonomic nervous system; they involve aggressively confronting (fight), running from (flight), becoming immobile (freeze), or people-pleasing/appeasing (fawn) the danger to ensure safety, often developing from childhood experiences and becoming ingrained patterns. These aren’t conscious choices but automatic reactions to stress, helping you survive by releasing hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. (from AI summary)
I’ve been waking up every day looking forward to see what else I might discover this time around … 
cheekily: impudent or irreverent, typically in an endearing or amusing way: ↩︎
Further validating what I observed last year: “No compromises needed, or even lifestyle changes needed (much less seek advice to that end from others often in vain).” Just feel good, bro - #7 by syd ↩︎
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