Syd: In hindsight, I’ll say that I don’t know what the fuck I was writing about. (1) kinda makes sense, but I couldn’t even bother to re-read my own (2) and (3).
Hi Syd,
I went back to your “attempt at verbalizing my understanding” of sincerity to find out what “kinda makes sense” to you and why in hindsight the latter part does not make sense –
Syd: (1) The normal state is one of mild dissociation. “I” have feelings; and “I” want to control the ‘inner world’ of dissociated feelings (like moving chess pieces around); When “I” have feelings, “I” am not responsible for them. It is usually somebody else’s or some event’s fault. This leads to wanting to control the ‘outside world’. If that control (of inner or outer world) fails, this can cause further feelings, reinforcing that control in more pathological ways. For example, “I” take on the fault, and try to control my ‘inner world’ (sometimes in the name of ‘actualism’); Overall, we end up being unwittingly busy either expressing or repressing emotions. (4Jan2026)
The question is, now understanding the fact of being in a state of mild dissociation, have you intently changed this state by remembering whenever feelings arise, that I am my feelings and my feelings are me?
I ask because that would increase being more genuinely sincere than continuing the ‘mild dissociation’.
Syd: 2. The only way to stop this dissociation is to “do” the opposite: put the emotion into a bind or not move psychologically. (link)
What you were doing here, was to equate (via link) a Seinfeld episode to Richard’s report in the Audiotaped dialogue about “put the emotion into a bind”, by a slight of hand calling it “do the opposite”.
‘Putting the emotion in a bind’ is not the opposite to dissociating from one’s feelings. It is the third alternative. Neither expressing nor repressing means not to feed them by either endorsing them (express) or rejecting them (repress) – and when a feeling gets no support it withers.
Having equated ‘putting in a bind’ with “doing the opposite”, and linking it to a satirical farcical show, ‘you’, the cunning identity, successfully pushed aside the impact Richard’s report could have had. I am breaking it down in detail because one can learn as much about sincerity by recognizing and understanding insincerity in action (in hindsight) and thereby adjusting one’s course. Your follow-up summary in point (2) was fairly accurate but the slight-of-hand-action most likely prevented it to be a sincere successful process. Hence your point (3) never eventuated in practice.
Richard: By neither expressing nor repressing emotions, something new can happen. The emotion is put into a bind, it has nowhere to go. Next time anger, say, comes up in a situation, simply decline to have it happen. Observe it as it gets up to all kinds of tricks to have its way. Do not express it – but do not repress it either. Watch what happens … you will be surprised. Personally, I rid myself of anger in about three weeks when I started on this all those years ago. The more subtle variations like getting peeved, getting irritated and getting annoyed took a little longer, but losing my temper in an angry outburst ended after about three weeks. I kid you not. It all has to do with the determination to succeed, with patience and diligence born out of the pure intent garnered from a peak experience. You just know that it is possible to be peaceful because you have seen it for yourself. One will do whatever is required to be that experience, twenty-four-hours of the day.
Here we can start afresh. Here we can have success. (source)
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Vineeto: There is also a page in Richard’s Catalogue where on the page for ‘sincere’ you find a whole collection of quotes where he talked about being ‘sincere’ with links you can look up for context.
Syd: I found this: Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 27
Claudiu responded lucidly to your quote and questions from this link. (link)
Did you also follow up the other 10 references in that catalogue page to broaden your understanding of sincerity?
I can also recommend Adam-H’s post from today as an example of sincerity in action with favourable results. Kuba’s last post gives a broad and long-term summary of what all is involved in getting closer and closer to the innocence he is genuinely and naïvely aiming for via rigorous sincerity.
Syd: My current understanding is that, for a feeling-being – the application of ‘sincerity’ (at least initially when practicing the actualism method) is a matter of being genuine (authentic, guileless, etc.) in regards to what is happening (especially affectively) such that we see clearly (without nescience or ignoration) as to how both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings (and the instinctual passions that sustain them) stand in the way of feeling good, which understanding is to automatically result in action (in getting back to feeling good).
I don’t know if this is only a shortened way to describing the actualism method or if you are not aware that “getting back to feeling good” is not the whole story?
There is a sequence to ‘feeling good’ –
Richard: And, of course, once one does get the knack of this, one up-levels ‘feeling good’, as a bottom line each moment again, to ‘feeling happy and harmless’ … and after that to ‘feeling excellent’. (Richard, This Moment of Being Alive)
And here is the text of the tool-tip right next to “feeling happy and harmless” – given that you mention “being naiveté” –
Richard: Okay … it may be worthwhile bearing in mind that it is impossible to be happy (be happy as in being carefree), as distinct from feeling happy, without being harmless (being harmless as in being innocuous), as distinct from feeling harmless, and to be happy and harmless is to be unable to induce suffering – etymologically the word ‘harmless’ (harm + less) comes from the Old Norse ‘harmr’ (meaning grief, sorrow) – either in oneself or another.
Thus the means of comprehending the distinction lies in understanding the nature of innocence – something entirely new to human experience – and the nearest one can come to being innocent whilst being an identity is to be naïve (not to be confused with being gullible).
And the key to naïveté (usually locked away in childhood) is sincerity. (Richard, AF List, No. 62, 26 Mar 2004).
Syd: Beyond that I don’t yet understand what ‘being sincerity’ means (never mind ‘being the key’ to ‘being naiveté’) – except it is interesting to note that Richard says that “being sincere […] is to have the pure intent” — or what being ‘true to facts and actuality’ means. (link)
In order to move from feeling good to feeling happy and harmless to feeling excellent one needs to keep this in mind –
Richard: What the identity inhabiting this flesh and blood body all those years ago would do is first get back to feeling good and then, and only then, suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – feeling bad happened as experience had shown ‘him’ that it was counter-productive to do otherwise.
What ‘he’ always did however, as it was often tempting to just get on with life then, was to examine what it was all about within half-an-hour of getting back to feeling good (while the memory was still fresh) even if it meant sometimes falling back into feeling bad by doing so … else it would crop up again sooner or later.
Nothing, but nothing, can be swept under the carpet. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, AF List, No. 68c, 31 May 2005).
This can only be done with sincerity because one’s instinctual reaction would be to bury the disturbing incident, whatever it was.
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There is another reason why I emphasise there is more than ‘feeling good’ to the process of becoming actually free. It is because you only yesterday (17 Feb 2026) presented a 1000+ word excerpt from Geoffrey answering questions after he became actually free, without personal context or comment, appropriating the text in order to mark your preferred phrases with yellow highlights emphasising your personal preference. It was deceivingly titled “Geoffrey on Actualism Method (Feeling Good)”
I say deceivingly deliberately because just a day before (16 Feb 2026) you were not aware that ‘good’ feelings such as lust (which are as harmful and ‘self’-enhancing as ‘bad’ feelings) are not part of ‘feeling good’, and Claudiu explained it to you in a brilliant post. So your own understanding of the Actualism method and therefore your personal emphases are still developing and hence your no-comment emphases misleading.
Perhaps you are personally content to only get back to feeling good, but please do not promote it as the entire actualism method. What’s the word? Reductionism?
Cheers Vineeto