Please note that Vineeto’s writings below were written by the feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ while ‘she’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom.
# Vineeto ~ Selected Writings ## Fear Actualism Homepage When Peter and I started to throw out love it had a great impact on my sexual ‘identity’. It was an intense and scary time because right behind the nice, embellishing veil of love lingered all the monsters and demons of being an animal, a whore, a slut, not human and having sex with a ‘stranger’. Enjoying sex without ‘being in love’ is still considered one of the greatest sins of Christian morality. And Eastern spirituality regards any kind of sex as the biggest obstacle to enlightenment.
| Not only had I to face my own personal conditioning about sex but I was also confronted with the fact of stepping out of the collective accepted behaviour and limits that every woman had been taught. Demons of atavistic fears would present me with their ferocious stories, as though I was still living in the Middle Ages, where women were burnt at the stake for leaving the fold or were expelled for not conforming. It took some effort to understand that both fears and beliefs around sex were simply inherited from other people, they don’t have any actual relevance for me. Digging deeper, stepping outside of the realm of sexual conditioning and beliefs I then discovered their underlying force – the sexual instincts. This inheritance from our animal past is simply installed to blindly ensure the continuity of the species.
It has nothing to do with my happiness and inhibits any sensible behaviour. Those blind instincts cause, among other troubles, possessiveness, jealousy, rape, murder and overpopulation. Identified and seen as what they were, these instincts eventually lost their significance and their grip over me. Now I can enjoy the sensibility and pleasure of sex without being driven, free of the need and dependency that used to be the inevitable consequence. I now don’t need to reinforce my female sexual identity or practise my manipulative power over men – hence the need for flirting has disappeared. Relating to men without the restriction of sexual flirtation is indeed a freedom to meet them in a new and fresh way. Now I started to question the idea of higher love and compassion – whether they were values that still had any significance for me on my way to freedom. Given that I had seen through the belief in the ultimate authority of God I could now more easily explore the nature of the bonds with the Master and face the fears which came along with dismantling my relationship with Him – he who claimed to represent the ‘Absolute Truth’ in the spiritual world. I now set out to compare his promised ultimate goal of enlightenment with my already experienced delightful glimpses of freedom. My only knowledge about enlightenment had consisted either of what I had heard and read from the Master or of the borrowed bliss or ‘energy’ that I felt when sitting devotionally at His feet. He had been ‘big daddy’ for me, he knew what was right and wrong, he told me what to do with my life, where to search and what to find! But then ‘big daddy’ had died and I had not found any tangible evidence of my being closer to enlightenment despite a lot of intent and effort. Also, there existed no consistent pathway or map, which could establish my position relative to the goal. When I noticed that friends were having a harder time to cope with the ‘world’ after long meditations I didn’t know if that was to be considered a success or a failure. After leaving Poona I meditated regularly for two years and tried to really understand Rajneesh’s teachings. However, the hope of finding something worthwhile in my spiritual search started to fade, but because of my life-long habit of blaming myself, I did not dare to question the validity of the teachings themselves. ‘It is only because I am not pushing hard enough, I am not meditating enough, I am too dumb or too lazy’, I thought. After I met Peter and began to use Richard’s new method of examining and stripping away beliefs, I was challenged by the success of our continuously improving relationship. My life was becoming easier, happier and more thrilling every time I explored a new issue. However, I found myself quite torn apart because I was also desperately trying to hold on to my old ways. I was afraid to leave the fold – this imaginary ‘community’ where right and wrong was clearly defined and confirmed by everyone around me. I was trying to live in two worlds at the same time. Loyalty to the Master became quite a gut-churning issue. How could I dare to question His love, His authority, His power, His great vision? How could I be a traitor, stepping away yet again from another group that had provided me with meaning and a sense of belonging as well as financial and emotional security? Exploring a way no one has ever gone before has been, and still is, immensely scary at times. First the fears had names like ‘I am afraid of losing friends or my job’, ‘I will be lost and lonely when I leave the fold’, ‘I will be persecuted as a traitor’, ‘I will grow into a poor old woman and nobody will take care of me.’ Each time I had to encounter the dominant fear at the time and examine the belief that supported the fear. It always took some effort to not believe in the fear, but to take a closer look. Once the belief behind the fear was identified as just a belief the next thing to do became obvious and easy. I realise that I can easily take care of myself and I am actually safe – nobody is hurting me, I won’t die of hunger or face any other terrible danger. Eventually those fears are becoming less and the survival instinct itself, the ‘fear of disappearing or dying’ surfaces – quite a serious threat. But it is also the very thing that I am intending to do, to eliminate this ‘self’. I have learned to see that whenever such a fear-attack would rush through me, it was the ‘self’, my identity, which caused the fear in order to re-affirm its existence. I find that I can sit out those fear-attacks on the sidelines, once I recognize them for what they are – simply an emotion or feeling, not a fear produced by an actual danger. Once identified they lose their power and eventually fade, giving way to the direct experience of the world as it is – a marvellous, wonderful and safe place. Writing this chapter has activated my fears once more. I thought, ‘Oh dear, when this book gets published, the shit will hit the fan. People will despise me, won’t talk to me, and will turn away. Everybody will know that I don’t agree with their beliefs... I will be all on my own.’
I was tense for hours, trying to get to the root of this fear, to name it and understand it and to not let it have power over me. Eventually I could see that I am on my own already and, in fact, have always been so. I live a happy, magical life, once in a while I meet some old or new friends, but I am utterly contented on my own or in Peter’s company. Realising this, I could feel the fear dissolve like a fog, leaving me unrestricted and free to experience life again as the crisp, clear, delicious and intimate adventure that it actually is. I liken the journey as travelling on this path of freedom and eventually hitting an obstacle on the way made up of a belief, a fear or any other emotion. If I avoid the challenge of examining this obstacle, I end up in the thick of the jungle where there are many more ‘real’ and imaginary dangers to be tackled. Only by getting back to the original obstacle and clearing it out of the way am I able to once again delight in strolling freely on this wonderful path of freedom – chiselling away my ‘self’ while at the same time thoroughly enjoying myself.

| Watching a film on WW II, I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the collective sorrow, guilt, depression and dread that made up the ‘dark part’ of the ‘German soul’. The feeling became so bizarre and threatening that I started to desperately look for something to bring me back here into the actual world. At the same time I was curious to experience and explore this new intensity of feeling. I seemed to be standing at the edge of an immense abyss of hell, which emanated all of the terror and dread of humanity, stretching endlessly into a grey dead infinity with no hope and no way out, ever. My eyes were searching for something physical to anchor on. I stood at the window, repeating to myself, ‘this is a fence, this is grass, this is a flower.’

The bright redness of the bougainvillea outside in the garden penetrated a little into this powerful magnet of dread that was threatening to swallow me for eternity. Above the abyss of dread appeared enlightenment, seductively blinking, promising bliss as the solution to this overwhelming hopelessness and sense of ‘evil’. But as I had seen through the illusion the enlightenment option only a few days before, I was not convinced to go down that land of imaginary bliss – I wanted freedom from illusion, any illusion. So I fixed my eyes on the red flowers, until slowly, slowly the dread lost some of its power and turned into the familiar feeling of fear. But it was far from being over! I started to look for more actuality, longing for the taste of coffee in my mouth, for sounds in my ear and wind on my skin. Nothing else would get me out of this powerful collective and atavistic passionate dream. Peter had told me about a similar experience that he had had just a few days earlier and had seen that there is no solution to be had in feeling everyone’s dread, everyone’s hopelessness. So I activated all my willpower to manoeuvre myself back into the physical world of the senses, where neither dread nor enlightenment exist – and I eventually succeeded. |

The experience left me shaking for another day, and I am glad to know that the door marked ‘dread’ is as much a delusion as the door marked ‘enlightenment’. Quite a Rocky Horror Picture Show, just more real – and yet, all happening inside one’s own head!

Vineeto’s Selected Writings | Library – Fear

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