Please note that Vineeto’s correspondence below was written by the actually free Vineeto
(List D refers to Richard’s List D and his Respondent Numbers) Vineeto’s Correspondence with Chrono on Discuss Actualism Forum July 12 2025 CHRONO: There’s an insistent emergence of sexual desire during the periods of angst that I mentioned above. It promises a fulfillment, perhaps an instinctual fulfillment. It could potentially blossom into love. It promises a dream and eternity. It’s presents like an antidote to my meaninglessness. It would definitely fall into the “instinctual urge, drive, impulse, or any other similarly blind appetitive craving/ longing/ desiring for an affective-psychic coupling or bonding form of consummation”. I will focus on being as sincere and naive as I can be. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, What stands out that you are looking for “an antidote to my meaninglessness”. You also mentioned the word “fulfilment” in your next paragraph. When I read your journal, starting in April 2022, there are many insightful realisations and reports of brief PCEs, for instance “what particularly has been standing out has been how this pure intent (to my never-ending surprise) is not contaminated by ‘me’ at all”. You also know that “when I say reflection, I mean an active thinking with all your being”. Now it’s a matter to actualise those realisations, else they just sit there, forgotten and unfulfilled. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ knew after her first PCE that ‘she’ had found both ‘her’ meaning of life – it was to do whatever necessary to experience life as it had been during the PCE 24/7, 365 days a year, forever, and that is what ‘she’ dedicated ‘her’ life to. ‘She’ knew from the start that the PCE lived permanently is where ultimate fulfilment lies. It is something truly wonderful and enjoyable to dedicate oneself to with the whole of one’s being, to make peace-on-earth apparent. Richard: At times this audacity – that it will be me who does it – approaches megalomania ... after all, one thinks, who am I to think that I can break through the impasse that has baffled humankind for millennia? As long as one does not succumb to delusions of grandeur, a healthy dose of what appears to be megalomania is appropriate ... otherwise one is held back by the mediocrity of those who say you can not do it. You can. The only requirement is that one be a human being – and that I hereby devote my entire life to breaking through to the perfection and peace that is lying open all around right now ... if only I had the eyes to see it. It takes great courage and fortitude to fly in the face of all those ‘would be’s’ and ‘want to be’s’ who, alas, only talk about it. One has to do it ... because, after all is said and done, it is my life that I am living. (Richard, List A, No. 8, #No.01) How is that for a meaningful life-choice? To actualise your insights is a matter of applying yourself by starting to pay diligent attention to how you feel in this moment of being alive in order to notice even the slightest diminishment in enjoyment and appreciation, and do something about it as described in This Moment of Being Alive. In short: Richard: What I did was: • To constantly have the question running: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This kept ‘me’ on the ball for all the waking hours. • I did whatever to induce PCE’s on a daily basis so as to gain maximum benefit from living the nearest approximation to an actual freedom that was possible ... maybe two to three times a day. • I examined all ‘my’ beliefs – cunningly disguised as ‘truths’ – as they came up in ‘my’ moment-to-moment living. • I did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t 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’ angry ... or even irritated ... or even peeved. It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. ‘My’ life became cleaner and clearer and more and more pure as each habitual way of living life was consciously eliminated through constant exposure. • Finally ‘I’ invited the actual by letting go of the controls and letting this moment live ‘me’. ‘I’ became the experience of the doing of this business of being alive ... no longer the ‘do-er’. (Richard, List B, No. 12a, 16 July 1998). As you can see, going out-from-control is the (second-)last point in the process, not at the start. Life becomes more and more easy the more obstacles to feeling good, come what may, you recognize and affectively channel to felicitous/ innocuous feelings. * VINEETO: … The affective feelings of “pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and so on” create a bond, whereas benevolence does not. (see Richard, Audio-Taped Dialogues, Compassion Perpetuates Sorrow and Compassion Gained through Forgiveness Binds). CHRONO: The “compassion gained through forgiveness binds” dialogue is very very relatable. It’d be relatable to pretty much everyone I know. I just had my parents ask me why I wasn’t visiting them. And they are also almost always trying to guilt me into feeling bad about it. I’m not quite sure why I visit them when I don’t really want to. We do not have anything in common. As Richard suggested, I asked “what is my investment?”. The answer is pretty much that I will find “fulfillment”, but only with their permission. This is my ‘connection’ and loyalty to them. The fulfillment will be that I will be freed and accepted to be me as I am. But now I see why this can never happen. It’s an ideal and it cannot happen as long as I remain an identity. I can only relate to them as ‘son’ and them to me as ‘parent’. It’s not just that I want them to give me permission and accept me as I am but I also want them to be free in the same way. As I read this dialogue, I am realizing that what I really want is to meet others freely as fellow human beings with no ‘connection’. VINEETO: You say “the fulfillment will be (…) accepted to be me as I am” – but do you like yourself? Or, as ‘Vineeto’ recognized – “I had expected or assumed someone was to love my ‘grotty self’, when even I could not stand those parts of me!” (Actualism, Vineeto, A Bit of Vineeto, #love) As you can only change yourself, unilaterally, it’s up to you to naïvely shed the various roles and become a fellow human being and simultaneously recognize others as your fellow human beings. This will do away with a lot of the resentment for them for not being as you would like them to be. * VINEETO: Perhaps if I put it this way – to be able to be “acutely-empathic caring” one is necessarily aware of and sensitive to (not closed off from) one’s own and other people’s feelings. In the below quote Richard used the word “acutely” in a related context – (…) (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 14 June 2000). CHRONO: I am very much like how Richard describes experiencing himself here haha. I do feel others’ suffering acutely but due to not really knowing what to do with it, I’ve built a persona around pretending to be ‘tough’ like everyone else. What I was trying to get my head around was the fact that if one is to be experiencing ‘acutely-empathic caring’, then one is at that time feeling the suffering of others. I was wondering something like ‘how can one be feeling good if at that time you are also feeling the suffering of others (feeling bad)?’ A suffering which I cannot seem to look away from. I will read the correspondence with Martin you suggested to see how I can come across the third alternative consistently. VINEETO: It is no longer suffering when you can emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable. * VINEETO: When this “acutely-empathic caring” is combined with the naïve/ pure intent to bring an end to all the suffering and mayhem within the human condition (which had certainly been the case for ‘Richard’ in the period he described in his above correspondence, then this deeply felt empathic caring results in action. CHRONO: Ah I was wondering what the “button” was. I’ve had this confusion with the term ‘doer’ and the following clarified it a lot: Richard: To explain further: when out-from-control – out from being under control of the ‘controller’; that self-centred/ self-centric ‘doer’ (i.e., the ‘doer’ of deeds; the ‘actor’ of acts; the ‘speaker’ of words; the ‘thinker’ of thoughts; the ‘feeler’ of feelings) – the primary impetus of agency is the benevolence and benignity of pure intent being dynamically operative via the full concurrence of the ‘beer’ of those deeds, acts, words, thoughts, feelings (i.e., being the experiencing of same, as a state-of-being, as opposed to doing them). (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #out-from-control) VINEETO: The “button”, as you put it, is the unequivocal agreement/ acquiescence to ‘my’ demise. The final trigger may be differing for different people. CHRONO: So then for me the ‘doer-ship of actions’ is always the ‘doer’ (self-centric) unless something causes me to go out-from-control. VINEETO: Yes. This “something” is ‘you’, when you allow yourself “to go out-from-control” by following the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself until it becomes apparent that it is entirely safe and beneficial to allow the universe to live you. It is not an outer force or event (a “something”) that causes something. You are in charge of your destiny all the way by sensibly loosening the control (with pure intent) bit by bit. CHRONO: Another point of clarification is how this ‘doer’ and ‘beer’ is not the ‘ego’ and ‘soul’. VINEETO: In short – ‘ego’ and ‘soul’ are based on the perception of the old paradigms prescribing the ancient values of good and bad, right and wrong, where the opposite of egoic means selfless, and being ‘soul-less’ is considered unthinkable. In actualism, as Richard explained in the quote you provided above, “that self-centred/ self-centric ‘doer’ is the ‘doer’ of deeds; the ‘actor’ of acts; the ‘speaker’ of words; the ‘thinker’ of thoughts; the ‘feeler’ of feelings.” When the ‘doer’ is operating with sincere intent to channel all affective energy into the felicitous and innocuous feeling, it thus willingly is preparing the way to become redundant. Then the ‘naïve beer’ (only possible with pure intent fully active) can come to the fore and allow being what is happening, i.e. allowing the benevolence and benignity of the universe to live your life. Richard: Lastly, because the terms ‘doer’ and ‘beer’ are utilised in religio-spiritual/ mystico-metaphysical literature to refer to ‘ego’ and ‘soul’, respectively, it is apposite to point out here that those terms are *not* being used thataway when referring to the doer being abeyant, and the beer ascendant, in either a near-PCE – else IE’s and EE’s would instead be ASC’s (i.e., egoless) and thus not near-PCE’s – or when in an out-from-control virtual freedom. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, #out-from-control) CHRONO: As I understand it then the only way I can allow this “benevolence and benignity of pure intent being dynamically operative” is by the way that you mention. And only a naive ‘me’ can allow this. VINEETO: Yes. CHRONO: Relatedly, would it be correct to say then that in an actual freedom, the ‘doer-ship of actions’ is this benevolence and benignity of pure intent (which is not self-centric)? VINEETO: You probably already found the relevant quote to answer your question in Martin’s correspondence – Richard: What gradually became more and more apparent was that a prevailing feature of ‘her’ differing ways of being was the degree of intimacy involved. The gradations of ‘her’ scale were, basically, good, very good, great, excellent, and perfect – whereby, in regards to intimacy, ‘good’ related to togetherness (which pertains to being and acting in concert with another); ‘very good’ related to closeness (where personal boundaries expand to include the other); ‘great’ related to sweetness (delighting in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other); ‘excellent’ related to richness (a near-absence of agency; with the doer abeyant, and the beer ascendant, being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian); and ‘perfect’ related to magicality (neither beer nor doer extant; pristine purity abounds and immaculate perfection prevails) – all of which correlate to the range of naïveness from being sincere to becoming naïve and all the way through being naïveté itself to an actual innocence. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 March 2016) There is no ‘doer’ or ‘beer’ in actuality. Cheers Vineeto July 26 2025 VINEETO: When I read your journal, starting in April 2022, there are many insightful realisations and reports of brief PCEs, for instance “what particularly has been standing out has been how this pure intent (to my never-ending surprise) is not contaminated by ‘me’ at all”. You also know that “when I say reflection, I mean an active thinking with all your being”. Now it’s a matter to actualise those realisations, else they just sit there, forgotten and unfulfilled. CHRONO: Thanks Vineeto for your reply and providing that reminder of those memories. I forgot I had those experiences and they can sometimes seem so far away. I’ve been feeling between neutral to good for the past week. Even during days of lack of sleep. The main obstacle is my own default state of being that I can only describe as an obsessive-compulsive neuroticism. Everything must be “right” before I’ll feel good. Even the actualism method I feel like I have to do it “right” or else I keep thinking it over and get stuck. It seems to be a function of the guardian or social identity. In this I am ultimately looking for a certainty. But I find now that I am able to ‘emotionally accept that which is intellectually unacceptable’ and with this I am able to put everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. I don’t have to agree with everything that is happening in the world but I also don’t have to give in to the instinctual compulsion of suffering over it. I think it has been this emotional reservation which has impeded a moving forward in a more stable feeling good. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, Now that you have precisely identified your “default state of being” and been “able to put everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis”, has your “default state of being” changed to being more continuously feeling good? And further, are you now perhaps able to access the memories from three years ago in a way – rememorate the flavour of these experiences – to establish the golden clew to pure intent? I am asking because this “I have to do it “right” or else …” is, or at least has been, the standard of ‘you’, the passionate entity within, whereas when you can establish/ re-establish, your connection to pure intent, the purity of the infinite and eternal universe outside of ‘you’ will be the benchmark to guide you. CHRONO: With that said, yesterday I realized that there actually is a certainty here. The certainty is in sensuousness. This quality keeps me here. It makes sense how attentiveness is a “sensuous attention”. I am usually instinctually trying to solve things in the murky areas of ‘being’ but I am here always existing reliably in a sensuous manner. This in itself invites feeling good. It stands in contrast to my default state of being. Now it’s a matter of how can I allow more of this to come to the fore more often. VINEETO: The attentiveness Richard describes in “Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness” article is paying attention to both one’s psychological and psychic world and one’s senses. Viz: Richard: To enable apperceptiveness to haply occur it is essential to allow a reflective attention – attentiveness – to one’s psychological and psychic world. It is impossible for one to intelligently observe what is going on within if one does not at the same time acknowledge the occurrence of one’s various feeling-tones with attentiveness. This is especially true with the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful). In order to observe one’s own fear, for instance, one must admit to the fact that one is afraid. Nor can one examine one’s own depression, for another example, without acknowledging it fully. The same is true for irritation and agitation and frustration and all those other uncomfortable emotional and passionate moods. One cannot examine something fully if one is busy denying its existence. Whatever feeling one may be having, a fascinated attention – attentiveness – freely divulges it ... it is looking with discernibleness. All affective feelings are – quite simply – an hereditary occurrence, an inborn factor to be acutely aware of. No pride, no shame, nothing personal at stake ... what is there, is naturally there. There is no clinging to the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) and no fleeing from the hostile and invidious, either (those that are hateful and fearful). A contemplative attention views all feelings as commensurate – nothing is suppressed and nothing is expressed – as attentiveness does not play favourites. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness). Only in this way attentiveness will become “sensuous attention” – Richard: Attentiveness gets not infatuated with the good feelings nor sidesteps the bad as attentiveness is a non-feeling awareness; a sensuous attention. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness). The first habitual impulse is to dive into ‘solving’ “the murky areas of ‘being’” so it’s a matter of noticing and replacing this habitual impulse with the more felicitous habit for contemplative attention and “sensuous attention” whenever possible. This will aid you in up-levelling from feeling good to feeling felicitous. CHRONO: Something else which clicked as I was going about my day was the realization that the best that I can do for my partner is to always feel good. And in turn, this is the best that I can do for everyone. It’s like I am turning everything that I have been doing around truly 180 degrees in the opposite direction. I see the difference between intellectually unaccepting and emotionally unaccepting. I don’t agree with the Human Condition, but if I’m emotionally unaccepting of it then I have no choice but to try to solve it instinctually. It’s like there was some “rule” that one must be emotionally unaccepting and thus react in some compassionate and empathetic (suffering) manner. So my focus now has been to make feeling good the baseline. VINEETO: Yes, being “emotionally unaccepting” can also express itself as complaining and resenting and then react with whatever instinctual/ emotional feelings and behaviour kick in. Hence the suggestion to always first get back to feeling good before contemplating on what triggered the diminishment in feeling good. When you allow yourself to be more and more naïve, then the real fun can unfold. CHRONO: Also I am curious what you think of this, Vineeto : Respondent: (…) How is the method best done – should I examine the feeling and find its trigger while experiencing it, in order to get back to feeling good? Richard: If you have a tendency towards being an intellectual/ abstractional-type person then … yes. Respondent: Or should I get back to feeling good and then figure out why I last felt less-than-good? Richard: If you have a tendency towards being an emotional/ passional-type person then … yes. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 110, 21 June 2006). I know the advice now is to return to feeling good before investigating anything. Is the above advice recommended at any time? VINEETO: The reason Richard gave two different options is because when someone has a tendency to experience their mood in an intellectual/ abstract way, perhaps even a dissociated way, then they need to first viscerally feel the feeling which disrupted their feeling good in order to correctly identify the nature of the trigger rather than assessing it at arm’s length. Whereas when you are an emotional/ passional-type then identification of the feeling happens at the moment of it occurring, perhaps even in an overwhelming way, then getting back to feeling good as soon as possible is necessary to be able to look at what was the trigger in a more clear-headed manner. Cheers Vineeto July 28, 2025 VINEETO: Now that you have precisely identified your “default state of being” and been “able to put everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis”, has your “default state of being” changed to being more continuously feeling good? CHRONO: Not entirely but I am able to feel good more often than before. Something I re-read a few days ago that helped immensely as well was tracing back to feeling good before the trigger which caused a diminishment in feeling good. That itself automatically restores feeling good and when look at the trigger after that, it amounts to almost nothing and easily seen as habitual. VINEETO: Hi Chrono This is an excellent discovery, I will add it to my repertoire when someone else might benefit from it. It also confirms to you that the trigger was really irrelevant in the grand scheme of your life and can simply be declined the next time it occurs. * VINEETO: The first habitual impulse is to dive into ‘solving’ “the murky areas of ‘being’” so it’s a matter of noticing and replacing this habitual impulse with the more felicitous habit for contemplative attention and “sensuous attention” whenever possible. This will aid you in up-levelling from feeling good to feeling felicitous. CHRONO: Yes I experience the sensuous attention as a simultaneous seeing of the psychological and psychic world and also the awareness of being here. My default state of being is such that I am excluding the senses part and thus going inward instead to ‘solve’ it. VINEETO: Yes, the default state of being is to pay almost exclusive attention to one’s feelings, and once you do that there is no room for appreciating the sensate experience. It takes a bit of diligence and tenacity to ween yourself off from believing what your feelings induce you to believe and instead look for the factual evidence (of the sensate experience) that everything is already perfect. * VINEETO: The reason Richard gave two different options is because when someone has a tendency to experience their mood in an intellectual/ abstract way, perhaps even a dissociated way, then they need to first viscerally feel the feeling which disrupted their feeling good in order to correctly identify the nature of the trigger rather than assessing it at arm’s length. Whereas when you are an emotional/ passional-type then identification of the feeling happens at the moment of it occurring, perhaps even in an overwhelming way, then getting back to feeling good as soon as possible is necessary to be able to look at what was the trigger in a more clear-headed manner. CHRONO: Ah that makes sense. I always thought of myself as the intellectual/ abstractional type but the more I look at my feelings, I am seeing that I am actually the second type. I experience it often times in an overwhelming way. So feeling good first makes sense. VINEETO: Ha, men are conditioned to be more of the intellectual/ abstractional type but underneath you discovered the emotions and passions operating. It’s great to find out more and more how you tick and put it to good use to enjoy life and appreciate being alive. * VINEETO: And further, are you now perhaps able to access the memories from three years ago in a way – rememorate the flavour of these experiences – to establish the golden clew to pure intent? CHRONO: I want to write this while it’s still fresh on my mind. I backtracked through the comments and tried to arrive at how I experienced it as before. The trigger or clue was in Claudiu’s description of pure intent and then reading my own description. I was able to experientially arrive at the same experience. This time the aspect that stood out the most was ‘my’ essential nature and why my default way of ‘being’ is the way it is. The word ‘quality’ triggered this seeing for some reason. ‘My’ essential quality is malice and sorrow. No matter how hard I try that is what I will be. But then there is this quality of the universe which I can only describe as perfection. It was so clear that is something that ‘I’ will never be or can’t be. ‘My’ default way of being is the way it is because ‘I’ am trying to get to this perfection in ‘my’ own way, but I can’t. This triggered a bit of alarm and I found I was getting overwhelmed but in a good way. I pulled back but I kept looking at this quality because it brings effortless enjoyment and appreciation. With this quality of perfection, that’s all I can do is enjoy and appreciate. What else needs to be done if there is perfection? Even further to that, I can confidently say in this experience I genuinely found that I am liking myself. It’s interesting that it’s this experience which has me feeling this way vs me trying to get there myself. VINEETO: This is wonderful to read. In effect your first discovery (“that is what I will be”) is ‘you’ at the core (including all the other instinctual passions) but there is an alternative. And in face of the evidence of the perfection of the universe and it’s qualities – benevolence and benignity – you can now like yourself, and like others and life becomes fun. Remember to establish the ‘golden clew’ connection while it is happening so you can always find your way to pure intent. Richard: Incidentally, just before/ just as the PCE starts to wear off, if one unravels (metaphorically) a ‘golden thread’ or ‘clew’, as one is slipping back into the real-world, *an intimate connection is thus established betwixt the pristine-purity of an actual innocence and the near-purity of the sincerity of naiveté*. At least, that is the way it worked for the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body, all those years ago, inasmuch ‘his’ recall of PCE’s was a naïve remembrance [i.e., rememoration & presentiation; see Message № 19775 (Richard, List D, No. 32a, 19 June 2015). for context], rather than a cognitive memory, and ‘he’ thus experienced a constant pull, each moment again, into the immaculate perfection of the actual world ... and thus away from the contaminated imperfection of the real-world. Being a ‘fatal attraction’, so to speak, it rendered the entire process virtually effortless”. [emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 13, 21 May 2009) CHRONO: Maybe ‘I’ want some purpose in all this? VINEETO: ‘Your’ purpose is, of course, that ‘you’ have a job to do – to go into oblivion for the benefit of the flesh-and-blood Chrono and that body and every body. And that is wonderful. Cheers Vineeto August 14, 2025 CHRONO: I have been able to much more easily and consistently feel good since my last post. There is this intertwining of closeness and sweetness. It’s always readily here and sometimes it’s like ‘I’ am close to this quality and “bathing” in its rays with varying degrees from feeling good to excellent. I have an increased confidence that I did not have before. Although I experience it as a choice that I have to consistently make. But what is more clear is that it is ‘I’ that is away from this. Everything that ‘I’ do takes me away from this. It’s so very clear that ‘I’ can never be here. ‘My’ very nature is that of being away from this moment. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, What an excellent report that you are able to see it so clearly – and from there to know exactly what to do. CHRONO: Now when I look at a feeling I try to see if I really want to feel that feeling. I ask myself if it feels good and the feeling may morph and shift into a different feeling to avoid facing it. ‘I’ am being seen each moment. The more I’ve done this, I see that every feeling other than feeling good sucks. And even further to that, I only genuinely like myself when I am feeling good. VINEETO: Ha, when you see – and know with certainty – “that every feeling other than feeling good sucks” then you know you have dedicated your life to being happy and harmless. And further to that you may well have opened the door to being naïve because this is what happens when you genuinely like yourself – and like your fellow human beings as a natural corollary – Richard: To be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as a childlike persona with adult sensibilities), which is to be the closest one can to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not), one is both likeable and liking for herewith lies tenderness and/or sweetness and togetherness and/or closeness whereupon moment-to-moment experiencing is of traipsing through the world about in a state of wide-eyed wonder and amazement as if a child again (guileless, artless, ingenuous, innocuous) – yet with adult sensibilities whereby the distinction betwixt being naïve and being gullible is readily separable – simply marvelling at the sheer magnificence of this oh-so-material universe’s absoluteness and unabashedly delighting in its boundless beneficence, its limitless largesse, as being the experiencing is inherently cornucopian (due to the near-absence of agency which ensues when the controlling doer is abeyant and the naïve beer is ascendant), with a blitheness and a gaiety such that the likelihood of the magical fairy-tale-like nature of this paradisaical terraqueous globe, this bounteously verdant and azure planet, becoming ever-so-sweetly apparent, as an experiential actuality, is almost always imminent. (Richard, Abditorium, Innocence, #Naïveté). CHRONO: Relatedly, I was wondering today what it means to actually care for someone. After reading thru some articles on the AFT website it’s clear that I have never actually cared ever before. VINEETO: I can relate very well to that realisation of yours as ‘Vineeto’ had a similar experience – Richard: Hence it came to pass one fine evening that feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ realised, with a profound visceral impact, how ‘she’ had never actually cared – although ‘she’ certainly felt caring (in fact ‘she’ had a deeply - ingrained and ongoing feeling of caring about all the misery and mayhem) – and upon that realisation transforming itself into an actualisation (as per the intimacy-yearning process detailed in the ‘Direct Route Mail-Out № 05 email part-quoted at the top of this page) it activated “a caring which is as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” and there was indeed action which was not of ‘her’ doing ... to wit: the ending of ‘her’ and all ‘her’ subterfuge and trickery (just to stay in keeping with the above wording purely for effect). (Richard, List D, Srinath2, 6 August 2016). CHRONO: To put someone before oneself or to experience compassion for them is what it has meant in the ‘real world’ to care for another. But to actually care for someone else, it’s to actually free them from the burden of ‘me’. Thus to free this body of ‘me’ is the best that I can do for them. VINEETO: It is very helpful to rule out putting “someone before oneself or to experience compassion” so as not to fall into the trap of compassion or trying to be ‘selfless’, whereas a deep near-actual-caring, which is not self-centric, is what will facilitate the powerful instinct of altruism to overcome the powerful instinct of self-survival. Richard reports about ‘his’ experience during ‘his’ virtual freedom – 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 (…) 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. (Richard, List D, Srinath2, 13 August 2016). CHRONO: I can see now that to truly care even for myself that I have to first genuinely like myself (and others). Let’s see how far this aim will go! VINEETO: Yes, when you genuinely like yourself and therefore care for yourself (this body), and by extension for that body and every body with all your ‘being’, “this aim” can carry you all the way. Cheers Vineeto PS: Unless you already found it, the selected correspondence on Near-actual Caring is quite comprehensive. September 19, 2025 CHRONO: I have been coasting along with some occasional pulling back. But I have not fallen back into feeling bad like before at all. I know that I simply have to feel good and that has been an easy thing. Attentiveness is optimally active. Any issue is always solved by returning to feeling good. I find that I am also able to sleep much better consistently and I no longer have any worries around it. This is a huge thing as I had a lot of issues with sleeping with anxiety and fears always getting in the way. This way back to feeling good, I don’t think that I can ever forget it anymore. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, With “attentiveness [being] optimally active” you have an excellent basis for your next adventure to unravelling the mysteries of sex, desire and intimacy. CHRONO: These past few weeks though, I have been trying to explore sex and sexual desire. Trying to sort out the two. I’ve been wondering how I can be ‘closer’ during sex and what role does sexual desire play, if any? I find that the energy of this desire overtakes and diverts the experience into a fantasy realm. Peter’s writing was very helpful and this in particular I liked: Peter: I recognised the behaviour and feelings in myself, saw the appalling consequences both to my happiness and that of others … and then they simply disappeared. The complete and total understanding of a belief and its accompanying emotions actually results in their elimination. It took a little time, a lot of diligence, introspection and plain ‘self’-obsession – and the will to keep going, to find out. It was often very fearful and I found myself not only dealing with my fears but also with the fear of all humans now and who ever have been. And then, as though by magic, one day I realised I was no longer driven. It had been a gradual process but it had come to an end – it worked. The sex drive, or instinctual passion, had virtually disappeared from my life. (Actualism, Peter, Selected Writings, Sex) The feeling gives the impression that I would not be able to have sex at all without it. That I must always fuel it so that it can happen. But is it true? VINEETO: This “impression” may be believed to be true but it is not a fact. The many questions Richard answered from his ongoing experience regarding delighting in sexual congress without any libido bear witness to the incredulity of his correspondents that sexual enjoyment required the presence of libido . It is my own intimate personal experience as well that libido is not at all required for optimum enjoyment of sexuality – on the contrary it had only been in the way of perfect ongoing intimacy. CHRONO: This drive seems like it is lauded in being a ‘man’. Perhaps even central to being a ‘man’. So there’s some vested interest in maintaining it in some way. And what if I wasn’t a ‘man’ (or any such gender identity)? However, I do find over and over that it precludes intimacy. I read how sex is one of the easiest ‘gateway’ into the actual but I find it to be more difficult. Maybe there are some beliefs around it that are hindering the full experience. VINEETO: It seems you are ready to deliberate and explore the social conditioning of your gender identity of what you, and society, considers “being a ‘man’”. There are lots of beliefs and unspoken rules and all are unhelpful to both happiness/ harmlessness or delightful harmony and intimacy with a person of the other gender. It’s worth keeping in mind that what you see is a consequence of the tried and failed spiritual legacy of both Western and Eastern religions. Some information is collected in Basic to Full Freedom, #man-woman-identity and more in Richard’s Journal, Article Two as well as the Actual Freedom Library on those topics with their respective selected correspondence links. Sexual intimacy is indeed “one of the easiest ‘gateway’ into the actual” but this of course refers to the naïve sensuousness and intimacy in sexual play. For instance – Richard: As for your query regarding how the intimacy experience (IE) differs from an excellence experience (EE): qualitatively they are much the same, or similar, insofar as with both experiences there is a near-absence of agency – the beer rather than the doer is the operant – whereupon naïveté has come to the fore, such as to effect the marked diminishment of separation, and the main distinction is that the IE is more people-oriented, while the EE tends to be environmental in its scope. In other words, with an EE the ‘aesthetic experience’ feature, for instance, or its ‘nature experience’ aspect, for example, tends to be more prominent, whilst with an IE the ‘fellowship experience’ characteristic, for instance, or its ‘convivial experience’ quality, for example, comes to the fore. In either type of near-PCE – wherein the experiencing is of ‘my’ life living itself, with a surprising sumptuosity, rather than ‘me’ living ‘my’ life, quite frugally by comparison, and where this moment is living ‘me’ (instead of ‘me’ trying to live ‘in the moment’) – the diminishment of separation is so astonishing as to be as-if incomprehensible/ unbelievable yet it is the imminence of a fellow human’s immanence which, in and of itself, emphases the distinction the most. (Richard, List D, Claudiu4, 28 January 2016) The more you allow yourself to be naïve = guileless, artless, ingenuous, unsophisticated, open, aboveboard, direct, frank, straightforward, child-like, simple, the more you can allow sensuous intimacy without the clutter of the social identity of what a man should be, or a woman should be, for example. The sheer appreciation, amazement, marvel and wonder of the physical closeness experienced in sexual play is astonishing, to say the least. CHRONO: On a related note, I was speaking with my partner earlier about something and I started thinking about relating and what it means to be ‘compassionate’ as she talked about some of her worries from her day. I was suddenly struck out of nowhere with a huge immense fear about what I am doing by trying to becoming free. I understood at the core what this end of ‘me’ is. It’s both the end of ‘me’ and ‘her’. The end of all humanity. The end of everything. The fear for a moment almost was going to become panic. I paused and had to backtrack and remember what feeling good is. I’ve been floundering a bit since and now have renewed vigour. It’s time to apply some more sensuosity. VINEETO: It’s interesting to note that contemplating “what it means to be ‘compassionate’” has triggered this “huge immense fear about what I am doing by trying to becoming free”. Compassion is one of the stalwarts to keep you trapped within humanity, and contemplating to do without appeared a dangerous and therefore impossible direction to proceed. Respondent: Is not the sense of being a human being tied up with the belief in permanence, i.e. the belief that ‘I’ am at the root of everything (as a permanent entity) Richard: As the (sensorial) ‘sense of being a human being’ is tied up with impermanence – as in mortality – you can only be referring to the intuitive ‘sense of being a human being’ (as in immortality) ... the affective feeling of being a ‘presence’ inside the body (aka ‘being’ itself), in other words, as a psychological/ psychic entity (a metaphysical identity) rather than the sensitive feeling of being this body as a sensate/ material entity (a physical creature). Hence spiritualism has it that, whilst the ego-self is impermanent, the soul-self is permanent and that ego-death, while the body is a living body, is essential to reveal who one really is – an immortal spirit-being – whereas actualism has that identity-death in toto (extinction) is essential to make apparent what one actually is (a mortal human being) ... and therein lies the rub: as a spirit-being one is so very real, so very, very real at times, one is prepared to do virtually anything – virtually anything at all – than go blessedly into oblivion so that what is actually permanent can become apparent. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 54, 7 November 2003). And yet you know from your PCE(s) that there is a third alternative to practicing compassion or abandonment. But ultimately it does indeed mean “the end of ‘me’ and ‘her’. The end of all humanity” and this fact takes time to digest and get used to. I’m reminded of Geoffrey’s last line in his recent contribution – Geoffrey: When one knows what it is one wants, and when one knows what it is one must sacrifice, then only the sensible action remains. Now with “renewed vigour” (renewed pure intent?) you can see your way forward. It bodes well for wondrous experiences in “some more sensuosity”. Cheers Vineeto September 24 2025 VINEETO: This “impression” may be believed to be true but it is not a fact. The many questions Richard answered from his ongoing experience regarding delighting in sexual congress without any libido bear witness to the incredulity of his correspondents that sexual enjoyment required the presence of libido (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Sex). It is my own intimate personal experience as well that libido is not at all required for optimum enjoyment of sexuality – on the contrary it had only been in the way of perfect ongoing intimacy. CHRONO: Hi Vineeto, I can readily see that it gets in the way of intimacy, but I have been contemplating how can this powerful drive be utilized. It’s been difficult to contemplate outside of the opposites in regards sexual desire. Initially there’s even a small sense of shame in wanting to completely indulge in it. I found your post (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Felipe, 20 September 2025) with Richard’s expanded description of the way towards sexual congress happening of its own accord very illuminating. Part of me is actually in disbelief that sex can even be that good haha. What stood out to me the most though and perhaps may serve as a line of demarcation in my approach was this: Richard: Now, the way to have intimacy unfold, in all its luscious wonder, is to be aware all the while (with that unique human ability to be conscious of being sentient) that your sexual partner likes being with you so much that they are willing to spend their most valuable asset – their time – not only being with you but having you inside them/ having them inside you (dependent upon gender) for this most physically intimate way of associating possible. In other words one is always aware, with that second-level awareness, all the while primary consciousness is sexually engrossed, just how precious this opportunity is as – out of all 3.0 billion women/ out of all 3.0 billion men (dependent upon gender) – this fellow human being has chosen you, and only you, to be so intimately entwined with. In short: having sex/ being intimate with her/ with him (dependent upon gender) is very special – so special as to be precious – and this very preciosity readily enables giving oneself completely to one’s partner – totally and utterly – during sexual congress. (...). (Richard, List D, No. 20, 9 December 2009). VINEETO: Hi Chrono, Can you see that the post from Richard answers your question regarding “how can this powerful drive [of libido] be utilized”. It “is to be aware all the while (with that unique human ability to be conscious of being sentient) that your sexual partner likes being with you so much that they are willing to spend their most valuable asset – their time – not only being with you but having you inside them/ having them inside you (dependent upon gender) for this most physically intimate way of associating possible.” Being aware of being conscious almost automatically gives rise to appreciation and the wonder of it all happening – and this way the energy of “powerful [affective] drive” of libido is channelled into enjoyment and appreciation with marvellous results. CHRONO: It sounds weird to say, but it’s this appreciation of my partner in this way that I find to be a new direction. And he also uses the word ‘preciosity’, which exact word has come to my mind when I’ve experienced the sweetness of this moment before. The same preciosity that I want to experience again. Sexual desire on its own has a disregard about it that may be the reason why it needs to be kept in check. I’ll try all of this next time and see! I might need to work on my ability to ‘hover indefinitely on that orgastic plateau which precedes an orgasm’. I’m wondering if that ability would also be of any use even if one was by oneself. VINEETO: Well, in terms of the actualism method, which is enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive, it is not “weird” at all – in fact it is appreciation which exponentially multiplies one’s enjoyment and can catapult you into naïveté. Also the more you appreciate of your partner in this way increases the intimacy and appreciation thereof, and as Richard says, “be warned, the sky is not the limit.” To extend the time hovering on that orgastic plateau certainly needs practice but who would object to that. Lots to discover! * VINEETO: It seems you are ready to deliberate and explore the social conditioning of your gender identity of what you, and society, considers “being a ‘man’”. There are lots of beliefs and unspoken rules and all are unhelpful to both happiness/ harmlessness or delightful harmony and intimacy with a person of the other gender. It’s worth keeping in mind that what you see is a consequence of the tried and failed spiritual legacy of both Western and Eastern religions. Some information is collected in Basic to Full Freedom, #man-woman-identity and more in Richard’s Journal, Article Two as well as the Actual Freedom Library on those topics with their respective selected correspondence links. CHRONO: I am still reading over much of the correspondence so I will reflect on it as I finish. VINEETO: It’s certainly beneficial to reflect, but then any realisation needs to be actualised in order to bear fruit. It’s amazing what you can uncover with naiveté and pure intent and how your attitude and behaviour will change towards more benevolent, amiable and friendly action toward your fellow male and female human beings including yourself. * VINEETO: It’s interesting to note that contemplating “what it means to be ‘compassionate’” has triggered this “huge immense fear about what I am doing by trying to becoming free”. Compassion is one of the stalwarts to keep you trapped within humanity, and contemplating to do without appeared a dangerous and therefore impossible direction to proceed. CHRONO: Yes there was in the deepest part of the fear a complete and almost unbearable loneliness. Compassion perhaps keeps me connected to others and provides as an antidote for it in some way as well. Not that any of that will stop me haha. As you said, there may need to be a digestion period. VINEETO: That fear of “a complete and almost unbearable loneliness” is exactly the prison wall that is supposed to ensconce you within ‘humanity’s’ boundaries. When you stop fighting the fear, it will instantly diminish and then you can see if it has any substance in actuality. And yes, if it is a deep fear it might take some time to unravel and get to the thrilling aspect. I remember some strong fears ‘Vineeto’ had, for instance the atavistic one of being burnt at the stake – ‘Vineeto’: 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. (A Bit of Vineeto) Here is another example – ‘Vineeto’: This reminds me of a day when I was so badly in the grip of fear that I couldn’t think straight, didn’t know how to get myself out of this overwhelming feeling and could hardly talk for my cluttering teeth. I thought that I will never gather enough gumption to become free, I am just too much of a coward. Telling my story to Richard he said something to the effect of: ‘what else would you want to do with your life – be miserable like right now for the next 30 odd years? Seems pretty impossible to me. Of course, you will keep going.’ (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, James, 20.12.1999). What ‘Vineeto’ forgot to mention that Richard’s interjection snapped ‘her’ out of the grip of fear instantly (because quite obviously intense fear cannot be maintained forever). It brought ‘Vineeto’ back down to earth. CHRONO: It’s very funny that this topic of everyone basically being spiritual should come up. Just a few days ago I was talking with my partner after viewing an incredible image of distant galaxies about how spirituality had infiltrated science (or always had?). The reason of course being the inherent bias in ‘being’ itself. The universe itself is being viewed self-centrically. VINEETO: Ha, I read some of the comments and naturally everyone on that forum attempted to integrate the new information as quickly as possible into their existing paradigm! CHRONO: Just to add to the above, it is that impression of being present and existing over time as an ‘entity’ which is the source of ‘my’ belief in immortality. Belief doesn’t seem quite right here as ‘I’ don’t actually believe that ‘I’ will persist after this body dies, it’s more like a fundamental impression. VINEETO: Well said. It’s not a belief which can be excised, it’s part and parcel of being an ‘entity’ … until, as it was for ‘Vineeto’ for instance, enough of actuality had irrefutably penetrated via apperceptive insights for ‘her’ to know, and accept, that ‘self’-immolation was the only and viable solution to the mess of the human condition. MARK: But I do feel instinct and its grip weakening as my personal reality is exposed for the mirage that it is. This adds a little to the notion that the whole thing (the self) is an integrated package and a reduction in one area is a reduction across the board. Hence as we chip away at our belief system (the seemingly ‘most visible’ layer of the ‘being’, the outer most layer so to speak) then there are repercussions in our emotional and instinctual arenas as well. RICHARD: Yes, well said. It (‘self’) is an integrated package because it arises out of the instinctual software package handed out by blind nature. At the core of ‘my’ being is the rudimentary animal ‘self’ that all sentient beings have. It is the price paid/ trade-off for consciousness being able to arise out of matter. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Mark, 18 May 1999). Cheers Vineeto October 2 2025 KUBA: I can see that in my life I invested into becoming a ‘someone in relation to others’, this is ‘my’ apparent individuality. So initially when allowing intimacy it seems as if I am giving up my very individuality, yet when I look at just what this ‘individuality’ consists of, it is based in separation. CHRONO: I can very much relate to this. In fact, recently when I tried to allow the unfolding of intimacy that Richard described, there was an immediate block. The block first took the form of (yet again) resentment. But this time the resentment was that I had to be a someone in relation to my partner at all. I am angry that I have to be a man in order to relate with her as a woman. The feeling is that ‘I’ am bound to be this way. When I ask myself what if I wasn’t a man, then I feel the anger rise up a little more. It feels like then I cannot be intimate at all, because my partner is expressing herself through her conditioning as a woman. If I don’t meet her this way, then I am being callous (such is the feeling). So the way that I experience it right now isn’t that I would lose power and authority, but rather that I will be alone. Which aloneness seems to be the condition deep within. But I have on occasion also experienced the fear of this loss of power/ authority. If I were not to maintain this identity (man), then I would become inept, impotent, and be a pushover. Notwithstanding all of this, what I really want is to be genuine, open, and straightforward. Perhaps there is a dare here. That despite what those feelings are, I proceed with my intent to be naive. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, It’s fascinating how you describe the emotional process – first a block, then resentment, then anger to have to be a man, then angry about being trapped, then a sort of resignation, then fear of being alone (=loneliness). It is well observed and described but it leads nowhere until you contemplate what you “really want” – to be “genuine, open, and straightforward”. I remember feeling being ‘Vineeto’ having this meme running in the background – Illegitimi non carborandum (don’t let the buggers get you down). There is indeed a “dare here”, the dare to care, and the growing confidence that it is possible. CHRONO: Of course underneath the cognitive acrobatics of being a man is the power source itself (the libido). One of the characteristics that sticks out about this is the disregard of the other. A complete opposite of appreciation. It’s expression is a fuelling of fantasy and illusion. It promises an instinctual fulfillment that will never come. It can be readily discernible as the epitome of ‘Blind Nature’. This about sums it up: Peter: Nature, or more accurately blind nature, wants only reproduction – the survival of the species – and it doesn’t give a damn for my happiness. The physical enjoyment of sex and the euphoric orgasmic climax is a by-product of the reproductive process itself. As a male animal I am programmed with a sexual instinct which drives me to impregnate as many women as possible. Crudely put (for it is indeed crude): find woman, fuck woman, move on; find woman, fuck woman, move on… (Actualism, Peter, Selected Writings, Sex) I’ve been wondering if libido itself is perhaps possessing the ‘arousal’ that this physical body is capable of and thus giving the impression that one would not be able to have sex without its drive. VINEETO: You classified blind nature’s libido well – “a complete opposite of appreciation”. It confirms what I wrote to Kuba yesterday – Richard (to № 04): “(...) it is pertinent to note that libido (Latin, meaning ‘desire’, ‘lust’, and referring to the instinctual sex drive, urge or impulse to procreate and perpetuate the species) is not, and never has been nor ever will be, the driver of the longing for intimacy, the yearning for an end to separation, the vital interest in loss of self ... nor even the means whereby altruism trumps selfism”. (Richard, List D, No. 4a, 23 June 2013). You can experiment yourself experientially when you, with awareness, start backing off the instinctual urge of libido and replace it with a preference to sexual intimacy, thereby diminishing the self-centredness of the libidinous impulse with a more self-less inclination for closeness and sensuousness. Then you might get to a point where “sex takes care of itself and full attention can be paid to intimacy”. (see Richard, List D, No. 20, 9 December 2009). CHRONO: Just yesterday I had an inkling that despite what this conditioning may say or what the libido drives one towards, that my partner also desires the same intimacy that I am also desiring. She recalls being able to be at ease as a child and expressing fun in an uninhibited way that she is no longer able to do. Which ease she wants to be able to express with me. And I became aware of the gulf created between us with the conditioning of man and woman. So if she also desires this, then what really do I have to be afraid of? Despite that though, I am seeing once again the unilateral nature of this endeavour. Again there is a daring aspect. And that is exciting! VINEETO: What a wonderful opportunity that your partner “also desires the same intimacy”. ‘Vineeto’ experienced the same desire, ‘she’ just didn’t know how to bring it about until ‘she’ discovered naiveté. And Richard reports that women in general are more interested in intimacy than men – Richard: As libido is null and void for me then being sexually active or not is purely a matter of preference. What this means in effect is that sexual congress, because of its utter proximity, has more to do with intimacy than anything else. Now, here is where it becomes quite an intriguing matter because, and as a generalisation only, women tend to place more emphasis on intimacy than men. Indeed, many a woman has bewailed the dearth of men prepared to make the big commitment required for such connubial accord. Yet they are deathly afraid of intimacy – the fear of intimacy is a subject most women have talked to me about – for it means loss of self. And therein lies the rub: the survival instincts can kick in big-time, especially during sexual congress, and the very opposite of the longed-for intimacy takes place (as in pulling-back, turning-away, closing-off, shutting-down, and so on). (Richard, List D, No. 14a, 9 November 2009) You are correct “seeing once again the unilateral nature of this endeavour” and yet there is opportunity of exploring it together as well. Either way, a more and more self-less and less self-centric way of being sensuous is not to be missed – Richard: To cut to the chase: as I have been gratuitously informed by more than just one female that my physical touch – even a caressive stroking of their bared back for example – is tangibly a non-possessive and actually caring touch (i.e., a literally selfless touching) please be assured that nothing of value will be lost upon the extinction of the masculinist capacity to be “affectionately touching” the female of the species. (Richard, List D, Martin, #2). Richard described his own experience this way – Richard: … just then, as he [Peter] remembered how to find me, his hand came through that flimsiest of films (which completely enclosed and isolated his bubble of actuality from the real-world reality) and actually stroked the left-side of my face with the most perfect touch; it was a caress of absolute perfection such as could only occur when this particular feeling ‘being’, tenderly feeling the utmost caring possible per favour being the near-innocence of naiveté personified, was thus granted privileged access to slip part of their host body through a compliantly temporaneous rent in their veil. (Announcement1, Tooltip after #magic). He described the caress of absolute perfection further on in the same tooltip – Richard: As this had been my experience twice before – once on the previous night, when another feeling ‘being’ had inadvertently slipped bodily through[1] a similarly compliant temporaneous rent in their bubble of actuality, and on a first occasion many years previously when my second wife (de jure) briefly had this privileged access … [1] … being complete, as it was, with the most perfect bodily touching (a physical caressing of absolute perfection) … (Announcement1, Tooltip after #magic). * VINEETO to Kuba: Whereas you could nourish and foster a naïve excitement of a beneficial discovery operating – think of how young children are eager to learn about the world they find themselves in (until their enthusiasm gets more and more stifled and oppressed. This is the kind of naiveté albeit with adult sensibilities which is the next exploration, and don’t be discouraged when you feel a bit shy or foolish – it’s part of the package … (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba10, 1 October 2025). CHRONO: Ha this is very funny as I was talking with my partner about exactly this yesterday. Time to put my money where my mouth is. VINEETO: I wish you exquisite enjoyment and success in your new exciting adventure. Cheers Vineeto October 13 2025 VINEETO to Kuba: Via actualistic awareness and attentiveness you can choose, each moment, between pursuing the high, or enjoying and appreciating the sexual intimacy with the fellow human being you are closest to. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba10, 29 September 2025a). CHRONO: With all of that said, there are still some feelings of fear standing in the way of it at the moment. I find that this fear again goes with being a ‘man’. It has to do with how men are lauded for their ‘sexual prowess’ and I often feel that I must ‘perform’ to impress. The further fear of it is that my partner will leave me if I don’t follow this belief. I experience this as another dare. If my partner were to leave me because of this, then that is what it is. Although I do find these feelings rather amusing too since she expressed on a number of occasions of how she enjoys the physical proximity and closeness of sex the most. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, What you really mean by “being a ‘man’” is what you consider the role of a man, the social identity aspects that you swallowed hook, line and sinker (like everyone else). And it is well worth looking at these expectations/ obligations enshrined in the human condition what put so much pressure on you. While you are doing that you can also pop your head around the corner, so to speak, and recognize that in actuality you are already a man, a male human being, and in actuality this is already perfect. So when ‘I’, the identity, comes back in with all ‘my’ demands how ‘I’ should be, there is a salubrious actual perspective which allows you to look at those ‘problems’ in more naïve way and makes it all much less serious. CHRONO: It has been a number of years now since reading Article 2 of Richard’s Journal and I am able to appreciate and glean more meaning and insight from it. Some writings that stood out were: Richard: I experienced it as a bold step when I first started to strip away the layers of the mystique … the feeling being that nothing would remain and sex would become insipid coupling … a boring repetition of what is already known. One’s courage stems from one’s pure intent … and one’s steadfast purpose of dispelling any illusion, however seductive it might seem to be. Richard: Whenever we trip over an issue of man-woman differences and find ourselves falling back into our gender identities we notice, while looking at each other over a gulf of separation, a marked lack of equity and mutual intimacy between us. Then again, in our long periods of mutual intimacy, we experience that neither Authority nor Love plays any role. Can we contemplate a life together where intimacy and equity are paramount? Wherein the power of Love and Authority become irrelevant? Any Authority precludes equity … and therefore intimacy. Any Love precludes intimacy … and therefore equity. (Richard’s Journal, Article Two). VINEETO: Indeed … you may even discover that behind the idea of a “being a man” needing “‘sexual prowess’” is hidden a yearning for intimacy. After all, a near-actual intimacy is something so new, it has to be lived to be discovered. Richard to № 04: “(...) it is pertinent to note that libido (Latin, meaning ‘desire’, ‘lust’, and referring to the instinctual sex drive, urge or impulse to procreate and perpetuate the species) is not, and never has been nor ever will be, the driver of the longing for intimacy, the yearning for an end to separation, the vital interest in loss of self ... nor even the means whereby altruism trumps selfism”. (Richard, List D, No. 4a, 23 June 2013). CHRONO: On a separate but related issue, I noticed at work this past week more clearly how I ‘hold back’ in my interactions with others. Just as in a similar manner as with my partner (with whom it still operates but on a level of lower intensity), I ‘hold back’ from them. I take a step back and basically scan out what’s the ‘right way’ to be with them. This scan of course is composed of anxiety/ fear and exemplifies the societal conscience. I’m always on alert of what they are thinking of me and if ‘I’ am playing ‘my’ role properly. Seeing this, I then also allowed myself on the same day to meet them right where they are and I am always delighted at how easy interactions are. People enjoy associating with me when I am enjoying my own association. When this happens, there’s a background feeling of ‘this can’t be’ or ‘something will go wrong’. But I find that even when people may become upset, my remaining in this delighting has a rather conciliatory effect. This time the background feeling is that ‘I will be physically harmed and so I must take a step back again’. It’s a rather strange conditioning but feels very real. VINEETO: This naïve approach is well worth keeping in mind. It helps you to overcome the initial apprehension of “holding back”, feeling foolish or ignorant or whatever, because you already know it has a beneficial outcome for all concerned. Did you notice that when you have overcome the fear of being psychologically harmed you stepped up the danger to being “physically harmed”, just to keep yourself in line? CHRONO: On another separate day, I was reading something Richard writes in regards infinitude where he says that ‘I’ create a center in consciousness and block the experience of infinitude. I started thinking ‘what really is this infinitude?’. ‘It’s a physical infinitude’. ‘Oh it’s this infinite space and eternal time’. Then this thought occurred to me that perhaps that this physical universe is all that there is. There’s nothing other than this physical universe that actually exists. The experience of being ‘me’ is an experience of an ‘otherness’ which is blocking this immensity (which I experience as there on the periphery). I understood for a moment this: Richard: The human eye is, rather, looking into infinity (when gazing deeply into that velvety darkness betwixt the stars) in the sense that there is no limit to its seeing ability other than its own physical capacity due to having evolved on a planet a short distance away, in astronomical terms, from its central star (aka the sun). [Emphasis by Chrono]. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Infinitude). VINEETO: This is marvellous. What happened in that moment was apperception – Richard: In that brief scintillating instant of bare awareness, that twinkling sensorium-moment of consciousness being conscious of being consciousness, one apperceives a thing as a nothing-in-particular that is being naught but what-it-is coming from nowhen and going nowhere at all. Apperception is very much like what one sees with one’s peripheral vision as opposed to the intent focus of normal or central vision. This moment of soft, ungathered sensuosity – apperception – contains a vast understanding, an utter cognisance, that is lost as soon as one adjusts one’s mind to accommodate the feeling-tone and subverts the crystal-clear objectivity into an ontological ‘being’ ... a connotative ‘thing-in-itself’. In the process of ordinary perception, the apperception step is so fleeting as to be usually unobservable. One has developed the habit of squandering one’s attention on all the remaining steps: feeling the percept; emotionally recognising the qualia; zealously adopting the perception and getting involved in a long string of representative feeling-notions about it. When the original moment of apperception is rapidly passed over it is the purpose of ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to accustom one to prolong that moment of apperception – a sensuous awareness bereft of feeling content – so that uninterrupted apperception can eventuate. Apperception is the clear and direct experiencing of being just here at this place in infinite space right now at this moment in eternal time – sans identity and its feeling-fed realities – and it is a wordless appreciation of being alive and awake on this verdant and azure planet. Apperception is where one is living in the already always existing peace-on-earth and is where one is blithe and carefree, even if one is doing nothing: doing something – and that includes thinking – is a bonus on top of the never-ending perfection of the infinitude which this material universe is. Apperception is where one is the universe being stunningly aware of its own infinitude. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25, 31 August 2001) All the best. Cheers Vineeto October 16 2025 CHRONO: I can relate to a lot of what you write. Especially the : Henry: avoiding my problems and feelings and living in a false ‘actualist identity. In my experience it has been that some part of me truly believed in those problems/ ideals/ dreams and persisting in feeling them. But also it’s because I am trying to ‘fix’ it while also experiencing those feelings. As an example, I would very often go into states of ‘limerence’ (a hellish state of being). During all of that time I thought that I could not apply the actualism method because of how acutely I felt the suffering, so I would have no choice but to apply real world methods. I went to counsellors and therapists and it did help but only in a ‘keeping my head above water’ kind of way. In the most intense periods of that state there would be the deep desire to end it and there was the desire to do whatever it takes, but I wasn’t sure how. Simply put, it can’t be done from there because ‘I am my feelings and my feelings are me’. It was only when I acknowledged that I had a subsequent realization that all I had to do was enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive. Right in there is the desire to be happy and harmless. I really did want to be happy and harmless. There’s no other path for me. When I realized that, I was able to enjoy life more consistently and felt more like I had autonomy. Something nothing in the real world has been able to offer. Everything in the real world is about ‘keeping my head above water’. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, It is a valuable insight that “everything in the real world is about ‘keeping my head above water’”, in line with what Sigmund Freud classified as the aim of psychiatry: to return patients “back to a state of as near-normal functioning as possible (and ‘normal’ is categorised by Mr. Sigmund Freud as ‘common human unhappiness’)” (Richard, General Correspondence, Page 8, #shrinks). As such it is unreasonable to expect any more than keeping your head above water from counsellors and therapists. However, when you say that “I thought that I could not apply the actualism method because of how acutely I felt the suffering” you seem to have forgotten, or overlooked, a vital ingredient of the actualist tools when applying the actualism method – when your mood falls below feeling good, first get back to feeling good. That, of course, includes recognizing and acknowledging the feeling which is happening (which can sometimes be made difficult by not wanting to recognize it because this might interfere with one’s self-image, or fighting the feeling, which automatically imbues it with a lot more affective energy). Hence when you realize what feeling is happening, acknowledge it as being part of your genetic inheritance, and stop fighting it. From there it is much easier to get back to neutral and then to feeling good. Only then does it make sense to find out what triggered the feeling and draw the necessary conclusion from the event. And once you fully take on board that “I am my feelings and my feelings are me” you have the choice of being a different feeling because it is simply silly, when you have the choice, to be something other than happy and harmless. You might also discover that there is a certain amount of investment in keeping the suffering going (because of some good feeling you cherish, for instance) – elsewhere referred to the addiction of being a ‘being’ (Richard, List B, James3), and that is a further topic for contemplation. All this is to indicate that it’s not always straightforward to “activate delight”. Nothing can be swept under the carpet in the long run. CHRONO: All of that to say, it’s actually pretty simple. Just as Vineeto has suggested: Richard: ‘To get out of ‘stuckness’ one gets off one’s backside and does whatever one knows best to activate delight. Delight is what is humanly possible, given sufficient pure intent obtained from the felicity/ innocuity born of the pure consciousness experience, and from the position of delight, one can vitalise one’s joie de vivre by the amazement at the fun of it all ... and then one can – with sufficient abandon – become over-joyed and move into marvelling at being here and doing this business called being alive now. Then one is no longer intuitively making sense of life ... the delicious wonder of it all drives any such instinctive meaning away. Such luscious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté – the nourishing of which is essential if fascination in it all is to occur – and the charm of life itself easily engages dedication to peace-on-earth. Then, as one gazes intently at the world about by glancing lightly with sensuously caressing eyes, out of the corner of one’s eye comes – sweetly – the magical fairy-tale-like paradise that this verdant earth actually is ... and one is the experiencing of what is happening. But refrain from possessing it and making it your own ... or else ‘twill vanish as softly as it appeared. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, Alan, 13 December 1998). You do not need to wait “clearing the cobwebs out of some ‘dark corners’ of myself”. Such an activity (in my experience anyway) becomes an exercise in keeping ‘my’ problems alive. You know what it is to feel good. You know what it is like to experience pure intent. Maybe go back through your journal and read through the experience and rememorate it again. Any problems are easily solved when you are feeling good. VINEETO: You are certainly right when feeling good, feeling better and feeling naïve any problems are more easily solved, or don’t even appear as such, but simply accepted as challenges in the game of becoming actually free. Cheers Vineeto October 18 2025 CHRONO: Hi Vineeto, VINEETO: What you really mean by “being a ‘man’” is what you consider the role of a man, the social identity aspects that you swallowed hook, line and sinker (like everyone else). And it is well worth looking at these expectations/ obligations enshrined in the human condition what put so much pressure on you. CHRONO: Yes I have seen these expectations/ obligations featured in many aspects of my life. In relation to male friends (primarily), it could be that I must maintain some outward appearance of confidence, being nonplussed, being “skilled”, being of high status, etc. With my partner, it feels like that I must be a place of safety and comfort for her (backed by the feeling of responsibility and seriousness) and that if I don’t then I have failed or am a failure. At work, it feels like I must always be excelling and must always know the answer. It could all come under some guise of being an ‘authority’. If I had to go a little further, I could say that all of that is about projecting power. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, Well said. Having recognized this you can now decline “projecting power” and experiment with allowing the naiveté which you talked about in your last message – Chrono: Seeing this, I then also allowed myself on the same day to meet them right where they are and I am always delighted at how easy interactions are. People enjoy associating with me when I am enjoying my own association. When this happens, there’s a background feeling of ‘this can’t be’ or ‘something will go wrong’. But I find that even when people may become upset, my remaining in this delighting has a rather conciliatory effect.. VINEETO: While you are doing that you can also pop your head around the corner, so to speak, and recognize that in actuality you are already a man, a male human being, and in actuality this is already perfect. So when ‘I’, the identity, comes back in with all ‘my’ demands how ‘I’ should be, there is a salubrious actual perspective which allows you to look at those ‘problems’ in more naïve way and makes it all much less serious. CHRONO: When I think on this, I can understand it intellectually. But in society it doesn’t seem enough. I think it’s about showing ‘my’ usefulness to society. Otherwise I could be discarded. Which means being ostracized, lonely, punished in some way. Everything that I am being perhaps in this entire journal is being kept in place by this fear of retribution from society and humanity. Perhaps another dare. VINEETO: The dare is to become autonomous, less and less dependant on other people’s opinions and demands. It happens when you gradually find out that there is something better than having the fickle approval and praise from your contemporaries. There is an actual world right here, right now, and right under your nose. You may enjoy this story from Richard. (Richard, List D, Rick, Wonder-land-tale). * VINEETO: Indeed … you may even discover that behind the idea of a “being a man” needing “‘sexual prowess’” is hidden a yearning for intimacy. After all, a near-actual intimacy is something so new, it has to be lived to be discovered. CHRONO: Yes, this hidden yearning is what I’m currently trying to locate. Which perhaps may only come about if I abandon the sexual drive as well. I am wondering if that drive has any role to play at all in any of this. I sometimes struggle to see how it could not arise at all unless one is already actually free. VINEETO: Not so fast. You cannot abandon the sexual drive – it is an instinctual passion. It will only completely disappear when the whole identity becomes extinct. Any attempt to abandon the sexual drive will necessarily lead to suppression and repression. This is the old way which both Western and Eastern religions promoted for thousands of years, and if you only know a little bit of history you already know where it leads to. What you can do is sincerely examine each of the various aspects of your acquired identity as a man, and if it interferes with being happy and harmless aim for as much naiveté as you dare, which already had such fortuitous outcome. Here is a short excerpt from feeling being ‘Peter’ regarding male identity – ‘Peter’: What we found in our investigations has been quite shocking – a blow to that insidious feeling of pride that inevitably causes human beings to refuse to admit that their behaviour is just plain stupid and that ultimately prevents any possibility of radical, effective change. How could I have been so stupid? But the facts spoke for themselves. How could I have believed that simply because ‘everybody behaves that way’, I should also behave that way? How could I believe that everybody else was ‘getting it wrong’, and not me? Was I going to endlessly try and change every woman I was with or somehow try and find the ‘right one’ amongst the billions? How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me? (Peter’s Journal, Living Together) This correspondence may be useful as well – Gary: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to. In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed. ‘Peter’: (…) Then there are other aspects of one’s social identity that demand attention if one is to ever get to the stage where one can see and treat one’s fellow human beings as fellow human beings and not continue to think and feel them to be separate ‘beings’. A man never meets a woman and sees her or treats her as a fellow human being because men and women have been instilled with opposing gender identities – identities that are mandated by each side in the battle of the sexes and are rife with mutual feelings of suspicion, fear, ignorance and superstition. Similarly, a father never meets a son and a mother never meets a daughter for each has a socially-imposed identity relative to each other – a complex set of social obligations, emotional demands and needs, expectations and resentments that serve to prevent each from either seeing or treating each other as fellow human beings. Similarly, an American never meets an Australian, a Lithuanian never meets a Nigerian and so on, for each believe they belong to a different culture and each call a particular piece of the planet ‘home’. The list goes on, but I won’t, for you will have got the gist by now. What normally happens in relationships when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, is that the each party blames the other for failing to meet their needs, fulfill their expectations, nurture them sufficiently, respect their feelings, and such like. Often a begrudging compromise is reached in relationships or failure is allowed to run its natural course. As you well know from your experience with actualism, the only way out of this mess is to demolish one’s own social identity, piece-by-piece, element-by-element. And the proof that this process works is that you begin to not only see but to treat the fellow human beings you come in contact with as exactly that – fellow human beings, regardless of their age, gender, kin, race, religion, culture, nationality, and so on. (Actualism, Peter, Selected Correspondence, Social Identity). As you might see, loyalty plays a big part in keeping the social identity in place. * CHRONO: This scan of course is composed of anxiety/ fear and exemplifies the societal conscience. I’m always on alert of what they are thinking of me and if ‘I’ am playing ‘my’ role properly. Seeing this, I then also allowed myself on the same day to meet them right where they are and I am always delighted at how easy interactions are. People enjoy associating with me when I am enjoying my own association. When this happens, there’s a background feeling of ‘this can’t be’ or ‘something will go wrong’. But I find that even when people may become upset, my remaining in this delighting has a rather conciliatory effect. This time the background feeling is that ‘I will be physically harmed and so I must take a step back again’. It’s a rather strange conditioning but feels very real. VINEETO: This naïve approach is well worth keeping in mind. It helps you to overcome the initial apprehension of “holding back”, feeling foolish or ignorant or whatever, because you already know it has a beneficial outcome for all concerned. Did you notice that when you have overcome the fear of being psychologically harmed you stepped up the danger to being “physically harmed”, just to keep yourself in line? CHRONO: Thanks I actually did not notice that haha. Now that I am looking back at it, that seems to happen any time I get ‘close’. Some sort of fear of retribution, but proceed anyway. VINEETO: That’s how the instinctual passions work – any time you get ‘close’, i.e. more intimate to another fellow human being, there is an apprehension of what might happen, that you might lose yourself. And yet when you pay attention, there is no actual danger, not even real danger. So you can increase the daring just a little bit, and then a little bit more, and be more confident in discovering and enjoying being naïve. It is such fun. * CHRONO: As an aside, I have been wondering why it is said that actual freedom has no conditions to happen and that the actualism method is something that you do in the meanwhile. Yet at other times, I gain the impression that there technically are conditions for it to happen. VINEETO: There are no condition from the actual world, as the PCE confirms when it happens. It is ‘I’ and ‘me’ who create the boundaries and set the rules under which conditions ‘I’ will agree to ‘my’ demise, and ‘I’ will place plenty of (genetically endowed) passionate and cunning objections to obstruct such voluntary agreement. Hence pure intent is paramount. * CHRONO: The following is from Henry’s Journal but I did not want to divert it into a different topic: VINEETO: (…) And once you fully take on board that “I am my feelings and my feelings are me” you have the choice of being a different feeling because it is simply silly, when you have the choice, to be something other than happy and harmless. You might also discover that there is a certain amount of investment in keeping the suffering going (because of some good feeling you cherish, for instance) – elsewhere referred to the addiction of being a ‘being’ (Richard, List B, James3), and that is a further topic for contemplation. All this is to indicate that it’s not always straightforward to “activate delight”. Nothing can be swept under the carpet in the long run. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono2, 16 October 2025). CHRONO: Yes it was only after I saw that I had to return to feeling good first that any sort of beneficial changes were noticed and maintained. VINEETO: This is a valuable experience and a good to keep in. CHRONO: Though overall there is still the addiction to being ‘me’. I have been re-reading the linked correspondence on addiction and some parts stood out to me (also appreciated James’ questions and pondering): Richard: I was not referring to whatever suffering may be caused by losing in gambling … but to the suffering which ensues as the eventual result of the high evaporating (no matter what particular addiction it is). Therefore I presume that the ‘action’ you refer to is what provides the high … and if so then I further presume that when this action-induced high evaporates then suffering ensues. If this is the case then it is this suffering which is well worth investigating for its addictive properties. (Richard, List B, James3, 24 October 2002) Richard: Is not the reason why ‘I’ do not know if the unknown path delivers the goods – or why ‘I’ do not know what the unknown path is – none other than because ‘I’ will not abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods? (Richard, List B, James3, 5 November 2002) James: Ok, it might be possible by seeing that I am doing it for this body and everybody but I am really doing it for ‘I’/ ‘me’ at least in the beginning. Richard: When ‘I’ see that ‘I’ am as mad and as bad and as sad as anyone else instinctually driven it is actually impossible to say that ‘I’ am doing it for ‘me’ alone … the repercussions of such an event are vast beyond belief. (Richard, List B, James3, 28 October 2002a) James: I hear what you are saying but I am not tuned in to the altruistic instinct. Richard: As it is instinctive it arises as the need arises … just as its concomitant courage does. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 November 2002) If I compared to my experience with suffering (deep feelings of complete desolation) as described above in experiences of limerence (where I feel anything very deeply), in the midst of the most intense suffering is where I also felt the most “alive”. Within it, there’s a simultaneous desire to end the suffering (because it is intense anguish) but also addicted to being it. This suffering also had a ‘good’ side where I felt fulfilled, but only if certain conditions were met. I’d go in circles no matter how much I noted it did not make sense. Deep down I felt this suffering as my soul itself and sometimes a ‘dream’ would present itself as being the only way out. This was the dream of ‘love’. Which dream is gone now. But I would naturally go back to this place of intense suffering if no attentiveness or anything was applied. I can see that as ‘my’ path. VINEETO: You have identified the nub of the old paradigm which applies both to the spiritual as well as the materialistic aspect – your ‘being’ searching for the fulfilment that only an actual freedom can provide. Instead, for millennia people have been settling for second best – either spiritual enlightenment or material fulfilment, as in addictions to ‘highs’, ranging from drugs, success, group-highs, winning competitions, admiration or similar ‘self’-enhancing activities. It is an excellent realisation to have identified this as “‘my’ path”, in contrast to the wide and wondrous path. It is a dead-end road unless you want to settle for second best. This “limerence” only reifies the ‘self’ and the ‘self’s’ yearning for grandeur in the dream of the ‘good’ side – ‘self’-aggrandisement. The sooner you recognize, and consequently decline, the nature of the “dream” the sooner the attraction to the “most intense suffering” will also abate. Perhaps a thorough investigation of what is left of “the dream of ‘love’” might be useful – (FAQ: Why is love (Love) no Solution?) Richard: Also, intrinsic to the nature of love is its – always unfulfilled – promise of eternity. Our life here on earth has a time-span, so what use is a spurious Eternal Bliss in some conjectured After-Life? Love has produced wars, murders, rapes and violence since time immemorial ... it staggers me that it still retains its credibility. To kill for ‘Love of Country’ or ‘Love of God’ is surely proof enough for any discerning person. Then there are those ‘Crimes of Passion’ that are brought about by love’s constant companions: possessiveness, jealousy and envy. If these examples are too extreme then what about the heartache, the longing, the pining and the yearning that all peoples report as accompanying love’s bliss? This leads to the search for ‘True Love’ which, supposedly, does not induce these unpleasant characteristics so common to everybody’s experience of love. ‘True Love’ is simply a fiction ... it is impossible to manifest it here on earth, hence the notion of an After-Life to encompass it. To repeat: Love never delivers on its implied promise. It never has done nor ever will. Its days are numbered, as more and more people are beginning to notice that love itself – not the human being – is failing to live up to its reputation again and again. (FAQ: Why is love (Love) no Solution?) CHRONO: But I do have this desire within to also end the suffering, which I equate with: James: ‘I’ am telling myself that ‘I’ don’t really want to do it because that will be the end of ‘me’. Richard: Ahh … now to the nub of the issue: have you ever desired oblivion? (Richard, List B, James3, 5 November 2002a) My natural instinct then was to end it while being it, but I would go in circles. Maybe I wasn’t doing this: James: ‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now. ‘I’ can’t see how to get past that. Richard: As there has been a, perhaps predictable, retreat back into suffering (predictable as foreshadowed in ‘‘I’ want to hide from this inquiry’ and ‘‘I’ want to back out’ for example), then one starts with where one is presently at (where one is not yet at will emerge of its own accord as one proceeds): as you say ‘‘I’ am stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) now’ then for ‘me’ that is where ‘I’ am currently at. Therefore, do ‘I’ feel the feeling of being stuck with ‘me’ (suffering) or not? If yes, then through staying with the feeling, by being the feeling (instead of trying to see how to get past that), one will find out, experientially, what it is really like to not have a path and/or not have a plan … other than the one of ‘looking for a way out’ so that one can stick with the known that is. (Richard, List B, James3, 21 Nov 2002a) VINEETO: My suggestion is that as long as the ‘good’ side of your suffering is still active as a promise and therefore desire, you will continue to go round in circles. ‘Vineeto’ knows from personal experience that the (at first often hidden) ‘good’ feelings such as desire, love and compassion kept the bad feelings in place. Here Richards reports from his own experience of dismantling enlightenment – Richard: In my tenth year … I had to turn my sights upon the last thing that stood between me and an actual freedom. I would have to let go of the deeply ingrained concept of ‘The Good’. For this to happen I would have to eliminate ‘The Bad’ in me, or else I would be likely to go off the rails and run amok. Little did I realise that it was ‘The Good’ that kept ‘The Bad’ in place. I was soon to find this out. The Altered State of Consciousness – in particular, spiritual enlightenment – needs to be talked about and exposed for what it is so that nobody need venture up that blind alley ever again. There is another way and another goal. The main trouble with the enlightenment is that whilst the ego dissolves, the identity as a soul remains intact. No longer identifying as a personal ego-bound identity, one then identifies as an impersonal soul-bound identity – ‘I am That’, ‘I am God’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am The Absolute’ and so on. This is the delusion, the mirage, the deception ... and it is extremely difficult to see it for oneself, for one is in an august state. [Emphasis added] (Richard, List B, No. 31, 7 March 2000) CHRONO: Also I am curious why Richard suggests in this correspondence not to return to feeling good first but to proceed with the contemplation despite James saying he experiences fear and the suchlike. In what context is this happening? VINEETO: The conversation was less of a contemplation but rather an affective exploration into the nature of fear and the addiction of suffering and being ‘me’ and it revealed the feeling James had regarding the ending of ‘me’. Viz.: James: My current thinking is that no path will deliver the goods. Any path I take is more of ‘me’ trying to escape from ‘me’. Richard: Ahh ... but what about the path of no return? So far you have only ever travelled on the path that carries a return ticket. Viz.: [James]: ‘However, since ‘me’ is essentially suffering ‘I’ try to escape through various highs. Once these highs evaporate I am back to being ‘me’ suffering’. [endquote]. Given that the price of the return ticket is yet more suffering – a life-time of suffering in fact – why is it that the price of a one-way ticket is considered too high a price to pay? What price the end of suffering, eh? James: Because the end of suffering is the end of ‘me’. Richard: Is this not another way of saying that, because of ‘my’ fear of death, ‘my’ current plan is to not yet set foot upon the path of no return? (Richard, List B, James3, 21 November 2002). When an intense feeling such as the fear of extinction is encountered for the first time, it sometimes requires an affective exploration to identify what it is really about before one can see the silliness of this existential fear and be able to return to feeling good for further contemplation. Besides, this example of the affective exploration into stuckness, fear and the addiction of being ‘me’ could result in the courage to proceed for James or other readers via garnering sufficient pure intent. Similarly, your own affective experiences of “limerence” revealed that you are “addicted to being it”, that there was “a ‘good’ side where I felt fulfilled …” and “the dream of ‘love’”. However, there is no point in going into these limerences once you know what they are about or into the feelings of the fear of ending ‘me’ again and again unless ‘I’ am prepared, via discovering and dissolving the last bastions of ‘me’ objecting to ‘my’ demise, especially when you already found out that you “would go in circles”. Cheers Vineeto October 30 2025 CHRONO: Now I have a string of days off to enjoy, reflect, and compose. I think I also operate to a similar extent in the “steeple chasing” and taking “excursions” mentioned in the replies prior (19 Oct 2025). It does make sense to aim for the in-control virtual freedom as the means to the end and end are no different. CHRONO: Yes I have seen these expectations/ obligations featured in many aspects of my life. In relation to male friends (primarily), it could be that I must maintain some outward appearance of confidence, being nonplussed, being “skilled”, being of high status, etc. (…) If I had to go a little further, I could say that all of that is about projecting power. VINEETO: Well said. Having recognized this you can now decline “projecting power” and experiment with allowing the naiveté which you talked about in your last message (quoted further below) – CHRONO: Yes I am reaching the “exhaustion” point of all options and seeing that perhaps naiveté is the only way to proceed. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, Thank you for your extensive reflections. The way you phrased the last sentence it looks as if naiveté, though being the least attractive option for ‘me’, is nevertheless the only way to achieve a more continuous feeling good? * VINEETO: The dare is to become autonomous, less and less dependant on other people’s opinions and demands. It happens when you gradually find out that there is something better than having the fickle approval and praise from your contemporaries. There is an actual world right here, right now, and right under your nose. You may enjoy this story from Richard. (Richard, List D, Rick, Wonder-land-tale). CHRONO: I can see in this dare how important it is to have a genuine intent to be happy and harmless. As one of the main fears that pops up is how I will be uncaring and callous if I were to be less and less dependent on other people’s opinions and demands. I know that I’ve mentioned this quite a few times in this journal so it’s definitely something central to ‘me’. The callousness may very well be the case if I did not have that intent. Caring in the real world is synonymous with being ‘Good’ and all the ‘good’ feelings. I enjoyed reading Richard’s wonder-land-tale and it’s a wonderful reminder of how society’s standards can never meet or match the perfection of the actual world. VINEETO: Yes, there is a tangible dare “to have a genuine intent to be happy and harmless”. Hence unless you genuinely enjoy being happy and harmless for its own sake you won’t care to dare leaving the ties behind that so (comfortably and uncomfortably) bind you. When pure intent is active, there are no worries of being “callous” or “uncaring”. * CHRONO: Yes, this hidden yearning is what I’m currently trying to locate. Which perhaps may only come about if I abandon the sexual drive as well. I am wondering if that drive has any role to play at all in any of this. I sometimes struggle to see how it could not arise at all unless one is already actually free. VINEETO: Not so fast. You cannot abandon the sexual drive – it is an instinctual passion. It will only completely disappear when the whole identity becomes extinct. Any attempt to abandon the sexual drive will necessarily lead to suppression and repression. This is the old way which both Western and Eastern religions promoted for thousands of years, and if you only know a little bit of history you already know where it leads to. What you can do is sincerely examine each of the various aspects of your acquired identity as a man, and whenever it interferes with being happy and harmless aim for as much naiveté as you dare, which already had such fortuitous outcome. ‘Peter’: (…) How could I not see that the only one who l could possibly change was me? (Peter’s Journal, Living Together) CHRONO: I think in these past days I have realized that one of the reasons I am having some trouble with it is because I also have a feeling of guilt and shame at feeling this sexual drive in the first place. It seems locked in place because there are some simultaneously conflicting beliefs that go with it as well and creating cognitive dissonance. The first is the one that I have already mentioned about needing it and indulging in it to some extent for the male “sexual prowess”. But also there’s a feeling of guilt at having it because then you are disregarding your partner. I noted above how this drive is the opposite of appreciation and it is conflicting because society both feels that it is a “need” while also saying that it is ‘Bad’. VINEETO: I talked to Andrew about guilt recently (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Andrew2, 24 October 2025), perhaps you have read it. Additionally to the original guilt of being an instinctual ‘being’ there is the social conditioning regarding sexuality in almost all societies, because man-woman sexuality is the genesis of family and thus the very core of civilisation itself and therefore strictly regulated almost everywhere, not only via laws but also “guilt and shame”. It is possible to unravel this social conditioning when pure intent is firmly in place. As for the second aspect of the “feeling of guilt” because “you are disregarding your partner” – when you deliberate shift your focus of interest from personal sexual satisfaction only to intimacy, the whole nature of sexual congress will change in the direction of including your partner, as a fellow play-mate, in the direct (bodily) intimacy of sexual congress. Richard: (…) exploring sex and sexuality is enormously beneficial: there is no better way, in my experience, for a man and a woman to approach such intimacy than sexual congress. (Richard, List D, No. 6, 10 November 2009) * Respondent: Thank you Richard for this elaboration, it’s both fascinating and helpful. I would like to clarify a certain point, when you mention sexuality, do you refer to the sex drive? Richard: Yes, otherwise known as libido – a Latin word meaning ‘lust’ (which is an Old English word for ‘sensuous appetite’ according to the Oxford Dictionary) – or sexual energy ... as distinct from (bodily) sexual arousal. To explain: that sexual energy (as in feeling lusty) is an affective energy – libido, as distinct from sexual arousal, is an instinctual passion otherwise known as desire – whereas bodily arousal (as in genital engorgement, erectile tissue, lubricious fluids and so on) is only sensuous (as in sensate) or, more properly, purely sensual. (Richard, List D, No. 20, 11 December 2009) CHRONO: I remember this quote from Richard standing out and highlighting this confusion: Richard: {Sure ... it is this simple: you are into altering behavioural patterns (rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic) whereas what I speak of is the elimination of that which causes the aberrant behaviour in the first place. As pacifists and their ilk (those who live the doctrine of non-violence) do not eliminate the source of aberrant behaviour ... then they have to imitate the actual ease of an actual freedom from the human condition by making a big splash about their ‘goodie-goodie’ behaviour.} To put it simply – and in a way that might just convey it to you – this what I speak of is somewhat indicated by what is possibly the only passage in the Christian’s Holy Scriptures worthy of note. Viz.: • ‘He and/or she that looketh upon a woman and/or man with lust in their heart has already committed adultery’. {Whilst obviously not a direct quote, this applies to all anti-social behaviour ... not just a minor thing like sex outside of marriage. Things like all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides, to give but a small yet very representative example. Which means: clean up your act on the ‘inside’ and the ‘outer’ actions are free to be appropriate to the circumstances.} (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Sex) VINEETO: Of course it is confusing because you snipped the beginning and end of the quote (added in curly brackets here). Richard is talking about rules made by pacifists and religious moralists to restrain instinctual behaviour instead of aiming to eliminate the very source of the offending behaviour – the instinctual passions. Here Richard points out that the Bible-quote at least considers the instinctual feelings as well as the instinctually-driven behaviour as something reprehensible (but offering nothing but repression for remedy). CHRONO: But further to that, probably the main reason for this is that I have never had ‘magical sex’. I’ll admit that that’s probably because all of these beliefs are standing in the way. Thus it ends up not being playful, appreciative, and fun, but instead an act that must be performed “properly”. The physical delight gets stunted to some degree. I wasn’t aware of all of this before though. Just that my experience stood in stark contrast to anything in the gradations of intimacy. Consequently, the rest follows what Peter writes about blaming the other. Blaming them for not allowing me the proper “space” for this intimacy that I desire to eventuate (it’s funny that I am realizing that that is actually what I am looking for as I am writing this). VINEETO: Well, of course if you start with the top-most grade, so to speak, and want ‘magical sex’ right away without exploring and getting accustomed to the preceding stages of Grace’s gradation scale first, you have a good excuse for being resentful and not even start. Besides – Richard: Put succinctly, this intimity, this most intimate of intimacies, has been beyond the ken of humankind since forever! [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 46, 7 February 2016). Which means it is never talked about and hence entirely new to human history. It’s time someone puts it into practice and brings delicious intimacy into “the ken of humankind”. The more you allow yourself to be naïve the easier you have access to the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté. * VINEETO: This correspondence may be useful as well – <snipped> (Actualism, Peter, Selected Correspondence, Social Identity). CHRONO: I can see what Peter writes here about the demands of the social identity. I can feel the separation from others and experienced it in an epitomized way when I was going in to work last week. As I was walking from the parking lot into the building, I saw that all the people’s walking about were a ‘they’ and a ‘them’. And ‘I’ was a ‘me’. It was like the social identity program had just booted up and I saw the beginnings of it. It’s clear now that everyone (including me) is engaged in the correcting of the issues coming much later from this through various means but not willing to acknowledge the start of it. VINEETO: It is indeed the instinctual programming that automatically places ‘me’ in the centre of all ‘my’ feelings and actions, thus creating a ‘me’ and ‘them’, whereas increasing naiveté allows you to recognize that everyone is inflicted with the same instinctual passions as you, and you can more easily (unilaterally) recognize them as fellow human beings. * VINEETO: You have identified the nub of the old paradigm which applies both to the spiritual as well as the materialistic aspect – your ‘being’ searching for the fulfilment that only an actual freedom can provide. Instead, for millennia people have been settling for second best – either spiritual enlightenment or material fulfilment, as in addictions to ‘highs’, ranging from drugs, success, group-highs, winning competitions, admiration or similar ‘self’-enhancing activities. It is an excellent realisation to have identified this as “‘my’ path”, in contrast to the wide and wondrous path. It is a dead-end road unless you want to settle for second best. This “limerence” only reifies the ‘self’ and the ‘self’s’ yearning for grandeur in the dream of the ‘good’ side – ‘self’-aggrandisement. The sooner you recognize, and consequently decline, the nature of the “dream” the sooner the attraction to the “most intense suffering” will also abate. Perhaps a thorough investigation of what is left of “the dream of ‘love’” might be useful – (FAQ: Why is love (Love) no Solution?) CHRONO: It’s something that I have been thinking about since reading the correspondence thus far. Why do I want this dream (of love and limerence) to be true? What is this dream composed of? I realized this past week that for the unknown path to become apparent that the belief in ALL of ‘my’ dreams would have to go. All of ‘my’ dreams were somewhere and somewhen else. They would never actually manifest here. This brought a strange sense of relief. I know at some level that I am only fooling myself with some deception. Then while leaving work and heading home I experienced a sensuousness I quite often experience at the end of the day and had a spontaneous realization that the end of ‘my’ dreams was also the end of all of ‘my’ nightmares. VINEETO: This is an excellent realisation – “the end of ‘my’ dreams was also the end of all of ‘my’ nightmares”. The good feelings keep the bad feelings in place. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ often found when there was a stubborn emotional problem that it was a certain dream or other cherished attachment which needed to be looked at before ‘she’ could resolve/ dissolve the problem. CHRONO: The next day while I mulled this over, I got a “peek” behind this. All of this was due to the essential pain of being ‘me’. And I felt deep down what ‘my’ essential task was despite this pain. ‘My’ task is to survive at all costs. Every single moment that ‘I’ am ‘being’ is another moment that ‘I’ am buying “time” to survive. At literally any moment ‘I’ can die. There’s a realm of fear here that’s raw and untouched. Very immediate and urgent. I backed away from it. But then I started again thinking about time. I realize that a very big bulk of ‘me’ is this feeling of existing over time. But it’s always any other time than this moment. Much of my modus operandi has been to change ‘me’ while also remaining ‘me’. Now it’s clear that ‘I’ cannot end ‘me’. My thinking was something like ‘I’ trying to expose ‘me’ and this would dissolve ‘me’. But ‘I’ have to ‘be’ naiveté. I’ve been cunningly trying to take a “shortcut”. VINEETO: Excellent contemplations and discoveries, Chrono. Every identity is trying to “take a “shortcut”” – it’s the very nature of being an imaginary yet passionate identity. You can pat yourself on the back for each time you discover another one of ‘my’ strategies and enjoy and appreciate your insights and success. CHRONO: While all of the above was being “churned” at the back of my mind, I was reading this correspondence and this suddenly made sense: Richard: As simply as possible: human consciousness – as in, flesh-and-blood bodies being conscious (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun expressing a state or condition), or sentient – is common to all human beings. (Richard, List D, Rick, 28 May 2013) This flesh and blood body has its own consciousness independent of ‘me’. This was so interesting and so fascinating. VINEETO: Yes, there is a consciousness, the sentience of this flesh-and-blood body, naturally. It is not “its own consciousness” because you are this flesh-and-blood body, it is your own consciousness. The identity only hijacks this marvellous capacity and blights it with passions and emotions, distortions and problems. Hence the suggestion to get back to feeling good before you begin to sort out any triggers to your diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation. A flesh and blood body entirely “independent of ‘me’” operates apperceptively and is capable of great clarity. CHRONO: I started experiencing a pain at the back of my neck. Then it was like a heavy blanket was removed from over my body slowly and I was here. This body was as if moving on its own. No reference to ‘me’. I went to help someone at work and I expected a near pull back to think about what ‘I’ am supposed to do but I was already doing it. To be friendly and helpful was no longer something that I had to attain to. I am now thinking of Richard’s wonder-land-tale and understand it much more. VINEETO: A great description of a PCE. How easy to be right here, once you realised that a flesh and blood body can perfectly function without any help from ‘me’. CHRONO: But it passed and ‘I’ started to wonder how can ‘I’ get from ‘me’ to “there”. Not long after ‘I’ was quickly met with another challenge at work. Someone came up and demanded with a small level of aggression that I give them their money or they will not leave. I started feeling that fear of being faced with the potential of another’s verbal assault (which seems backed by the fear of being physically assaulted). I ended up being able to help them and get them what they need and had a subsequent realization. Even though I felt fear, I simultaneously experienced everything to be well due to the “after-effect” of the prior experience. What I saw during it though was that ‘I’ felt slighted by the way they approached me for help. Thus I also became aware of an anger building in myself. Towards the end of it I became aware of how ‘I’ was standing in the way of beneficence operating again. I also became aware of how much “respect” plays a role in society. Respect is backed by the fear of violence. Every identity demands respect. And this respect is to acknowledge their identity in the first place. VINEETO: You can give them respect as fellow human beings just as you can give this respect to yourself. With increased awareness how you feel each moment the upcoming problems are easily dealt with, without you having to act out any of the emotions which arise. A perfect example of the actualism in practice. * VINEETO: However, there is no point in going into these limerences once you know what they are about or into the feelings of the fear of ending ‘me’ again and again unless ‘I’ am prepared, via discovering and dissolving the last bastions of ‘me’ objecting to ‘my’ demise, especially when you already found out that you “would go in circles”. CHRONO: Yes I need to bring being happy and harmless each moment again in every aspect of my life while still remaining ‘me’. It makes a lot of sense. VINEETO: It is also a lot of fun, and even more fun when you get into the habit of appreciating your successes. Cheers Vineeto October 31 2025 CHRONO: Hi Vineeto, As always, I greatly appreciate your responses and participation. VINEETO: Thank you for your extensive reflections. The way you phrased the last sentence it looks as if naiveté, though being the least attractive option for ‘me’, is nevertheless the only way to achieve a more continuous feeling good? CHRONO: I phrased it that way because I unknowingly had the emotional investment in the other options such as love as a way to achieve fulfillment or continuous feeling good. It’s only through seeing its limitations through seeing the light and dark sides of it that only one path remains open so to speak. Also because I have not gone deep enough into naiveté for it to become ‘my’ path. I can see how this path even to being naiveté is different to what everyone in the world does. VINEETO: Hi Chrono, You are very welcome. I’m pleased to hear you recognized the dark side of love and no longer consider it an option “to achieve fulfillment”. Of course “this path even to being naiveté is different to what everyone in the world does” – the actual world is outside of ‘me’ and everyone in the world is busy being ‘me’. Before you contemplate ‘being naiveté’ or going “deep”, or “planning of naiveté being ‘your’ path”, it is not. It is the path of self-less inclination, hence ‘you’ won’t have much of a role to play apart from objecting. �� Why not start being naïve, in little steps. First it feels a bit uncomfortable, foolish or insecure (like a teenager first talking to a girl for instance). Then you dare extending this modus operandi a bit longer, expand into other areas of life – and you find it feels good, light, different, felicitous. You do it at your own pace, of course, don’t even think of pushing yourself, perhaps remember how you were as a kid (but now with adult sensibilities) and … enjoy it. You might find other people respond, like it, even become more friendly (naiveté is infectious). Allowing yourself to be naive is indeed different to what serious sophisticated people in the world do – but who cares. Being naïve, you like yourself and simultaneously like others. It feels good, it is harmless and it’s infectious. Appreciate your small steps, then bigger steps, in this new way of living. It gives you confidence. It is intimate and invites naïve intimacy with fellow human beings. Being naïve includes not knowing what you are going to do next, or say next, being spontaneously happy and harmless. The less you pay attention to any self-image or pride, the easier it becomes. Putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t matter’ basis allows you to be less ‘self’-oriented and more open to the adventure of what being here actually is. It’s fun. CHRONO: So I am now trying to rememorate all of the times and experiences of being naiveté in my life. I particularly enjoyed reading “A Rather Quaint Clay-Pit Tale” and the description and experience of being naiveté. VINEETO: Don’t “try”, don’t ‘work’ on it – just allow the hidden-away-during-puberty childhood naïveté to bubble up. Richard: And as ‘he’ stood there, delightedly extolling the virtues of being naiveté itself, ‘he’ enthusiastically encouraged ‘his’ rapt audience to reach down inside of themselves intuitively (a.k.a. feeling it out) going past the rather superficial emotions and/or feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions and/or feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until they came to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where they intuitively feel they elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’, at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself), and, having located ‘being’ itself, gently and tenderly sense out the area immediately below that (just above and/or just before and almost touching on the sex centre) where they would find themselves both likeable and liking (for here lies sincerity and/or naiveté) and here is where they can, finally, like themself (very important) no matter what, for here is the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’, and, moreover, here lies tenderness and/or sweetness and togetherness and/or closeness because here is where it is possible to be the key which unlocks the potency of naiveté.(Richard, A Rather Quaint Clay-Pit Tale) CHRONO: I am wondering what are your thoughts on this: VINEETO: It’s a wonderful and inspiring story; perhaps if you not use it as a serious sophisticated script but start by being sincere and naïve you’ll have more fun than trying to be naiveté right away. CHRONO: What was your experience of this as an identity? Is it something that you can just do anytime or only at a certain point? VINEETO: It only requires lots of enjoyment and appreciation, so much so that letting go of the controls is inevitable. It was a great time – naiveté fully bloomed when I was out-from-control (being naiveté and being out-from-control is in fact one and the same thing). There was no fear after I decided to pull out all the stops. There are several descriptions of this time of my life on the website, here is one – Vineeto: It happened around end of November/ beginning of December 2009. Richard showed me and Peter a short video where a young woman was filming herself having pleasuring herself with unabashed delight. It was obvious that she was entirely unselfconscious, not acting, not pretending, but simply having a great time. Hers was a genuinely naïve enjoyment and celebration of her sexuality, an unbridled and uninhibited sensuality and sensuosity. ‘Vineeto’ was impressed, and at the end of the video ‘she’ said “if she can do it I can do it”. You’ll have to remember that two weeks before Richard had impressed up ‘her’ to come out-from-control. (Richard, List D, No. 25, 6 February 2012). So ‘Peter’ and ‘Vineeto’ went to the bedroom, and with such naïve demonstration it was indeed easy to imitate and replicate the naïve unbridled enjoyment of sexuality and sensuality. That’s how ‘Vineeto’ lost ‘her’ own inhibitions. When Respondent No. 4(D) met us [Peter, Pamela, Tom, Richard and myself] on 5th December 2009, ‘Vineeto’ finally noticed the change in ‘herself’ and happily whispered to Richard “psst, I am out-from-control” – ‘Vineeto’: The other observation from this period of being out-from-control worth sharing, I was able to make when ‘No. 4(D)’ came for a visit. I remember clearly one day sitting in a circle of 5 friends, utterly relaxed despite the fact that I had never met one of them in person, and I noticed that I had no personal agenda whatsoever, no plan to stir the conversation into a particular direction, nothing to emphasize or hide, no self-centredness or favouritism, no shame, shyness, embarrassment, no power or drive – I was just being myself as I was. I sat in this group, as one of many, and my sole interest was that everyone present (including me as one of those present) enjoyed themselves/ obtained the maximum benefit from our meeting. I experienced myself as being unreservedly at ease and utterly benign and wasn’t driven to say anything unless it contributed to the overall quality of the conversation. (Direct Route, James, 16 Jan 2010). Funnily enough, I completely forgot the event which had set it all in motion and allowed me to traverse the ‘wall of fear’ without noticing what ‘I’ had done, so to speak. Obviously, my social-conditioned mind still had come to terms with the newly discovered reality. It was months later when Richard reminded me of the ‘fear-shattering’ event. It’s quite a laugh! (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 9 June 2025) * VINEETO: Yes, there is a tangible dare “to have a genuine intent to be happy and harmless”. Hence unless you genuinely enjoy being happy and harmless for its own sake you won’t care to dare leaving the ties behind that so (comfortably and uncomfortably) bind you. When pure intent is active, there are no worries of being “callous” or “uncaring”. CHRONO: I am getting a flavour of naiveté now as I’m typing and reflecting. Similar to my previous experience in the journal of allowing myself to meet people where they are (13 Oct 25). And this particular part in the above clay-pit tale quote very much sticks out and serves as a direction for me: Richard: … both likeable and liking (for here lies sincerity and/or naiveté) and here is where they can, finally, like themself (very important) no matter what… (Richard, A Rather Quaint Clay-Pit Tale) VINEETO: Indeed, when you are genuine, sincere in your aim to imitate the actual as much as possible, being naïve comes easy and with it fall away the self-deprecating feelings that have dominated your daily life. It is such a relief to finally be able to like yourself no matter what, and hence like others. CHRONO: I can see in that direction that there are no worries of being callous or uncaring as both others and myself are easily in consideration and regard. As I’m thinking on this I find that another one of my worries is something like “how can I like others when they are being ‘bad’?” And I found a ready answer as I feel myself likeable then others can also be likeable irregardless of the antics they get up to. VINEETO: Exactly. CHRONO: I find then a subsequent objection that reads like “I can be more easily hurt the more naïve that I am” but here in this place where I am already likeable, I don’t think it could be possible to be hurt. But it does highlight the belief in me of how that to be naïve is to be “unknowing” or “unaware”. VINEETO: Well, it is still possible to be hurt because you might still have unexamined issues, but that is the challenge and opportunity to clean yourself up. The main fear, as you said, is that you don’t know what will be happening – being naïve you would more likely welcome the adventure rather than fear it. CHRONO: As a follow up to that, I am realizing that it’s a very viable alternative to love. I am allowing this to “soak in”. It relates to caring in which I can only sum up currently as love is dishonest in that it does not truly regard the other (because it’s mainly about ‘me’), while naiveté does. Are you making a spreadsheet for all the pros and cons before you start living it? And who is in charge of making the assessment? ‘Me’ and ‘my’ desires and fears or pure intent? Armchair planning gets you nowhere – dare, and care to dare, and just do it. * VINEETO: I talked to Andrew about guilt recently (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Andrew2, 24 October 2025), perhaps you have read it. Additionally to the original guilt of being an instinctual ‘being’ there is the social conditioning regarding sexuality in almost all societies, because man-woman sexuality is the genesis of family and thus the very core of civilisation itself and therefore strictly regulated almost everywhere, not only via laws but also “guilt and shame”. It is possible to unravel this social conditioning when pure intent is firmly in place. As for the second aspect of the “feeling of guilt” because “you are disregarding your partner” – when you deliberate shift your focus of interest from personal sexual satisfaction only to intimacy, the whole nature of sexual congress will change in the direction of including your partner, as a fellow play-mate, in the direct (bodily) intimacy of sexual congress. CHRONO: Yes I hadn’t considered that the root of the feeling of guilt came instinctually. I will have to make this deliberate shift and start from there. VINEETO: Ah, another “I will have to”. But you can voluntarily make a shift because intimacy is such a delicious happening to explore. Actualism is not like learning or training for an exam like in the real world – if it’s not fun and being friendly with yourself, don’t even consider it. * VINEETO: Well, of course if you start with the top-most grade, so to speak, and want ‘magical sex’ right away without exploring and getting accustomed to the preceding stages of Grace’s gradation scale first, you have a good excuse for being resentful and not even start. Besides – Richard: Put succinctly, this intimity, this most intimate of intimacies, has been beyond the ken of humankind since forever! [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 46, 7 February 2016). CHRONO: I think as far as sex goes the best I’ve had from the gradations of intimacy is “good sex”, but now I can make a deliberate aim towards experiencing the full gradations. You can probe and experiment and enjoy the whole way. Again, there is no exam to pass at the end and no medals to collect. * VINEETO: Which means it [intimity] is never talked about and hence entirely new to human history. It’s time someone puts it into practice and brings delicious intimacy into “the ken of humankind”. The more you allow yourself to be naïve the easier you have access to the near-innocent intimacy of naïveté. CHRONO: And that someone will be me! VINEETO: Marvellous. * VINEETO: Yes, there is a consciousness, the sentience of this flesh-and-blood body, naturally. It is not “its own consciousness” because you are this flesh-and-blood body, it is your own consciousness. The identity only hijacks this marvellous capacity and blights it with passions and emotions, distortions and problems. Hence the suggestion to get back to feeling good before you begin to sort out any triggers to your diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation. A flesh and blood body entirely “independent of ‘me’” operates apperceptively and is capable of great clarity. CHRONO: I have been wondering, is it possible for this awareness of being a flesh and blood body to also be there as a feeling being? Could it be a connection between ‘me’ and the actual? The reason I ask is because I do always have this inkling that I’m here this whole time all the time. VINEETO: Yes, it is possible, mainly from lingering memories of your various PCEs and moments of apperceptiveness. The “awareness of being a flesh and blood body” can peek through, especially when no good or bad feelings interfere with your enjoyment and appreciation of being here. But this does not mean that there is a “connection between ‘me’ and the actual”. * VINEETO: You can give them respect as fellow human beings just as you can give this respect to yourself. With increased awareness how you feel each moment the upcoming problems are easily dealt with, without you having to act out any of the emotions which arise. A perfect example of the actualism in practice. CHRONO: The word “respect” for me has always had a connotation of some authority involvement backed by punishment and reward. It seems to translate into “stay in line”. Could “regard” perhaps be a synonym instead for it in this context of seeing them as a fellow human being? VINEETO: The word “respect” comes from the Latin respectus, meaning “a looking at” or “regard”, and the verb respicere, “to look back at”. (https://www.etymonline.com/word/respect). Development of meaning: From this original sense, the meaning evolved to include “regard”, “esteem”, and “consideration”. (Merriam Webster) As you can see the word has a perfectly neutral origin, it’s time that the meaning again expands from having “a connotation of some authority” only. I like both words. As for authority, that is a different issue for another conversation. For now, if you are interested, I recommend the selected correspondences found on the library page regarding authority and the section on authority in the Basic to Full Freedom article. Cheers Vineeto November 6 2025 VINEETO: Before you contemplate ‘being naiveté’ or going “deep”, or “planning of naiveté being ‘your’ “path”, it is not. It is the path of self-less inclination, hence ‘you’ won’t have much of a role to play apart from objecting. Why not start being naïve, in little steps. First it feels a bit uncomfortable, foolish or insecure (like a teenager first talking to a girl for instance). Then you dare extending this modus operandi a bit longer, expand into other areas of life – and you find it feels good, light, different, felicitous. You do it at your own pace, of course, don’t even think of pushing yourself, perhaps remember how you were as a kid (but now with adult sensibilities) and … enjoy it. You might find other people respond, like it, even become more friendly (naiveté is infectious). Allowing yourself to be naive is indeed different to what serious sophisticated people in the world do – but who cares. Being naïve, you like yourself and simultaneously like others. It feels good, it is harmless and it’s infectious. Appreciate your small steps, then bigger steps, in this new way of living. It gives you confidence. It is intimate and invites naïve intimacy with fellow human beings. Being naïve includes not knowing what you are going to do next, or say next, being spontaneously happy and harmless. The less you pay attention to any self-image or pride, the easier it becomes. Putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t matter’ basis allows you to be less ‘self’-oriented and more open to the adventure of what being here actually is. It’s fun. CHRONO: I have been thinking on what you say here. And it struck me that the peace-on-earth of actual freedom is already always existing. Peace-on-earth exists already but only when ‘I’ in my entirety am no more. Thus the path is of a self-less inclination. Perhaps I’ve undiscerningly glossed over it. I also took note of what you wrote at the end that “It’s fun”. Well, am I having fun consistently? Am I enjoying and appreciating consistently? What’s in the way? What is it I really want? VINEETO: Indeed, this is the very way the actualism method works in a nutshell. By following a self-less inclination you are having fun and vice versa, felicitous and innocuous feelings don’t provide fodder for ‘me’. CHRONO: Thus in an overall manner to having more fun consistently the thing that sticks out to me the most is what I can only describe as a persona that’s bent on being sophisticated. A sophisticate. Making things complicated. Setting up an “image” of myself. Being serious. Even the visceral manoeuvring in my thinking and feeling. I found immediate relief in this noticing because only in this way I finally don’t have to be a “someone”. Interestingly, it was one of my major qualms with work that I noticed a while back. It’s not that work itself is majorly difficult, it’s that I have to be a “someone” at work. But it’s actually enjoyable when I don’t. Being a “someone” is a serious business. And this extends to pretty much every aspect of my life. VINEETO: It’s wonderful, isn’t it. To be ‘someone’ is the modus operandi for which you have been conditioned since childhood, backed up by the instinctual imperative of survival – but is this really still necessary? As you say “it’s actually enjoyable when I don’t”. It is also possible because you can be naïve with all your adult sensibility intact. * VINEETO: Don’t “try”, don’t ‘work’ on it – just allow the hidden-away-during-puberty childhood naïveté to bubble up. CHRONO: Yes I’ve set my benchmark that if there’s a feeling of effort or “work” involved then something may be amiss. I was thinking that maybe I’m just being lazy, but then the opposite of this is to be getting to “work” on it. VINEETO: Yes, the real-world rules, morals and dogmas operate in opposites and have only two alternatives. There is a third alternative. * VINEETO: Well, it is still possible to be hurt because you might still have unexamined issues, but that is the challenge and opportunity to clean yourself up. The main fear, as you said, is that you don’t know what will be happening – being naïve you would more likely welcome the adventure rather than fear it. CHRONO: Yes it’s much more enjoyable to welcome the adventure rather than fear it. One of the things that I noticed in the PCE described prior was that I did not “know” what would happen next or even what I would say or do. It happened of its own accord and I acted in a beneficial and friendly way. And I noticed after some time that ‘my’ main way of being is to be control itself. I am always projecting into a past, present, and future. This is a way to ensure that ‘I’ exist and remain in control. This aspect of there not being control is scary to me because it feels this is the way that I can protect this body. VINEETO: Indeed, being in control is the sole function of this contingent ‘being’, ‘me’, the entity which does not exist in its own right and needs to control to prevent being exposed as such. ‘You’ need to keep working hard to justify ‘your’ existence, whereas “it’s actually enjoyable when I don’t”, when you can allow yourself to be what you are. You lessen control by progressively allowing the obstacles to enjoyment and appreciation to disappear via attentiveness and (if necessary) investigation – and thus by imitating the actual. * VINEETO: Are you making a spreadsheet for all the pros and cons before you start living it? And who is in charge of making the assessment? ‘Me’ and ‘my’ desires and fears or pure intent? Armchair planning gets you nowhere – dare, and care to dare, and just do it. CHRONO: Ha, weirdly a mental spreadsheet sounds like something that I am “supposed” to do. But if I keep it simple, I just enjoy feeling good. This unravelling of what I have been doing this whole time is helping push the envelope further. VINEETO: It makes it so much simpler, doesn’t it? * CHRONO: I have been wondering, is it possible for this awareness of being a flesh and blood body to also be there as a feeling being? Could it be a connection between ‘me’ and the actual? The reason I ask is because I do always have this inkling that I’m here this whole time all the time. VINEETO: Yes, it is possible, mainly from lingering memories of your various PCEs and moments of apperceptiveness. The “awareness of being a flesh and blood body” can peek through, especially when no good or bad feelings interfere with your enjoyment and appreciation of being here. But this does not mean that there is a “connection between ‘me’ and the actual”. CHRONO: Is this because only being naiveté can make this connection? Or that there cannot actually be a connection between ‘me’ and the actual? VINEETO: ‘I’ can never enter the actual world, hence no connection whatsoever. When ‘I’ disappear, the actual world becomes apparent, when ‘I’ reappear, the actual world is no longer apparent. But you, the flesh-and-blood body can have shorter or longer moments of apperception where you are aware that you are the flesh-and-blood body – this is the very definition of apperception, the mind’s experience of itself, unmediated by the identity. Of course, once ‘I’ re-enter the arena, ‘I’ claim the experience for myself, hence your impression that there is a connection. Richard: To be naïveté itself (i.e., naïveté embodied as a childlike persona with adult sensibilities), which is to be the closest one can to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ (innocence is where ‘self’ is not) … (Richard, A Quaint Clay-Pit Tale, Last Tooltip). Naiveté facilitates ‘my’ diminishment and ‘my’ intermittent disappearance, yet the word ‘connection’ does not apply. * VINEETO: The word “respect” comes from the Latin respectus, meaning “a looking at” or “regard”, and the verb respicere, “to look back at”. (https://www.etymonline.com/word/respect). Development of meaning: From this original sense, the meaning evolved to include “regard”, “esteem”, and “consideration”. (Merriam Webster) As you can see the word has a perfectly neutral origin, it’s time that the meaning again expands from having “a connotation of some authority” only. I like both words. As for authority, that is a different issue for another conversation. For now, if you are interested, I recommend the selected correspondences found on the library pageregarding authority and the section on authority in the Basic to Full Freedom article. CHRONO: I think the reason that the word respect has the connotations of some authority (as opposed to authoritative) is because my parents would always say that I need to respect them (and anyone else who holds a particular position). Thus I have been differentiating that word when used usually in a real world setting from regard. But perhaps this takes a further looking into as I noticed in one of my previous posts way back that I had a habit of being a ‘victim’. I’ve taken on board that I need to ‘respect’ people but this means in a sort of psychic submission type of way. And also backed (originally from my parents) that if I don’t then I do not “care” and I will be physically punished. This way of operating demonstrates a complete lack of equity. And equally would not be a way to bring it about. At the core of this is the belief that I need to psychically submit or else people will get angry (sounds very silly and feels embarrassing when I write it out). VINEETO: I don’t know what holds authority, anyone’s authority, in place for you. For ‘Vineeto’ the very justification for any authority disappeared in one fell swoop with the startling apperceptive discovery – ‘Vineeto’: Usually, when I succeeded freeing myself of one authority figure, I soon found that I had only replaced them with a supposedly better one – but it never solved the problem. Slowly I started to understand that in order to be free from authority I had to eliminate the need for, and support of, those very beliefs and values underlying the authority Finally one evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realisation. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery. This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’. But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear. When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master. Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free. (Actualism, Vineeto, A Bit of Vineeto, #oneevening). It had been quite a startling and consequential PCE. CHRONO: I noticed in the From Basic Actual Freedom to Full Actual Freedom Part 1 correspondence that you wrote: Vineeto: Remember that ‘you’, the guardian, have a general backward outlook who one regards automatically, as in habitually, as a (non-expertise-related) authority, when, in fact, they don’t have any more authority than one is willing to give them. And ‘your’ choice to give certain people an unearned aura of authority has a lot to do with expected social rewards and punishment. One can then decide in each situation if this is worth one’s voluntary submission. The more one simplify/ reduces one’s need/ attraction for the perceived social rewards and thus anticipated ‘punishment’ of withheld ‘reward’, the less one will find oneself being drawn into power conflicts with supposed (guardian-created) authority figures. CHRONO: Would you say this course of action only applies if you are basically free? VINEETO: It was written with the social identity in mind who remains in part or entirely in situ when one becomes basically free. When your aim is to become actually free then obviously the outlook of the feeling being identity is equally backward oriented. As such everything I wrote in that paragraph also applies to feeling beings. You can dismantle your psychic and conditioning ties to authority at any time. CHRONO: I also noticed in the same correspondence Richard writes: Richard: … this ‘battle of the sexes’ need no longer hold sway if the need for power is seen at its source. (Richard, List B, No. 10d, 20 March 2000). CHRONO: I have been wondering if what I experience is an example of a “need for power” or if that need is something else. VINEETO: Are you asking if the habit of being a ‘victim’ is related to a “need for power”? It certainly is, it is the flip-side of the same power structure, which, being sourced in the instinctual passions of fear and aggression, is operating ubiquitously. By choosing to be naïvely happy and harmless you voluntarily withdraw from the battlefield (not as a pacifist or virtue-hunter) but as someone who prefers (i.e. values more) getting along in a beneficial way with your fellow human beings. You are playing a different game, so to speak. Or, as Richard called it – playing for fun, not for keeps. Cheers Vineeto
This Correspondence Continued
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