# Actual Freedom ~ Commonly Raised Objections Commonly Raised Objections ## The Actualism Method Is Too Difficult
| Richard, would you say that it takes quite a bit of effort and determination to follow through in asking the question to it’s conclusion? I find it takes a lot of effort to resist being pulled into negative imaginary scenarios. It seems to be easier to just go with them, get sucked into negativity, rant inside for quite some time, then eventually let it pass. Of course, I’ve wasted all of that time in an imaginary story line rather than enjoying the only moment I have to be alive. Would say it is similar to the movie ‘The Matrix’, in that all imaginary memory based knowledge seems to want to keep us locked in it’s grid? Would you say it takes a lot of effort?
| I don’t understand the AF method instructions. I can’t remember a PCE either, and I don’t think a fear of having ‘me’ eliminated is valid because I have no idea what that would be like.
| Asking HAIETMOBA at times seems to create irritation that was not present before I asked it. Yesterday, I wondered why not just simply say to oneself: ‘I’m experiencing (then focus on what your feeling and then verbally label what you find) irritation (just an example). Or ‘I’m feeling sad’ instead of asking HAIETMOBA and then saying ‘I’m feeling anxiety’ after that. I find it difficult to run the question while doing certain tasks at work, mainly from its whopping 16 syllables going threw my head while I try to think through or do something. 2) Sometimes I just feel ‘shitty’, but I can’t pin point it as irritation (anger), anxiety (fear), or sadness (sorrow). What to do? If I keep trying to figure it out, I usually feel worse. While, I’ve had a easier time shortening the question to ‘how am I feeling?’ I’ve chosen to ‘stick it out’ with the original method to possibly figure ‘why’ I have a problem with it ‘as it stands’. Oh, how I wish it to become a ‘nonverbal approach to life’! (whatever that means).
| Who can vouch for this method with 100% sincerity?
| The problem with HAIETMOBA is H. As soon as one is aware of a feeling or thought manifesting, the questioner kicks in to action. This triggers the whole labelling and subsequent analytical process. At that point you’re screwed because you have suckered for the same old trap.
| The word ‘how’ makes it difficult for me to grasp. What sort of answer – experiential or otherwise does it beg? Bit like asking: how am I typing this? Why with my hands! Or: With pleasure. Or: I just am. Or: By intending to. What does how mean? How is your sentence different from: ‘Notice what you are experiencing with your senses now?’ All of the above are new-age clichés.
| I am, of course, aware that Richard was giving a practical demonstration of how the method works in practice ... i.e. what happened between [one date] and [another date] to trigger the loss of felicitous feelings? In the course of daily life, lots of things can and do happen to cause or diminish felicitous feelings ... But here is the key point, the one that almost every respondent seems to have overlooked ... the reaction I have described occurs independently of those events and independently of my current attitude toward actualism/actualists. I am not bullshitting about this. I could be having a great day, could be on fine terms with actualists, could be very enthusiastic about actualism ... yet when I start asking myself ‘How ....?’ ... inevitably before very long, without anything necessarily having happened other than beginning to ask the question and become self-consciously seeking to maintain felicitous feelings, the feedback loop sets in exactly as I have described it. I’ve said this repeatedly: the problem I had with the method was unrelated to any and all problems that the method revealed, and unrelated to any and all events that arose in daily life. It itself created a problem that is not otherwise present.
| I think I have found perhaps why some struggle with this method. 1) unless like Vineeto and Peter you have a history of training of the attention (i.e. meditation, passive awareness, mindfulness, self observation) your control over your attention will likely not be stable enough to usefully examine feelings and beliefs. One could benefit in practicing attentiveness sitting down with a simple focus like the darkness you see when you close your eyes. (...) Basically I think ‘actualism’ asks too much for many people. Some training in attentiveness could be helpful. Those with experience or with a ‘knack’ for this kind of thing would not of course. I’m sure you’re aware that certain folks have highly developed aptitudes that others don’t?
| The way Richard put it, it sounded like he was able to simply *choose* the way he felt, and seemed surprised that others could not. Speaking for myself alone now ... it does not work/has not worked that way. Why I do not know, but I would like to find out. I do not experience it as possible to choose how I am feeling at any given moment. Nay. Feelings happen involuntarily ... Richard, *IF* it is possible for anyone to feel excellent simply by choosing to feel excellent, why aren’t they?
| I should have trusted my own judgement all along. This ‘happy and harmless as humanly possible while remaining a self’ bullshit ... it’s just delaying the inevitable (and maybe getting so comfortable with it that there’s no longer a powerful enough incentive to go the rest of the way). No two ways about it, ‘self’-immolation is out and out suicide, an all-or-nothing affair if ever there was one ... and all the happy/harmless minimise-this-feeling maximise-that-feeling is no more than another game of ego, another way of jerking off and jerking oneself around. No thanks.
| Since I last felt good (6/7 hours ago), I have been trying to re-commence feeling good with no success. That sounds very difficult. I can remember – just barely this time – that it was thoughts about tomorrow and decision-making that probably ended the felicitous feelings. Meanwhile, here I am feeling ‘not-so-good’, lacklustre, flat, a little frustrated. How do I get back to feeling good?
| I had questions about the HAIETMOBA, and kept searching the site for answers, since I could not get answers from Vineeto or Richard.
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