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 Jesus Carlos on Discuss Actualism Forum July 20, 2024 JESUSCARLOS: I had a PCE or “vision of perfection” of that actual world in which there is no drama, no need, no resistance, no defense mechanism. Only a vast stillness, a sweetness permeating everything and a great sense of humor: I recorded, with all clarity, that in the actual and free world there is no seriousness, only an absolute sincerity product of the purity inherent to this universe. With all this, it only remained for me to express “I have absolute confidence in this universe, since it has brought me to this moment.” It all happened after having ingested fungi, with the chemical component of psilocybin. The PCE occurred after several episodes of contemplation, appreciation, introspection and “fight” with an alien entity inhabiting this body, which later came to be understood as a mere human condition being denied, to finally integrate as an other dimension of ‘me’ or me in my core. After the moment of struggle-recognition-integration, a deep cry ensued, an emotional discharge that allowed me to drain myself and reduce myself to a minimum. At the end I noticed that there was only pure “love”, or rather “pure sweetness” (in principle I didn’t mind distinguishing one from the other, but I know that the first one could take me to an ASC and translate into an increase of the ‘I’, but it didn’t happen). I was in that PCE for several minutes, and later came back for a couple of hours (the effect of mushrooms was very soft at this time), in which I was contemplating nature, the trees, the birds, the rocks, the plants, and then the stars, the moon, and greatly enjoying the company of my partner, without any record of any emotional compulsion (just “sweetness, sweetness, sweetness” and an absence of separation, which generated a deep atmosphere of intimacy). Between one PCE and the other, I was trying to understand the connection with pure intent, which would allow me to keep the golden thread and access to perfection again. Even today, a few days away, I maintain that pure connection, which allows me to easily move from feeling neutral to feeling good and from time to time from feeling good to feeling excellent. I haven’t managed to go any further and I’m on it, trying to investigate what’s stopping me. I note the reactivation of a certain fear, on a subtle level, of releasing again the controls. And thanks to the previous experience, I know that this resistance is “me”, it is the human condition, it is what at that moment was fully integrated and gave its place to the actual world. Thank you Richard, Vineeto, Peter, and everyone here, because it was essential to be able to reach this experience, to have a map that would prevent my loss in other directions. That, the desire to be free and sincerity were and are the key. A final note: during the PCE I was able to ask myself a couple of times, is this what I want? And the answer was: definitely yes! (Actualism, Others, Descriptions of PCEs). VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, This is perhaps the most comprehensive and all-encompassing PCE-report I have read. It has all the ingredients a leisurely experienced PCE can have, including establishing the golden clew to access pure intent. Now, it seems, there is nothing in the way to you enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive each moment of your life. You only need to actualize what you already know and have described so well. And as now is the only moment you can experience being alive why not do it now? With appreciation Vineeto November 5, 2024 VINEETO: Hi Jesus.Carlos, It is a pleasure to read your excellent progress report. JESUSCARLOS: Although dismantling the political and activist identity is bringing enormous benefits, it has above all been the exploration of love that has brought the most. What I can say for now is that I have been replacing a way of relating to my partner based on compulsive attraction with a way based on sweetness and care (and this substitution has not been a forced decision, rather I would say that it has been the product of experience and sincere observation). I can recognize that this care has above all to do with not imposing my agenda on her and fully understanding that she is a human being with her own autonomy, desires and needs. It has helped me to remember Richard’s commitment to giving himself completely to someone else with the firm intention of managing to live in an absolutely peaceful, harmonious and beneficial way for both. I feel less and less compulsive, in fact there are already days or maybe weeks in which I do not experience again the level of anxiety that I felt before the PCE. From time to time it is reactivated for a short period, and by simply attending to it, observing it, without expressing it or repressing it, it allows its prompt disappearance. VINEETO: Now that you recognize your partner as a fellow human being in her own right rather then as extension of your “compulsive attraction” which had automatically made you perceive her as your ‘possession’ being responsible, amongst other feelings, for all that anxiety you report. You are now able to experience more and more the delicious benefits of intimacy, which is vastly superior to the feelings of love it replaces. This intimacy can be deliberately increased with sincerity and naiveté and with sensuous attentiveness (see Grace’s scale of intimacy (Richard, Abditorium, Intimacy). JESUSCARLOS: To remember all the suffering and pain that I have experienced, or in which I have been a participant, even the cause, and the sincerity with which today I can say that I do not want even one millimeter more of all of it. On the contrary. That clarity that arises from that sincerity reestablishes the connection. And also naivety. VINEETO: Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ had similar sympathy and compassion for the hardships and, sometimes overwhelming, suffering of human beings she observed in the news and could relate to from some of ‘her’ own emotional struggles. Towards the end this vital interest developed into “a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster” (nowadays paraphrased as ‘near-actual-caring’) which facilitated ‘her’ self-immolation. Here is part of Richard’s summary of it: RICHARD: [...] 4. This moment-to-moment experiencing of a caring which is not self-centred/ self-centric provided ‘her’ with the experiential convincement that actualising such caring, via ‘self’-immolation, was the only solution to the human condition; this ‘hands-on’ understanding as a dynamically present feeling-being – an impressively distinct contrast to having been abeyant during PCE’s – left ‘her’ with absolutely no choice (lest ‘she’ be forever “rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic”). 5. Since a near-actual caring is, of course, epitomised by a vital interest in the suffering of all human beings coming to an end, forever, as a number one priority, then ‘her’ single-minded focus was essentially centred upon the most immediate way of ensuring this long-awaited global event could begin to take effect the soonest ... to wit: bringing ‘her’ own inevitable demise, at physical death, forward into a liminal imminence. 6. Because the means ‘she’ elected to utilise towards these ends was the near-actual intimacy which goes hand-in-hand with a near-actual caring (per favour that afore-mentioned absence of self-centredness/ self-centricity which typifies being out-from-control) it is apposite to defer to what Vineeto herself wrote on the 20th of January 2010, only fifteen days after her pivotal moment/ definitive event, as its refreshingly simple directness speaks for itself. Viz.: [...] ‘The final clue was again about caring, a caring as close to an actual caring as an identity can muster. Only when I cared enough to give all of ‘me’ to another person, to give them what they want most, was I then ready to give it to the one I cared for most, the one I was closest to, and then I was able to leave all remnant concerns and inhibitions of my identity behind. And that’s what happened”. (Direct Route, No. 20, 20 January 2010). (Out-from-Control Reports, Vineeto) JESUSCARLOS: Finally: since this weekend I have begun to understand more clearly what it means to decide how to feel, moment by moment (or when it is necessary to make a decision, since the consistency of feeling good, or excellent, etc. has been broken). I confess with all sincerity that until recently it seemed very difficult for me to understand or even accept this possibility. My tendency was rather that of a victim of circumstances. Feeling without agency at certain moments and in a negative sense (“the beer” is, in a positive sense, the disappearance of the “dooer’s” agency). This has begun to change significantly. Now I see and recognize that I do have that power, that decision is in my hands. Why not always decide to feel good, and beyond? It seems more and more absurd to me. And wonderful. VINEETO: This is really wonderful that you have recognized, and are actualizing, that how you feel is in your hands (and not due to some favourable or unfavourable event) and this enables you to feel good again each time after feeling/ good/feeling excellent slips below the line. Such a delight to read, thank you. Cheers Vineeto November 6, 2024 JESUSCARLOS: Dear Vineeto , thank you very much for your feedback, I really appreciate it a lot, and I read all your comments to the rest of the participants in this forum, because it is being very helpful to me in clarifying my doubts and giving me an increasingly stronger push towards the path to freedom. VINEETO: Dear JesusCarlos, Thank you for your positive feedback – I delighted how you can pick up clues to clear your doubts and help you enjoying and appreciating more and more and thus continue your journey towards your ultimate destiny. JESUSCARLOS: I found it very meaningful that you shared with me what the transformation of “sympathy and compassion for the…suffering of human beings” into ‘near-actual-caring’ was like for you towards the end. I have no doubt that my two more powerful aspirations/ motivation forces are actual intimacy and actual care. VINEETO: Yes, as Richard says – “This perpetual enjoyment and appreciation is facilitated by feeling as happy and as harmless as is humanly possible.” Harmless, i.e. being caring and considerate, is just as important as being happy – you cannot have one without the other. You cannot feel that you don’t care, shut yourself off or feel antagonism towards another and still feel happy. You can, upon recognition, channel the affective energy of feeling “sympathy and compassion for the … suffering of human beings” towards felicitous feelings by turning them into appreciation that there is now a solution, a possible end, because an actual freedom can deliver the goods, for ‘this body, that body and everybody’. In ‘my’ spiritual years I had pushed away caring for humanity at large, there was just too much misery to bear and no solution. However, when I discovered actualism, there was a solution, not just for ‘me’ but eventually for everybody. And it naturally followed that ‘I’ dedicated my life to peace-on-earth, something ‘I’ had always secretly wished for but which always seemed impossible. It was such a joy and uplifting force to finally do something worthwhile with ‘my’ life. And it’s still my favourite topic. JESUSCARLOS: Today, after some years, I was watching again the DVD “out of control” and some phrases and moments really struck me: 16:30 “instead of living in the present… let the universe live your life… the entire universe could do a better job…” 25:35 (‘Vineeto’ tears of sweetness) 34:31 “…it is selfish to stay in the real world… awfully selfish…” It was a boost to see this particular video again! VINEETO: I agree, there is a lot of delightful and useful information in that video, also about ‘nurture’ (I have watched it myself again a few months ago). KUBA: The ‘difficulty’ in actualism is due to the fact that all that ‘I’ have learnt in ‘my’ life was an encumbrance. The ease in actualism is unlocked when one stops being sophisticated haha. JESUSCARLOS: Golden Kuba!! VINEETO: Ha, and the opposite to being sophisticated is being naïve! It is so much fun to discover and allow naiveté, to be like a child again (with adult sensibilities) and to more be like what you are rather than what (internalized) other people want you to be. I have it on good authority that remembering to be naive can/will boost your baseline of feeling good to feeling excellent. It’s the opposite of stressing, telling yourself off or pushing hard – it’s being playful, liking yourself and others and enjoying and appreciation being here without any cause or condition, just enjoying being alive. (see also: (Richard, A Quaint Clay-Pit Tale). Cheers Vineeto December 14, 2024 JESUSCARLOS: I remember the last Vipassana retreat I did (2019), 10 days, in which a guy sitting next to me shared his experience after 25 years of practice: “each time I sit, for several hours, the most I can, I see myself as a soldier with a flamethrower, burning all the impurities, of my being that have punished this body for many lives.” I was terrified and that was when I finally realized that that was not my path. Now I realize that at least he had a point: the body is not to blame, it is “I” who has subjected and punished it all this time. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, This is a great story and a valuable insight you took away with you when you gave up Vipassana for good. JESUSCARLOS: It is “I” who must disappear, abandon the throne, set it free. But the method was not correct, you cannot free the body by subjecting yourself to intense days, leaving it physically immobile, something not natural for this body made by this universe, to move and enjoy being aware of itself and everything that surrounds and stimulates it. VINEETO: Yes, it is ‘I’ who stands in the way of becoming actually free but it is also ‘me’ which stands in the way. What the Vipassana doctrine means by ‘I’ is only one part, the ego, that “must disappear”, they leave the soul or capital-S ‘Self’ (‘me’, the instinctual passions) intact to continue to create its havoc. Therefore it’s no use to further extract or keep any ‘wisdom’ of what you may have osmotically (inadvertently) absorbed, rather make sure there is nothing of that nature lurking to confuse and lead astray. Claudiu and Kuba have a lot more experience with this topic and can warn you of its pitfalls. The way to becoming actually free is to consciously and knowingly imitate the actual, which you have experienced in your PCEs. To do that ‘you’ set the minimum standard of experience for yourself: feeling good. If ‘you’ are not feeling good then ‘you’ have something to look at to find out why. This way attentiveness to the cause of diminished enjoyment and appreciation restores felicity and innocuity. In other words, you are being affectively attentive to those ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings, which prevent you from enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive. Acknowledging that you are your feelings you can channel the affective energy into the felicitous feelings of delight, wonder, marvelling, enjoyment and appreciation to the point of activating naiveté where you like yourself and your fellow human beings and discover the fun of being alive. Sometimes you might have to do a closer inspection to one or the other of your ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings when they prove to be more than habitual but rather sticky because of a passionate belief or a persistent adherence. JESUSCARLOS: So I make peace with myself and establish the commitment to be generous with this body, support of everything “I” am and true actual reality. VINEETO: Just for clarification – the above description of the actualism method is not to “support of everything “I” am” because that would mean you want to support your ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings, which only strengthen your ‘self’ and keep it in existence. To “be generous with this body” doesn’t make much sense to me – when you take care of your affective moods your body benefits automatically. What is beneficial is to be a friend to yourself and not blame yourself for what you discover about yourself. Also, there is no such thing as “true actual reality” – RICHARD: [...] I get to comprehend what you mean by ‘actual reality’ each time you write ... it is a good description and I may borrow it, if I may, when writing to others about settling for second-best. [emphasis added]. Editorial note: there can be no such thing as ‘actual reality’ in the actual world]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 12a, 1 February 1999). RESPONDENT: 2. Actual reality (second best as you call it). We are identified as a witness to the world of thoughts, emotions, feelings, instincts, etc. We can be ruthless and loving without feeling identified with either action. We experience bliss whenever we become a witness. Everything is happening to us. We are being pulled and pushed around by our heart. RICHARD: Yes, well said. The term ‘actual reality’ is No. 12’s phrase by which I understand was meant what is really going on ‘within’ as compared with the facade or image one socially presents to others ... and fools oneself into believing. Such observation is useful as a preliminary step in one’s journey into one’s psyche – which is the human psyche – but to remain ‘being authentic’ is to remain a ‘sannyasin’ forever. Unless this inner reality is expunged, all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide will continue for ever and a day. To become the spiritual ‘witness’ is to have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of tender feelings, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of savage feelings and – by calling this bundle ‘Intelligence’ – to eventually realise oneself to be the unitive and centreless ontological entity (called ‘God’ by any other name) swimming in the ‘Ocean Of Oneness’ ... unborn and undying; birthless and deathless; timeless and spaceless; formless and ceaseless; immortal and immutable. Yet, unbeknown to those who perform this prestidigitation, to be divinity is to be cacodemonic ... diabolical in the sense that the savage feelings are kept subliminally alive. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 18 February 1999). See, how your own term “true actual reality” fits in with Respondent No. 12’s spiritual adherence in the above conversations? ‘Reality’ is an actualist term for the real world, the world where ‘I’ and ‘me’ reign supreme, and there is nothing actual about the real world of feelings and beliefs. Those two worlds never meet because no identity can ever experience the actual world. You only get to experience the actual world when the identity is in abeyance. JESUSCARLOS: I no longer need to relax my body, I need to relax the one who tenses it because he believes he has difficult missions to accomplish in this real world. VINEETO: I suggest you not only “relax the one who tenses it” but find out exactly is the cause for the tension, which is an affective cause. Be curious, be investigative, be persistent, until you discover the emotional cause of the tension, and from there you have a choice to decline being upset, tense, anxious, worried or sad. It is eminently possible to decline each and every ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotion but there is more to it than “relax the one who tenses it”. Sitting back and relaxing happens after you have done the homework. Cheers Vineeto December 15, 2024 VINEETO: To “be generous with this body” doesn’t make much sense to me – when you take care of your affective moods your body benefits automatically. What is beneficial is to be a friend to yourself and not blame yourself for what you discover about yourself. Also, there is no such thing as “true actual reality” JESUSCARLOS: Thank you Vineeto ! Got it. Not only did I express my ideas wrongly, but, as you say, I wasn’t looking at the problem correctly. It makes total sense to me what you suggest I rectify. I need to go deeper into my research to detect what exactly is the cause of my stress and anxiety. I know it’s me, both as an ego and a soul. But more than knowing it intellectually I need to see it experientially. Now I can see that I lost the connection with pure intent and I am simply operating from the old habits that I already know and are useful to me to defend myself in the jungle. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, You are right, intellectually knowing is not enough, you need to understand how your mind, i.e. your feelings and being, ticks. Again, the actualism method is of great help – paying ongoing affective attention to how you experience yourself informs you what diminished feeling good. You find what triggered this diminishment and get back to feeling good. Then you have a look at the problem. It may just be a habitual response and will disappear when you decide to decline to go along with it. In the long run none of those “old habits” “are useful to me to defend myself in the jungle” because they only perpetuate the conflict and therefore you are feeling worried and stressful. Remember that by acknowledging that you are your feelings to are able to change how you feel. Or you find that it is a more complex pattern, then you nut out why you consider the world a jungle, why you feel that you have to protect/ defend yourself, in other words protect /defend the feeling being inside your flesh-and-blood body, thereby harming it by stress. For instance, you can ponder/ feel out if resentment plays a part, like Claudiu discovered. The other helpful thing to keep in mind is to be a friend to yourself and don’t blame yourself for anything you might discover in the depth of your psyche – it’s all par for the course since we all do this business of being alive for the first time. Cheers Vineeto December 15, 2024 VINEETO: RICHARD: To become the spiritual ‘witness’ is to have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of tender feelings, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of savage feelings and – by calling this bundle ‘Intelligence’ – to eventually realise oneself to be the unitive and centreless ontological entity (called ‘God’ by any other name) swimming in the ‘Ocean Of Oneness’ … unborn and undying; birthless and deathless; timeless and spaceless; formless and ceaseless; immortal and immutable. Yet, unbeknown to those who perform this prestidigitation, to be divinity is to be cacodemonic … diabolical in the sense that the savage feelings are kept subliminally alive. [emphasis added]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 18 February 1999). JESUSCARLOS: I’ll be extra careful with this! As I am navigating in an extremely aggressive territory, I think that just these feelings are more active than before, and I am not recognizing them enough. They are doubly dangerous because they can feel like good feelings, because they serve to magnify me and give me strength, when “I need it most” because I perceive threats from others. But that’s not being harmless and considerate. Now I can see more clearly what is happening to me (or rather: what I’m doing). VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, When you say “these [savage] feelings are more active than before” at least you haven’t repressed them and are able to identify when they are happening. The best way to deal with anger and aggression is to neither suppress nor express them and thus allow the third alternative to hove into view. Richard gave a vivid detailed description how ‘he’ effectively got rid of full-blown anger (after he had identified and eliminated ‘his’ resentment of being alive) – Richard (speaking in the third person on the 13th of January, 2013): In the late-afternoon of an otherwise typical summer’s day, in 1981, a six-foot-two man was standing in the kitchen of his ex-farmhouse being soundly berated, as was also typical, by his four-foot-eleven wife; he was in a bind, a double-bind, in fact, and of his own making insofar as he had formed the intent, a few weeks earlier (on the 1st of January), to live life as it had been in their all-too-brief honeymoon period a little over fourteen years previously; his intent to do so was formed as a way of having it segue into the pristine purity of the four-hour perfection experience, indelibly imprinted in his memory, which he had experienced in all its marvellous wonder in the mid-winter of the previous year; his wife, having impetuously agreed that day to travel in concert with him, had already succumbed to the same-old same-old and was out to have him crack, too, so that their life together could revert to normal (having put all that pie-in-the-sky romantic nonsense back where it belonged in the wishful-thinking department). As he stood there, with the slowly-setting sun streaming yellow through the wide-open French doors leading out onto the brick-paved patio, he was quite aware that a similar scene had taken place only the day before, plus how he had managed to keep his act together only by the exigency of abruptly vacating the scene, until the barely suppressed anger she had invoked in him had subsided enough to return; he was acutely aware, also, that she had his number and, as far as she was concerned, it was only a matter of time before he too succumbed to the same-old same-old; and as he stood there he was uncomfortably aware that the same anger of yesterday was rising, slowly but inexorably, from the solar plexus up toward the rib-cage diaphragm. There was no way he was going to suppress it – he’d had a lifetime of the failure of the ‘stiff upper lip’ approach – and he was damn’d if he was going to express it, either (for then this four-foot-eleven female would have triumphed over this six-foot-two male yet again); the vision of having to vacate the scene once more – and again and again off into a sombrely-looming future – was not at all an attractive option, yet, if all else failed, he supposed he could always make the unseemly dash to the door. Thus he stood there still, despite feeling the anger rising ever upward, through the rib-cage diaphragm, and now suffusing the thoracic region with its all-too-familiar temptation. And he could see her eyes begin to gleam, even through the wrathful glare which had transfixed him all the while, and he just knew she was zeroing in for the kill; his own anger was mounting, ever-simmering and seething it was brimming at the region of the lower throat by now; her face was flushed with purple, with nostrils quite distended, and spittle flecked her livid lips as her shrilling rose to fever pitch; he had left it too late to beat a hasty retreat and his throat muscles quivered as the brimming anger shimmered and shifted into a pre-shout mode born of old and ... and, wonder of wonders, that oh-so-familiar throat-muscle quivering skipped a beat or two and began to ease! With a rapidly-mounting amazement and delight, he marvelled at the fact that he had, in some way, neither suppressed nor succumbed and that he had finally freed himself of domination by this four-foot-whatever fleshly package of seething anger and hatred that had usurped the mother of his and her children. And as the slowly-setting sun streams golden from the west another world entirely hoves into view. Pristine and pure, ever-fresh and new, peerless perfection permeates all and sundry, without exception, and he knows with a certainty that his life is never going to be the same ever again. Ain’t life grand! (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression). The story following this one at the same link is also very instructive. Cheers Vineeto December 16, 2024 VINEETO: Richard: … one of the most persistent forms of anger is indignation (or righteous anger/ justifiable anger): it can be eradicated rather simply by the realisation that its raison d’être – a guardian against injustice, unjustness, unfairness, inequality (partiality, discrimination, and so on) – is as much a human invention as those concepts it defends … justice, justness, fairness, equality (impartiality, indiscrimination, and so on). (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Aggression). JESUSCARLOS: It has been wonderful to come home, after a weekend trip, and read this link you shared, Vineeto On the way back, I was talking to my partner about exactly this. After having read your feedback yesterday (and Kuba’s), and having dismantled the shame I felt (not only seeing it as silly, but also recognizing the enormous opportunity to learn), due to the wounded pride of being exposed, I was able to recognize the underlying problem: the indignation I feel at the injustices that have been committed in the public service arena where I work. But, as Richard noted, this indignation is nothing more than an other human construct, a belief, a guardian, that I have made part of my personality. VINEETO: Isn’t that wonderful. Yesterday Claudiu reports that he was dismantling his intellectual pride, and today you report the same about “wounded pride”! What synchronicity. And you could dismantle “the shame” as a similarly useless installation of your social identity. It’s like the onion (the identity) is peeling itself. It is correct what you say about indignation and it’s easy to understand intellectually. Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found it rather a sticky feeling with all its ‘noble’ connotations attached, and first ‘she’ had to acknowledge that there was nothing noble about being indignant and neither did anybody benefit from ‘her’ feeling indignant. JESUSCARLOS: What is truly useful to do is not to feel offended by those threats around me, but to prevent these intellectually unacceptable injustices from affecting me emotionally. And act objectively. Otherwise what is articulated in me is the feeling and desire to take revenge, or to defend myself, or to attack before being attacked. And those are the triggers of continuous stress in the work environment. VINEETO: Yes this is “truly useful” “not to feel offended”, and each time you do feel offended, there is another opportunity to discover something new about yourself. For instance why did what someone said offend you. What ideal is questioned by the other, what belief, even what ‘truth’, what ‘noble’ sentiment to defend? It is fascinating to detect, and then be able to decline, these newly discovered stumbling blocks … and you will see how quickly they diminish to a fraction of what there was at the start of your investigations. After each time discovery you can act more objectively and interrupt the otherwise endless cycle of ‘tit-for-tat’. JESUSCARLOS: How fun it would be not to be affected, and just act from consideration for any human being, looking for the best solution, from the operation of free intelligence. But without becoming emotionally depressed if it is still not possible to achieve the best solution, because we are dealing with human beings with instincts and passions operating. To see the problem objectively, factually and not personally. How fun and beneficial and naive it would be to start dismantling the way of doing politics, where every means justifies the end. Instead of this ancient wisdom, appreciate and enjoy this only moment of being alive, as we work to solve the problems of urban management (or anything else). VINEETO: Mmh, yes that is fun and beneficial and naïve, and it is eminently possible to be that … Presently it is wishful thinking but it gives you a wonderful motivation to be attentive to how you feel and what diminishes your feeling good each moment again. JESUSCARLOS: We’ll see how it goes tomorrow! Thank you! VINEETO: It’s a pleasure to talk about my favourite topic. Cheers Vineeto December 20, 2024 JESUSCARLOS: Yesterday I had a fundamentally bad time. At times neutral. But very rarely good. Let’s not say very good. This is in stark contrast to my experience on Tuesday night, where I deeply contacted my naivety and experienced a lot of pleasure in simply being alive. Today I woke up again with physical (I think I have a flu) and emotional discomfort. But within these few hours of the morning, I was able to feel good again. And I remember again how it is essential to make the decision to feel good, to choose to feel good and not follow old inclinations. It is a habit that I must overcome and now that I feel better I can observe it more carefully: I have resentment for the simple fact of being alive and that things are not always the way “I” want them. It may help to analyze why I want what I want, but if I look closer, I recognize that what I want is recognition. I long for recognition. I won’t say more because I will be observing that need throughout the day and finding a way to free myself from it. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, This reaction seems quite natural. I see that in your previous post you said – JesusCarlos: But this began to happen after rereading this wonderful text: (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Ian, 16 December 2024) and Claudiu and Kuba’s last reflections, regarding how unnecessary I am now. […] Isn’t it amazing that you were be able to so quickly “feel good again”, due to having made “the decision to feel good”. Longing “for recognition” is not something superficial, it is an inbuilt feature of the human condition. You not only “long for recognition”, ‘you’ need it for ‘your’ very existence. ‘You’, the identity’, being a contingent ‘being’, cannot exist on ‘your’ own – ‘you’ require constant confirmation to justify and confirm ‘your’ existence, else ‘your’ non-substantial nature will become apparent. With this comes a desire to hide and a fear of being exposed as a fraud, an impostor. I remember feeling being ‘Vineeto’s’ reaction to this alarming discovery quite well. ‘Vineeto’: … this guilt of ‘being a being’ is intrinsic to every human being. The only way I became aware of this basic layer of guilt of being a ‘self’ was by repeated exposure to the perfection, purity and innocence as experienced in a ‘self’-less PCE. The more I experience purity and perfection, when this flesh and blood body is free from any identity whatsoever, the more I know, as soon as ‘I’ return, that ‘I’ am a fraud, an intruder, an alien entity, a fake – I undeniably know that ‘I’ am not the genuine article. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 38c, 28.8.2002).. ‘Vineeto’: Once I made the commitment to become free ‘I’ then agreed to be discovered and to be dismantled … and there is an inherent joy and relief in no longer having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 32b, 6.3.2005) Richard: Fear – existential angst at finding oneself to be the contingent ‘being’ one always suspected oneself to be – is both the barrier and the way to freedom. Always included in fear is a thrilling aspect, and by focussing upon this and not fear itself, an energy gathers momentum which does the trick for one (thrilling as in an exciting sensation through the body, stirring, stimulating, electrifying, rousing, moving, gripping, hair-raising, riveting, joyful, pleasing, throbbing, trembling, tremulous, quivering, shivering, fluttering, shuddering and vibrating). ‘I’ cannot set ‘myself’ free ... but ‘I’ can set in motion a process that will lead to ‘my’ eventual demise. (Richard, List B, 12a, 18 July 1998) So you see, you discovered straight away what the solution to longing “for recognition” will ultimately be. Cheers Vineeto January 12, 2025 JESUSCARLOS: Lately I have been experiencing a persistent feeling of well-being. Emotions come and go, but against a background of happy, harmless feelings. Sometimes anxiety, fear, worry, but nothing that prevents me from enjoying being here and now. I find myself investigating how to go from feeling good to feeling excellent, with the same consistency (more appreciation perhaps). How exciting it is! VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, This is excellent. Definitely, appreciation will increase your feeling good, it multiplies feeling good every time you remember to sincerely appreciate being here. And when you recognize that now is the only moment you can actually experience being alive (remembering that neither the past nor the future are actually happening now) it will increase your appreciation of this very moment even more. And the less your feeling good is interrupted by “anxiety, fear, worry” the easier it becomes appreciating being here. Do you take a closer look at anxiety, for instance, once you are back to feeling good, to find out what causes this anxiety to arise in the first place so that it won’t have to arise in the first place? JESUSCARLOS: I can say that it was a giant step to identify resentment, to identify the need for recognition and the subsequent drama. It was very liberating to discover it, and to realize how silly it is. VINEETO: This is good news. JESUSCARLOS: Of course I am not free of it, but I don’t feel it anymore as a constant burden. Nipping in the bud? VINEETO: Why do you say you are not free of the resentment after you identified it? Why did you allow it back into your life after you have realized how silly it is? If you fully recognize how silly it is there is no need to keep it – unless you nipped it in the bud too early and perhaps there is still something you need to understand about it so that it can disappear forever. Not feeling it “as a constant burden” is not good enough – fully understanding the silliness will allow you to drop it for good, never to return again. Just have another close look, it may just be a persistent habit which is equally silly to maintain. Cheers Vineeto January 13, 2025 VINEETO: Do you take a closer look at anxiety, for instance, once you are back to feeling good, to find out what causes this anxiety to arise in the first place so that it won’t have to arise in the first place? JESUSCARLOS: Yes! Doing this has been essential to dismantle that old habit, that I and Felix share. It’s a weakening process right now. VINEETO: That is excellent to hear. * VINEETO: Why do you say you are not free of the resentment after you identified it? Why did you allow it back into your life after you have realized how silly it is? JESUSCARLOS: Oh! I said it in theoretical terms, but maybe I misunderstood something. When to my previous post you answered: Vineeto: So you see, you discovered straight away what the solution to longing “for recognition” will ultimately be. I concluded that only when ‘I’ self immolate, I can become free of this and every aspect of the human condition (the need of nurture and desire that are the instincts from which ‘I’ emerge) and that before it happens what I can do is to diminish it to a 99% degree. VINEETO: Mmh, so you essentially understood it that you can put off the solution to your problem to when you self-immolate? Here is the quote from ‘Vineeto’ in that previous post – ‘Vineeto’: Once I made the commitment to become free ‘I’ then agreed to be discovered and to be dismantled … and there is an inherent joy and relief in no longer having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud. (Actualism, Vineeto, AF List, No. 32b, 6.3.2005) Did the fact of not “having to hide that ‘I’ am in fact a fraud” change anything in your “longing for recognition”? JESUSCARLOS: But apart from this, it also makes sense to me that I need to look more closely at the problem to see if I can root it out. From what I have been researching and working on in therapy (cognitive-behavioral therapy), this aspect of my personality, the intense needing of recognition and approval, was born mainly in the first three years of my life, due to the particular dynamics that occurred in my family and was strengthened over time after not having been detected earlier and dismantled it (I didn’t knew any method to do it anyways). I am now 40 and it has been my main discovery since last year and especially in these last two months. VINEETO: Mmh, all you get from therapy is a justification for any particular persistent feeling or problem. You can blame your upbringing, your peers, your teachers, your parents, society, capitalism or whatever else, it is merely justifying to have that problem or holding onto that problem. In therapy feeling beings treat other feeling beings with sympathy and compassion to make them fit better into the human condition. I am not saying to stop therapy, that is for you to decide. What I am saying is that it needs a lot more – to have the courage to acknowledge that one is addicted to being ‘me’ and commit oneself whole-heartedly to the task of becoming free from that addiction. That’s why Richard says in This Moment of Being Alive Richard: If ‘I’ am not feeling good then ‘I’ have something to look at to find out why. What has happened, between the last time ‘I’ felt good and now? When did ‘I’ feel good last? Five minutes ago? Five hours ago? What happened to end those felicitous feelings? Ahh ... yes: ‘He said that and I ...’. Or: ‘She didn’t do this and I ...’. Or: ‘What I wanted was ...’. Or: ‘I didn’t do ...’. And so on and so on ... one does not have to trace back into one’s childhood ... usually no more than yesterday afternoon at the most. … And this is because the actualism method is about one thing and one thing only – Richard: … the actualism method is all about consciously and knowingly imitating life in the actual world. Also, by virtue of proceeding in this manner the means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end itself. [emphasis added]. I admit, it does take courage to change oneself, to willingly diminish the influence and control ‘I’ have on my life – to stop feeling sad, or proud, or humble or malicious when those feelings happen. But unless ‘I’ “consciously and knowingly” set out to “imitating life in the actual world” everything ‘I’ do is just patchwork, to feel a little better than before but fundamentally stay as I am. Unless I have a “commitment to become free” and agree “to be discovered and to be dismantled” I might as well forget the whole business. I keep being reminded of what Geoffrey wrote, cutting through the whole charade of ‘my’ precious feelings and ‘my’ precious identity – Geoffrey: For a split second I saw like a veil in front of me. I saw how I could be on the other side of the ‘mirror’, on the safe side, the magical side, how I could… But there was a last second resistance: My precious! I will not give away my precious! Later on the way back, I was thinking about this ‘precious’ thing, how only here on this tiny planet right now there are 7 billion people just as ‘unique’ and ‘precious’ as my self, when it clicked… and I burst into laughter. This was simply hilarious. Everybody is so precious. I must then be SO precious hahaha. Every little ‘me’ waging wars against other little ‘me’ because they are so precious. Whereas they are just the same product of evolution and animal passions, with the same hiding place, the same hunger, the same dirtiness. You can’t be serious! I saw without a shadow of a doubt that ‘I’ am the cause of every evil, corruption, dirt… just because ‘I’ am ‘so precious’. How ‘I’ mess everything up for myself and everybody just because ‘I’ am. And not some dissociated ‘I’ with enough quotes not to be me, but me right now thinking this. [emphasis added]. (Becoming Free Reports, Geoffrey). Cheers Vineeto January 17, 2025 JESUSCARLOS: Today I woke up feeling stuck in my process. When observing my feelings during the early hours of the morning, I discovered aggression. Anger. Nothing really strong, a state of subtle discomfort. Some bitterness. For some reason, this old pattern of resentment in general was reactivated. What I can detect is that it has to do with the fact that I feel threatened in my new work environment. Defence mechanisms were activated. That ancestral animal that I was able to recognize, integrate and eventually send to rest during the July PCE. At that time, that instinct was active in relation to the fear of feeling rejected by my partner. Today is this other situation, of feeling under attack in the work environment. This quote that I put above reminds me that the only way to continue, and get out of stagnation, is to recover the pure intent, lower my arms and not seek to defend myself. Instead, from a sincere intent (to use the terms more precisely), try to look at the situation anew and act harmlessly. The only thing I will gain by acting aggressively, or defensively, is more of a perception of being under attack. I want to change perspective and learn to live in harmony with my fellow human beings even in this environment. But I’m having a hard time seeing the silliness of the situation. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, Can it be that the problems you listed are related to your resentment you talked about a month ago – not getting recognition. JesusCarlos: I recognize that what I want is recognition. I long for recognition. Here is part of my reply to you – Vineeto: Longing “for recognition“ is not something superficial, it is an inbuilt feature of the human condition. You not only “long for recognition“, ‘you’ need it for ‘your’ very existence. ‘You’, the identity’, being a contingent ‘being’, cannot exist on ‘your’ own – ‘you’ require constant confirmation to justify and confirm ‘your’ existence, else ‘your’ non-substantial nature will become apparent. (Actualism, ActualVineeto, JesusCarlos, 20 December 2024) Naturally you experience “the fear of feeling rejected by my partner“ and “feeling under attack in the work environment“. In this modus operandi you are competing with every other feeling being for the highest amount of recognition you can get, just as they are doing, and you are naturally in battle with every person you are in contact with. A lose-lose situation. The alternative is to get back to feeling good and recognize that you can be a friend to yourself and treat others as fellow human beings rather than competitors in a futile battle for recognition of a fake ‘identity’. With the help of remembering your “July PCE“ maybe this conversation of Richard’s can give you a hint how to proceed – RICHARD: When one has an insight into an aspect of the Human Condition, there is action ... and this action is the actualising of the experience so that one’s personality is changed, irrevocably. Otherwise, I agree, the experience, the insight, becomes knowledge ... and knowledge is dead. Dead, that is, until it is activated and lived in one’s daily life. Sagacity lies in the living of a realisation … (Richard, List B, No. 20, 14 Feb 1998) RESPONDENT: Can an insight, one moment of insight, have an effect here? Does this not call for something that is from moment to moment, ongoing. RICHARD: Yes, indeed it can. One fundamental moment of insight can alter the entire course of one’s life wherein becoming free of the Human Condition is no longer a matter of choice – it is an irresistible pull. And, yes, then there is something that is from moment to moment, ongoing. I choose to call this something: ‘Pure Intent’. Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benevolence and benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of this physical universe. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity, which is the essential character of the universe, by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List B, No. 20, 17 Feb 1998) The key to unlock naiveté is sincerity, “which is that intimate aspect of oneself that is usually kept hidden away for fear of seeming foolish (a simpleton) ... it is like being a child again but with adult sensibilities (wherein one can separate out the distinction between being naïve and being gullible/ trusting).“ (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 79, 7 June 2006). With naiveté operating in your life you can like yourself and like others … and it is a wonderful way of experiencing each moment, far more enjoyable and inducive in providing fun, appreciation and dignity in your life than any battle for recognition can ever deliver. Cheers Vineeto January 18, 2025 VINEETO: Can it be that the problems you listed are related to your resentment you talked about a month ago – not getting recognition? JESUSCARLOS: Indeed! Is the same. VINEETO: Naturally you experience “the fear of feeling rejected by my partner” and “feeling under attack in the work environment”. In this modus operandi you are competing with every other feeling being for the highest amount of recognition you can get, just as they are doing, and you are naturally in battle with every person you are in contact with. A lose-lose situation. JESUSCARLOS: That´s totally true, I’m not sure that with “every person” but the ones I perceive as a threat in these two fields. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, Thank you for confirming that. Of course I didn’t mean the butcher, the baker and the check-out girl, but every person who you have some kind of investment in. * VINEETO: The alternative is to get back to feeling good and recognize that you can be a friend to yourself and treat others as fellow human beings rather than competitors in a futile battle for recognition of a fake ‘identity’. JESUSCARLOS: I can see now that I lost being a friend with myself. So I ask from others what I can’t give to myself. And I think this have a link with stress. Ultimately, stress is triggered because I have stopped having the best possible relationship with myself. I perceive a “threat” in an emotional way, fear or anxiety about something is triggered. When those emotions persist, stress is triggered. Those emotions persist because I forget to return to that friendship with myself, which consists of a form of emotional attention (affective attentiveness) that immediately inclines me towards feeling good (I already know that feeling good is a choice, as I have been able to confirm a few months ago). This is HAIETMOBA in action (just recognizing the problem, after an insight, is not enough, it becomes knowledge and not transformation of myself). VINEETO: Yes, when one is a warrior in the imaginary jungle of fighting for social rewards, those who are gentle and friendly (to themselves and others) have no ranking. This is a good insight – “just recognizing the problem, after an insight, is not enough, it becomes knowledge and not transformation of myself”. Nothing is lost … here is another moment where you can put your insight into action. Btw, you don’t have to have a “relationship” with yourself. You don’t have to split yourself into two in order to be kind in the way you treat yourself. * VINEETO: The key to unlock naiveté is sincerity, “which is that intimate aspect of oneself that is usually kept hidden away for fear of seeming foolish (a simpleton) … it is like being a child again but with adult sensibilities (wherein one can separate out the distinction between being naïve and being gullible/ trusting).” (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 79, 7 June 2006). JESUSCARLOS: This hits the nail on the head. This is my main problem. I have this fear of being seen like this. The entire political culture around me warns the opposite: you have to be clever, outsmart the other guy who wants to use you, beat you, win, etc. The morality of this world dictates “he who hits first hits twice.” The Christian antidote of turning the other cheek is well known. And it doesn’t work, because you just end up trampled, humiliated and ultimately sacrificed, all for upholding the value of humility. Separating the distinction between being naive and being gullible/ trusting seems to be what I must discover as a third alternative. Allow the intelligence of this body to operate for the greatest benefit of itself and everyone else, without a false identity to uphold. VINEETO: I think Claudiu’s recent description is particularly fitting – Claudiu: The other wondrous recent insight was in seeing how I am actually not ‘special’ in that I am essentially the same as any other feeling-being out there. In terms of what I am at my core. In other words I don’t have to maintain or hold onto or try to prop up any aspect of myself that would set me apart or above anyone else – because I am the same at core! This is something I can’t change – I can only self-immolate to remedy this situation. This was seen as an immense relief of a huge burden that I no longer have to maintain myself in all these various small ways. In other words I am free to do anything, and anyone is free to say or think or do whatever in response, and none of it matters in terms of me having to prop myself up or defend myself or do anything. Cause I already know I’m not special, there is nothing I can actually defend to change this fact! * VINEETO: With naiveté operating in your life you can like yourself and like others … and it is a wonderful way of experiencing each moment, far more enjoyable and inducive in providing fun, appreciation and dignity in your life than any battle for recognition can ever deliver. JESUSCARLOS: I have to access again to that naiveté to be able to confirm this wonder. I will be remembering the PCE for that. Thank you very much for your assistance Vineeto. VINEETO: You are very welcome JesusCarlos, it only takes a little courage, coupled with the firm knowledge of the fact that the other way does not work. JESUSCARLOS: p.s. I remember a wonderful moment in particular during that PCE. My gaze was fixed on the horizon, far away, and beyond the horizon, towards what was no longer visible. A thought associated with infinity arose: what I really am has the capacity to see very far, further than what is considered normal. This is its true capacity. To be able to see beyond the present, towards the enormous and infinite of this vast universe. And with that gaze, to look again at the immediate: there was perfection. VINEETO: Thank you for the description, it is wondrous, mirificent. It makes all the persistence and diligence worth-while. This “true capacity” is apperception. Cheers Vineeto July 24, 2025 VINEETO to Pelagash: As I said above, a cognitive, rational decision to “simply do what’s sensible in a given situation” is not enough as your intelligence is manipulated and stifled by your affective faculty. Unless you acknowledge and recognize which feeling and what belief/ principle/ moral code is causing you to be “self-punishing”, this harmful attitude towards yourself will assert its dominance again and again. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Pelagash, 7 July 2025) JESUSCARLOS: I wanted to move this here as a reminder. Especially this statement “your intelligence is manipulated and stifled by your affective faculty.” Because it is becoming increasingly clear to me that this is totally the case, and that making decisions dominated by any disturbed emotional state only produces bad results. And I’d like to take this opportunity to share an update on my progress with the method. If it can be defined as progress, because in my experience it’s kind of a discontinuous progress. When it seems like I’ve already taken ten steps, I take six backwards, so in reality I’ve only taken four. But keep going. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, Thank you for your progress report and excellent description how you go about it. While it may look like “ten steps” forward and “six backwards”, from memory of my own experience it seems more likely that actualising one’s insights can sometimes be a gradual process because one is weening oneself off detrimental habits and attitudes by replacing it with propitious ones (for instance either to high expectations and habitually putting oneself down when you instead can enjoy observing yourself slowly but irrevocably changing and appreciate the sincerity, growing naiveté and increasing fun and confidence you gain. After all, being naïve means liking yourself and liking others. JESUSCARLOS: Something I’ve noticed has been essential to this progress is paying special attention to my way of being with my partner. I began to put special emphasis on this after reading the feedback Vineeto gave both Kuba and Claudiu regarding their definition of the primary motive that could drive their total commitment to peace on earth and trigger the process of their irrevocable psychic extinction. VINEETO: I remember asking both Claudiu and Kuba the same question: “who or what do you want to give all of ‘yourself’ to?” Was this what you were referring to? JESUSCARLOS: In both cases, it coincided with being able to give the closest person what they most longed for: a partner who is truly 100% considerate, attentive, and sincere. And I continue to find much fruit in channelling my emotional energies toward the most complete experience of intimacy possible with my partner. Knowing that if I achieve it there, I can achieve it with any other human being. VINEETO: Whatever the case may be, you chose an excellent and delightful way “channeling my emotional energies toward the most complete experience of intimacy possible with my partner”. And because aiming for actual intimacy is an unendorsed, unsanctioned and unilateral pursuit, there is no demand or pressure on your partner to change in any way, even though an increased ability to be intimate may well entice and encourage her to similarly come out of hiding. It’s a win-win situation. Richard: Look, the whole point of minimising both the malicious/ sorrowful feelings (the ‘bad’ feelings) and their antidotal loving/ compassionate feelings (the ‘good’ feelings) whilst maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings) is to make for a potent combination when this untrammelled conviviality operates in conjunction with a naïve sensuosity – whereby one is both likeable and liking – such that the benevolence and benignity of pure intent may increasingly become dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone ... to wit: for the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent, in this lifetime, as this flesh-and-blood body. As your proposed making of a conscious effort to not pull back – and to allow yourself “to have a feeling of liking for others and show this feeling” (which is indeed “the same as expressing the feeling” of course) – is on track with “maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings)” then here is an example of what that untrammelled conviviality could look like when translated into action. (Richard, List D, Martin, 6 March 2016). JESUSCARLOS: And I recognize that this is something my psyche resists, as I face an old pattern that consists on the one hand of activating fear in the face of the possibility of rejection (this is where I have made the most progress, this fear is 99% eradicated) and on the other hand of activating boredom or disinterest to encourage a change of direction. In short, a cowardly escape plan to avoid committing 100%. What has happened in these months has been a slow progress in becoming aware of the resistances (often stagnant for several days) and thus, thanks to investigation (always trying to do it while feeling good), I have been able to deactivate them, gradually advancing toward that experience of ever-more fulfilling intimacy. VINEETO: It great to hear you have greatly overcome the fear of rejection – naiveté, i.e. liking yourself and therefore liking others, is the best antidote for that. As for the occurrences of “resistances” along the way, this is only natural because intimacy is about having less and less to hide. And all ‘I’ ultimately want to hide is ‘me’, all ‘I’ want to avoid and distract from, is being exposed. Yet the wonderful, naïve, playful and fun experiences of an “ever-more fulfilling intimacy” when ‘I’ dare to be exposed provides the encouragement to dare a little more each time. You could call it catching two ‘carrots’ in one – the intimacy you long for and the vital interest in loss of ‘self’ – and with pure intent operating they are one and the same: the less dominant the ‘self’ the greater the intimacy. JESUSCARLOS: In short, the carrot that’s getting me to lower my defenses, release my controls, and activate my naiveté is the commitment to getting as close and intimate as possible to my partner. An important aspect I’ve been working on lately is eliminating all emotional dependence on her. Becoming immune, so to speak, to her emotional ups and downs. But with care that this doesn’t translate into a lack of empathy or emotional repression. The only way I detect to achieve this and avoid detours down other paths is to maintain a fine emotional attention (HAIETMOBA) moment by moment, trying to channel my varying states toward a sweet, peaceful, harmless, calm, joyful, and, last but not least, fun state. Because if this becomes serious, my old cowardly pattern of flight and seeking new distractions is reactivated. VINEETO: You probably noticed that the way to become more immune to “emotional ups and downs” – both yours and hers – is to be paying particular attention to the seductive lure of affectuous intimacy – Richard: What did not get included in those second and third paragraphs, regarding feeling-being ‘Grace’ and her rigorous gradations, was ‘her’ oft-repeated observation – regarding the onset of the third stage, on that range of naïveness, where ‘her’ gradation of ‘great’ related to sweetness – about a bifurcation manifesting where the instinctual tendency/ temptation was to veer off in the direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate) as contrasted to a conscious choice being required so as to somehow have that sweetness then segue into a naïve intimacy via what ‘she’ described as ‘richness’ and graded as ‘excellent’. (Richard, Abditorium, Intimacy, #Intimacyscale) Just for fun, regarding your “because if this becomes serious …” here is a list of tools Richard employed to get ‘himself’ out of spiritual enlightenment, a far more serious predicament that nobody ever will need to get into – Richard: Just so that there is no misunderstanding: what really worked, when the identity was that ‘Altered State Of Being’, was (1) a continuation of the totally dedicated and/or devoted pure intent to evince what the PCE’s evidenced ... and (2) a furtherance of the irreversible momentum, or inevitability, already set in place on day one as the process is, essentially, that of escaping from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny ... and (3) a prolongation of the attentiveness as to how the only moment of being alive was experienced ... and (4) an utter lack of dignity in being so far up oneself (narcissistic) as to render the term ‘egotistical’ a mere bagatelle in comparison ... and (5) a sense of humour which, if nothing else, made possible (6) a delightful resurgence of the earlier felicity/ innocuity which again brought about, in combination with sensuousness, an outstandingly ingenuous sense of amazement, marvel and wonder. And it was that last-named – the wide-eyed wonder of naiveté – which resulted in apperceptiveness (unmediated perception). (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60f, 29 Sep 2005). JESUSCARLOS: I detect a second carrot: given the current global situation, the ongoing wars, the growing violence in Mexico, the possibility of the creation of military artificial intelligences that threaten our lives, and the growing awareness of the thousands of atrocities we humans have inflicted on one another, there is a growing urgency within me, a pressing need to do something radically significant as soon as possible that will contribute to true peace on earth. And I try to channel this kind of emotional pressure toward the only solution I currently detect as effective. VINEETO: Isn’t it wonderful that when you dare to care to be naïvely open and intimate with one fellow human being (your partner) you can’t help but be also more caring about the plight of others and “the global situation”. As you said in your second paragraph – “knowing that if I achieve it there [with my partner], I can achieve it with any other human being.” Cheers Vineeto July 25, 2025 VINEETO: I remember asking both Claudiu and Kuba the same question: “who or what do you want to give all of ‘yourself’ to?” Was this what you were referring to? JESUSCARLOS: Yes! Exactly, and I remember that it wasn´t very obvious or clear for them at the beginning, but thanks to your retro they were able to acknowledge it. If I’m not wrong, their answers also included my “second carrot” (humanity), which, in my perspective, first comes in a more intellectual way until you experience it viscerally after touching naiveté thanks to intimacy with some specific being in your life. But well, this can be different with each one. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, I find it curious that your term “carrot” (as in carrot and stick) designates you more as a donkey responding to reward and punishment rather than a sensate, sensitive, intelligent human being motivated by pure intent – that which is outside the human condition – and as such outside the dichotomy of desire and fear and all of the instinctual survival passions. My question to Claudiu and Kuba and to all who want to be actually free from the human condition was aimed at discovering for themselves what is outside of ‘me’, more precious than what ‘I’ hold most dear – ‘my’ self, ‘my’ presence, ‘my’ self-centric importance, something for which ‘I’ am willing to agree to ‘my’ extinction. Regarding your question to what you call your “second carrot” I already replied when I said “you can’t help but be also more caring about the plight of others and “the global situation””. Sincerely and emphatically caring about all the wars and murders and suicides and domestic violence gives you plenty of reason to dare going all the way, for the benefit of this flesh-and-blood body JesusCarlos and that body, your partner’s flesh-and-blood body, and everybody. * VINEETO: You probably noticed that the way to become more immune to “emotional ups and downs” – both yours and hers – is to be paying particular attention to the seductive lure of affectuous intimacy – JESUSCARLOS: Yes! And I’m having a little trouble here, understanding more clearly the distinction between that sweetness and the “direction of love and its affectuous intimacy (due to a self-centric attractiveness towards feeling affectionate)”. Maybe a good parameter is to detect that sweetness doesn’t require a retribution, it’s all in itself, and love always require payment in back. Am I correct? VINEETO: You probably meant reciprocity because “retribution” means punishment, justice, revenge and tit-for-tat. I agree that love, unless it’s the delusional state of Love Agape, requires mutualness and possessiveness to maintain itself because being a feeling it requires affirmation and confirmation. Whereas when you experience the felicitous advent of naïve intimacy and delight in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other, this very experience is fulfilling in itself and this intimacy is autonomous and unilateral. Richard: Just so that there is no misunderstanding: what really worked, when the identity was that ‘Altered State Of Being’, was (4) an utter lack of dignity in being so far up oneself (narcissistic) as to render the term ‘egotistical’ a mere bagatelle in comparison … and (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60f, 29 Sep 2005). JESUSCARLOS: Lol! Don’t know if I get this one right (sometimes I have difficulties in the translation to Spanish, my mother tongue), but it means something like losing all fear or shame of being as one is and letting others see that, despite the risk of being classified as what in modern psychiatric terms means total narcissism? Of course I understand it doesn’t mean let passionate impulses run free across the meadow. It refers rather to allowing oneself to think about one’s own well-being in absolute terms, regardless of the desires or whims of others. VINEETO: You have to remember that Richard in the above quote was referring to a fully deluded enlightened ‘being’. Hence what he described was that ‘he’ then gradually recognized the utter ridiculousness of upholding ‘his’ dignity in the light of the narcissistic nature of his passionate feelings of grandeur – being the Absolute and thus the latest saviour of humankind. It does not mean “losing all fear or shame of being as one is and letting others see that, despite the risk of being classified as what in modern psychiatric terms means total narcissism”. A sincere actualist will not be a narcissist. What it can mean for you, practically, is to recognize that whatever your egocentric good and bad feelings – such as feelings of pride/ humility, self-importance, feeling hurt/ insulted – want you to believe, acknowledge that they are just feelings and not facts – and when you are back to feeling good you can verify this fact for yourself and move in the direction of being less ‘self’-centric. For instance – egocentricity: ‘Holding the view that the ego is the norm of all experience; viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre; assessing people via the filter of one’s own ego (also ‘ethnocentric’: judging people through a belief in the superiority and rightness of one’s own ethnic group; racism; nationalism). ~ Oxford Dictionary I am using the word egocentric – ‘viewed or perceived from one’s own mind as a centre’ ~ (The American Heritage® Dictionary) – in the same way as ‘ethnocentric’ is used: • ethnocentric: centred on one’s own race or ethnic group; based on or characterised by a tendency to evaluate other races or groups by criteria specific to one’s own; having assumptions or preconceptions originating in the standards, customs, etc., of one’s own race or group. ~ (Oxford Dictionary). (Richard, Abditorium, e, #Egocentricity) It is rather the last two point (5) and (6) which are applicable for everyone – a sense of humour and “a delightful resurgence of the earlier felicity/ innocuity which again brought about, in combination with sensuousness, an outstandingly ingenuous sense of amazement, marvel and wonder”. JESUSCARLOS: Thank you so much for the full quote. I didn’t know it before. It’s wonderful, especially considering how difficult it was for Richard to emerge from enlightenment. And as always, thank you so much for your retro and support V. It is invaluable. VINEETO: You are very welcome. I posted the quote more for fun and historic reference. It was indeed extremely difficult to emerge from enlightenment but now a precedent has been set so that nobody needs to follow in Richard’s footsteps, and the danger of becoming fully deluded could well have disappeared from the horizon. Cheers Vineeto July 27, 2025 VINEETO: I find it curious that your term “carrot” (as in carrot and stick) designates you more as a donkey responding to reward and punishment rather than a sensate, sensitive, intelligent human being motivated by pure intent – that which is outside the human condition – and as such outside the dichotomy of desire and fear and all of the instinctual survival passions JESUSCARLOS: Okay! That was a bad metaphor. Maybe I used it because in my local context, we use it more simply to refer to what motivates us. It also made sense to me because it also refers to something that isn’t me, but comes from outside and pulls me, calls me, attracts me, etc. VINEETO: Hi Jesus Carlos, I am pleased to hear that the “carrot” you are referring to is clearly “something that isn’t me”. * VINEETO: Whereas when you experience the felicitous advent of naïve intimacy and delight in the pervasive proximity, or immanence, of the other, this very experience is fulfilling in itself and this intimacy is autonomous and unilateral. JESUSCARLOS: Yes, that is my experience, I think that the confusion arises when there is a loss of connection with pure intent and I search in the wrong direction. VINEETO: Ha, that is the habitual reaction to the feeling regarding the “loss of connection” – now that you are aware of searching in the wrong direction you can easily rectify it. * VINEETO: A sincere actualist will not be a narcissist. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, JesusCarlos, 25 July 2025). VINEETO: The reason I said that “a sincere actualist will not be a narcissist” and not “a sincere actualist will never be a narcissist” is because Richard in is enlightened state was both. That is because for ‘him’, being the first, going through enlightenment was the only way, and no-one needs to follow ‘his’ footsteps in that regard. * VINEETO: What it can mean for you, practically, is to recognize that whatever your egocentric good and bad feelings – such as feelings of pride/ humility, self-importance, feeling hurt/ insulted – want you to believe, acknowledge that they are just feelings and not facts – and when you are back to feeling good you can verify this fact for yourself and move in the direction of being less ‘self’-centric. JESUSCARLOS: Got it. I understand better now. Thanks! VINEETO: Excellent. You are very welcome. All seems to go swimmingly. Cheers Vineeto July 28, 2025 VINEETO: All seems to go swimmingly. JESUSCARLOS: Well, in general terms, I could say yes. Even two months ago, I was thinking I might have reached a stage of virtual freedom, since my feeling good was constant or very easily recovered after some episode. Let’s say that feeling good was becoming my baseline. But after a while, I began to notice that I was returning to a neutral feeling as a baseline. Trying to detect what caused this regression, I find that there are aspects of my identity that haven’t been fully resolved (I know there’s no total solution until the final extinction occurs). And some of them have narcissistic characteristics, such as an inflated sense of self-importance or the need for recognition (an aspect we’ve already discussed here). For example, certain (work-related) events occur in which if I’m not taken into account as I consider I should be taken into account for a decision, then I got upset or very upset, sometimes for some couple of hours (and had a recent event that lasted almost a day). The good news is that it takes me less and less time to detect it, recognize it, and turn it around. But I still see a need for more investigation to root out these reaction patterns and achieve a more stable baseline. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, This is certainly good news (that it takes less time to detect it) – it means your affective attentiveness is more and more continuously operating. I wondered if putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t matter basis’ might solve most of the problem of ‘self’-importance? Richard: ‘There is no worry, no, but I am not too sure that this is because there is no ‘I’ ... it is simply silly to worry as worrying does nothing whatsoever to get an event changed. I correct – and thus improve – what can be corrected ... according to a preference for creature comforts and ease of life-style. For example: if I can sit upon a cushion instead of the brick pavers of the patio I will ... that is a preference. But if a cushion is not available it does not matter ... I thoroughly enjoy being alive at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space irregardless of what is happening. I could be just as happy and harmless on bread and water in solitary confinement in some insalubrious penitentiary ... but I would be pretty silly to act or behave in such a way as to occasion that outcome! The ‘I’ that used to inhabit this body 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 irritated ... or even peeved, if that was possible. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 27 January 1999). JESUSCARLOS: And something I keep in mind and try to achieve is the ability to experience a PCE without the need for certain conditions (the two PCEs I have recorded as such have been after taking psychotropic substances). For this I notice that I have a particularly difficulty going from feeling good to feeling excellent. And where I find right now the most effective way to get close to this is through the naiveté that gets activated after the more intimacy is allowed with my partner. In those moments, several EIs or even EEs have emerged, but not yet PCEs. VINEETO: The answer in Frequent Questions (FAQ, How to Induce a PCE) is to allow it to happen. When you feel good and want to feel excellent, just loosen the control a bit, then another bit, not letting yourself get distracted by worrying and allow a bit of naïveté to happen. From there marvelment and wonderment happen easily and appreciation for all this amazing happening will do the rest. Richard: What I can say is this: as the many and various emotions/ passions are the same affective energy, at root, then directing all of that affective energy into being the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (that is, ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself), via minimisation of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and maximisation of the happy and harmless feelings, will have the effect of involuntarily radiating felicitous/ innocuous vibes and currents as a matter of course. [Emphasis added]. (Richard, List D, No. 25c, 29 October 2013). Cheers Vineeto August 25, 2025 JESUSCARLOS: It’s Friday afternoon, and my partner is encouraged to give me feedback on my way of being and acting over the past week. Above all, she emphasizes that I’m like “absent”. Absorbed in my worries, too busy with my phone, not here and now. She rightly resents this. I receive it with discomfort but at the same time with openness, sticking to the facts: she’s right. It’s Saturday, and since the day before, I’ve tried to abandon my worries and be here, with attentiveness. We hike through the forest until we reach a waterfall at the far end. We’re alone. After a period of relaxation, a moment of pure awareness occurs. I marvel at the stillness of the rock while the majestic curtain of water falls steadily. I mention this to her, and she makes a humorous comment that makes us laugh for a while. “Yes, it’s very still, but the water is also damaging it slowly.” We called her thought the “anti-zen” thought of doom. All this reminds me that perfection comes with a high dose of humour. It’s Sunday and we’re at the cinema. We went to see the new “Dracula”. Two-thirds of the way through the film, I realize I’m feeling fear. But it has nothing to do with the film. Upon closer inspection, I realize it’s almost a panic attack. I think that if this feeling increases, I’ll either vomit, or run, or throw myself on the floor. But as best I can, I keep my hands in my pockets. I observe. Thoughts come and go, all of them doubts, fears, regarding actual freedom. What if this is just another manipulation? What if it’s an algorithm to program humans to no longer question anything and conform to the current regime? What if I become an inert robot by taking that step? What if Vineeto is actually an agent of the Matrix? (that film had a deep impact on me in my youth), etc. VINEETO: Hi Jesus Carlos, I understand your fear but you are misled by your feelings. About three years before becoming free ‘Vineeto’ expressed a similar sentiment when ‘she’ said to Richard, “to me you represent death”. Richard laughed and then said “I’m just a bloke”. Today I can say the same thing to you – I am just an old woman. As you said above – “perfection comes with a high dose of humour”. JESUSCARLOS: I clearly realize that these thoughts arise from an emotional reaction to the realization that my defence mechanisms cause suffering and aren’t truly necessary (Saturday’s EE/PCE realization). And I can clearly see that they are a core part of my identity, but that eliminating them means eliminating all of me; just one part can’t go. This insight increases my fear, almost to the point of terror. “My feelings are me, and I am my feelings”; “becoming my own best friend in this, isn’t something imposed on me, it’s something I choose for myself”; “This is for the good of humanity, it’s for its good, and for all the others I affect with my interactions, my absences”; “what is known is uncertain, uncertainty is the necessary step toward finding a solution”; “stick to the facts. What do the facts say? Don’t my interactions, my decisions, my will to fully be here improve when I really enjoy and appreciate this moment of being alive?” This last thought is the one that has the greatest impact on overcoming fear (because is not only a thought, is a connection with pure intent). I begin to experience a reduction of fear, recognizing that through facts, and not through my beliefs or daydreams, there is a clear and evident truth (paraphrasing René Descartes). The concrete experience of what is truly beneficial is the guide on this wide and wonderful path. Little by little, terror is replaced by the sweetness of this realization, which also awakens memories of my life in which I have always been searching for the final solution to my suffering. VINEETO: Have you ever thought that it might be the other way round, that your fear is created by ‘me’ wanting to force ‘me’ to do something ‘I’ am not ready to voluntarily do? In this case this is not pure intent informing you but passions pitched against each other in order to keep ‘me’ in existence. JESUSCARLOS: At this point, the film’s plot (spoiler alert) connects with the emotional thread of my feelings and thoughts, and the acceptance of the main character’s death as an altruistic decision that frees others from his own burden makes even more sense. I’m amazed by this synchronicity. VINEETO: I don’t know the film but this is not synchronicity but real-world sentimental fantasy for bitter-sweet feel-good effect. JESUSCARLOS: The film ends. I’m not in a PCE, but in a kind of IE/EE, experiencing a lot of sweetness and intimacy. And I tell my partner what happened. Tears run. And I’m incredibly grateful with her for having the courage to tell me what she’d been noticing these past few days about my way of withdrawing from being here, as a defence mechanism. And that reminded me that what is the most important for me is to truly give all of myself to her, and to the rest of living human bodies. VINEETO: As you describe well, the effect of this fantasy is that you feel grateful, not appreciative, towards your partner – which is a ‘good’ feeling not a felicitous/ innocuous feeling. You would be misleading yourself to compare that to pure intent and your aim to altruistically ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body (which does not die when ‘I’ become extinct), that body and every body. JESUSCARLOS: I see what happened as a positive sign of progress, a kind of preparation for facing/ understanding that wall of fear behind which freedom could lie. At least a virtual one. VINEETO: Now to the main reason I am replying to your post – “understanding that wall of fear”. While one does experience fear in the process of becoming free, for instance, when there is resistance to admit to this or that aspect of the identity, and one certainly needs daring to persist, it is nevertheless important to understand that it is always a self-induced suffering. ‘I’ am feeding the fear, either by fighting against it or by wanting to have something immediately which needs a gentler more friendly approach, especially when it comes to ‘my’ extinction. Stand back and have a chuckle about the antics ‘I’ get up to and get back to feeling good. Perhaps the following quote will make things clearer regarding “that wall of fear” – RESPONDENT: I find it particularly interesting that with more recent experiences of becoming free, for example Peter, Vineeto, and others you’ve related – there was no wall of fear or dread. The process was ‘matter of fact,’ ‘simple,’ ‘easy.’ RICHARD: That is because they all became (newly) free via the well-publicised epoch-changing opening in human consciousness designated as the ‘direct route’ on the ‘A Long-Awaited Public Announcement’ web page on The Actual Freedom Trust website. Here are the very first words on that web page: • ‘The directors of The Actual Freedom Trust take great pleasure in making public knowledge of a direct route at the end of the wide and wondrous path (now both gentrified and rendered secure) to an actual freedom from the human condition – a down-to-earth manumission [from Latin manumittere, lit. ‘send out from one’s hand’, and meaning release from slavery; release from bondage or servitude; set free] hitherto only available dangerously via spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment ...’. (Long Awaited Announcement). RESPONDENT: How can current actualists bypass such acute experiences of dread on the ‘path’ to freedom? RICHARD: By tapping into pure intent – nowadays also personified in its feminine aspect (its masculine aspect became personified 30+ months after 1992) – hitherto only accessible via a PCE. RESPONDENT: Are they [such acute experiences] merely an idiosyncrasy of different personalities, or are they tied to an approach or attitude? RICHARD: Neither ... they came about because (a) nobody had gone beyond spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment before ... and (b) the direct route (opened by Peter and Richard on the 29th of December, 2009) was yet to be forged back then. RESPONDENT: Is there a strategy that can be utilized to bypass or minimize such experiences? RICHARD: Yep ... tapping into pure intent should do the trick nicely. For instance: #10876 From: richard.actualfreedom Date: Sat Feb 4, 2012 12:16 am Subject: Re: [...] about two types of Actual Freedom • [James] [...] Is the pce necessary? ps: Is the pce necessary for pure intent to come out of this vast stillness? • [Richard]: G’day James, Prior to 11.25 AM (AEDST) on Saturday, the 14th of November, 2009, a pure consciousness experience (PCE) was indeed necessary for pure intent – that benevolence and benignity of the vast and utter stillness of the universe itself – and the reason why a PCE was essential is reported/ described/ explained both on The Actual Freedom Trust website and in ‘Richard’s Journal’. [...] what the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago experienced as an ‘over-arching benevolence and benignity’ was experienced by the feeling-being ‘Peter’, on the 29th of December 2009, as [quote] ‘a sweetness that was palpable’ [endquote] and that ‘he’ was [quote] ‘literally being bathed in this sweetness’ [endquote]. [...]. Other people have reported experiencing that over-arching benevolence and benignity as a palpable sweetness as well. Pamela, for instance, spoke of it in those terms during the ten minutes or so immediately prior to the pivotal event/ the definitive moment when she became actually free of the instinctual passions/ the feeling-being formed thereof on the 27th of January 2010. (On another occasion, about three weeks later, she reported experiencing it as being an ‘infinite tenderness’ of such a magnitude as to render her incoherent upon endeavouring to describe it to Vineeto). Vineeto [...snip...] has written of it, in a private email, as being ‘an overwhelming sweetness, so overwhelmingly sweet that tears were running down my face. At another time I experienced a tenderness so vast that I was speechless for a good time afterwards’. I mention these reports so as to demonstrate that what the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago experienced as an ‘over-arching benevolence and benignity’ may not necessarily be exactly the way others experience it. [...]. (Message 10876, Richard, List D, James, 4 February 2012). (Richard, List D, No. 25a, 25 May 2015) The whole correspondence from 25 May 2015 is well-worth reading from the beginning because it drives the point home even more. As you might have gathered by now, when you are a friend to yourself and look at/ sort out the various obstacles to being happy and harmless, enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive, when you become more and more naïve, like yourself and others, then you can follow the wide and wondrous path of felicitous discoveries and appreciative amazement, then there is no need to get lost in the scary thicket of self-created fear, sorrow and bitter-sweet fantasy. Then, following pure intent, one day the choice is so crystal-clear and irresistibly attractive, then the facts speak for themselves and inevitably trigger ‘my’ permission to the only obvious action which is not of ‘my’ doing. Cheers Vineeto August 26, 2025 JESUSCARLOS: Thanks for your kind and detailed reply Vineeto. VINEETO: Have you ever thought that it might be the other way round, that your fear is created by ‘me’ wanting to force ‘me’ to do something ‘I’ am not ready to voluntarily do? JESUSCARLOS: This makes a lot of sense. And now I can see that in the last 2-3 weeks I’ve pushing myself to feel good when not. Or I have been reproaching myself for not being able to feel good in the midst of the sea of ​​difficulties I am facing now. So it makes sense to me to think that I caused that fear myself by trying despite everything to feel good, excellent, perfect and to become extinct. (…) VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, You are welcome. When you notice not feeling good, instead of “pushing myself to feel good”, stand still and let the feelings ebb away, perhaps go back before the trigger event until you get back to feeling good again. Then you can look at the cause which triggered the diminishment of feeling good. Here is what Chrono reported – Chrono: 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. [Emphasis added]. * VINEETO: I don’t know the film but this is not synchronicity but real-world sentimental fantasy for bitter-sweet feel-good effect. JESUSCARLOS: I didn’t realize it until I read it, and now I can see it clearly. It makes sense to me, especially because at that moment I felt very different than I did after the PCE a year ago. This time there was no lightness, but rather a kind of feeling of shock after the trauma, and with that feeling I fell into the trap of seeking shelter in good feelings… Thanks to this feedback, I see that I need to further refine my differentiation between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings. VINEETO: I am pleased you can see that. Of course, one notices the bad feelings first, and now you can refine your attentiveness to distinguish “between good feelings and happy, harmless feelings”, which in normal-day parlance are lumped together in one category. * VINEETO: ‘I’ am feeding the fear, either by fighting against it or by wanting to have something immediately which needs a gentler more friendly approach, especially when it comes to ‘my’ extinction. JESUSCARLOS: Of course! I can see that this way of wanting something immediately is an old, tantrum-like pattern of my personality. The other side of the coin, or the other extreme, is believing that achieving something will take forever, which turns me into a passive entity waiting for salvation. VINEETO: Indeed. Here is how feeling-being ‘Vineeto’ put it – ‘Vineeto’: Expectation is certainly not the full description of my attitude towards extinction, obsession is a more appropriate word to use. It is one of the widespread spiritual requirements that one should not aspire, desire, expect but wait for the grace of Existence to grant fulfillment of one’s dreams. But as actualism is about the actual and not about some spurious feeling-state granted by some even more spurious Energy, I can be straight forward with wanting Actual Freedom, desiring it, expecting it to happen and doing everything I can to achieve it, just like people in the normal world aspire tangible, non-spiritual values like riches, a car, a position or a woman. What I mean is that I am the only person who can bring about my freedom from malice and sorrow and I am the only one who can rewire my brain to facilitate self-immolation. (Actualism, Vineeto, Actual Freedom List, Gary-b, 19.8.2000). This recent exchange may also help – Kuba: Which is to say that at the core of it there is no pre-set list of conditions which ‘I’ have to tick off as the ‘doer’ before felicity and innocuity is granted to ‘me’ – this is completely the wrong paradigm. It pre-supposes that felicity and innocuity is something that is granted as an end result of some kind of deterministic domino effect, all the while ‘I’ remain passive, waiting. Vineeto: You put it well – this is the difference between actively taken life into your hands and changing yourself fundamentally, rather than following the reward/ punishment template and therefore passively wait for an authority, ‘mother nature’, karma or some supernatural force/ entity to capriciously dish out the rewards. In fact, this is one big difference between the straight and narrow path and the wide and wondrous path. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba9, 23 August 2025). It is useful to recognize the typical real-world affective paradigm of swinging from one side to its affective opposite while in actualism, when you get back to feeling good, you look for the third alternative using pure intent as your guide. * VINEETO: As you might have gathered by now, when you are a friend to yourself and look at/ sort out the various obstacles to being happy and harmless, enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive, when you become more and more naïve, like yourself and others, then you can follow the wide and wondrous path of felicitous discoveries and appreciative amazement, then there is no need to get lost in the scary thicket of self-created fear, sorrow and bitter-sweet fantasy. Then, following pure intent, one day the choice is so crystal-clear and irresistibly attractive, then the facts speak for themselves and inevitably trigger ‘my’ permission to the only obvious action which is not of ‘my’ doing. JESUSCARLOS: Thanks for the “wall of fear” quote! I’ll read all the correspondence you mention. VINEETO: It’s good to be up to date with the descriptions, reports and explanations about self-immolation because before the direct route was opened in January 2010 Richard had only his own path to an actual freedom to describe what happened for the first pioneer. It is a lot easier now to become actually free. JESUSCARLOS: And I really appreciate this last summary of the method you’ve given me. I see that where I’m failing the most is in being a friend to myself. Especially this weekend, I was noticing that I don’t like myself, or that I’ve returned to that point I thought I’d overcome. Thank you so much, Vineeto. Your feedback helps me a lot to correct my course and avoid getting lost in more mazes. VINEETO: Indeed, being a friend to yourself is vital and helps you to uproot the detrimental habits of blaming and berating oneself, or others, being resentful, angry, lost or sad as reaction to unexpected events. Then naively enjoying and appreciating each moment of being alive comes more naturally, and you recognize you live in a friendly world, all the while imitating actuality as much as possible. * KUBA: So I wonder is this just another aspect of the “straight and narrow path”, a tenet which holds that suffering is required to succeed, that one’s success is predicated on how much pain they are willing to endure in the process etc. JESUSCARLOS: An ancient belief, both Christian and Buddhist! Perhaps older than religions themselves. And a mantra of today’s world, of meritocracy that justifies inequality between human beings. VINEETO: Here is a question for you – if meritocracy is the cause which “justifies inequality between human beings”, then why do you value the expertise, reports and explanations how to become actually free from those fellow human beings who have succeeded? When you choose expertise and competence over ineptitude and incompetence then you choose merit over inadequacy (in a particular field). Whereas the “mantra of today’s world” is equality – ‘all are born equal’ – now cunningly renamed equity, which detrimental results of implementing this belief in law and regulations can be seen in many areas of human endeavour. Note, Richard talked about “equity[1] and parity[2]”, for peace and harmony to flourish amongst human beings. (see The Formation and Persistence of the Social Identity, #04). [1] Equity: the state, action or quality of even-handed dealing, even-handedness; fairness, justness; impartiality; unbiased; [2] Parity: the state, action or quality of being on a par; an equivalence of status, level or value; correspondence, similarity; (Adapted from Oxford Dictionary, see Neoteric Online Dictionary). * Richard: ‘It is important to remember, that when one questions a principle (such as equality) and its opposite (inequality) becomes obvious as a result of the question, that nothing has changed except that a belief has disappeared ... inequality was always happening anyway. (Richard, List B, No. 37, 20 March 2000). Cheers Vineeto August 28, 2025 JESUSCARLOS: An ancient belief, both Christian and Buddhist! Perhaps older than religions themselves. And a mantra of today’s world, of meritocracy that justifies inequality between human beings. VINEETO: Here is a question for you – if meritocracy is the cause which *“justifies inequality between human beings”*, then why do *you* value the expertise, reports and explanations how to become actually free from those fellow human beings who have succeeded? (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba9, 23 August 2025). JESUSCARLOS: I didn’t say that meritocracy was the cause that “justifies inequality among human beings.” I think I needed to provide more context. Meritocracy is a rationale that seeks to allocate resources based on effort and merit. I have no problem with that. I was rather talking about meritocracy as an ideology used by some people in the real world here in Mexico, to justify why some have more than others. They attribute everything to individual effort and erase the true reasons why many people obtained certain resources: social status, class, inheritance, corruption, theft, plunder, violence, etc. Of course, I value the testimonies of those who have succeeded in achieving actual freedom through their own merits, because it has nothing to do with anything other than their own merit and effort. In this case, the purpose suggested by meritocracy truly applies. That’s why, before writing that final statement, I was thanking Kuba for all his success and progress reports, which are very helpful to me. My apologies, I wrote a problematic final sentence without being clear and without providing context. And I think there are aspects I need to analyze more closely, as to why I came to link one thing with another. VINEETO: Hi JesusCarlos, Thank you for your clarification. Now that you provided the context, the ideological usage of the word, I do understand better what you meant. As you said, “meritocracy as an ideology used by some people in the real world” then you would be aware that other people would use ‘equality’ as an ideology to counteract the ideology of meritocracy and similarly make a hash of it. It is standard practice in the real world to cure one unpopular/ upsetting situation with its very opposite. For actualism it may be more useful to make a distinction between expertise (based on knowledge, skill and/or lived experience) and an authority connected with power, including psychic power for you to come to your own conclusions. What other human beings do is their own business. Richard: There are two meanings to the word ‘authority’ and the one that causes all the troubles is the one connected with power. (The power of the authority to enforce obedience; the power of the authority to enforce moral or legal judgements; the power of the authority to command or give the final decision; the power of the authority to control; the power of the authority of a governing body; the power of an authoritative holy book; the power of the authority to inspire belief and so on). The second – less used – meaning is: an expert on a particular subject. (Richard, Selected Correspondence, Authority and Expertise) For equity and parity to flourish, one looks at and eventually abandons all principles, ideologies, beliefs, convictions, attitudes and concepts. (see The Formation and Persistence of the Social Identity, #04). Cheers Vineeto
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