December 17 2024

But I really have felt the collective momentum that in my own experience is best described as a confidence that no matter what happens feeling good is the response that makes sense. Constantly seeing that mirrored back by everyone’s own unique and intelligent perspective is majorly helpful to fuel this confidence, although the ultimate fuel for it is the positive feedback of seeing how the more I have that confidence the better things get.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. It’s great news that you get so much confidence from the “collective momentum” on this list. After all, feeling beings are gregarious beings and respond to other people’s feelings and vibes. Now there is a choice for sharing felicitous and innocuous feelings and vibes, and simultaneously improve your own capacity for more enjoyment and appreciation by choosing to feel good in every situation.

Also, it is marvellous that you derive your “ultimate fuel” from “the positive feedback of seeing how the more I have that confidence the better things get”.

Have you considered tapping into pure intent via rememoration of your most outstanding PCE? Unless you have already done so, this will give you an even more reliable source of confidence, it being the final arbiter that you are on the right track as well as continuous inspiration and a constantly available guide for increasing naïveté in a real world of serious sophisticates.

In any case, it is great to see that so many people are experiencing naiveté in one form or another now and it can only get better and more fun and enjoyment. Let us hear more of your exploits, it is always appreciated when someone shares their success with actualism.

Cheers Vineeto 

June 13 2025

ADAM-H: The other big change in this time was entering into my first (still ongoing) long-term relationship with my girlfriend. We’ve been living together and spending almost all of our free time together all this time, in relatively good (but far from perfect) harmony and intimacy. There’s no other place in my life where there is such direct feedback for the quality of my actualism practice as there is in how I experience our relationship. When I’m not applying the actualism method, the relationship can feel unfair and stifling, while when I am applying it things can feel incredibly intimate to the point of feeling magical, like there is no separation between us. These ways of experiencing can alternate fairly rapidly where I feel like I can ascend and descend through that spectrum of experience in the course of a week. With ‘work stress’ on the other hand where relationships are much more measured and controlled, that same alternation in mode of experience is much more internal.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

Welcome back to the forum. Great to hear your detailed report and success.

As you have mentioned stress, and work stress in particular, maybe this is the topic to direct your affective attentiveness to in order to determine what causes you to feel this stress in the first place.

There is not much point aiming for naiveté or even “care to be innocence personified” (which only an actually free person can be) before you are able to recognize, dismantle and abandon the triggers for feeling stressed. You say that stress equally affects your mood in your “first-time” relationship, so the feeling of stress can have multiple and diverse as yet unexamined reasons. Once you start paying close attention you will find a treasure-trove of exciting discoveries that can make your life instantly better when you understand each issue more fully as how ‘you’ tick – and thus be able to get back to feeling good and appreciating much more quickly.

ADAM-H: My focus, inspired by the successes of several participants and their interactions with Vineeto, has mostly been on diving into naiveté. This has been a process of making an effort to recognize that I am my feelings, that I can choose how I want to be, and that being naiveté is essential to (or perhaps the same as?) being happy and harmless.

VINEETO: This is excellent. Still stress, according to your report, seems to interrupt feeling good and needs to be addressed –

Gary: I gave some thought as to whether I am ‘tracking’ the waking entity, and I think I am. I seem to go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax, often to but take up the tracking the next day.

Richard: If it be not fun to track oneself in all of one’s doings then one might as well ‘give up the chase and relax’ ... however what you describe as a modus operandi does not make sense to me (‘go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax’).

To need to (and to be able to) ‘relax’ means there must be tension in the first place to relax from ... thus the tracking down has changed from tracking down the ‘same emotions’ or the ‘same repetitive thoughts’ to tracking down the tension ... and you did not notice that the game had changed horses in mid-stream. The need to ‘relax’ is a flashing red light that the game-play has changed: ‘when did this tension start?’; how did this tension begin?’; ‘what was the event that initiated this tension?’; ‘what were the feelings at the time?’; ‘what was the thought associated with that feeling?’ ... and so on. Usually one has only to track back a few minutes or a few hours ... yesterday afternoon at the most. Then one is free from both the tension and the ‘Tried and True’ cure of ‘relax’.

Speaking personally, I never relaxed in all those years of application and diligence, patience and perseverance ... upon exposure to the bright light of awareness the tension always disappeared. [Emphasis added].(Richard, AF List, Gary, 28 January 2001)

ADAM-H: I remember being particularly stirred by this from Vineeto:

Vineeto to Kuba: With the thrilling permission for ‘you’ to die and the passionate care to be innocence personified in place you have blessedly set in motion your demise – nothing can go wrong. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Kuba6, 14 April 2025)

especially the endorsement of Kuba’s ‘passionate care to be innocence personified’, recognizing that it had never really been part of how I approached actualism.

VINEETO: Of course, it is beneficial to experiment with being naïve and use all the good tips and information Claudiu just gave you. What feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that for ‘her’ being naïve was at first not easy to establish, ‘she’ had to have success in other areas with applying the actualism method consistently and rigorously, such as dismantling various beliefs, and all the while ‘she’ was determined to be ruthlessly honest with herself and being more and more sincere. Out of that sincerity ‘she’ then could allow ‘herself’ to be more and more unsophisticated and guileless.

Richard: There is a marked distinction betwixt spontaneity and impetuosity (aka impulsiveness) ... acuity and/or perspicacity, in the applied form of discrimination, discernment (as in being expedient, provident, judicious, prudent) in conjunction with pragmatism, practicality, sensibility, simplicity, and so forth, gives ready access for any introspective/ creative process to take place. With no identity in situ/ no affective faculty extant, to stuff things up, it is all quite effortless. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 103, 1 October 2005d)

You can change Richard’s last sentence to “with a diminished identity in situ/ a diminished affective faculty extant” – then it becomes clear that the more diminished the identity becomes, naiveté will increase accordingly.

ADAM-H: Since then, I’ve been attempting to galvanize that passionate care which is for this body and everybody to flourish through ‘my’ seeking naivete, which is inextricably linked to seeking my end. Directly recognizing that my calculating/ guileful tendencies are the very thing that prevents happiness and harmless is a small step from seeing that my being is the very thing that prevents perfection.

VINEETO: Mmh, becoming more and more happy and increasingly harmless, i.e. considerate, in your daily life is the best thing you can do for your fellow beings right now, particular for your partner, and of course for yourself. In other words, when you emanate less and less stressful feelings and vibes and are able to neither suppress them nor acting on them, and/or eventually not having them arise in the first place, the less you contribute to stress circulating and multiplying. Start from where you are at, and with pure intent the progress of the actualism method will fall into place organically.

It’s best to avoid creating conceptual maps, which you then try to follow, as this methodology, so tempting for many, only leads to strife (stress), self-deception, and ultimately disappointment ... and is in the very opposite to being naïve.

I snipped the next section because Claudiu has already answered it..

Cheers Vineeto

June 14 2025

ADAM-H: Thanks Vineeto

VINEETO: There is not much point aiming for naiveté or even “care to be innocence personified” (which only an actually free person can be) before you are able to recognize, dismantle and abandon the triggers for feeling stressed. You say that stress equally affects your mood in your “first-time” relationship, so the feeling of stress can have multiple and diverse as yet unexamined reasons. Once you start paying close attention you will find a treasure-trove of exciting discoveries that can make your life instantly better when you understand each issue more fully as how ‘you’ tick – and thus be able to get back to feeling good and appreciating much more quickly.

ADAM-H: Interesting, it seems like your overall impression is that I’m putting the cart before the horse a bit. I can confirm that the investigation side of my practice has maybe been a bit light recently. I wouldn’t say I neglect it entirely but it certainly hasn’t been the focus. With the flavor of naivete powerfully enticing me right now, I’m definitely interested in making it more consistent, so thank you for the advice that the way to do so is more focus/ investigation on the issues that interrupt it.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

You are welcome.

It may well be only a ‘small cart’ that is ‘before the horse.’

Naturally, being stressed needs “‘good’ investigation”, as Geoffrey said in the quote below, so you can recognize and then decline what causes you stress. As ‘Vineeto’ observed early on, it’s often the ‘good’ feelings such as pride, ambition, loyalty, virtue, being ‘right’ and other feelings like this, which caused the ‘bad’ feelings such as stress to achieve the ‘good’ feeling or disappointment when not achieving it. And unless those ‘good’ feelings are recognized and acknowledged with the ‘bad’ feelings both will stay in situ.

Chrono: Just watched Geoffrey’s video that he shared a while back and something he said in there really helped me right now. It’s essentially that “good” investigation is just seeing what’s preventing me from feeling good right now. There’s no need to get any more complex. I mean I know this has been written many times before and the words are right there in front of my face but hearing it really clicked for me. Because I can basically “investigate” forever and I will always find problems (or create them). So in the context of my discomfort and investigating the discomfort, it is the same thing. So what is preventing me right now from feeling good? It’s basically trying to “do” something to feel good. So simple! I have a tendency to complicate things. Also might be related to how I’ve learned throughout my life to be “sophisticated”. If it’s not difficult, then I’m not doing something right. It became the measure (internally) of if I’m doing something properly. Now it’s like the opposite. If it’s not easy, then something is amiss. [Emphasis added].

Thus, when you found the trigger, you can get back to feeling good (not the same as having a ‘good’ feeling) and enjoy and appreciate being alive. Make sure, when feeling good that you’ve understood enough of what triggered the feeling so as to not have it happen again. Then naturally you can enjoy even more and increase this enjoyment with appreciation.

*

VINEETO: What feeling being ‘Vineeto’ found that for ‘her’ being naïve was at first not easy to establish, ‘she’ had to have success in other areas with applying the actualism method consistently and rigorously, such as dismantling various beliefs, and all the while ‘she’ was determined to be ruthlessly honest with herself and being more and more sincere. Out of that sincerity ‘she’ then could allow ‘herself’ to be more and more unsophisticated and guileless.

ADAM-H: I think I am on the same page in terms of the ruthless honesty with myself, and it is clear to me how the sincerity of that intention segues into naiveté. Basically if I am really honest about how and why I’m not happy and harmless, it segues into an experiential realization that ‘I’ am the problem, which segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful.

VINEETO: That’s excellent and it already “segues into perceiving the world as fundamentally friendly and wonderful”.

ADAM-H: The form that this takes for me right now is mostly focused on intentions and vibes more than beliefs, which may be a shortcoming. This is related to previous struggles going in circles of ‘philosophizing and psychologising’ in the past when my practice did have more focus on investigation.

VINEETO: I’m not sure what you mean by “intentions” – are they certain plans for the future?

Also I don’t know what you mean by being “focused on … vibes” – are you focused on your vibes (which are essentially your feelings), or are you trying to figure out other people’s vibes in order to respond accordingly?

It is definitely more beneficial to pay affective attention to how you feel and what is preventing you from feeling good rather than guessing other people’s vibes in order to react according to your guesses. One, you can never be sure if these are your feelings or their feelings/vibes and two, your focus is on their feelings rather than your own. The only person you can change is yourself.

ADAM-H: It’s somewhat rare that I get back to feeling good by recognizing an unexamined belief, much more often it’s closer to a ‘resolution’ that I don’t want to experience life this way, fuelled by the memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way, plus the memory that once I am experiencing life in that other way all of those ‘problems’ will seem imaginary and get dealt with in a manner that is effortless and harmless. Perhaps what is necessary is that once I get into that state where all the problems melt away and seem imaginary, what I need to do is basically dive back into them and closely examine how and why they seemed real vs. how and why they now seem imaginary? Or is there something more fundamentally off with how I’m approaching things?

VINEETO: Not fundamentally, just a little tweaking here and there …

Mmh, resolutions generally don’t work as it’s a form of controlling yourself to feel in a certain way – if that is what you mean by “resolution”. Whereas recognizing that your feelings are caused by a certain belief and then are able to replace this belief with a fact, this will make the belief evaporate and thus no ‘resolution’ is required. You don’t need to believe in a fact, it just sits there, unsupported.

“The memory that it’s possible to experience life in a totally opposite way” can strengthen your intent to be/become more happy and harmless, and perhaps allows you to take life less seriously, less sophisticated, more naïvely.

Actual change happens now, only this moment is actual. The past is not happening now neither is the future happening now – that’s why you don’t want to waste this moment by feeling stressed, remembering good intentions and bad decisions or planning/ wishing something in the future.

Now is the only moment you are being alive. Realising this, again and again helps a lot to recognize that feeling bad is just silly.

Here Richard tells a correspondent how to access naiveté whenever you want to –

Richard: Given that it is, plainly and simply, always ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment then the optimum manner in which to do so is, of course, sincerely/ naïvely.

Given that it is, plainly and simply, always ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment then the optimum manner in which to do so is, of course, sincerely/ naïvely.

Thus the part-sentence in that previous post of mine [quote] ‘and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté’ [endquote] is worth expanding upon.

The operative words in that part-sentence are [quote] ‘... to be the key ...’ [endquote] and with particular emphasis on the word ‘be’ (rather than ‘have’ for instance).

In other words, to be sincerity (not only have sincerity) is to be the key (not merely have the key) to be naiveté (not just have naiveté).

(Bear in mind that, at root, ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’ and it will all become clear).

As there is something I have oft-times encouraged a fellow human being to try, in face-to-face interactions, which usually has the desired effect it is well worth detailing here:

Reach down inside of yourself intuitively (aka feeling it out) and go past the rather superficial emotions/ feelings (generally in the chest area) into the deeper, more profound passions/ feelings (generally in the solar plexus area) until you come to a place (generally about four-finger widths below the navel) where you intuitively feel you elementarily have existence as a feeling being (as in ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being ... which is ‘being’ itself).

Now, having located ‘being’ itself, gently and tenderly sense out the area immediately below that (just above/just before and almost touching on the sex centre).

Here you will find yourself both likeable and liking (for here lies sincerity/ naiveté).

Here is where you can, finally, like yourself (very important) no matter what.

Here is the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’.

Here lies tenderness/ sweetness and togetherness/ closeness.

Here is where it is possible to be the key. (Richard, List D; Srid, 26 May 2009) 

Cheers Vineeto

June 15 2025

VINEETO: I’m not sure what you mean by “intentions” – are they certain plans for the future?
Also I don’t know what you mean by being “focused on … vibes” – are you focused on your vibes (which are essentially your feelings), or are you trying to figure out other people’s vibes in order to respond accordingly?

ADAM-H: Just for a little more clarity on what I meant by intentions and vibes – I did mean my own intentions and vibes. Effectively the ruthless honesty with myself is honesty about my own self-centeredness and harmfulness (which I was loosely referring to as intentions/ vibes), which segues into seeing that I’m the problem etc.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

Thank you for the clarification.

The way you describe yourself may be ruthless but not very friendly towards yourself. It’s a good idea to treat yourself as a friend and not someone you need to take down. There are already enough others who do that.

Richard: ‘It is important not to view ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ as an enemy – blind nature is the culprit – and to be friends with yourself ... only you live with yourself twenty four hours a day. Coopt any aspect of yourself as an ally in this investigation into the human psyche ... eventually ‘I’ come to realise that the very best thing that ‘I’ can do is altruistically ‘self’-immolate for the benefit of this body and all bodies’. [endquote]. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 7, 18 February 1999)

Richard: Put succinctly: be kind to yourself ... you are the only friend you have, so to speak’. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 41, 4 February 2003).

The actualism method is to enjoy and appreciate being alive – only when something happens, which diminishes this enjoyment and appreciation, then you get back to feeling good and from there look at what triggered the diminishment. There is no need to go out of your way to look for trouble.

ADAM-H: I was trying to express how, overall, my practice of actualism is focused on the core feelings and attitudes that I have that are opposed to happiness and harmless, less so on the beliefs I have that are opposed to happiness and harmlessness. I’m thinking a bit more focus on beliefs will be beneficial since I haven’t really been thinking about things in terms of beliefs, worldviews, psittacisms lately.

VINEETO: It’s not about which aspect of ‘me’ to focus on but on whatever is happening at this moment – if it’s a belief which causes diminishment in feeling good right now, then this is what you figure out; if it’s a habit, such as resentment or castigating yourself, then you acknowledge and decline this habit by replacing it with something better; if it is a certain attitude, then you look at that and work out in what way you can exchange it for a more beneficial attitude.

As Geoffrey said, “It’s essentially that “good” investigation is just seeing what’s preventing me from feeling good right now. There’s no need to get any more complex.”

Cheers Vineeto

June 24 2025

ADAM-H: So I am running into some difficulty getting back to feeling good from a state of stress. Over the last week I observed myself moving from happy and harmless, to good feelings, and now to stress. Although I saw the good feelings replacing naiveté as it happened, I basically didn’t have enough motivation to stop it. It basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté, congratulating myself, and imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté. Now that the good feelings are replaced with bad, the motivation is there and I am definitely keeping this whole cycle in mind in hopes that it gives me more focus the next time around.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll solve this right here and right now, I’ve been contemplating it while writing this post for a while, but just wanted to get something into my journal while I’m in this spot.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

The first thing that occurred to me was that you were feeling good and feeling naïve and then “it basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté” and you were “imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté”. It could well be that this hijacking of naiveté by ‘’me’ is what caused the original feelings of stress. To fulfil this imagination you would have to manufacture being naïve, which is the very opposite of being naïve, i.e. letting life live you, and therefore a stressful task rather than a joy to be.

Because the feeling of stress continued you then found a likely cause transferring it all to work-related problems. I am not saying they don’t exist but the primary trigger was that your naiveté was taken over by the desire to being praised “for my naiveté” – in other words manifested as the co-joined twins of pride and humility, swinging from one end to the other.

I suggest to get back to feeling good, or at least feeling ok, and then see if what I said makes sense to you. Perhaps it helps to understand more of this aspect of your social identity and thus can be declined so you will be able to get back to a more consistent feeling good.

It’s also useful to remember that when you fight/ reject any of your feelings you add affective energy to that feeling and thus increase it.

As a reminder, here Richard wrote in detail how to access sincere/ pure intent, which is essential for having success with the actualism method –

Respondent: (…) How did you get the pure intent or how did you keep the intent running? Are there certain events that lead to it’s discovery? Is there are a particular approach you would advise other to get pure intent?

Richard: G’day No. 13, Just putting in a plug for what is propagated by the website.

The ultimate source of an actualist’s pure intent is, of course, the pristine purity of the innocence which prevails in the pure consciousness experience (PCE).

For those who are unable to recall/ unable to trigger a PCE there is the near-purity of the sincerity which inheres in naiveté – the nearest a ‘self’ can get to innocence whilst remaining a ‘self’ – which naiveté is an aspect of oneself locked away in childhood through ridicule, derision, and so on, that one has dared not to resurrect for fear of appearing foolish, a simpleton, in both others’ eyes and, thus, one’s own.

(Because ‘naïve’ and ‘gullible’ are so closely linked – via the trusting nature of a child in concert with the lack of knowledge inherent to childhood – in the now-adult mind, most peoples initially have difficulty separating the one from another).

Now, as ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’, then seeing the fact that it is plainly and simply ‘my’ choice as to how ‘I’ experience this moment – the only moment one is actually alive – is a first step leading to its discovery.

And, as the part-sentence you have quoted (further above) has been extracted out from the middle of the first paragraph of the section entitled ‘The Who And How of Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’, in the ‘Attentiveness And Sensuousness And Apperceptiveness’ article, then the opening lines provide a clue to an answer for your queries. Viz.:

• [quote] ‘The intent is you will become happy and harmless.
The intent is you will be free of sorrow and malice. The intent is you will become blithesome and benign. The intent is you will be free of fear and aggression. The intent is you will become carefree and considerate. The intent is you will be free from nurture and desire. The intent is you will become gay and benevolent. The intent is you will be free of anguish and animosity. The intent is that, by being free of the Human Condition, you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body ... as is evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) (...)’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness).

Spelled-out sequentially that first part of the paragraph, immediately prior to the part-sentence you extracted, can look something like this:

1. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming happy and harmless.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of sorrow and malice.

2. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming blithesome and benign.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of fear and aggression.

3. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming carefree and considerate.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free from nurture and desire.

4. The initial intent comes from a vital interest in becoming gay and benevolent.

That intent thus creates a vested interest in being free of anguish and animosity.

*

All of this vital interest/ vested interest enables sincerity – as to be in accord with the fact/being aligned with factuality/ staying true to facticity is what being sincere is (as in being authentic/ guileless, genuine/ artless, straightforward/ ingenuous) and to be sincere is to be the key which unlocks naiveté ... then the summing-up sentence can now look something like this:

The [sincere/ naïve] intent, then, is that by being free of the human condition you will experience peace-on-earth, in this life-time, as this body ... as is evidenced in the PCE.

As that summary sentence leads straight on to the sentence you have part-quoted from then it too can now look something like this:

• [quote]: ‘(...) An actualist’s intent is a [sincere/ naïve] intent and discovering how to blend this [sincere/ naïve] intent via attentiveness – into one’s conscious life is the process that places one on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom ... this path is a virtual freedom’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness).

Which in turn is immediately followed by the how-to sentences:

• [quote] ‘Uncovering how to prolong the condition of virtual freedom – via attentiveness and sensuousness – is still another process. These are felicitous and innocuous processes, however, and they are well worth the effort for attentiveness and sensuousness are central to virtual freedom and the key to the whole condition. Attentiveness and sensuousness are both the goal of actualism and the means to that end: one reaches apperceptiveness by being ever more sensuous and one activates sensuousness by being ever more attentive ... and one activates attentiveness by no longer ‘feeling good’. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness Sensuousness Apperceptiveness).

In other words, it is the experiencing of no longer ‘feeling good’ (or ‘feeling happy/ harmless’ or ‘feeling excellent/ perfect’) which activates attentiveness again (as in it ‘jogs the memory’ to pay attention).

It is all a very, very simple method, actually. (Richard, List D, No. 13, 21 May 2009).

Let me know how it works for you.

Cheers Vineeto

June 27 2025

JOHN-E: There seems to be a problem with the PCE video. In the description of the download it says the file is 1.7Gb but the downloadable file is only 1gb and can’t be played beyond 34min even though the media player says the file is 59min.

Maybe something went wrong with the encoding or possibly uploading of the file?

ADAM-H: I had the same issue initially with the downloaded version, but playing the video on the server worked fine. I then found that by playing on the server and using the menu inside the online video player however, I could download the full file without the issue you’re describing. So I do think something is up with the download button for the PCE video specifically, the other two are working fully.

VINEETO: Hi Adam and John,

Thank you both for your feedback.

I was able to figure out the glitch – the ‘download’ had capital letters in the link, whereas the .mp4 file name had small letters ‘pce’.
The download link should be working fine now.

ADAM-H: Also just FYI, this page https://www.actualfreedom.com.au/sundry/orderformpaypal.htm is still linked in the site map.

VINEETO: Thank you Adam, an oversight of mine which I have corrected now.

ADAM-H: And p.p.s. thank you so much for making the videos and journals freely available! I’m so psyched to watch them again, I haven’t had a DVD player or a digital copy in a long time.

VINEETO: You are welcome. I was a pleasure to get it all organized with the help of a friendly practitioner of actualism and have it ready for uploading. I watched all the video just recently and they have a lot of different valuable information apart from the pleasure of the pleasant background surrounding during the conversations.

Cheers Vineeto

June 27 2025

ADAM-H: Hey Vineeto, I managed to get back to feeling good by contemplating how, if it came down to it, I would sacrifice the things I feel that I’m protecting (namely my job) if it meant I could be perfectly and continuously naive. I also had a moment of realizing that underneath the fears about my job was the fear that I wasn’t likeable (which related to job insecurity, hence my fears about the ‘whims’ of my boss).

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

Chrono has just posted a report that he was experiencing a similar fear of not being likeable and found other feelings lurking beneath that. It may give you some helpful or even applicable pointers.

Instead of “sacrifice the things I feel that I’m protecting” you can instead put everything on a preference basis –

Richard: 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).

*

Richard: I did everything possible that ‘I’ could do to blatantly imitate the actual in that ‘I’ endeavoured to be happy and harmless for as much as is humanly possible. This was achieved by putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis. That is, ‘I’ would prefer people, things and events to be a particular way, but if it did not turn out like that ... it did not really matter for it was only a preference. ‘I’ chose to no longer give other people – or the weather – the power to make ‘me’ angry ... or even irritated ... or even peeved. (Richard, List B, No. 12a, 16 July 1998)

And instead of wondering why other people do perhaps not like you, you can find out if you like yourself and if not why not. Is there perhaps a bad feeling lurking in the dark that you want to keep hidden, hidden from yourself? Something which perhaps requires some bright light of awareness? Something you can do something about with sincere intent to be happy and harmless?

ADAM-H: Now that I am feeling better and contemplating your suggestion, I definitely think it has some validity. Once I started hijacking the naiveté I started feeling insecure about it continuing, and started being oversensitive to other people’s reactions to me. This instantly created a cycle where I became more disingenuous trying to get people to like/ value me, which because it had the opposite effect eventually lead to me giving up in a state of self-pity. Anyways, I’m now just tuning into the ‘inherent’ value of being naive, rather than what it gets for me. I’m not quite there but I’m peering over at the state of ‘gay abandon’ and trying to work up the daring to get back to it and let things take care of themselves, let life live me, and give up on the careful control and manipulations. It’s still a little hard to believe everything won’t fall apart though.

VINEETO: You see, you can’t make naiveté happen, you can only allow yourself to be more naïve, in this moment – it is something outside the domain of the ‘controller’. It happens when you allow life to happen, not have it ‘your’ way. Hence a good way to start is to put everything on a preference basis, give up control a little – and don’t expect everything to happen at once (like a big leap to “the state of ‘gay abandon’”) – that again would be the opposite of being naïve.

You can experiment when doing nothing in particular for a while, and not know what is going to happen next, feeling a bit foolish perhaps, that’s ok, then a bit more of that, allow the objections and recognize the silliness, then get back to feeling good. Just explore what happens without plans how it should turn out …

Cheers Vineeto

August 28, 2025

VINEETO to JesusCarlos: Chrono has just posted a report that he was experiencing a similar fear of not being likeable and found other feelings lurking beneath that. It may give you some helpful or even applicable pointers. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, JesusCarlos, 26 August 2025).

ADAM-H: Yes I definitely have been seeing the connection between my fear of not being likeable with the knowledge that I have harmfulness hidden within me. The more I channel energy into happiness and harmlessness the less I feel like I have to fear from others, it leads to a positive reinforcement loop… whereas when I hide and ‘nurse’ harmful feelings the opposite happens.

I think this is a phenomena I’ve been aware of, but the recognition of what point in this ‘loop’ I can actually make changes is something that’s never fully sunk in. The point where I can actually make changes is in being happy and harmless ...

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

This is excellent. Fully comprehending that you "can actually make changes" will give you the necessary interest, vitality and persistence to actually be happy and harmless.

ADAM-H: … which brings me to some of the recent forum happenings that have inspired me to post again:

Geoffrey: As long as you find yourself looking for the door that is tiny (the recipe, the formula, the secret sauce, the psychic gun, the pill, the trick), you’re nowhere near and should instead walk the path.

As long as you find the path narrow, arduous, vanishing, confusing, instead of wide and wondrous as it is, you’re not walking it, you are merely lost in the woods nearby – and should instead find it in yourself to take a first clear step in the right direction, such as making a commitment to happiness and harmlessness.
The door is wide as the universe, just as the path is by imitation.

When one knows what it is one wants, and when one knows what it is one must sacrifice, then only the sensible action remains.

*

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.

*

Kuba: So instead what happens is that ‘I’ choose to ‘be’ the felicitous and innocuous feelings instead of ‘being’ the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings. Then ‘I’ am no longer operating from the back-seat, ‘I’ am directly and actively involved in how ‘I’ am experiencing this moment of being alive.
Of course as you mentioned this can only work if ‘I’ first fully acknowledge that ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings, which means that no feelings can be repressed, suppressed or dissociated from.

*

Vineeto to Kuba: 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).

ADAM-H: I find myself getting stuck into what Kuba described with conditions to check off or actions to take that will lead to somehow receiving happy and harmlessness, as opposed to just being happy and harmless. It’s interesting how even in the very moment of trying to get back to feeling good I do this.

VINEETO: This is a marvellous selection of quotes and well worth revisiting. What you describe is a deeply ingrained pattern, instilled and reinforced from early childhood, through school and all the other socialisation processes. The best thing you can do is become aware of it instance by instance, nip this habitual approach in the bud and get back on the wide and wondrous path. Once you notice it you are no longer stuck.

ADAM-H: Last week some friends of my girlfriend came to visit who I’ve never fully gotten comfortable with, they still seem like ‘her friends’ not mine. In the moment I was (or told myself I was) trying so hard to be happy and harmless, all the while thinking to myself about how we didn’t really connect, how they were different from me, how nothing I was saying was ‘landing’, how nothing I was doing was ‘working’ to put them at ease or connect.

I was also watching the tightness in my chest, the hesitancy and nervousness in my words, the suppressed resentment in my thoughts, thinking to myself ‘how do I fix this?’ Very much a case of not really seeing my feelings as being me, seeing my feelings instead as something that I "know better" than.

VINEETO: Well, firstly it is a case of not being friendly with yourself. When you become aware of what is affectively happening, pat yourself on the back for spotting it, and then it is much easier to get back to feeling good. Only then it’s worth looking at the cause of what diminished your feeling good.

ADAM-H: The difference between this and actually seeing that I am my feelings and choosing to be another way is huge experientially yet somehow hard for me to grasp conceptually. I think the key that helped me to grasp it was reading the above exchange between Kuba and Vineeto, and recognizing how even in that moment where I thought I was trying to apply the actualism method, I was still within that ‘reward/ punishment template’.

VINEETO: Yes it is, and as one correspondent once said, who had tantrum-size trouble with the actualism, once seen "it is remarkably easy".

Respondent: ‘It has taken me a hell of a long time to understand the difference between having feelings and being those feelings. Because I have not clearly understood this, I’ve never quite got the hang of paying attention to feelings without praise or blame, and without notions of innocence and culpability, right and wrong, etc getting in the way.

This makes things very interesting. The moment I regard my ‘self’ as ‘having’ a feeling, I’m split down the middle and there’s a secondary reaction on the part of the social identity (an urge to "do something" about the feeling, which in turn evokes more feelings, and so on). Conversely, if I recognise that I am the feeling, it most often dissolves into thin air – and usually pretty quickly too.

This is great. It’s especially helpful with regard to anger and frustration which have been two of my biggest hurdles to date. Previously, when I caught myself being angry, annoyed or frustrated, identifying and paying attention to this feeling would NOT cause it to disappear. On the contrary, the feeling and the awareness of myself as ‘having’ it would sometimes become like a microphone and amplifier locked into a screaming feedback loop.

I’m really pleased that this is no longer happening. It seems almost too easy’. [emphasis in original]. (Thursday 28/10/2004 6:55 PM AEST) (See Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 60g, 30 Oct 2005a).

ADAM-H: To be even more specific, I think the exact ‘realization’ which helped me switch over was to realize that I could actually choose to enjoy the experience right now and that would be the reward in and of itself, rather than having in mind the reward as the way that the relationship dynamic would improve if I dealt with the annoying feelings I was experiencing.

That realization led to coming directly face to face with my own objections to enjoying life in that situation, at which point I realized how I was being silly to have those objections because they were self-evidently making my life and everyone else’s life worse, and got back to feeling good. The path is not hard to find it’s just I don’t want to walk down it, but seeing this really clearly is often enough to change my mind, especially when the triviality of my highly specific reasons for not wanting to is illuminated.

VINEETO: Indeed, and once you find out that this was the only obstacle, you not wanting to enjoy life, it is really amusing and easy to redress, amend, readjust. It reminds me of Peter’s Virtual Freedom DVD who reported having had a similar resistance to be happy and harmless.

And now that you discovered how easy it is there is no reason to make this the most important aim in your life.

Ain’t life wonderful.

Cheers Vineeto

October 23 2025

KUBA: Hmm ok I see the bottom line of this is that I am not willing to change myself. This makes a lot of sense, why I would rather go on excursions, because then I get to remain intact as I am now and fool myself into an escape fantasy.

All of those things cannot remain as they are if I expect things to be different. Which is to say the Kuba who feels good for 23h 59m a day would be a vastly different person to the who that I am now.

ADAM-H: This is pretty interesting. Thinking about this in myself it seems like a sort of compartmentalization, where I compartmentalize my feeling bad away into certain times of day or certain settings. It does seem like it’s fundamentally about avoiding the need to change, if I can change the location/ timing of my bad feelings, I don’t need to fundamentally change (that’s the trick I play on myself).

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

There is a term for this “compartmentalization” when it happens in a more extreme form – “the Cognitive Dissonance Theory”. Yet every feeling being is prone to it to some extent.

Richard (based on several web sources): The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. The distressed personality is predisposed to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. Concurrent with this falsification, core beliefs tend to be vigorously defended by warping discernment and memory ... such people are prone to misinterpret cues and ‘remember’ things to be as they wish they had happened instead of how they actually happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes, while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures.

However it is more than merely a foolish head-in-the-sand psychological aberration, because the new, the fresh, the novel is oft-times met with determined resistance, disagreement, opposition and hostility. Indeed, the record of history shows many an occasion where someone who dared to question conventional beliefs was tortured, stoned, rent asunder, burnt at the stake, or otherwise horrifically put to death.

It is difficult to comprehend the extent and depth of the brutal ignorance and downright stupidity required of the great mass of people who, unable to grasp innovative things that were to their own advantage, fought to retain the existing mind-set which was inimical to their welfare. It is the strangest of incongruities in regards to human pertinacity that peoples will invent reasons and struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement ... even those conditions which enslave them.

The scientific method has evolved, in a large part, to reduce the impact of this human penchant for jumping to such self-justifying yet erroneous conclusions. (Richard, Abditorium, Cognitive Dissonance)

Richard: ... the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ would be better described as a ‘feeling-fed cognitive dissonance’ as it is not just a mental blockage which causes people to be unable to grasp innovative things that are to their own advantage and to fight so hard to retain the existing belief systems which are inimical to their welfare.

It is the strangest of incongruities in regards to human pertinacity that peoples will invent reasons and struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement ... even those conditions which enslave them. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 30, 22 October 2003).

As such it is great when you discover one or several of your own “compartmentalization” and are able to make sense of what is going on. So, whenever you dare, you can look closer at a sticky aspect of why you are feeling bad and in what way you dare to change in order to resolve the issue. And when you take a step back and look at your problem from a broader perspective then you’ll find that nothing really matters in the long run.

Richard: ‘(...) the human species has been doing its thing for at least 50,000 years or so – no essential difference has been discerned between the Cro-Magnon human and Modern-Day human – and may very well continue to do its thing for, say, another 50,000 years or so ... it matters not, in what has been described as ‘the vast scheme of things’ or ‘the big picture’, and so on, whether none, one or many peoples become actually free from the human condition (this planet, indeed the entire solar system, is going to cease to exist in its current form about 4.5 billion years from now). All these words – yours, mine, and others (all the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, scholarly tomes and so on) – will perish and all the monuments, all the statues, all the tombstones, all the sacred sites, all the carefully conserved/ carefully restored memorabilia, will vanish as if they had never existed ... nothing will remain of any human endeavour (including yours truly). Nothing at all ... nil, zero, zilch. Which means that nothing really matters in the long run and, as nothing really does matter (in this ultimate sense) it is simply not possible to take life seriously ... sincerely, yes, but seriously?

No way ... life is much too much fun to be serious! (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 25g, 22 December 2004).

From ‘Vineeto’s’ own experience, it helped to know about ‘cognitive dissonance’ and the sometimes atavistic fear associated with certain changes, yet ‘she’ also discovered that the change was never as scary (let alone dangerous) as imagined once addressed. The sincere/ pure intent to become more happy and harmless provided the impetus to eventually move forward. And with every reason/ trigger for feeling bad which is resolved/ dissolved there comes a relief that this ‘threat’ for change and the feeling stuck/ feeling bad is no longer present, and life becomes more enjoyable with the additional opportunity to appreciate being alive.

Cheers Vineeto

November 14 2025

ADAM-H: The biggest thing that’s happened in the last month or so has been an emphasis on continuity of feeling happy and harmless. I realized that my general practice had been to spend time reacting to things that upset me for a while before eventually trying to get back to feeling good, rather than immediately trying to get back to feeling good.

This seemed like valid actualism practice, even though I was aware that I wasn’t doing it perfectly I thought this was a good way to make incremental progress. The problem with this approach was that it basically allowed me to stop making any progress in the direction of self-immolation, because I could compartmentalize myself and my feelings into short periods of time and create a safe space for ‘me’ there. Making it my actual goal (rather than a distant future goal) to be happy and harmless continuously is clearly so much more confrontational of myself, I actually have to change now if that is going to be my goal.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

What you report appears to be progress on several fronts –

Noticing that you can improve the time span to get back to feeling good – and you are doing that and “make incremental progress”.
Noticing that you “compartmentalize” yourself and your feelings “into short periods” to create a “safe space”.
Drawing a compelling conclusion from your diligent observations and make “to be happy and harmless continuously” your primary goal right now rather than in “a distant future”.

This is excellent. You know now that merely wanting “to be happy and harmless continuously” is not compelling enough, one needs experiential input of facts (observed data from your own life) to give you impelling intent to actually do it.

ADAM-H: I think my practice is definitely in the best place it’s ever been, and I can relate much better to things I’ve read on the AFT site. I’m also closely observing the emphasis on not creating new maps and just focusing on maintaining the happy and harmless feelings, the holiday atmosphere, as steadily as possible. In terms of actually doing something about the human condition, it’s clear that this is the only way to put my money where my mouth is.

VINEETO: This is great to hear – the urge to create maps and future action plans and concepts can only divert your attention from the fact that this very moment, now, is the only moment you can actually/ dynamically experience, and any change can only happen now.

ADAM-H: Where I still get off track is when I want to ‘be somebody’, somebody important. It’s clear how I still have a competing motivation to be recognized, especially in my career and work, and that keeps me from more wholeheartedly committing. I think that by fully acknowledging this and sensibly evaluating ‘will this motivation deliver the goods?’ it is losing some influence.

VINEETO: Ah, several people on the forum have recently talked about the same urge to “be somebody”. It is inherent to being a ‘self’. As a ‘self’ you need constant confirmation from others that ‘you’ exist.

Richard: The self is what one is born with; it grew out of blind nature’s method of perpetuating the species via the instinct for survival. All sentient beings have an awareness of self ... all conscious beings know that they are separate from everything else. Unfortunately, with our ability to think, which animals do not have, we transformed this instinct for survival into a will to survive – a mental and emotional operation. This creates a psychological entity – the self – which takes up residence within this body and feeds off it like a parasite. (Richard, General Correspondence, Page 1, 26 June 1997).

The solution is rather simple – one can diminish the dominance of the ‘self’ by choosing to transfer the affective energy of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings towards the felicitous and innocuous feelings – and you have already decided to do that –

Richard: Which is why I advise minimising both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings and maximising the felicitous feelings – as far as humanly possible – as a salubrious modus operandi in the meanwhile rather than trying to eliminate them. Not only does this approach have the immediate benefit of feeling happy and harmless as one goes about one’s normal everyday life but it has the ultimate benefit of assisting in the rewiring of the brain’s habitual circuitry before the once-in-a-lifetime event happens which wipes out the identity in toto. (Richard, List B, James2, 22 October 2002).

In other words, rather than following the ‘self’-enhancing urge to “be somebody”, whenever it appears, you give yourself permission to put everything on a preference basis –

Richard: A general rule of thumb is: if it is a preference it is a self-less inclination; if it is an urge it is a self-centred desire. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, 25d, 14 January 2004).

Please note – the aim it not to become self-less as in unselfish, but less “self-centred”, more naïve.

If you put everything on a preference basis you soon find out that this self-diminishing inclination makes being continuously happy and harmless much easier and increasingly fun, evincing marvel and wonder.

Chrono said in a recent post to the forum – perhaps you can relate to it –

It’s a grand adventure.

Cheers Vineeto

December 9 2025

VINEETO:

Richard: A general rule of thumb is: if it is a preference it is a self-less inclination; if it is an urge it is a self-centred desire. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, 25d, 14 January 2004).

Please note – the aim it not to become self-less as in unselfish, but less “self-centred”, more naïve.

If you put everything on a preference basis you soon find out that this self-diminishing inclination makes being continuously happy and harmless much easier and increasingly fun, evincing marvel and wonder.

ADAM-H: I’ve been pondering the ‘put everything on a preference basis’ for the last few days. At various times in the past I tried to approach things through this lens and did not always have success. Like a lot of things with actualism it seems like the method and the goal are the same thing here.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

As putting everything on a ‘it doesn’t really matter’ basis goes against the instinctual drive of ‘self’-survival, it is to be expected that you “did not always have success”. Don’t let this discourage you, if you really want to become happy and harmless.

ADAM-H: ‘I’ have some resentment that the method and the goal are the same thing, because it doesn’t give me something ‘I’ can do to maintain but reshape my influence. Techniques that allow ‘me’ to assert something unique and special about ‘me’ are much preferred haha.

VINEETO: Ah, have you considered how feeling happy and harmless, even when 23hrs a day, compares to being spontaneously felicitous and innocuous every moment of your life? This is not merely a difference in degree but a qualitative difference in kind, so much so that it is inconceivable/ incomprehensible and unimaginable/ unbelievable to any identity whatsoever. It is entirely outside of ‘my’ territory.

Is the resentment that you will need to accustom yourself to the permanent living of actuality or else it would blow your fuses?

Richard: ‘After living in the condition of virtual freedom for sufficient time to absorb all the ramifications of a blithesome life, it is highly likely that the ultimate condition can happen.

‘I’ do not make it happen, because ‘I’ cannot make it happen. What is more ... ‘I’ am not required to make it happen. An actual freedom happens of itself only when one is fully ready, and not before. One has to become acclimatised to benignity, benevolence and blitheness, because the purity of the actual is so powerful that it would ‘blow the fuses’ if one was to venture into this territory ill-prepared. To precipitously apprehend the vast stillness of infinitude would be too much, too fast, too soon ... one could go mad with the super-abundance of pleasure that pours forth’. (Richard’s Journal ©1997 The Actual Freedom Trust. Page: 150).

Or is the resentment perhaps that you, the interloper, intend to rule the roost for the rest of your physical life with all the misery and mayhem that this entails?

ADAM-H: However, when ‘I’ keep in mind what it is like for me and others when everything is on a preference basis, even ‘I’ can get on board with it after some coaxing. It’s evident though, that it puts me on a direct course for self-immolation.

VINEETO: Ha, a reluctant agreement “after some coaxing” … and then the instant ‘self-immolation-card’ presented as the ‘worst case’ fear-scenario.

Remember, “illegitimi non carborandum”. (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Chrono2, 2 October 2025).

Cheers Vineeto

December 9 2025

ADAM-H: ‘I’ have some resentment that the method and the goal are the same thing, because it doesn’t give me something ‘I’ can do to maintain but reshape my influence. Techniques that allow ‘me’ to assert something unique and special about ‘me’ are much preferred haha.

VINEETO: Ah, have you considered how feeling happy and harmless, even when 23hrs a day, compares to being spontaneously felicitous and innocuous every moment of your life? This is not merely a difference in degree but a qualitative difference in kind, so much so that it is inconceivable/ incomprehensible and unimaginable/ unbelievable to any identity whatsoever. It is entirely outside of ‘my’ territory.

ADAM-H: Hmm yes, being that does seem to be more than I comprehend.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

I am not so sure if it is only a matter of comprehension – you talk about resentment and that you are seeking ‘self’-assertion techniques. I assume, you are aware that the aim of using the actualism method is the opposite – enjoyment and appreciation and a ‘self’-diminishing inclination.

Let me ask you for clarity’s sake – what is it that you want to do with your life? Or … what is your overall aim in life?

*

VINEETO: Or is the resentment perhaps that you, the interloper, intend to rule the roost for the rest of your physical life with all the misery and mayhem that this entails?

ADAM-H: Definitely more on this side. I want to be involved in the living out of the happiness and harmlessness, I want to take credit for it. That’s part of why I tend to corrupt actualism time and time again into something more clever and sophisticated than what it is I think. It is becoming more clear to me how ‘I’ in my essence am diametrically opposed to the happiness and harmlessness, and every time I take credit for it and turn it into my system it loses its purity and gradually degrades..

VINEETO: This is quite perspicuous of you.

Do you remember that you have seen a similar fact before, over than five months earlier? You wrote in your journal –

Adam-H: It basically manifested as taking credit for naiveté, congratulating myself, and imagining a future where I was praised for my naiveté. (24 June 2025)

Now that you know that you can only have one, or the other, you can decisively find out which direction you want to proceed – ‘self’-enhancing techniques or a naïve felicity and innocuity. Once you know your intent, there is action possible based on this perspicacity (that ‘me’ taking credit spoils both naiveté and purity).

Your destiny is entirely in your hands.

Cheers Vineeto

December 11 2025

VINEETO: I am not so sure if it is only a matter of comprehension – you talk about resentment and that you are seeking ‘self’-assertion techniques. I assume, you are aware that the aim of using the actualism method is the opposite – enjoyment and appreciation and a ‘self’-diminishing inclination.

Let me ask you for clarity’s sake – what is it that you want to do with your life? Or … what is your overall aim in life?

ADAM-H: Certainly there is no aim that I consciously hold higher than being spontaneously happy and harmless each moment again. But it is evidently not the only thing I want, because otherwise I would stop dilly dallying and focus on maximizing felicity each moment again. So in short – yes I agree that it’s more than a lack of comprehension that stands in my way.

VINEETO: Hi Adam,

This is good to know. I mainly asked this question for your own sake so that you, upon contemplation, see what you want first and foremost in your life. As you probably noticed, being happy and harmless is not a matter of will-power, hence calling your obstacles “dilly dallying” is rather a self-deprecating misnomer. The best way is to address each obstacle to being happy and harmless – unless you can easily nip it in the bud – and find out the cause and reason. Here is how I recently put it to Felix –

Vineeto: However, investigating the obstacles to feeling good is more looking for the reasons why you have those (sticky) negative feelings in the first place, in other words why you keep them. Is there a belief or moral/ dogma or other reason behind it? Are you defending a particular aspect of your identity? (Actualism, Actualvineeto, Felix, 30 November 2025).

As you have clearly acknowledged to yourself that your avowed aim is to be “spontaneously happy and harmless each moment again”, you can more easily recognize whenever a feeling is leading your away from that destiny, and also more easily recognize that a feeling is not a fact.

*

VINEETO: Now that you know that you can only have one, or the other, you can decisively find out which direction you want to proceed – ‘self’-enhancing techniques or a naïve felicity and innocuity. Once you know your intent, there is action possible based on this perspicacity (that ‘me’ taking credit spoils both naiveté and purity).
Your destiny is entirely in your hands.

ADAM-H: I am indeed more clearly aware that I can have only one and not the other. This awareness is helping to convert my overarching ‘initiative’ that being permanently happy and harmless is what I want to do with the rest of my life and nothing else really comes close into more concrete action – that I have to actually be felicitous and innocuous here and now in these particular circumstances and in spite of these particular uncertainties.

VINEETO: Ha, it sounds like a terrible chore the way you put it “I have to actually be felicitous and innocuous” – don’t make it into a moral doctrine or precept to be obeyed else it gets corrupted into a tool to keep you miserable. How about ‘I prefer to be …’ and ‘I will do whatever necessary to look at, nip in the bud or investigate the obstacle to this happy condition’.

Richard: I might add, though, that naïveté does away with all that ‘heavy lifting’ you spoke of in an earlier e-mail. Viz.:

• [Respondent]: ‘From what I can glean so far, virtual freedom is a period of ‘heavy lifting’. (‘Introduction’; Friday, 27 July 2003).

Where you have gleaned this diaphoretic impression from has got me stumped ... here is but one of the many ways I describe the actualism practice:

• [Richard]: ‘... the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition is marked by enjoyment and appreciation – the sheer delight of being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible whilst remaining a ‘self’ – and the slightest diminishment of such felicity/ innocuity is a warning signal (a flashing red light as it were) that one has inadvertently wandered off the way.

One is thus soon back on track ... and all because of everyday events. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 38, 20 February 2003).

Or even more specifically to the point of your ‘heavy lifting’ comment:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘If it is the experiencer that makes efforts to be aware and stay aware, the centre is strengthened, not dissolved, right?

• [Richard]: ‘Since when has naiveté been sudorific? (Richard, List B, No 12q, 5 January 2003).

In short: if it be not either easy (effortless) or fun (enjoyable) then there is something to look at until it is again. (Richard, Actual Freedom List, No. 46, 9 August 2003).

Best of success and a lot of naïve fun.

Cheers Vineeto