Diminishment

From Richard’s Selected Correspondence On How To Become Free of the Human Condition:

[..] what ‘he’ had twigged to [..] was how it was far, far easier and simpler to stay in a good mood come-what-may – preferably a happy mood of course – than claw ‘his’ way back up to feeling good, again and again, after having habitually reverted to type.

Hence being (affectively) aware, each moment again, of more and more subtle variations in the quality of one’s moment-to-moment enjoyment and appreciation of being alive/ of being here so as to earlier and earlier pre-empt any potential reversion to type.

Also, repeated experience had shown ‘him’ that minor dips🥌️ in that quality presaged each major diminution⛰️ – indeed miniscule blips⚛️️ soon became evident even earlier than those minor dips as ‘his’ ability to (affectively) detect subtle variations in the affective tone of mood and temperament 1 became evermore fine-tuned – and the earlier such habituated silliness could be (affectively) discerned the sooner ‘he’ could thus nip these instinctual potentialities in the bud.

Footnotes
1.

[Richard]: The affective tone of mood and temperament relates to the qualitative nature of same (as distinct from hedonic-tone which is either pleasurable, displeasureable or neither).

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  • Awareness-Cum-Attentiveness; Aware-Cum-Attentive

    This hyphenated neologism – a term which includes being affectively aware in combination with, and as felt necessary thereby, being cognitively attentive (the Latin cum=with, together with, or along with, as in ‘a garage-cum-workshop’, for instance) – was coined in order to more readily reference an adroit technique which involves a keenly discriminative affective monitoring of the quality of mood plus the cognitive rectification of same, and as instigated responsively‌ therefrom, so as to effect beneficial modification of one’s day-by-day temperament which, in the longer-term, brings about a benefactive transformation of disposition and/or character as well. Any necessity to be (cognitively) attentive only takes place on those occasions when/ where an otherwise ongoing (affective) enjoyment and appreciation diminishes – which attentiveness is initiated by that diminution in the quality of (affectively) enjoying and appreciating being alive/ being here, each moment again, come-what-may – and occurs less and less once one gets the knack of thus (affectively) monitoring one’s moment-to-moment mood and temperament via the increasingly subtle variations in that quality.

  • Actualism Method
    A slightest diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation automatically activates attentiveness.
    Repeated occurrences of the same cause for felicity/ innocuity loss alerts pre-recognition of impending dissipation which enables pre-emption and ensures a more persistent felicity/ innocuity through habituation.
    Seeing the silliness at having felicity/ innocuity be usurped, by either the negative or positive feelings, for whatever reason that might be automatically restores felicity/ innocuity.

    And the nipping-it-in-the-bud is that when you start to feel even irritated or slightly irked at something, you learn to recognize – it’s like a red-light goes off/ starts flashing or bells start ringing – you know that here-you-go-again … back to on this path you have been going umpteen thousands of times in a lifetime and it doesn’t lead to anywhere fruitftul at all. So, the nipping-it-in-the-bud is to, in effect, decline – "I've done that before; I know where it leads to; I'm not going to do that again; what's the point? It doesn't lead to anywhere at all". And then when you get into the habit of feeling as happy and harmless as is humanly possible that, in combination with sensuosity (which is becoming more and more aware of the flowers and the trees and the stars and the clouds and the rivers and the mountains and anything at all) can lead to a state of wide-eyed wonder, which brings it back to naivete which is the nearest thing you can get to being innocent whilst still being a self. And then, something can happen. There’s always the possibility that some kind of experience can happen - be it an Excellence Experience or a Pure Consciousness Experience. And then, finally, the feelings are gone. But then “you” have disappeared as well.

    It is really very, very simple (which is possibly why it has never been discovered before this): you felt good previously; you are not feeling good now; something happened to you to end that felicitous/ innocuous feeling; you find out what happened; you see how silly that is (no matter what it was); you are once more feeling good. —Richard