IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This method is unlikely to work for someone that is currently suffering from Neurosis.
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
P: Is it possible to cut each emotion [eg. anger] at the root, so that it is not a long process?
R: At the root itself, "you" are that feeling; whichever the feeling is, that’s what “you” are; right at the very root of everything ("I" am "my" feelings and "my" feelings are "me" is the way to look at it). The only way to completely and utterly get rid of feelings is to get rid of “yourself”, because it is one and the same thing. What the identity inside this body did all those years ago was, by being attentive to what was happening each moment again, got into the habit of feeling as happy and harmless as is humanly possible, which meant that the other feelings didn’t get a look-in. That’s the primary way that the whole method works.
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.
(From a DVD video)
First, a couple of passages providing overall context; followed by point by point description of the method; ending with some clarifying commentary.
RICHARD: Obviously, the physical cause necessitates a physical solution (the extinction of the instinctual ‘being’ itself) and this altruistic ‘self’-sacrifice will not eventuate unless the temporary absence or abeyance of the physically inherited cause (a genetically inherited instinctual animal ‘self’) which created the problem of the human condition is intimately experienced, remembered and activated. This peak experience of one’s potentiality is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and is essential to the process of freeing oneself from one’s fate and attaining to one’s destiny. The first and most important step is to remember a PCE (everybody that I have spoken to at length over the last nineteen years – everybody – has had at least one) and thus start thinking for oneself (although most people cannot initially remember a PCE and may need a lot of prompting to retrieve it from their memory). Then each next step becomes obvious of its own accord in one’s daily life as one goes about one’s normal business in the market place. The pure intent born out of the PCE actively works on eliminating the animal ‘self’ bestowed by blind nature each moment again. http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/default.htm
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. http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-intimacy.htm
From This Moment of Being Alive:
- Begin by asking, each moment again, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’
- Note: asking how I am experiencing this moment of being alive is not the actualism method.
- Consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is the actualism method.
- The means to the end – an ongoing enjoyment and appreciation – are no different to the end.
- Enjoyment and appreciation are facilitated by feeling as happy and as harmless as possible.
- Felicity and innocuity are potently enabled by minimising both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings.
- An affective awareness is the key to maximising felicity and innocuity over all alternate feelings.
- A slightest diminishment of enjoyment and appreciation automatically activates attentiveness.
- Attentiveness to the cause of diminished enjoyment and appreciation restores felicity/innocuity.
- The habituation of actualistic awareness and attentiveness requires a persistent initialisation.
- Persistent initialisation segues into a wordless approach, a non-verbal attitude towards life.
- Consistently enjoying and appreciating this moment of being alive is what the actualism method is.
From What is the Answer to ‘How Am I Experiencing this Moment of Being Alive?’
RESPONDENT: Can someone please list the laws contained within the method that enable one to minimise the social identity and the instinctual passions?
RICHARD: Nope … however, the experiential processes contained within the actualism method can be:
- Activate the long-ago buried sincerity so as to make possible a pure intent to bring about peace and harmony sooner rather than later.
- Set the standard of experiencing, each moment again, as feeling felicitous/ innocuous come-what-may.
- Where felicity/ innocuity is not occurring find out why not.
- 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.
- 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.
- Habitual felicity/ innocuity, and its concomitant enjoyment and appreciation, facilitates naïve sensuosity … a consistent state of wide-eyed wonder, amazement, marvel, and delight.
- Naiveté, in conjunction with felicitous/ innocuous sensuosity, being the nearest a ‘self’ can come to innocence, allows the overarching benignity and benevolence inherent to the infinitude this infinite and eternal and perpetual universe actually is to operate more and more freely.
- This intrinsic benignity and benevolence, which has nothing to do with affective happiness and harmlessness, will do the rest.
- Sit back and enjoy the ride of a lifetime!
RESPONDENT: It’s interesting that in practicing Actualism, we need to be in touch with our emotions enough to not be detached, but not so much in touch with them that we get dissociated as in enlightenment.
RICHARD: For the sake of clarity in communication I would stress that the actualism method sits firmly upon the minimisation of both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feelings and the optimisation of the felicitous/ innocuous feelings … and merely being in touch with felicity will not do the trick.
RESPONDENT: … but I see what is missing is I must generate felicity as my resident mood and not just be in touch with it sometimes.
RICHARD: Yes … and then, further along the way, be felicitous/ innocuous (‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’).
RESPONDENT: … but thank you for pointing out why because, obviously, how can I be happy when my attitude is ‘I didn’t ask to be born.’? HA!
RICHARD: Indeed not … that basic resentment, the fundamental grievance, will dog every best effort otherwise and render all endeavour useless.
– http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/listafcorrespondence/listaf50.htm#WzTtDiV
RICHARD: The jumping in point is always here … it is at this moment in time and this place in space. Thus, if you miss it this time around, hey presto … you have another chance immediately. Life is excellent at providing opportunities like this.
RESPONDENT: You’re going to have to send more information or draw a clearer map to paradise.
RICHARD: Okay. It is essential for success to grasp the fact that this is your only moment of being alive. The past, although it did happen, is not actual now. The future, though it will happen, is not actual now. Only now is actual. Yesterday’s happiness does not mean a thing if one is miserable now … and a hoped-for happiness tomorrow is to but waste this moment of being alive in waiting. All you get by waiting is more waiting.
Thus any ‘change’ can only happen now.
What ‘I’ did, eighteen years ago, was to devise a remarkably effective method of ridding this body of ‘me’. (Now I know that methods are to be actively discouraged, in some people’s eyes, but this one worked). ‘I’ asked myself, each moment again: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’?
– http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-hope.htm