Actualism Method

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

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

This method is unlikely to work for someone that is currently suffering from Neurosis.

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:

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

RICHARD: [..] 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.

– http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-method.htm

Links to this page
  • Seriousness

    RICHARD: You need to have a keen sense of humour. This business of becoming free is not – contrary to popular opinion – a serious business at all. Be totally sincere … most definitely utterly sincere, as genuineness is essential. But serious … no way. Humour is essential – it is inevitable in an actual freedom – and one has a lot of fun along the way. An actual freedom is all about having fun; about enjoying being here; about delighting in being alive. All that ‘being serious’ stuff actively works against peace-on-earth. One has to want to be here on this planet … most people resent being here and wish to escape. This method will bring one into being more fully here than anyone has ever been before. If you do not want to be here, then forget it.

  • Sensuousness

    RICHARD: The other aspect of the actualism method – other than felicity/ innocuity – is sensuosity: feeling felicitous/ innocuous, each moment again, brings one closer to one’s senses and the resultant wonder at the brilliance of the sensate world can enable apperception … the direct experience of the world as-it-is.

  • Security

    I don’t belong to any group and I have dared to acknowledge the fact that I am on my own – in fact, I as this flesh-and-blood body have been on my own all my life despite my feelings of belonging or not belonging. For the path to an actual freedom I rely on my own pure consciousness experiences to know what I want to achieve and I found that the method of actualism works to make me happy and harmless. There is neither belief nor devotion nor gratitude nor security nor following an authority figure – none of these emotional needs and bondages exist anymore.

  • Out-from-Control, Different Way of Being

    RICHARD: [..] the actualism method segues into what has become known as the actualism process when the actualism method has become so automatic, via habituation, that one is walking about in a state of wide-eyed wonder (naiveté) simply marvelling at being alive (sensuosity) and being amazed/ delighted that all this – the world about/the universe itself – is occurring in the first place; the actualism process is when it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the difference between one doing it (doing this business called being alive) and it happening of its own accord; when one becomes the experiencing of being alive/of it all occurring of its own accord one is then out-from-control (not ‘out of control’ as in wayward) and a different-way-of-being has ensued.

  • Humanity Unorthodox

    Start from Actualism Method if you wish to get to the nitty-gritty of what this is all about (the “method” is to segue into the “actualism process” which culminates in “self”-immolation) … or browse the various notes below.

  • Felicity and Innocuity

    [Richard]: ’The felicitous/innocuous feelings are in no way docile, lack-lustre affections … in conjunction with sensuosity they make for an extremely forceful/ potent combination as, with all of the affective energy channelled into being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible (and no longer being frittered away on love and compassion/ malice and sorrow), the full effect of ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being – which is 'being' itself – is dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone. (…) The actualism method is not about undermining the passions … on the contrary, it is about 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) in order to effect a deliberate imitation of the actual, as evidenced in a PCE, so as to feel as happy and as harmless (as free of malice and sorrow) as is humanly possibly whilst remaining a ‘self’.

  • Feeling good (mood)

    RESPONDENT: (…) How is the method best done – should I examine the feeling and find its trigger while experiencing it, in order to get back to feeling good?

  • Climate Alarmism

    Plus the more one enjoys and appreciates being alive simply by being here, each moment again for as much as is humanly possible (editor: See Actualism Method), the lower the cost-of-living becomes as less and less discretionary spending is used-up in purchased entertainment, in socialising expenditure (e.g., fashion-house attire, designer-driven accoutrements, status-displaying automobiles, and etcetera), in mood-enhancement payments, in novelty-seeking travel costs, and so on and so forth.

  • Autonomy

    The way of becoming actually free is both simple and practical. One starts by dismantling the shadowy social identity which has been overlaid, from birth onward, on top of the innate self until one is virtually free from all the social mores and psittacisms (those mechanical repetitions of previously received ideas or images, reflecting neither apperception nor autonomous reasoning). One can be virtually free from all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions and all the other schemes and dreams. One can become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques which were used to produce what one feels and thus thinks oneself to be: a wayward identity careering around in confusion and illusion. A ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning entity. However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is.