Actualism Method
From NonSpiritual
In the words of its founder: the actualism method is about using thought to examine feelings.[1]
The Actualism method uses a continuing wordless awareness to live in a happy and harmless state every moment.
How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?
The essential method is to undertake a total investigation into anything that is preventing one from being happy and harmless now – after all, if one’s aim is to be happy then one needs to be happy now, not at some time in the future, nor some time in the past. This moment is, after all, the only moment I can experience being happy.
It is vital to explore and investigate the affective feelings and emotions that arise from the instinctual animal passions – both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ – for the secret to being actually free of malice and sorrow lies in this very exploration. It is essential to understand and fully comprehend that one’s feelings and emotions are part and parcel of the Human Condition and not a personal fault, failure, stigma or ‘evil’. Fear, aggression, nurture and desire are innate passions that every human being is programmed with by blind nature.
There is a third alternative in investigating affective feelings, emotions and instinctual passions and it involves neither repressing nor expressing – the traditional either/or approach. This alternative approach requires breaking the habit of either expressing or repressing feelings, emotions and passions. Clearly seeing what one is doing to others by expressing, or attempting to suppress, anger is surely sufficient to stop if one’s intent is to become harmless. This observing and investigating – neither suppressing or expressing – has the added advantage of both getting men fully into their feelings for the first time in their life and getting women to examine their feelings, one by one, instead of being run by a basketful of them all at once.
The method soon presents success incrementally, as freedom from beliefs and instinctual passions is indeed a freedom that results in increased peace and harmony for oneself and in one’s relating with one’s fellow human beings. The method does bring up fear and resistance, because one is dismantling one’s very ‘self’, those very beliefs and passions one holds so dearly.[2]
Further Reading
- http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/actualism/path1.htm
- http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/method.htm
